Using a strengths-based approach, this study investigated whether Black adolescents' provision of different types of support to family (chores, childcare, emotional, financial support) was associated with their educational outcomes (school engagement, grades, suspensions), and whether these associations differed by household income levels. The…

Procrastination in academic contexts is thought to have a negative effect on students' learning and performance. This research sought to provide a comprehensive multi-method and multimodal validation of a self-report measure of procrastination, revealing its intricate associations with behavioral indicators of procrastination, engagement, and…

Insufficient sleep and sleepiness are common in adolescence and can negatively impact school performance. The current study examined sleep duration and sleepiness in academic performance and cognitive processes in early adolescence. Middle school students (N = 288; M[subscript age] = 12.01; 54% female; 48% Black, 37% White, 10% Hispanic) wore…

Is there an optimal grading scheme? Do psychology instructors prefer one grading scheme over another? These questions were recently posted on the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook page. After reading the responses, we realized that research in the domain of math cognition might help to shed light on an optimal grading scheme and put…

Standardized reading assessments are often used as an admissions criterion for college admittance, however, the relationship and predictive validity of reading assessments to academic achievement remains in question. Through a quantitative review of the literature, we conducted a meta-analysis to examine how well performance on college reading…

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…

Background: Food insecurity is characterized by limited access to adequate food due to a lack of money or resources (eg, lack of transportation to obtain food). School aged children who are experiencing food insecurity are at greater risk for poor academic outcomes, but previous studies have not examined the effects of food insecurity on specific…

Gender gaps in mathematics achievement persist in many contexts and when visible, these gaps are paradoxical. Low-stakes measures of mathematics achievement such as grades and study behaviors favor girls, while gaps tend to reverse on assessments/ competitions. We explore whether different impacts of raising performance stakes could be one…

Earning poor grades in early science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) college courses decreases the likelihood that a student will major in STEM. However, grades in first-year STEM courses do not impact students evenly, making it hard to know if early "gatekeeping" courses selectively push some students out of STEM. This…

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,…

Students in a gateway college science course were assigned to two instructional conditions: explanation-only or augmented instruction. In the explanation-only condition, students wrote explanations for six excerpts from their textbook. The augmented-instruction condition wrote explanations on only four of the excerpts, with the other two serving…

The United States (US) does not formally count, recognize, or support students in higher education who are caregivers, unlike England and Australia. This mixed-methods study presents results from a new survey of caregiving undergraduate and graduate students at a large university in the US. Students (N = 7592; 62.7% White, 69.9% women) reported…

The learning losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic make this an important time to identify strategies that can help students accelerate their learning. The Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention (STARI) is a year-long supplemental reading intervention that is intentionally designed to address the motivational barriers of middle school students…

Objective: Research has demonstrated the effectiveness of interventions to reduce organizational skills deficits and homework problems, including the clinic-based Organizational Skills Training (OST-C) program (Abikoff et al., 2013). In this study, OST-C was adapted for schools as a small-group (Tier 2) intervention delivered by school partners…

Profound socio-economic disparities that exist among American religious groups are largely driven by the quantity and quality of education they receive. Furthermore, given the U.S. schooling system is rooted in Protestant ideals, it is possible that students with Protestant commitments have an academic advantage. This article synthesizes…