This research study investigated the effects of preschool dosage on kindergarten readiness in an urban school district (n= 1,464). This study was guided by one research question: do children who attend two years of structured early childhood education programming (3-year-old and 4-year-old pre-k) demonstrate stronger academic skills than their…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the incremental validity of a set of domain general cognitive measures added to a traditional screening battery of early numeracy measures. The sample consisted of 458 kindergarten students of whom 285 were designated as severely at-risk for mathematics difficulty. Hierarchical multiple regression…

This study examined how early writing develops in Spanish-English-speaking children of Mexican and Central American descent who are dual language learners (DLLs) in the United States. The emergent writing skills in Spanish and English of 140 preschoolers in a multisite study were assessed using name- and word-writing tasks during the children's…

The effectiveness of a joint interactive storybook reading program delivered by class teachers to develop literacy skills is examined in Hebrew-speaking preschool and kindergarten children. Post-intervention, both groups achieved significantly higher gains in language and print concept skills than age-matched comparison groups that did not have…

Reading is typically considered a survival skill in our technology- and literacy-bound culture. Individuals who struggle with learning to read are at significantly elevated risk for a number of negative outcomes, including school failure, under- and unemployment, and special education placement. Thus, those who do not learn to read fluently will…

This study analysed the effects of a classroom intervention focusing on phonological awareness and/or automatized word recognition in children with a deficit in the domains of phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming ("double deficit"). According to the double-deficit hypothesis (Wolf & Bowers, 1999), these children belong…

This study presents evidence pertinent to current debates about the lasting impacts of early childhood educational interventions and, specifically, Head Start. A group of students who were first studied to examine the immediate impacts of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, Community Action Project (CAP) Head Start program were followed-up in middle school,…

Research Findings: Emotion knowledge (EK) enables children to identify emotions in themselves and others, and its development facilitates emotion recognition in complex social situations. Sociocognitive processes, such as theory of mind (ToM), may contribute to developing EK by helping children realize the inherent variability associated with…

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are associated with many different levels of language and social impairment, differences in levels of cognitive impairment, varying levels of aberrant behavior, and discrepancies in the presence or amount of restrictive and repetitive behavior. The heterogeneity found within the ASD population is coupled with…

State and local assessment data from 117 students in one school in the California Central Valley were examined to determine how much participation in a kindergarten through second grade multitiered reading intervention model contributed to third grade reading achievement, over and above the demographic factors of ethnicity, socioeconomic status,…

Background: The development of socially appropriate behaviour is increasingly seen as an important part of a student's education. Aim: To examine whether changes in a student's behaviour, as part of an ongoing social empathy intervention, can in part be explained by the difference between the student's self-perception of their behaviour and their…

An existing data set for a sample of 3rd grade students was used to determine the relationship between performance during a reading intervention and short-term achievement test outcomes, and long-term risk status. Students participated in a reading intervention, one-on-one practice with a trained adult, during which weekly curriculum based…

Background: Little research has focused on factors influencing teachers' decisions about whether and how to intervene in bullying incidents. Such factors have the potential to influence the role of teachers as agents in counteracting bullying. Aims: To examine: (a) whether moral orientation predicts teachers' responses to bullying, (b) the role of…

The tendency for school children to bully others was conceived as lying along a continuum of frequency, ranging from zero to very high. To examine social factors that may influence the position of individual students on this continuum, questionnaires were administered to Australian school children attending state coeducational schools: primary (N…