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This study explored implementation of the middle school concept (MSC) in Illinois middle-level schools, examining relationships between MSC implementation and schools' relative wealth, racial/ethnic composition, and achievement levels.

This quantitative study utilized a sample of 137 Illinois middle-level schools, defined as containing any combination of grades 5–9, including at least two consecutive grade levels and grade 7. Principals completed an online survey, identifying levels of implementation of advisory, teaming with common planning time (CPT), and a composite of both advisory and teaming with CPT.

Schools with high advisory implementation had significantly higher rates of Latinx enrollments. Schools with lower operating expenditures per pupil were significantly less likely to implement advisory or advisory and teaming. Teaming had a significant relationship with composite PARCC test scores, but there was no significant effect for advisory and no significant interaction of advisory and teaming together.

MSC is more expensive to implement, and affluent districts may have the financial means to absorb these costs. Although teaming facilitated improved state test scores, advisory programming did not result in significantly improved scores.

Lack of access to MSC programming in less affluent communities presents an equity issue for low-income students and students of color.

This study contributes to research examining underlying issues of race and poverty and their effects on academic achievement and the effectiveness of the MSC.

Arts-integration is a promising approach to building students’ abilities to create and critique arguments with data, also known as informal inferential reasoning (IIR). However, differences in disciplinary practices and routines, as well as school organization and culture, can pose barriers to subject integration. The purpose of this study is to describe synergies and tensions between data science and the arts, and how these can create or constrain opportunities for learners to engage in IIR.

The authors co-designed and implemented four arts-integrated data literacy units with 10 teachers of arts and mathematics in middle school classrooms from four different schools in the USA. The data include student-generated artwork and their written rationales, and interviews with teachers and students. Through maximum variation sampling, the authors identified examples from the data to illustrate disciplinary synergies and tensions that appeared to support different IIR processes among students.

Aspects of artistic representation, including embodiment, narrative and visual image; and aspects of the culture of arts, including an emphasis on personal experience, the acknowledgement of subjectivity and considerations for the audience’s perspective, created synergies and tensions that both offered and hindered opportunities for IIR (i.e. going beyond data, using data as evidence and expressing uncertainty).

This study answers calls for humanistic approaches to data literacy education. It contributes an interdisciplinary perspective on data literacy that complements other context-oriented perspectives on data science. This study also offers recommendations for how designers and educators can capitalize on synergies and mitigate tensions between domains to promote successful IIR in arts-integrated data literacy education.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and demonstrate an evidence‐based scenario design framework for assessment‐based computer games.

The evidence‐based scenario design framework is presented and demonstrated by using BELLA, a new assessment‐based gaming environment aimed at supporting student learning of vocabulary and math. BELLA integrates assessment and learning into an interactive gaming system that includes written conversations, math activities, oral and written feedback in both English and Spanish, and a visible psychometric model that is used to adaptively select activities as well as feedback levels. This paper also reports on a usability study carried out in a public middle school in New York City.

The evidence‐based, scenario design framework proves to be instrumental in helping combine game and assessment requirements. BELLA demonstrates how advances in artificial intelligence in education, cognitive science, educational measurement, and video games can be harnessed and integrated into valid instructional tools for the classroom.

This paper provides initial evidence of the potential of these kinds of assessment‐based gaming tools to enhance teaching and learning. Future work involves exploring student learning effects in randomized controlled studies and comparing the internal assessment models to more traditional assessment instruments.

BELLA is the first step toward achieving engaging, assessment‐based, gaming environments for a variety of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)‐related areas with explicit support for English language learners.

There are two factors essential to collection development and management in any library or information center. The first is an explicit statement of the organization's goals. The second is the size of the materials budget—the financial resources provided to achieve the goals. Professional literature includes a profusion of information dealing with the selection process for school library media centers, but very little is available about materials budgets. A clear, practical and rational procedure needs to be developed to help school librarians determine how much funding is necessary to fulfill the school library media center's goals.

This study investigates teacher receptivity to a proposal to relocate Year 7 primary classes to secondary schools in the Western Australia Catholic school system. The proposal has not yet either been formally promulgated to schools, parents and students or adopted by the Catholic Education Commission. A general model of teacher receptivity to a major planned change in a centralised education system, during the adoption stage, was used to guide the study. The dependent variable, receptivity, was measured in two aspects ‐ an evaluative attitude and behaviour intentions. Three independent variables, general beliefs about the secondary school and perceived readiness to leave primary school, perceived practicality of the change, and the perception that fears and concerns associated with the change will be alleviated, were measured. The environment in which teachers work was measured through the teacher (age, gender, experience, area of expertise and school size) and the school (primary or secondary, size and location), as situation variables, related to the independent variables. Receptivity was found to be strongly and positively related to the perceived practicality of the change and moderately, positively related to perceived readiness of Year 7 students for secondary school. The results are combined with other studies to provide advice to educational administrators about how to adopt and manage this proposed change.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the rapidly growing body of expatriate teachers in international schools’ as a neglected community of non-corporate expatriates, and presents a research agenda.

This paper presents a conceptual framework for identifying a possible reason for this neglect; the teachers in international schools can be viewed as “middling actors”, caught in a “middle space” of the emergent “business expatriate” concept, between the discussion about corporate expatriates and precariat workers.

This paper reveals that the body of expatriate teachers in international schools is growing rapidly, and is forecast to reach up to 800,000 by 2026, yet the literature still largely neglects their realities of everyday life as an expatriate.

The concept of an international school defies consensus agreement, and this paper uses data that is academically debatable in its accuracy. The figures should be viewed as the maximum amount.

The concept of the “middling actor” can be further developed, and international schools offer a rich area of research for expatriate researchers.

Teachers in international schools have escaped discussion as expatriates yet warrant greater attention. This paper introduces the concept of “middling” and the “middling actor” as new, yet potentially useful, sociological concepts. The concept of the “middling actor” within the broad “business expatriate” concept can be developed in many different ways and needs further discussion and theorization.

The purpose of this paper is to examine leading from the middle, which is consistent with calls to distribute leadership, while expanding the direction of influence, from the normal top-down to include a bottom-up or lateral direction. The paper proposes that the position of the vice-principal enables the role incumbent to lead from the middle as a boundary spanner. The research question was what leadership from the middle looks like for vice-principals.

The study consisted of interviews of 28 vice-principals and 10 principals. A mixed case and theme-oriented strategy was adapted, with member checking with each vice-principal.

The findings indicate that in leading from the middle, vice-principals play boundary spanning roles of connecting, translating and brokering: (1) connecting between organisational levels, (2) translating between vision/direction and actualisation, (3) connecting between middle managers and (4) brokering and translating between the ministry and the school.

Leading from the middle is a nascent concept which is worth exploring, given the complexity of educational systems with multiple ecological levels, and the need for leadership to create coherence between the levels.

The complexity of the work of school leaders has intensified in recent years. The basic assumption underlying this article is that school leaders should develop a coherent vision of the school to effectively cope with the increased complexity of their work. In order to develop such a coherent vision, integration at a cognitive level is needed. In order to gain insight into both the complexity and integrity of the visions of school leaders, their tacit knowledge is studied using cause maps. More specifically, a method to elicit and interpret cause maps is explored and the analysis of the tacit knowledge, as expressed in the structure and content of their cause maps, indeed shows them to differ with regard to the level of cognitive integrity and balance within their cognitive repertoires.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a nutrition-education intervention delivered at low-income middle schools in Washington, DC in the USA, using a mobile farmers’ market to bring hands-on lessons to schools. The program was a partnership between a local farm and university and was funded by the United States Department for Agriculture (USDA) Team Nutrition grant.

Seven low-income middle schools received the intervention, which included 45-minute lessons focussed on nutrition education and sustainable farming concepts. The farmers’ market was delivered via a converted school bus, allowing for full market setup at each school to provide local fruits and vegetables as teaching tools. The nutrition-education lesson focussed on the USDA MyPlate and healthy meal planning. The farm education component focussed on organic farming principles, sustainability of local food systems, and seasonality. A six question pre- and post-survey was administered to 408 participating middle school students to assess changes in knowledge.

Overall, average scores increased from 51 to 58 percent. Nutrition knowledge questions increased from 58 to 74 percent, while agriculture questions remained constant at 43 percent. Both increases significant using a two-sample t-test (p<0.001). This suggests that students gained more nutrition education concepts in this format as compared to the agricultural concepts.

Childhood obesity is a growing epidemic that affects low-income communities disproportionally. Innovative strategies must be implemented to increase healthy food consumption. This case study presents such an approach and its value in increasing student knowledge of healthy behavior.