Personalized learning (PL) and social-emotional learning (SEL) are areas of increasing emphasis in U.S. educational policy and practice. With the goal of examining how these initiatives may be mutually supportive, this exploratory study investigates the potential for a PL experience to help middle school students develop the SEL skill of “self-awareness.” Using qualitative inquiry, we analyze reflective interviews with eleven students engaged in PL using an original self-awareness coding scheme. Our findings offer promising evidence that PL can promote self-awareness, including specific student examples, followed by recommendations for how PL and SEL efforts can be more strategically aligned.

This study investigated the goal-setting approaches of 11 middle grades teachers during the first year of their implementation of a statewide, personalized learning initiative. As an increasing number of middle level schools explore personalized learning, there is an urgent need for empirical research in this area. Goal setting is a critical aspect of personalized learning and, thus, an important instructional area for researchers to investigate. This qualitative study found five dominant trends in teachers’ approaches to goal setting. The researchers analyzed the key features of each approach and then analyzed them using three key elements of personalized learning. The authors offer implications for practitioners and researchers engaged in teaching and research related to personalized learning environments in the middle grades.

While many preservice teachers turn to teaching because they believe in the power of education in the pursuit of social justice, they also lack concrete ideas for how to bring social justice education into the middle-school classroom. With the goal of preparing social justice educators in mind, teacher educators must find ways to transform these abstract ambitions into concrete skills. In this article, I present my approach to preparing social justice educators in my teacher education classroom, including (a) example learning outcomes and classroom activities to build preservice teachers’ foundational knowledge about the “why” and “what” of social justice education, (b) a process for developing social justice units using a framework called the “Three Phases of a Social Justice Unit,” and (c) example classroom activities to address common fears raised by preservice teachers as they learn about social justice education.

This article illustrates the critical need for middle level preservice teachers to be explicitly prepared to engage in reform-oriented advocacy. To illustrate this point, we present the experiences of four reform-minded student teachers who attempted to enact developmentally responsive curriculum, as defined in This We Believe (National Middle School Association [NMSA], 2010) during their student teaching semester. Their experiences underscore the challenges student teachers face in attempting to advocate for middle school best practices. After providing an overview of these challenges, we use the insights of the participants to propose the following set of advocacy skills: (1) building rapport; (2) educating, not intimidating; (3) anticipating concerns; (4) reflecting before reacting; and (5) establishing communication norms. We then present several concrete implications for middle level teacher preparation programs that aim to prepare preservice teachers to be advocates for change in their future schools.

Early adolescence is a dynamic stage for the development of critical consciousness, yet there are few resources focused on social justice education (SJE) in the middle grades. This article shares the findings from a study that investigated the experiences of three social justice educators as they engaged in SJE with young adolescents (YAs). We offer three key lessons associated with teaching SJE in the middle grades: (a) YAs are primed for SJ learning, (b) SJE can cultivate a learner-centered classroom community, and (c) SJE brings teacher positionality to the forefront. Subsequently, we identify instructional challenges associated with teaching SJE in the middle grades and share some of the ways in which the teachers in this study navigated these challenges.