Cheryl R. Ellerbrock

The author responds to recent research about ways teachers improved their practice during emergency remote teaching (ERT), including knowing learners individually, teaching to students’ individual needs, implementing student-directed strategies, measuring student learning, family partnership, and implementing technology. These findings invite further exploration of middle level school practices, policies, and structures that may have changed for the better during the disruptive COVID-19 pandemic. The author suggests middle level scholars should reimagine middle school organizational structures and the ways such structures may or may not impact teaching practices (e.g., relationship development, individualized instruction, and family collaboration) for all students. Reimaging organizational structures will not only help prepare the profession for the inevitability of extended school closures in the future but may also lead to the discovery of a better way to organize people, space/place, and time in the middle grades to support teacher practices that advance student learning and development.

The authors respond to a recent case study that examined the experience of middlegrades teachers who employed a backward design framework to develop interdisciplinary curriculum units. The researchers argued that teachers needed to be able to design curriculum that will challenge and engage young adolescent learners. In a supplement to the original study, the researchers suggest curriculum planning requires teacher-led design teams, school administrators, and students to work together in ways that result in schools serving as learning organizations versus places where learning simply happens. These two articles, when analyzed individually and then collectively, offer numerous insights into important factors related to middle-grades teachers' work as curriculum designers, such as productive struggle, organizational structures, shared responsibility, and a view of teacher-as-learner.

The authors offer a commentary on each section of this book, Dialogues in Middle Level Education Research, Volume 2, grounding their remarks on the different perspectives contributing authors hold and bring to their research. The diversity of students and schools matters as does the context in which the research is conducted. The dialogic structure of this book puts these differences in perspective front and center. The authors also consider the different viewpoints various chapter contributors bring to their treatment of the topics in each of the five sections of the book. In doing so, they also highlight some of the socio-political factors that can influence research in both positive and negative ways. With this approach, the authors aim to provide a new lens through which to view and consider current research in middle level education.

(2014). Supporting Young Adolescents’ Middle-to-High-School Transition by Creating a Ninth Grade Community of Care: Implications for Middle Grades Educators. Middle School Journal: Vol. 45, Catalysts for Student Success, pp. 3-10.