(1) Background: The Teacher and student community plays an important role in students’ academic development. Previous studies showed that students’ academic success is influenced by their social relations in school. This study extended to use a mix of social network analysis and survey methodology to understand how eighth-grade students’ network and perceived teacher’s support relate to their academic motivation. (2) Methods: A total of 95 eighth graders with the same teacher in a middle school in the southeastern United States were recruited. (3) Results: Results showed that the number of friendship nominations received (i.e., in-degree), degree centrality and betweenness centrality significantly correlated with higher academic motivation. In addition, a regression model analysis showed that perceived teacher’s support, together with more friendship nominations, predicted higher academic motivation.

The purpose of this randomized experimental study is to apply two socio-cognitive models to understand possible ways to improve students’ learning outcomes in an online introductory chemistry learning environment. Specifically, the social presence theory suggested that students’ sense of relatedness and learning motivation can be increased by a real or imagined interaction with others. On the other hand, self-regulated learning theory and self-determination theory both suggested that students learn best when they direct their focus to self, rather than others. Using these two theoretical perspectives as the basis, two experimental conditions (social presence vs. self-regulated) were developed in the context of chemistry learning. Participants of the study were randomly assigned to one of the experimental conditions. Both groups were presented with a pre-test, an online micro-lecture on balancing equations, i.e., a subtopic of stoichiometry, and a post-test. Linear mixed model analysis revealed that participants in the self-regulated learning condition had higher improvement in quiz scores than had participants in the social presence condition. Implications of the study and future directions were discussed.

The diversity of learners within education is neither linear nor constant. Educators are challenged to be responsive and understanding when encouraging learners to construct meaning while adhering to stringent standards. The objective of this study is to integrate science standards into authentic learning experiences, created in both a traditional teaching method and virtual reality (VR) platform, for 8th grade middle school students in Lafayette, Louisiana. The authentic experiences were based on oral histories of the residents of Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, who have lost 98% of their ancestral homeland since 1955. These experiences were then tied to the National Science Standards (8-MS-ESS1-4, 8-MS-ESS2-2, and 8-MS-ESS3-1). The students were split into two groups and given either a PowerPoint or VR experience, both having the same content. The researchers tracked engagement, focus, interest, and how important the students thought the content was. Using an experimental approach, the researchers also gave a pre- and posttest to determine if the VR experience resulted in better academic learning than a regular, PowerPoint-based lecture. The students were also asked to comment on their experience of the PowerPoint versus the VR and describe what their experience.

This paper explores tattooing as a collaborative, restorative, and posthuman literacy practice. Through an in-depth interview with a tattoo artist, we examine how tattoos function as layered texts that transform scars into narrative foundations, inscribe memory and identity onto skin, and foster healing through relational care. Drawing on frameworks of restorative literacies and posthuman theory, the findings reveal that tattooing is not merely decorative, but a process wherein pain, agency, and meaning are negotiated and co-created by bodies, tools, and stories. The study highlights how a tattoo studio became a liminal space for rewriting trauma, reclaiming agency, and making visible the entanglement of human and more-than-human actors in the ongoing work of healing and becoming.

Deep in the bayous of Louisiana lies Isle de Jean Charles, home to the tribe of the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation, made up of the tribes of the Biloxi, Chitimacha, and Choctaw, since the early 1800s. At this time the three tribes were distinct and had kept much of their culture intact by isolating themselves from European contact, even if it meant ceding their land. They were seen as “invisible people,” those who kept to themselves to avoid contact with whites. As the remnants of the tribes of the Biloxi, Chitimacha, and Choctaw resettled in Terrebonne Parish, their land encompassed 22,000 acres (about half the size of Washington, DC). After their initial displacements, the tribe suffered loss of land again when oil companies dug more than 10,000 miles of canals straight through the wetlands and brought oil rigs to Isle de Jean Charles. Promised repair of wetlands never happened. Isle de Jean Charles has now been reduced to only 320 acres (which is about five and a half times the size of the National Cathedral in Washington, DC), and, in some places, is only a quarter of a mile wide. Virtual reality lessons have been implemented to teach others by documenting the residents’ voices using their history of place and ancestry and experiences of displacement due to the dramatic loss of land brought on by the destruction of wetlands in the Gulf of Mexico.