Exceptional Spaces: Diverse Learning Environments in a Public High School

Are all schools created equal? Learning environments in small and large public high schools in New York City

Background/Context Though cast in many styles and given different labels, the notion that one can improve schools by improving or changing the social context of learning is a common thread that runs through the arguments of many education reformers and scholars. Indeed, a common assertion in education reform is that one needs to create school environments with stronger community, where people are “better connected.” At the heart of such claims—and the topic of investigation for this article—is the notion that the nature of social interactions in schools is a crucial part of schooling. Purpose/Objective In this article, we use social network analysis—a powerful yet underused method in educational research—to gain insight into how social relations give rise to relative advantage within a group of students at a large public high school engaged in small-school reform. More specifically, we ask three questions of this sample of students: First, to what extent is academic performance “contagious” among peers? Second, after accounting for individual characteristics, is a student's location in a social network, as indicated by network density, associated with academic performance? If so, is a norm-enforcing or horizon expansion mechanism primarily responsible for this association? Third, is there a joint effect of peer achievement and network density on academic performance? Setting A large urban public high school implementing a school-within-a-school reform. Population/Participants/Subjects Grade 10 students within one of the schools-within-a-school. Research Design We connect variations in network composition and network structure to hypotheses about the interpersonal mechanisms at work between students. We combine detailed network data on the social relations between students with individual-level data from school records and then attempt to exploit variation in network characteristics across students to make inferences about the role of social relations with respect to academic performance. Data Collection and Analysis The specific data come from two sources: (1) school administrative records that contained information on student grade point averages, absences, standardized test scores, and demographics, and (2) the administration of a Web-based social network survey asking students to cite those with whom they interact in several academic and social contexts. Conclusions We find that network composition (as measured by lagged peer achievement) and network structure (as measured the density of ties between a student's peers) have no average association with student performance after accounting for individual-level characteristics. However, when interacting network composition and network structure, we find a significant joint effect. This implies that the advantages and disadvantages arising from a student's social relations are context dependent and, moreover, suggests that in order to diagnose the impact of building stronger community in schools, it is necessary to consider the network structure of students’ relationships when examining the influence of peers.

One of the most important roles of today's Library Media Specialist is collaborating with teachers to design instruction. Out of his many years of experience in collaborating with teachers in a large public high school, the author describes this collaboration process and presents lessons in various disciplines to spark student inquiry. These reproducible lessons are immediately usable and will serve as prototypes for developing other lessons. Research tells us that students learn in a variety of ways (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.); one of the purposes of the book is to use the learning station approach to provide opportunities for students to learn via listening, viewing, reading, and touching. Grades 7-12. One of the most important roles of today's Library Media Specialist is collaborating with teachers to design instruction. Out of his many years of experience in collaborating with teachers in a large public high school, the author offers this book to describe this collaboration process and presents lessons in various disciplines that can be used to spark student inquiry. These reproducible lessons are immediately usable and will serve as prototypes for developing other lessons. Research tells us that students learn in a variety of ways (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.); one of the purposes of the book is to use the learning station approach to provide opportunities for students to learn via listening, viewing, reading, and touching. Students also learn best when they can interact with the material and each other, and are stimulated by the activities. Therefore, the units contain a variety of learning methods such as listening to music and oral history, using computers for research and interaction, watching videos, reading books, and discussing articles with classmates. There are also a variety of suggested end products using different media. Grades 7-12.

To analyze the effectiveness of Mennonite religious high schools in transmitting religious values, the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values was administered to 124 Canadian high school seniors, 40 from religious Mennonite schools, 56 Mennonites in public schools, and 28 from students at a large public high school. Attending Mennonite private schools made no significant difference in the religious values held by Mennonite high school seniors. Mennonite boys and girls showed significantly higher religious values than a general sample of senior high school boys and girls.

PurposeSchool social support is associated with improved adolescent wellbeing. However, positive school relationships were potentially disrupted when schools transitioned to distance learning in 2020 to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. This study investigated associations among perceived distance learning school support, mental health, social-emotional wellbeing, substance use, and delinquency among low-income, public high school students. MethodsWe analyzed longitudinal survey data, collected between June 2020 and June 2021, from 372 students attending five large urban public high schools. Mixed-effects regression models examined associations among changes in distance learning support and changes in mental health, social-emotional wellbeing, substance use, and delinquency, controlling for time, social-demographics, and baseline health. ResultsIn this predominantly Latinx (83%) sample, within-person increases in perceived distance learning support were associated with improved mental health, increased grit, increased self-efficacy, and decreased stress. Between-person differences in distance learning support indicated that students reporting greater support had improved mental and social-emotional outcomes. Although there were no within-person associations among distance learning support and hopelessness or delinquency, students with greater distance learning support (between-person) had lower levels of hopelessness and lower odds of engaging in any delinquent behavior. There were no associations between distance learning support and 30-day substance use. DiscussionSchool social support, even without students physically on campus, may be critical to adolescent health behaviors and social-emotional outcomes.

ABSTRACTRecent political, fiscal, and educational equity challenges require a renewed emphasis in our efforts to advocate for increased culturally and linguistically responsive education, making certain to further advance the accomplishments of the past four decades. The education of diverse exceptional learners is well established within the fields of special education and culturally and linguistically diverse education. However, drawing on several contemporary features that currently shape education in today’s schools, the authors examine the need for continued special education advocacy to ensure appropriate referral, assessment, and instruction of all culturally and linguistically diverse exceptional (CLDE) learners within the changing pre-K-postsecondary teaching and learning environments. Implications and recommendations for educator preparation at the pre and inservice levels are provided to guide the future development of teachers of CLDE learners.

School bullying has been recognised as having a major impact on mental health. Bullied students are often encouraged to seek help from others, but research indicates that adolescents experiencing problems tend not to ask for help. This study examines whether being bullied depletes psychological and social resources such that those who are bullied have lower intentions to seek help with this problem. Students (169 females, 153 males) from a large public high school in Australia completed a questionnaire assessing bullying prevalence, help-seeking and associated psychosocial factors. The results showed that being bullied was associated with poorer psychological health, fewer social resources and lower help-seeking intentions from informal sources (friends and family). The association between being bullied and low help-seeking intentions was explained principally by fewer social resources. All students indicated they were unlikely to seek help from formal sources (teachers, mental health workers, etc). Anti-bullying interventions should account for the negative psychological and social consequences of bullying, and the reluctance to seek help from formal sources.

Within-school differences in teachers' sense of community were explored to complement previous school-level research. Data from 3 large public high schools were used to examine 3 classes of predictors: time-related variables (employment tenure in a school and time spent in interaction with other staff members and students), work arrangement variables (participation in mentor programs and team-teaching arrangements), and school organization variables (perceived orderliness of student behavior and support for innovation). School organization variables and time-related variables emerged as the strongest predictors of teachers' sense of community. Results emphasize the importance of distinguishing teachers' referents for community (students, co-workers, school and site administrators) when exploring the dynamics of community in schools.

In this article, two secondary school educators explore the challenges of using documentation to support learning in a large public high school and explain why tackling those challenges is worthwhile. The authors discuss the problems they had in beginning to use documentation in the absence of high school exemplars—and in the presence of the time, space, and accountability mandates common in public secondary schools. They present key moments in their learning journeys that reveal the expectations, misconceptions, and habits of thought and practice that complicated their initial efforts to use documentation as a tool to support the learning of students and colleagues. Then, they offer the lessons they learned so that other secondary educators can more easily and effectively begin to incorporate documentation into their instruction and assessment repertoires in order to support authentic collaborative learning.

The object this afternoon is to acquaint you with some of the classroom conditions and methods in a large public high school, and to show how the size of the classes and the fact that it is public rather than a private school influences our classroom methods.

Advancement to postsecondary education for English language learners (ELLs) can be seriously constrained by a lack of academic preparation during high school. Currently, ELLs lag behind their non-ELL peers in their level of access to advanced college-preparatory courses. Through a qualitative case study of ELL education at a large public high school, we examine the educational practices that result in ELLs’ restricted curricular choices. The findings expose the way in which ELLs’ chances for rigorous academic preparation are systematically reduced and point to the importance of providing ELLs with high-level academic curriculum while also supplying linguistic scaffolding that makes such learning possible.

Background: The pandemic was followed by a severe mental health crisis in youth with both an increase in the prevalence of mental health problems and a decrease in requests for and access to care. Methods: data were extracted from the school-based health center records in three large public high schools that include under-resourced and immigrant communities. Data from 2018/2019 (pre-pandemic), 2020 during the pandemic, and then in 2021 after the return to in-person school were compared regarding the impact of in-person, telehealth, and hybrid care. Results: Despite the increase in mental health needs globally, there was a dramatic decrease in referrals, evaluations, and the total number of students seen for behavioral health care. The time course of this decrease in care was specifically associated with the transition to telehealth, although treatment did not return to pre-pandemic levels, even after in-person care became available. Conclusions: Despite ease of access and increased need, these data suggest that telehealth has unique limitations when delivered in school-based health centers.

This chapter explores neoliberal discourses of the self as they emerge in the transition from youth into early adulthood. My aim here is to explore the spatial and temporal parameters of neoliberal subjectivities as they are constructed at the end of secondary schooling. Specifically, I draw on ethnographic research in order to consider how seniors at a large public high school in The Bronx, New York City, negotiate ideas about aspiration in relation to constructions of masculinity and imaginings of the future. In rendering visions of their lives after school, students imagine themselves in multiple future times and spaces, often through narratives of partial or total escape from their community in The Bronx and towards visions of ‘the City’. In this case, ‘the City’ is occasionally the literal space of Manhattan, and sometimes a more abstract metropolitan destination representative of future success in keeping with an ideal neoliberal reckoning of the self. These removes correlate with imaginings of future masculinity as boys from the Bronx imagine themselves as men ‘from Manhattan’. However, the partial and multiple narratives of future selves that young men recount also reveal enduring tensions that at times challenge the notion of a singular, hegemonic, neoliberal logic of self. I make sense of the resulting tensions, contestations and multiple imaginings of the future through the novel conceptual frame of quantum personhood (Alexander, Masculinity and Aspiration: International Perspectives in the Era of Neoliberal Education. New York, Routledge, 2017). This concept draws on metaphors derived from quantum physics as a way to capture the concurrent, entangled future persons that are imagined as young people flit, electron-like—some self-assured, some uncertain, many a mix of both—towards the event horizon of early adulthood.

BackgroundDue to the lack of comprehensive high school athletes' sports injury surveillance data in Florida, an injury registry was developed by the Sports Medicine and Athletic Related Trauma Institute (SMART)...

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether significant group, gender, and grade differences existed in the learning style preferences of students with learning disabilities and students who are gifted, using the Learning Style Inventory (LSI) (Dunn, Dunn, & Price, 1987). Subjects consisted of 53 students with learning disabilities and 64 gifted students randomly selected from two large public high schools. They were 10th-, 11th-, and 12th-grade students, aged 15 to 17. A three-way analysis of variance on the LSI raw scores revealed significant group differences in preferences for light, design, and kinesthetic modality, and in motivation, persistence, responsibility, parent motivation, and teacher motivation. Significant gender and grade differences were found in preferences for mobility and learning in the afternoon, respectively. A stepwise discriminant analysis revealed six variables that significantly discriminated between the two groups. Findings imply that incorporating the learning styles of students with learning disabilities and students who are gifted is important for individualizing educational programming.