It is desirable that children engage in reading and writing beyond school. What is known about various individual and environmental variables that may be related to children's leisure reading and writing? And how strong is existing evidence? Our scoping review aims at mapping research on leisure reading and writing in first- to fourth-graders.…

The present study examined the academic antecedents of declining peer social status. Participants included 545 (311 boys, 234 girls) Finnish students followed from the 1st through the 4th grade (ages 6-8 at outset). Each year, teachers completed assessments of academic task avoidance and students completed standardized measures of reading and math…

Academic underachievement, as measured on standardised assessments, is commonly reported among students on the autism spectrum. However, little is known about the factors that predict academic (under)achievement, limiting the development of effective and targeted interventions. This study explored teacher ratings of academic skills and enabling…

In this 3-year longitudinal study, we examined the interplay of children's motivational orientations, spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) and number sequence and arithmetical skills from kindergarten (at age 6) to grade 1 (at age 7). We also examined the direct and indirect contributions of motivation and SFON to the acquisition of…

This study examined the associations between intrinsic motivation and achievement in mathematics in a sample of 1,478 Canadian school-age children followed from Grades 1 to 4 (ages 7-10). Children self-reported their intrinsic motivation toward mathematics, whereas achievement was measured through direct assessment of mathematics abilities.…

Although students' motivational frameworks (entity vs. incremental) have been linked to academic achievement, little is known about how early this link emerges and how motivational frameworks develop in the first place. In a year-long study (student N = 424, Teacher N = 58), we found that, as early as 1st and 2nd grade, children who endorsed an…

This study sought to assess Turkish parents' motivational beliefs, including their role activity and self-efficacy beliefs about their involvement in young children's education. The impact of demographic characteristics on these motivational beliefs was also explored. Parents' motivational beliefs about their involvement were measured by using the…

This study examines the ability of a theoretical model of the parental involvement process to predict Latino parents' involvement in their children's schooling. A sample of Latino parents (N = 147) of grade 1 through 6 children in a large urban public school district in the southeastern United States responded to surveys assessing model-based…

This study examined whether discourse knowledge about various forms of writing predicted young developing writers' (Grade 2 and Grade 4 students) story writing performance once 4 writing (handwriting fluency, spelling, attitude toward writing, advanced planning) and 3 nonwriting (grade, gender, basic reading skills) variables were controlled. It…

This 3-year longitudinal study examined how motivational tendencies, that is, task orientation and social dependence orientation, as well as cognitive-linguistic prerequisites of reading and math skills (i.e., phonological awareness, rapid naming, oral language comprehension skills, number sequence and basic arithmetic skills) measured in…

The purpose of this study was to investigate factors that contribute to individual differences in the school performance of 2nd-grade children born to adolescent mothers. The sample of this study was 90 low-income adolescent mothers and their children. Data were collected from the adolescent mothers and their first-born children, now in 2nd grade,…

Measures of Chinese character recognition, vocabulary, and interest in reading were administered to 92 second grade children in Hong Kong, while questionnaires on parental literacy practices were administered to their parents. In a hierarchical regression equation, maternal education, children's age and vocabulary skill predicted 18% of the…