P. Elizabeth Pate

Designing Rubrics for Authentic Assessment.

Curriculum has not been adequately addressed in the middle school. Many educators are now engaged in curriculum reform efforts in middle schools (Beane, 1990; George, Stevenson, Thomason, & Beane, 1992; Lounsbury, 1992; Messick & Reynolds, 1992; Stevenson & Carr, 1993). Much of this reform focuses on a cur riculum for middle level students revolving around themes that provides practice in life skills such as reflective thinking, problem solving, valuing, and social action. National Middle School Associations Curriculum

An Interactive Model of Word Recognition: A Practical Stance on a Relentless Debate.

This article reviews current research on word recognition from the perspective of an interactive model. The intention of this review is to identify those learner characteristics, learning conditions, and language processes that are best treated through aspects of a meaning‐oriented or a code‐emphasis instructional program. Finally, instructional guidelines drawn from this analysis are presented and their implications for classroom practice and educational research are discussed.

Multiple Change Agents Work for Middle Grades School Reform

L everaging change in middle grades education requires a great deal of knowledge, energy, and creativity, along with a willingness to take risks. Over the last century, individuals and organizations at all levels of schooling have used their personal and collective leverage to advance the cause of improving schools for young adolescents. Due to space limitations, in this article we could only highlight some of the significant individuals and organizations who have worked on behalf of young adolescents and the schools that serve them. We hope that readers of this article will learn from their work and join their efforts to leverage positive change in middle grades schools. Carneg ie Corporation of New York advances midd le grades reform.

A Fork in the Road: Reclaiming a Conversation on Sustainability for Science Teacher Education in the Anthropocene

Sustainability education projects and curricula often reflect instrumental ideologies of conservation and preservation. This chapter will highlight efforts to realize the transformative potential of sustainability education across three different science teacher preparation projects: the Systems Academy for Young Scientists for middle school teachers and their students, a secondary science teacher preparation course organized around tenets of ecojustice philosophy and pedagogies of citizen science and sustainability, and a professional development experience for K-12 teachers grounded in notions of community sustainability. We use ecojustice philosophy to analyze the meaning of educating for sustainability across these diverse contexts. In each case we describe the sustainability discourse at the heart of the project, discuss the challenges, tensions and paradoxes of teaching towards sustainability and describe promising pedagogical practices that have emerged through our work. In this chapter we aim to move forward a conversation about education for sustainability in the Anthropocene.

30 Years of Advocating for Young Adolescents: Perspectives on the Middle School Movement: Snapshots from the Past

As the middle school movement in the United States begins its fourth decade, this article presents snapshots from the past highlighting important ideas, people, and events from that movement. It begins with short biogra phies of those founding fathers of the middle school movement, followed by a brief history of the movement itself, and concludes with a time line of seminal writings. Conrad F. Toepfer, |r. (right) and Donald H. Eichhorn (left)