The purpose of this paper is to present an activity based on the integration of modeling and STEM to answer a real-life question related to volcanism which is a continuously unobservable but important phenomenon for many countries. For this purpose, firstly an activity was developed about volcanic eruptions to model the characteristics of volcanic…

This paper will demonstrate how we used state-level longitudinal data to model reading growth trajectories. Using data from large scale assessments that were vertically linked across grades in Hawaii, we utilized a multilevel regression framework to develop growth models to study students' reading performance trajectories during their elementary…

Situated within a positive psychology perspective, the current study examined the relations among academic achievement, self-esteem, and subjective well-being (SWB) in school among Chinese elementary school students using a longitudinal mediation model. A total of 807 elementary school students (M[subscript age] = 9.43 years; 52.9% male) completed…

Interactive learning environments with body-centric technologies lie at the intersection of the design of embodied learning activities and multimodal learning analytics. Sensing technologies can generate large amounts of fine-grained data automatically captured from student movements. Researchers can use these fine-grained data to create a…

Students perform better in school to the extent they are able to engage fully, cope adaptively, and bounce back from obstacles and setbacks in their academic work. These three processes, which studies suggest are positively inter-connected, may comprise a self-sustaining system that enables "motivational resilience." Using…

Language comprehension is crucial to reading. However, theoretical models and recent research raise questions about what constitutes this multifaceted domain. We present two related studies examining the dimensionality of language comprehension and relations to reading comprehension in the upper elementary grades. Studies 1 (Grade 6; N = 148) and…

We explored the usefulness of first and second grade reading measures and responsiveness criteria collected within a response-to-intervention (RtI) framework for predicting reading disability (RD) in third grade. We used existing data from 387 linguistically diverse students who had participated in a longitudinal RtI study. Model-based predictors…

This purpose of this study was to develop a clearer understanding of the complex, interrelated factors that lead to successful informational text comprehension and to determine if or how these factors vary for higher and lower comprehenders. Participants (N = 177) were in grades three through five and were predominately African American (61%) and…

This study examined the dynamic relationships among the components of the Simple View of Reading (SVR) in a transparent orthography (Finnish) and the predictive value of cognitive skills (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, rapid naming, and vocabulary) on the SVR components. Altogether, 1,815 Finnish children were followed from kindergarten…

The strong differences in manifestation, prevalence, and incidence in dyslexia across languages invite studies in specific writing systems. In particular, the question of the role played by emergent literacy in opaque and transparent writing systems remains a fraught one. This research project tested, through a 4-year prospective cohort study, an…

This study examines, within the domain of science, the characteristics of words that predict word knowledge and word learning. The authors identified a set of word characteristics--length, part of speech, polysemy, frequency, morphological frequency, domain specificity, and concreteness--that, based on earlier research, were prime candidates to…

Rapid automatized naming (RAN) is widely used to identify reading disabilities (RD) and has recently been considered a potential predictor of risk for mathematics learning disabilities (MLD). Here we longitudinally examine RAN performance from Grades K to 8, to view how growth on RAN response time differs for children with RD versus MLD. Across…

In both the school effectiveness and the educational administration literature, growing attention has been paid to the extent of principal leadership effects and the means by which they affect school performance. The main goal of this study is to estimate the effects of principal leadership on students' achievement growth in mathematics over a…

The present study utilized a latent variable modeling approach to examine the Simple View of Reading in a sample of students from 3rd, 7th, and 10th grades (N = 215, 188, and 180, respectively). Latent interaction modeling and other latent variable models were employed to investigate (a) the functional form of the relationship between decoding and…

As charter school waitlists around the United States continue to grow, it is important to analyze the factors that are possibly attracting parents away from the traditional public school setting and into the charter school system. Using waitlist data from Pennsylvania to proxy for parental valuation, the article examines numerous factors that…