Purpose: Using data from 1,868 children from the US, Australia, and Sweden who took a 10-word spelling test in kindergarten and a standardized spelling test in Grades 1, 2, and (except for the Australian children) Grade 4, we examined two questions. First, does the quality of a child's errors on the kindergarten test help predict later spelling…

Second Language Pragmatics (L2 pragmatics) research focused on the study abroad (SA) context points out the benefits of this context for second language (L2) pragmatic development while also illustrating the non-linearity of this development, as it is shaped by different contextual factors and individual differences. Nevertheless, this research…

Self-efficacy in mathematics is related to engagement, persistence, and academic performance. Prior research focused mostly on examining changes to students' self-efficacy across large time intervals (months or years), and paid less attention to changes at the level of lesson sequences. Knowledge of how self-efficacy changes during a sequence of…

Students' ability beliefs about running activities in physical education/athletics classes were investigated longitudinally from the perspectives of Nicholls' conceptions of ability and Dweck's implicit theories of ability. The data for this study were provided by 44 students (20 boys; 24 girls) who participated in a larger longitudinal project on…

This study set out to explore levels of religious affect (measured by the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity) and personal affect (measured by the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire) among samples of Catholic students in the Republic of Ireland attending fifth- and sixth-year classes (N = 3015) and Catholic students in Northern Ireland…

This study compared the effects of two brief prereading instructional practices--hands-on activities and prior knowledge activation--on sixth-graders' intrinsic motivation for reading a text and reading comprehension. Both hands-on activities and prior knowledge activation substantially improved reading comprehension relative to a control…

Social exclusion and the behaviors, thoughts, and feelings it evokes in children were examined in the present study. Two forms of exclusion were identified: being rejected and being ignored. Surveys were administered to third and fifth grade students in a Northeastern suburb in the United States to see how children respond overall and if younger…

Background: Education has much in common with professions that are using positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship to transform practice, yet the science behind peak human and group functioning has been slow to displace deficit-based framing of reform policies and improvement strategies in education. Purpose of the Study: This…

Few researchers have addressed student achievement outcomes as a function of grade configurations for older elementary-aged students. Thus, this study was designed to determine differences between students' Grade 5 reading and mathematics achievement in elementary schools (K-5) as compared to intermediate schools (Grade 5, 5-6) for 5 academic…

Students with mathematical learning disabilities (MLDs) experience persistent challenges learning even the most elementary mathematics. While prior research on MLDs has classified students on the basis of test scores and documented performance differences between groups, this dissertation focuses on the qualitative differences in individual…

The 7th International Conference on Education Data Mining held on July 4th-7th, 2014, at the Institute of Education, London, UK is the leading international forum for high-quality research that mines large data sets in order to answer educational research questions that shed light on the learning process. These data sets may come from the traces…