One feared consequence of how the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted public education is its potential negative impacts on teacher retention and mobility. Each spring, teachers decide whether and where to teach the following school year. Following the abrupt end to the 2019-20 school year in March 2020, there were increased concerns that teachers would…

Underrepresented (UR) students face barriers to help-seeking in traditional classrooms. We predicted these barriers would be ameliorated online. We analyzed online course discussion boards and found UR students asked for help more often than non-UR students and women were more likely than men to ask for help explicitly at least once. Furthermore,…

The extent to which youth attend Tier 2 evidence-based intervention is an important dimension of implementation. This study examined attendance patterns of 369 middle schoolers involved in a randomized trial testing the impact of Coping Power, an evidence-based Tier 2 preventive intervention. We conducted latent profile analysis to examine student…

We examine effects of the pandemic on student attendance, course grades, and grade retention in North Carolina in 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 using descriptive and regression analyses. We find each outcome worsened on average in 2020-2021, with larger changes at the high end of the absence distribution, the low end of the grade distribution, and among…

Help-seeking is a valuable practice in online discussion forums. However, the asynchronicity and information overload of online discussion forums have made it challenging for help seekers and providers to connect effectively. This study formulated a new method to provide fair and accurate insights toward building a peer recommender to support…

Background: Youth of color from low-income urban communities are crucial participants in research, as their involvement can shape effective, culturally responsive interventions and policy to promote youth health and well-being. These young people, however, are an often-neglected research population, due in part to perceived challenges associated…

School mental health practitioners and researchers are increasingly concerned about educator job-related stress and its implications for teacher burnout, teaching efficacy, turnover, and student outcomes. Educators' collegial networks in their schools are natural resources for stress support, yet little is known about the extent to which educators…

Men significantly outnumber women in physics, engineering, and computer science (PECS) majors, with a recent male-to-female ratio of approximately 4:1, a stark contrast to the near parity in other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines (1). This gender disparity in PECS carries wide-reaching implications for equity,…

"INSPIRE" is an Investing in Innovation (i3) development grant funded by the Office of Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. "INSPIRE" provides an innovative integrated K-12 STEM pipeline approach focused on STEM course content and instructional redesign. The INSPIRE model was implemented in Cabarrus County…

Discussion forums are important components of online courses because of the collaboration and community they foster, and the language used within the discussion forums may be influential in this development. In particular, studying the gendered language patterns of discussion forums can help gain insight into students' state of mind and propensity…

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is critical for student success in online postsecondary education. Many technology-based interventions have been studied to improve SRL skills, but few were situated in broad-access institutions that disproportionately serve systemically marginalized student populations in STEM fields. This study presents preliminary…

Self-regulation develops rapidly during the years before formal schooling, and it helps lay the foundation for children's later social, academic, and educational outcomes. However, children's self-regulation may be influenced by cultural contexts, sociodemographic factors, and characteristics of the child. The present study investigates whether…

We propose a dyadic Item Response Theory (dIRT) model for measuring interactions of pairs of individuals when the responses to items represent the actions (or behaviors, perceptions, etc.) of each individual (actor) made within the context of a dyad formed with another individual (partner). Examples of its use include the assessment of…

Despite well-established health disparities between transgender and cisgender youth, state bills restricting gender-inclusive school supports and health care have dramatically expanded since 2019. While parental support for transgender youth strengthens healthy development, unsupportive parents contribute to suicidality and homelessness. This…

Middle schoolers with or at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) typically have a trajectory of difficult outcomes (e.g., school dropout, incarceration). Growing evidence suggests that the continuum of behavioral competence to challenges is closely linked to students' neurocognitive executive function (EF) capacities, perceived stress…