Educational standards increasingly emphasize argumentation skills as goals fundamental to academic success, but schools largely fail to develop these skills in students, particularly among those in educationally disadvantaged populations. The present study examines development of argument skills among disadvantaged middle schoolers by engaging them in dialogs with a more capable adult over the course of a school year, in the context of a twice-weekly argumentation curriculum. Over four successive topics, participants in the curriculum engaged in six sessions of argumentive dialog per topic. Dialogs were conducted electronically between a pair of peers holding the same position on the topic and successive peer pairs holding the opposing position. Students were randomly assigned to treatment and comparison conditions. For students in the treatment condition, unknown to participants (due to the electronic medium), for half of the dialogs the opposing peer pair was replaced by an educated adult. These alternated with dialogs with peer pairs. Students in the comparison condition participated only in peer dialogs. The adult model arguers sought to concentrate their input on advanced argument strategies, identified as Counter-C (critique) and Counter-U (undermine), to the maximum extent possible. Effects on students were evaluated by their performance in their peer dialogs over the year and in a final dialogic assessment on a new topic in which students argued individually with an opponent (rather than in collaboration with a same-side peer). By the second of four topics, the more advanced argument strategies began to appear in a greater proportions of utterances in the dialogs of students in the treatment condition, compared to those in the comparison condition. The effect of condition increased over successive topics. It also persisted beyond the treatment context to the transfer task. These findings are suggestive of the power of engagement with a more competent other as a means of developing higher-order cognitive skills, as well as less complex social and cognitive competencies, where learning through apprenticeship has already been demonstrated to be a powerful learning mechanism. These findings are of particular significance for the educationally disadvantaged population studied here, who often are afforded inadequate opportunities to develop higher-order cognitive skills. Pedagogical and social implications are discussed.

What makes some students more effective learners and better academic performers than others? Is the answer identical with respect to learning and academic achievement, or do the contributing factors differ? I examined two kinds of self-regulation – cognitive regulation and behavior regulation – as predictors of individual differences in middle-school students’ learning and academic achievement. The type of learning investigated here is that of inductive learning, where knowledge must be discovered or constructed by the learner – the knowledge is not given to them, rather it is induced based on newly found evidence in light of preconceived beliefs. Across two studies, one a pilot study with underachieving students of lower socioeconomic status (SES) (n=21) and the other a larger study with a wider range of lower to middle SES students (n=135), results were consistent. A measure of cognitive regulation, but not behavior regulation, predicted learning effectiveness on an inquiry learning task adapted for this study. Behavior regulation, but not cognitive regulation, predicted academic achievement (assessed by state-administered standardized achievement tests). Longitudinal analyses were conducted to determine whether two distinct self-regulatory processes predicted change in academic performance. Cognitive regulation predicted improvement in math scores, while behavior regulation did not. Behavior regulation, however, showed little predictive power to English scores, and cognitive regulation showed none. Finally, to better understand the directional associations of these variables, structural equation modeling was performed. Results suggested that it is indeed cognitive regulatory processes, not behavior regulation, that predict learning effectiveness, which in turn predict improvement on both Math and English standardized test scores. These results support the conclusion that (a) learning and academic achievement are distinct constructs, and (b) cognitive regulation and behavior regulation are related, but distinct, processes of self-regulation, with cognitive regulation the more consequential as a long-term predictor of both learning and academic achievement.

This dissertation study explored the literacies and socialization practices that middle school youth used while engaging in a school-wide Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) class. The primary aims of the dissertation were to contribute to literature on YPAR and to examine the literacy and socialization practices that young people drew upon as resources in developing agentive identities. Relying on what is named as an agentive ecological approach, this study built upon sociocultural theories of literacy and learning to emphasize young people’s development of agency through their shared participation in a YPAR class that was shaped not only by the multiple identities they carried with them into the classroom, but also by factors such as the pedagogy of the teacher, the philosophies of school administrators, and the sociopolitical context of school. This study also relied on the ongoing traditions of critical literacy and critical pedagogy to highlight the ways that YPAR served as a mediator of important critical literacies that allowed students to learn about and directly respond to the social, historical, and cultural contexts of inequality that they encountered. Situated in one of New York City’s most ethnically diverse middle schools, this critical ethnographic study used multimodal and ethnographic methodologies to excavate the experiences of 7th and 8th grade students enrolled in a newly implemented YPAR course at their school. In this year-long course, students were apprenticed as critical social researchers of educational issues while simultaneously provided with opportunities to utilize digital media tools toward civic ends. Methods for this study included 112 hours of participant observation where the researcher captured field notes, weekly memos, and photographs of classroom life across six months of the course; three semi-structured interviews each with six randomly selected students enrolled in 13 sections of YPAR; and multimodal literacy artifacts that included YPAR film materials, Google Classroom assignments, photographs, and digital stories. Three focus group interviews were also conducted with a group of students selected for enrollment in a “YPAR filmmaking course”, where they were tasked with creating a film about the impact of YPAR on the school. This group had a unique vantage point in that that they participated in iterations of YPAR across all three years of their middle school experiences, affording a much needed phenomenological perspective. Finally, two semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teacher of the course, who also provided curriculum and planning documents for analysis. Constant comparative method and Critical Discourse Analysis were the primary methodological tools used to analyze the data in the study. Major findings revealed how the cultivation of critical literacies in the YPAR course afforded youth the opportunity to identify and respond to barriers in their educational contexts, allowing them to assert more humanizing portraits of themselves and their communities. Moreover, students’ leveraging of digital media tools toward civic ends permitted them space to offer perspectives concerning issues like Islamophobia and global violence, assisting them in the brokering of sociopolitical identities that changed the way they saw themselves, others, and the world surrounding them. Findings from the YPAR filmmaking class revealed the ways that youth constructed stories about imagined futures and their perceived role in shaping those futures, signaling new ways that critical digital literacy practices might be cultivated in service of healthy social, civic, and academic identities.

This study examines Channel One's influence on middle schools in Sullivan County, Tennessee. The purpose of the study is to investigate the views, feelings, and opinions of Sullivan County middle school teachers regarding the use of Channel One in their classrooms. The study utilizes data gathered from surveys and personal interviews from five middle schools in Sullivan County, Tennessee that subscribe to Channel One. Areas of data presentation include the uses of Channel One in each teaching classroom, the positive and negative consequences Sullivan County middle school teachers perceive Channel One has on their students, the effects of Channel One's advertising upon their students, and the overall satisfaction of teachers who use Channel One in their curriculum. Conclusions of the study emphasize the need for more teacher in-service training specifically for teachers who have Channel One in their classroom.

Recent research has shown an increase in cyber bullying acts against middle and high school students. The National Center of Education Statistics (2010) reported that cyberbullying incidents increased 73% between the years of 2007 and 2009. In 2011, 75% of cyberbullying victims were adolescents (National Center of Education Statistics, 2013). Using data collected from the Pew Research and American Life Project, the study examined the prevalence of cyber bullying acts against African American female adolescents compared to Caucasian male and female adolescents and African American male adolescents. Additionally, the study reported the cyber bullying incident that occurred most frequently as either directly using texting or indirectly using social media websites. Past research studies have shown a prevalence of cyber bullying acts against Caucasian females. The participants in this study were 737 adolescents 12-17 years old. The results suggested that a prevalence of cyber bullying acts against African American female students occurred at a significantly lower rate than Caucasian female and male students but a significantly higher rate than African American male students and Hispanic male and female students. Additionally, indirect cyberbullying incidents occurred significantly more frequently than direct cyberbullying incidents.

It has been common for elementary teachers to read aloud to their students; however, it has not been so common in the middle school. The purpose of this phenomenological case study was to examine how middle school teachers and their students describe the use of read-alouds, including the teachers’ reasons for conducting read-alouds and the students’ descriptions of their experiences with them. Individual interviews and observations were conducted with two teachers and six students to gain the essence of their experiences with read-alouds. Results from this study indicated that what students gained from read-alouds matched the reasons their teachers utilized them. The students described their experiences as enjoyable, helpful to independent reading, motivating, engaging, and a learning opportunity which were all reasons their teachers stated for reading aloud. Findings in this study also indicated the fidelity with which read-alouds were implemented by teachers was impacted by district mandates and the pressure of preparing students for state tests. Results indicated students prospered both cognitively and affectively from listening to teachers read aloud. This study can be used to inform middle school teachers and administrators of the value of using read-alouds. Keywords: Read-Alouds, Middle School Teachers, Middle School Students, Middle School Reading

Student disaffection, a pervasive problem in middle school classrooms, is costly not only for disaffected students themselves (e.g., declines in GPA, high school drop out) but also for their teachers (e.g., stress-related health outcomes). Despite its importance, however, open questions remain regarding both the development of disaffection during early adolescence and the classroom dynamics that underlie changes in disaffection. This dissertation includes two free-standing manuscripts that explore these open questions regarding the development and classroom dynamics of disaffection. Each focuses on different developmental time scales and employs different methodological approaches to examine these important, but unanswered questions. Drawing from a database of classroom observation videos, study one is a multiple case study focusing on four classrooms, which were selected based on school-level socioeconomic status and student-reported disaffection. This study was designed to explore 1) how disaffection is first initiated, 2) how it develops across single class periods, 3) how teachers generally respond to student disaffection, and 4) whether different kinds of teacher responses reduce or amplify disaffection. Student disaffection and teacher responses to disaffection were observationally coded and analyzed resulting in the following findings. First, students were initially most frequently socially off task during individual work time or relatively passive whole group time. Second, six patterns of how disaffection changed over the observed class periods were found with each pattern representing distinct student experiences and varying degrees in severity of disaffection. Third, while teachers' overall responses to disaffection could be classified as generally supportive (involvement and autonomy support) or defensive (withdrawal and controlling behavior), the teachers were not strictly adherent to one response style. Finally, five kinds of teacher responses to disaffection (supportive, quick fix, no response, mixed, and defensive) were found, each with varying degrees of effectiveness at resolving disaffection. Drawing from a 5-year longitudinal cohort-sequential dataset, study two is designed to describe the normative trajectories of disaffection across the early adolescent years and then to also examine the classroom dynamics that underlie these developmental changes in disaffection. Surveys of students' experiences of disaffection and perceptions of their relationships with their science teachers and teachers' views of student disaffection were collected twice per school year and subsequently analyzed. Latent growth curve models examined the development of disaffection finding both behavioral and emotional forms to have gradually increasing linear trajectories across the early adolescent years. Additionally, both initial levels in fall of 6th grade and rates of change significantly differed between students. Regarding the classroom dynamics of disaffection, the supported model suggests that teacher views of disaffection directly and indirectly through student-teacher relationships predict concurrent student experiences of disaffection and that earlier student experiences of disaffection predict changes in teacher views of disaffection across the school year. Taken together, the studies in this dissertation contribute to our growing understanding of how disaffection develops both across single middle school class periods (study 1) and across early adolescence (study 2). Additionally, these studies are among the first to investigate the classroom dynamics that may explain why disaffection develops over these multiple time frames. Implications of each study and the collective findings of this dissertation are considered in the respective discussion sections in Chapter 3, 4, and 5.

This study, which was conducted among middle-school students in California, focused on the effectiveness of using innovative strategies for enhancing the classroom environment, students' attitudes, and conceptual development. Six hundred and sixty-one (661) students from 22 classrooms in four inner city schools completed the modified actual forms of the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES), the What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC) questionnaire, and the Test Of Mathematics Related Attitudes (TOMRA). The data were analyzed for the CLES, WIHIC, and TOMRA to check their factor structure, reliability, discriminant validity, and the ability to distinguish between different classes and groups. In terms of the validity of the CLES, WIHIC, and TOMRA when used with middle-school students in California, the factor analysis results attest to the sound factor structure of each questionnaire. The results for each CLES, WIHIC, and TOMRA scale for the alpha reliability and discriminant validity for two units of analysis (individual and class mean) compare favorably with the results for other well-established classroom environment instruments. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was also calculated for each scale of the CLES and WIHIC to investigate its ability to differentiate between the perceptions of students in different classrooms. The ANOVA results suggest that students perceived the learning environments of different mathematics classrooms differently on CLES and WIHIC scales. In general, the results provided evidence of the validity of these instruments in describing psychosocial factors in the learning environments of middle-school mathematics classrooms in California. The effectiveness of the innovative strategy was evaluated in terms of classroom environment and attitudes, as well as achievement, among a subgroup of 101 students. / Effect sizes and t-tests for paired sample were used to determine changes in classroom environment perceptions, attitudes, and achievement for experimental and control groups. Pretest-posttest differences were statistically significant (p<0.05) for: the CLES scale of Shared Control for the experimental group, the TOMRA scale of Normality of Mathematicians for both the control and the experimental groups, the TOMRA scale of Enjoyment of Mathematics for the experimental group, and the achievement measure for both groups. Also ANCOVA was calculated to determine if differential pretest-posttest changes were experienced by the experimental and control groups in classroom environment perceptions, attitudes, and achievement. The results suggest that there were a statistically significant differential changes for Task Orientation, Normality of Mathematicians, Enjoyment of Mathematics, and achievement between the experimental and control groups. In each case, the experimental group experienced larger pretest-posttest changes than the control group. Overall, a comparison of the pretest-posttest changes for an experimental group, which experienced the innovative strategy, with those for a control group, supported the efficacy of the innovative teaching methods in terms of learning environment perceptions, attitudes to mathematics, and mathematics concept development. The results of simple correlation and multiple correlation analyses of outcome-environment associations for two units of analysis clearly indicated that there is an association between the learning environment and students’ attitudes and mathematics achievement for this group of middle-school mathematics students. / In particular, there is a positive and statistically significant correlation between: Normality of Mathematicians and Student Negotiation, Involvement, and Task Orientation with the individual as the unit of analysis; Enjoyment of Mathematics and all three CLES and three WIHIC scales with the student as a unit of analysis, and for the four scales of Personal Relevance, Shared Control, Involvement, and Task Orientation with the class mean as the unit of analysis. The multiple correlations between the group of three CLES and three WIHIC scales and each of the two TOMRA scales are statistically significant for the individual as a unit of analysis. Overall, the study revealed positive and statistically significant associations between the classroom learning environment and students’ attitudes to mathematics. A two-way MANOVA with repeated measures on one factor was utilized to investigate gender differences in terms of students’ perceptions of classroom environment and attitudes to mathematics, as well as mathematics achievement. A statistically significant but small difference was found between the genders for Student Negotiation and Task Orientation. Female students perceived their mathematics classrooms somewhat more positively than did the male students. There was no statistically significant difference between the genders on achievement and students’ attitudes to mathematics. Qualitative information, gathered through audiotaped interviews, students’ journal, and analysis of students’ work, was used to clarify students’ opinions about the new approach, classroom environment perceptions, attitudes, and conceptual development. / These qualitative information-gathering tools were utilized to obtain a more in-depth understanding of the learning environments (Tobin, Kahle, & Fraser, 1990) and the results of my study (Punch, 1998), as well as insights into students’ perceptions (Spinner & Fraser, 2005). The responses from the students’ interviews and students’ reflective journals from the group that experienced the innovative methods generally suggested that introducing Cramer’s rule as a method for solving systems of linear equations in the middle school can be beneficial and therefore might be considered for inclusion in the middle-school Algebra 1 curriculum more widely in California. Using only quantitative data would not have provided the richness that was derived from using mixed methods (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004). Therefore, qualitative data obtained from students who experienced the innovative method generally supported the quantitative findings concerning the effectiveness of this method for teaching and learning systems of linear equations.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 90-94). Also available in print.

The purpose of this research was to examine the effects of a co-curricular program on the behavior of seriously emotionally disturbed (SED) middle school students. Co-curricular activities are any school-based activities that give students an opportunity to blend the various aspects of their academic learning with personal actions. This was an action research study conducted in a middle school special education program. The participants were 10 middle school students identified as seriously emotionally disturbed. These students participated in the planning and evaluation of their involvement in co-curricular activities during this year long study. Participant observations, interviews, student and staff journals, and documentary evidence provided data for the development of case records. The study generated the following results: Participation in co-curricular activities increased the sense of belonging for these students at this middle school. Seriously emotionally disturbed students reported that adult mentors significantly influenced their level of success. Seriously emotionally disturbed students had higher grade point averages and better attendance and fewer disciplinary issues during this study. During co-curricular activities, these students demonstrated leadership, thinking, communication, and cooperative learning skills that were not apparent in the regular classroom settings. Seriously emotionally disturbed students responded favorably to a solution-focused model of education. Parents reported that their students engaged in more leisure activities involving peers outside school, and were easier to live with at home. Students identified the privilege of participating in co-curricular activities as motivating them to minimize their past use of counter-productive social strategies during interactions with peers and adults. Latino students found it difficult to participate in activities with Anglos if other Latinos did not view the activity as acceptable. The primary implication of this research for schools is that co-curricular programs appeared to increase the sense of belonging for middle school SED students which influenced more positive social and academic behaviors. / Graduation date: 1999