A huge portion of what we know about how humans develop, learn, behave, and interact is based on survey data. Researchers use longitudinal growth modeling to understand the development of students on psychological and social-emotional learning constructs across elementary and middle school. In these designs, students are typically administered a…

The components of a successful Response to Intervention (RtI) process are the following: monitored student growth, reviewed assessment tools used in screening students, and assessed data collection methods. RtI is well documented in the literature and has been the topic of many early intervention studies predominantly in the elementary setting.…

Beyond the traditional notions of intelligence and academic achievement, the successful development of noncognitive or "soft" skills (e.g., personality factors, motivation, creativity) among school-aged youth represents an important objective for any educational system. Such skills have been shown to be significantly predictive of…

Eighty-seven 4th, 5th and 6th grade students were administered the "Derivational Relatedness Interview" (DRI) (Templeton, Smith, Moloney, Van Pelt, & Ives, 2009). The purpose of this instrument is to explore students' understanding of derivational morphology. During the same week, the subjects were also administered an Upper…

The benefits of a strength-based approach to working with children and adolescents are clearly indicated in the literature while Strengths-Based School Counseling embraces the positive development of students and learning environments. An interdisciplinary research team formed a partnership with a middle school community to intentionally…

This article describes some of the underlying conceptualizations that have gone into the work of the BEAR Center in the development of learning progressions. The core of all of these developments has been the construct map, which is the first building block in the BEAR Assessment System (BAS). After introducing the concept of a learning…