American Educational Research Journal

Does unequal access to high quality English instruction lead to unequal achievement outcomes for students? Four key aspects of high quality instruction—quantity of assignments, coherence of instruction, student voice in curricular and pedagogical issues, and the content of instruction—are examined to see whether each aspect affects growth in reading achievement from grades 8 to 12. Analyses indicate that some aspects of student voice enhance achievement growth, but quantity and coherence do not. Content has the most substantial impact on achievement growth: greater emphasis on analytical writing is associated with greater growth in reading scores. Overall, these measures of instructional practices partially explain why students’ track position and reading achievement are related.

School violence is a problem in many nations, and rates of school violence in the United States are not among the highest in the world. The authors utilize a section of the TIMSS survey data to (a) explore the amount of school violence among the 37 nations in the study; (b) ascertain whether the traditional national-level predictors of crimes and delinquency explain cross-national variation in school violence; and (c) test whether factors related to the educational system are associated with levels of school violence cross-nationally. The results show that national patterns of school violence are not strongly related to general patterns of violence or lack of social integration in society. However, national systems of education that produce greater achievement differences between high-achieving and low-achieving students tend to record more violence. The authors suggest further studies and testing of one possible remedy for school violence: equalizing the quality of education that all students receive.

Relying on the life stories of three age cohorts of Black women who were first-generation college graduates, this article reveals how structural constraints shifted from one generation to another to differentially place the women at risk for limited educational attainment. In response to these shifting constraints and accordant changes in opportunities, the women’s strategies for negotiating the constraints on their educational mobility changed from one age cohort to the next in the production of educational resilience. These findings convey that the changing dynamics of social life must be accounted for in our efforts to improve the theoretical precision with which we understand educational resilience as a socio-historical and institutionally responsive process instead of as an individually determined phenomenon.

Discussion is currently at the center of educators’ attention, and Paideia Seminars are discussions that increasingly are being advocated. In particular, Paideia Seminars embody dialogic discussion. However, little is known about the extent to which principles of dialogic discussion are manifested in classrooms during the enactment of the seminars. The main purpose of this case study was to examine types of discussion in Paideia Seminars. Data were collected through observations, questionnaires, and interviews. “Grand case analysis,” “micro-examination” of the seminar discussions, and “narrative research” analyses were done. The overarching conclusion of the study was that the observed discussions reflected the teacher’s transitional status in conducting dialogic discussion, with some features of “ideal” Paideia Seminar dialogue represented and some features of “teacher-fronted” discussion represented.

Although many cooperative learning methods advocate grouping students heterogeneously in order to maximize the diversity of perspectives, skills, and backgrounds, past research shows that heterogeneous grouping generally ben-efits low-ability students but does not necessarily benefit high-ability students. This study investigates the effects of group ability composition (homogeneous versus heterogeneous) on group processes and outcomes for high-ability students completing science performance assessments. High-ability students working in homogeneous groups uniformly performed well, and high-ability students in some heterogeneous groups performed as well as high-ability students in homogeneous groups; but high-ability students in other heterogeneous groups did not perform as well. The quality of group functioning served as the strongest predictor of high-ability students’ performance and explained much of the effect of group composition.

This longitudinal study describes playground games of children progressing across their first year of schooling. Boys, in comparison with girls, played more games, especially chase and ball games, and played a greater variety of games. Also, the variety of boys’ games increased across the school year. Girls played more verbal games than boys. The study found that facility with games forecast boys’ social competence and both boys’ and girls’ adjustment to first grade. Children’s groups remained ethnically segregated across the school year. Results are discussed in terms of the role of games as an important developmental task during middle childhood.

This is an article within an article. It reports the results of a study with high school students, teachers, and a preservice teacher; and it uses those results in further investigating the preservice teacher’s views 1 year after his participation in the study, a year during which he taught in his own classroom. Using sociotransformative constructivism as the theoretical framework, the article presents insights into the issues and difficulties that can be encountered by Anglo-European beginning teachers who are committed to teaching for understanding in predominantly Latino/a and impoverished school settings. Findings from this study suggest that an article-within-an-article format can be used as a tool for further professional development and as a research tool for strengthening the validity of research claims

This article explores the work of three high school mathematics teachers who have advanced large numbers of their Latina/o students (largely English-dominant) through the curriculum. The data are drawn from interviews with the teachers, from school and classroom observations over a 13-month period, and from student interviews. An analysis of teachers’ work with Latina/o students suggests that some of the strategies used by elementary and middle school teachers and teachers of English language learners are also successful with high school Latina/os who are primarily English-dominant. These strategies include having students work in groups, allowing students to work in their primary language, supplementing textbook materials, and building on students’ previous knowledge. The implications for future research, policy, and teacher education are also discussed.

This article reports on one facet of a researcher–practitioner project undertaken with class of 23 diverse fifth graders. The project was rooted in taking recent history education reforms seriously. It was premised principally on reforms dealing with teaching practices found in the history standards and the research literature. As the researcher–practitioner, the author engaged the students in historical investigations to help them learn to think historically and better understand the past. He operated from a theoretical framework based on how he believed historical thinking and understanding occur for such novice learners. During the first three lessons, on Jamestown’s “Starving Time,” the author and class encountered history’s interpretive paradox. The article begins with an analogy drawn from the discipline of history. It then describes classroom events. The analysis focuses on a teaching dilemma that the encounter with the paradox provoked and conveys how the author’s pedagogical thinking and decision making were influenced by that encounter. The discussion of the dilemma suggests how research and reform in history education and the theories that underpin them mingle, in promising but unpredictable ways.