We examined relations among select components of the 4-H Thriving Model, focusing on youth sparks and four presumed determinants: program quality, developmental relationships, situational engagement, and dosage. Based on our results and results of previous studies, we propose a formal theory of youth program sparks. Three hundred fifty-six Texas…

Theoretical models have suggested that teachers' motivational beliefs relate to various student academic outcomes through particular teaching practices, and that teachers' motivational beliefs and teaching practices are reciprocally interrelated. However, these relations have rarely been tested in longitudinal work. We extend previous research by…

Past research has shown that children are more likely to seek out and remember facts about kinds (e.g. "tarsiers hunt for birds") than individuals (e.g. "this tarsier likes to sing"), underscoring the importance of kind-based information in human cognition. However, children also often care about and learn facts about…

The article describes a participatory segmentation strategy, called the Actor Diagramming and Tracing Method, that enables Extension agents to tailor education initiatives. Using a case study, the authors demonstrate the method by segmenting North Carolina family forest landowners based on resources needed for sustainable forestry management.…

The purpose of this literature review was to examine the current studies identifying sport specialization of collegiate athletes. Four aspects of specialization were identified: (1) age of sport initiation, (2) age of sport specialization, (3) differences of specialization between team-based and individual-based sports, and (4) reason for sport…

The rise of modern socio-digital technologies has fundamentally changed the everyday environments in which young people communicate with each other and cultivate interests. To gain a more sophisticated understanding of this phenomenon, this study provides in-depth, qualitative insights into adolescents' experiences of their socio-digital…

Recent work suggests that the stereotype associating brilliance with men may underpin women's underrepresentation in prestigious careers, yet little is known about its development and consequences in non-Western contexts. The present research examined the onset of this stereotype and its relation to children's motivation in 5- to 7-year-old Korean…

The Developmental Stages of an Extension Professional (DSEP) model depicts how professionals can move through the stages of service, education, management, and leadership to build volunteer and program capacity. It encourages Extension professionals to assess the situation and adjust their leadership style. Researchers used a mixed methods…

Virtual reality (VR) is a computer-generated three-dimensional environment representing the real or imaginary world with the virtual world through various sensory channels. The multisensory immersion feature of VR (Immersive VR-I-VR) reduces the user's awareness of what is happening in the surroundings. The use of immersive virtual reality…

In this study with within-subject design, the "be-creative effect" was investigated using three instructions in figural divergent-thinking tasks: Besides a be-fluent instruction, a be-creative instruction, and a be-creative instruction combined with strategies were applied. In addition, reasoning ability as part of fluid intelligence,…

Evidence of outcomes of the early years is highly dependent on what is considered as an outcome, the curriculum and relationships children experience, and the research designs and methods used to ascertain the value of early childhood education. This article reports from an original study in New Zealand that used narrative inquiry to interview…

The purpose of this design and development case study is to provide an in-depth account of the needs analysis (through surveys and interviews), design, development and formative evaluation of the Citizen Science Cancer Curriculum (CSCC). The curriculum was developed as an online, self-paced educational program distributed as an Open Educational…

This sequential mixed methods study applies a recently published model of integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teacher identity to analyze teacher artifacts from a graduate STEM education course for in-service teachers (n = 23). This model captures the complexity of integrating STEM in elementary classrooms as an…

Given constant online access to information, critical news literacy, or the ability to access and critically evaluate the news, is essential for adolescents to learn about the world and obtain civic knowledge to participate as national and global citizens. Although there has been much research focusing on how youths critically read and produce…

The teaching profession can be an extremely rewarding career. It can also be a challenging work and problematic from time to time. Therefore, the aim of this This qualitative research is to reveal problems that teachers encounter in the Turkish educational system and solutions to solve these problems. The data were collected with interview…