Reading Attitude as a Mediator Between Contextual Factors and Reading Behavior

The authors of this study examined how attitudes toward reading mediated the relationships between Korean adolescents’ reading environments and reading behaviors, using a nationally representative sample from the PISA 2009 database. Gender, home literacy resources, parents’ reading attitude, and parental support for reading were all significant predictors of Korean adolescents’ reading attitude.

Rich Classroom Discussion: One Way to Get Rich Learning

“Rich classroom discourse” has long been valorized by education reformers who object to teacher domination of classroom discussions. Is the greater use of RCD key to intellectually inspiring and challenging classrooms? Perhaps instead of focusing on increased use it’s time to ask what specific role for RCD might be realistic and yield learning outcomes educators value? The best chance for progress is to link this question to another one: how to create rich learning opportunities for achieving more advanced competencies. Strategic deployment of RCD for well-defined instructional purposes seems a more realistic vision than advocating greater use without respect for why, when, and for whom. Finding RCD’ proper role requires at least three conditions. Sustained collaboration between teachers and researchers. An ongoing study of curriculum and practice to identify pivotal RLOs in each unit or project and which might benefit from RCD. Supporting teacher development of the professional judgment to skillfully manage complex decisions with each population and generation of students they teach, so they deploy the best instructional choices.

Black Male(d): Peril and Promise in the Education of African American Males

The Pathologizing and Complicity of “Brown Boys”: Minoritized High School Students in Danger

Educated in Whiteness: Good Intentions and Diversity in Schools

Race, Community, and Urban Schools: Partnering with African American Families

Black Males in Postsecondary Education: Examining Their Experiences in Diverse Institutional Contexts

Public Education: For Richer, For Poorer

Since 1965, three precedents have had a powerful influence on the direction of public education—the promise to educate all children, the fluctuating nature of school funding, and mandated standardized tests. This commentary discusses the interplay of these three precedents for rich and poor.

Undocumented and Unwanted: Attending College Against the Odds

The Beautiful Risk of Education

Research in Learning and Teaching in Educational Leadership

Lost Classroom, Lost Community: Catholic Schools' Importance in Urban America

Interpretive Discussion: Engaging Students in Text-Based Conversations

Can Reading Comprehension Be Taught?

In this commentary we suggest that reading comprehension strategy instruction does not actually improve general-purpose comprehension skills. Rather, this strategy represents a bag of tricks that are useful and worth teaching, but that that are quickly learned and require minimal practice.

Improvement by Design: The Promise of Better Schools

Youth, Education and the Role of Society: Rethinking Learning in the High School Years

School-Based Instructional Rounds: Improving Teaching and Learning Across Classrooms

Inequality, Poverty, Education: A Political Economy of School Exclusion

Exploring Globalization Opportunities and Challenges in Social Studies: Effective Instructional Approaches

Cross-Country Generalizability of the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in Students’ Strategy Use and Reading Competence

Because metacognitive knowledge includes knowledge about adequate learning strategies, and an effective use of learning strategies is associated with higher levels of performance, substantial relationships can be assumed between metacognitive knowledge, strategic behavior, and performance. The discussion considers the validity of metacognition indicators (knowledge and strategy use) and practical implications of the findings.

Moving Beyond Country Rankings in International Assessments: The Case of PISA

A main goal of this themed issue of Teachers College Record (TCR) is to move the conversation about PISA data beyond achievement to also include factors that affect achievement (e.g., SES, home environment, strategy use). Also we asked authors to consider how international assessment data can be used for improving learning and education and what appropriate versus inappropriate inferences can be made from the data.

The Fragmentation of Metropolitan Public School Districts and the Segregation of American Schools: A Longitudinal Analysis

This study examines the effects of metropolitan school district fragmentation―the proliferation of public school districts within a metropolitan area―on the trajectory of racial/ethnic school segregation between 2002 and 2010.

Higher Order Thinking in an Online World: Toward a Theory of Web-Mediated Knowledge Synthesis

This article proposes a theory through which to better understand, evaluate, and scaffold the generative synthesis of knowledge in a web-mediated world. The theory is based on a review of literature from a diverse range of scholarly fields as well as an empirical investigation of advanced learners on the web.

State Higher Education Performance Funding for Community Colleges: Diverse Effects and Policy Implications

Performance-based funding programs have become a popular state policy strategy for increasing college completions, among other things. This study asks, To what extent does the introduction of performance funding programs impact two-year degree completion among participating states? Using a difference-in-differences technique, we find that the program had no effect on average and mixed results for the individual states. We conclude that the policy is not a “silver bullet” for improving community college completions.

The Case of Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education: From Civil Rights to Students’ Rights and Back Again

This article examines the student activism that led to the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education (1961). It explores how the students’ civil rights activism was transformed into a fight for students’ rights and analyzes the interplay of this transformation with future civil rights work.