Chapter 1: Student-Centered Learning: Evolving Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment—Intersecting New Needs

The lives of middle school students are dynamic; their needs and desires are always evolving, especially as they experience perhaps the most developmentally challenging few years of their lives. Young adolescents experience more complicated lives as influences of the broader society including technology, popular and social media (Martin, Wang, Petty, Wang, & Wilkins, 2018), immigration and cultural diversity, amplified political divisiveness, bullying (Hicks, Jennings, Jennings, Berry, & Green, 2018), and violence effect their daily lives both in and out of school. Some students live in poverty (Li, Allen, & Casillas, 2017), experience homelessness (Moulton, 2019), or have little parental presence or support. Students endure health problems, may be medicated in school, and have special needs (Graham, Wenzel, Linder, & Rice, 2018). Furthermore, the rates of middle school students’ suicidal thoughts or behaviors have increased (Salle, Wang, Parris, & Brown, 2017). In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control (2015), “Suicide is the third leading cause of death among persons aged 10–14” (p. 2). Certainly, these complicated experiences and changes can weigh heavily on the students themselves and the middle school culture; they affect the ways students interact with school settings and remind educators that the real world of middle school students is complex, demanding, and constantly in flux.