Explanatory patterns regarding situational differences in reading comprehension performance may be best captured by multidimensional reader profiles. Data from 56 third- and fifth-grade students were collected to investigate the applicability, scope, and convergent validity of a reader profiling scheme based on Alexander's (2005) reader profile…

Every year, over 20,000 Hispanics enlist in the U.S. military. Their military experiences influence their long-term educational outcomes. This exploratory study estimates the effect of military service on education level completed by men up to 15 years after initial enlistment. Findings suggest that technical military jobs, more than nontechnical…

The purpose of this quantitative causal comparative study was to examine to what extent if any, there was a difference in academic and recreational reading motivation and reading achievement between third grade students who participated in the Accelerated Reading curriculum (AR) (reading software management system), as defined in definitions and…

Academic Motivation Scale-Chemistry (AMS-Chemistry), an instrument based on the self-determination theory, was used to evaluate students' motivation in two organic chemistry courses, where one course was primarily lecture-based and the other implemented flipped classroom and peer-led team learning (Flip-PLTL) pedagogies. Descriptive statistics…

The primary objective of this cross-cultural investigation is to compare patterns in student responses to an empirically scrutinized character education measure administered to students in four school districts in Florida with students in a school in Kenya. In this way, the generalizability of findings for scale scores could be compared across…

Divergent thinking is a process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions or responses, and is a critical element of creativity. Lesion and imaging studies have shown that the frontal lobes are important in mediating divergent thinking, and frontal lobe function is highly dependent on white matter connections…

Background: Cluster randomized experiments that assign intact groups such as schools or school districts to treatment conditions are increasingly common in educational research. Such experiments are inherently multilevel designs whose sensitivity (statistical power and precision of estimates) depends on the variance decomposition across levels.…

The purpose of this study was to examine potential validity concerns regarding the use of music festival scores as an element of value-added assessment practices mandated by federal education policy. Nonmusical school and band characteristics of band size, school enrollment, school percentage of minority enrollment, and school percentage of…

This article examines the effect of improvements in timing/rhythmicity on mathematics achievement. A total of 86 participants attending 1st through 4th grades completed pre- and posttest measures of mathematics achievement from the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement. Students in the experimental group participated in a 4-week intervention…

As a critical step in understanding the impacts of IB, the analyses presented in this report examined the selection mechanisms behind IB participation across Florida, the state with the second highest representation of IB programs in the nation. We use longitudinal student and school-level data from 1995 through 2009 from the Florida K-20…

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of intensity of Facebook use and compare the effects of Facebook use with retention program participation on the engagement of college freshmen. The sample consisted of 141 freshmen at the University of West Florida (UWF). The participants were surveyed using questions from the National…

Traditionally, industries belonging to the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are dominated by males. Recruitment and enrollment of females for STEM fields have become an issue among universities specializing in fields such as aviation and aeronautics. The research problem for this study was that marketing departments…

Reading comprehension, defined as the active extraction and construction of meaning from all kinds of text, requires children to fluently decode and understand what they are reading. Basic processes underlying reading comprehension are complex and call on the oral language system and a conscious understanding of this system, i.e., metalinguistic…

The purpose of this study was to explore the learning strategies used by ethnically diverse learners and to investigate the relationships among the constructs of classroom goal structure, achievement goal orientation, motivation and self-regulated learning in an ethnically diverse population of fourth and fifth grade learners (n = 396). Goal…

This study evaluates the Adaptive Social Behavior Inventory (ASBI) for assessing pre-school children's social competence across home and school settings. Data were collected on a multi-ethnic sample of 191 3- to 5-year-old children attending Head Start centers. Parents, teachers, and teacher aides rated children similarly on the three ASBI…