The "remembered success effect" (Finn, 2010) refers to the finding that challenging academic tasks that start or end with extra opportunities for success are preferred to challenging tasks that do not include these opportunities. Work on remembered success has primarily been done with adults. We assessed (in a preregistered study)…

Background: We examined linguistic features in fourth graders' narrative and opinion writing and their relations to writing quality. We analysed narrative and opinion essays in terms of lexical sophistication and diversity as well as syntactic complexity, syntactic accuracy, and morphological complexity. Methods: Data were from English-speaking…

This investigation explores the relationship between the use of digital pencil and mathematical problem-solving accuracy among 1,530 students with learning disabilities (LD) and 25,400 general education (GE) peers from the 2017 digital National Assessment of Educational Progress mathematics assessment. The term "digital pencil" in this…

We investigated whether worked examples could be used to reduce cognitive load on mathematics learners who may have reduced available cognitive resources due to experiencing anxiety or excess stress. Across 2 days, 280 fifth-grade students learned from a difficult lesson on ratio, half of whom reviewed worked examples at key problem-solving…

The transition to formal schooling is a large contextual change, which for many children in U.S. begins with the year of kindergarten. To better understand the challenges of this transition, the present study examines the extent to which children experience transition difficulties in five salient areas: making friends, following schedules, meeting…

Narratives skills are associated with long-term academic and social benefits. While students with disabilities often struggle to produce complete and complex narratives, it remains unclear which aspects of narrative language are most indicative of disability. In this study, we examined the association between a variety of narrative contents and…

Measures of self-regulation may not capture adequate variability in children with low levels of self-regulation. This can limit a measure's ability to accurately demonstrate relations with other variables. The present study addressed this issue with a revised version of the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task (HTKS-R), which includes a new downward…

Persistence is an important part of student success--both in and out of school. To enhance persistence, we first need to assess it accurately. Digital games can be used as vehicles for measuring and enhancing persistence. The purpose of this study is to test the effects of (a) game-level characteristics (i.e., game mechanics and conceptual…

A vast majority of elementary students struggle with the core, pre-algebraic concept of mathematical equivalence. The Improving Children's Understanding of Equivalence (ICUE) intervention integrates four research-based strategies to improve outcomes for second grade students: (1) introducing the equal sign before arithmetic, (2) non-traditional…

We examined the contributions of English proficiency, genre, and the use of textual sources to adolescent writing. The sample included 1819 native English speakers and language minority students from 127 seventh- and eighth-grade classes in an urban school district. Students were randomly assigned one of three source-based essay prompts…

Powell, Berry, et al. (in press) conducted a randomized control trial assessing the effects of two variants of word-problem intervention with third graders (n = 304) experiencing mathematics difficulty. Students were assigned to a business-as-usual condition (BaU) or one of two variants of word-problem intervention. One variant included a…

Competence with fractions is foundational to acquiring more advanced mathematical skills. However, achieving competency with fractions is challenging for many students, especially for those with mathematics learning difficulties who often lack foundational skill with whole numbers. Teaching fractions is also challenging for many teachers as they…

Experiencing large differences between pre-k and kindergarten classroom contexts may affect children's academic development as they start school. This study examined differences between classroom contexts in pre-k and kindergarten (teacher-child interactions, time on academic content, and academic rigor) and associations with literacy, language,…

Informational text writing is a complex task requiring multiple literacy skills, such as reading and comprehending source material, identifying important information, and transforming ideas to meet the goals for the new writing task. The "Structures Writing" intervention was developed to improve the informational text writing skills of…

Background: Of the myriad of reading comprehension (RC) assessments used in schools, multiple-choice (MC) questions continue to be one of the most prevalent formats used by educators and researchers. Outcomes from RC assessments dictate many critical factors encountered during a student's academic career, and it is crucial that we gain a deeper…