Engagement and Motivation
Editor’s Note
Only when students feel engaged socially and academically can teachers and schools lay the groundwork for motivating achievement. The articles below explore a variety of approaches to helping students develop the skills, attitudes, and relationships that undergird success in learning.
One small change can yield big results
By Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana
Students in Hayley Dupuy’s sixth-grade science class at the Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School in Palo Alto, Calif., are beginning a unit on plate tectonics.Continue
Competition drives federal ed reforms at every level
By David McKay Wilson
When Arne Duncan was Chicago schools chief, he welcomed a research project that paid students to earn good grades, believing that monetary incentives would keep teens in school.
Now as U.S. Secretary of Education, Duncan has deployed monetary incentives on a broader scale...
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Innovative programs use technology to expand access to the arts
By Patti Hartigan
Monika Aldarondo is sitting in an office at the Boston Arts Academy (BAA) untangling scraps of brilliantly colored fabric that her students dyed to make banners for the school’s annual Africa Lives! exhibition. “I love old media,’’ the visual arts teacher says, snipping stray threads as she unravels the cloth.
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Researchers study how certain performance traits may help students learn
By Laura Pappano
On a recent Monday, students in Jeff Thielman’s advisory at Cristo Rey Boston High School crowded into his crimson-walled office to take a test. These juniors, like their schoolmates, answered questions aimed not at measuring academic skills but at something that has captured educators’ attention lately: their grit.
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