Teacher self-efficacy is a critical component of school life quality, leading scholars to explore the mechanisms behind it. Most studies have focused on this factor's mediation and moderation functions, with some indicating a strong link between teachers' academic optimism and self-efficacy. However, the roles of teachers' professional development…

Phonemic awareness (PA) refers to the ability to reflect on and manipulate phonemes. The development of the ability to become aware of and conduct mental operations on phonemes might involve higher-order cognitive processes, such as executive functions (EFs), which help modulate attention to goal-relevant information and support behavioral…

Effective classroom management is critical to supporting student learning and success in school. However, little research has focused specifically on the impact of classroom management on student mathematics achievement, especially in the early elementary grades or in a small group (i.e., Tier 2) context. To address this need we investigated the…

Schools have been postulated as ideal environments to encourage physical activity (PA). This study aimed to assess the relationship between PA in school hours, motor competence, and screen time in a sample of Spanish preschool children. Fifty-seven 4-5-year-old preschoolers (n = 32 girls) participated. The Garmin Vivofit wristband was used to…

This study explored the concordance between 70 third-grade students' preintervention and postintervention acceptability ratings of a writing intervention administered over 7 weeks. In addition, the association between students' preintervention and postintervention acceptability ratings and intervention effectiveness was examined. Results indicated…

The purpose of the present study is to examine whether physical and relational victimization negatively impacts indicators of school climate--students' perceptions of school safety, their attachment to school, and their help-seeking behavior--and whether gender moderates these associations. Using a sample of 361 third through fifth-grade students…

Theory of mind describes the ability to engage in perspective-taking, understand intentions, and predict actions and emotions. Theory of mind typically achieves major developmental milestones around age of 5, coinciding with the transition to kindergarten, and is associated with a verbal ability (receptive and expressive vocabulary), executive…

Nearly one in four students residing in the United States is from an immigrant family and these children's school readiness is related to their parent's nativity and other sociodemographic characteristics. Social-emotional skills are an important conduit for academic development, yet these relations have not been explored for children from…

Recent studies report the cumulative prevalence of behavioral disorders among school-age children to be second only to anxiety disorders. Unfortunately, by the time behavior has been identified as needing special education services, patterns of disruptive and externalizing behavior have often become unremitting. If at-risk behavior can be reliably…

Childhood exposure to traumatic experiences and subsequent psychological symptoms increase the risk for lifelong behavioral and mental health problems, including depression diagnoses, reduced adaptive coping strategies, substance abuse, and early death, with negative impacts on children's social development and academic achievement.…

This study examined the relationship of teachers' ratings of students' 21st century skills (i.e., persistence, curiosity, externalizing and internalizing affect, and cognition) via the Human Behavior Rating Scale: Brief (HBRS: Brief; Eaves & Woods-Groves, 2011) with student performance. Midwestern K-11 teachers (n = 96) rated students (n =…

Family involvement in education, including the quality of family-school communication, has been demonstrated repeatedly to have a substantial effect on child development and success in school; however, measures of this construct are limited. The purpose this study was to examine the factor structure and concurrent validity of the Quality of the…

As the foreign-born population in the United States grows, the achievement of immigrant children is a pressing concern. We examined family educational involvement in early elementary school as a potential source of support for the academic success of children in immigrant families. Using a nationally representative sample, we examined rates of…

A critical next step in advancing our understanding of teacher practices that can equitably engage and support learning in diverse classrooms is determining the effectiveness of culturally responsive interventions. Yet, quantitative measurement indicators of the effectiveness of culturally responsive teaching interventions are scarce. Most…

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity evidence of first-grade Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) scores for predicting third-grade reading comprehension scores. We used the "simple view" of reading as the theoretical foundation for examining the extent to which DIBELS subtest scores predict…