Assessment of Motivation to learn (MtL) is challenging in the diverse populations. Commonly used method (i.e., exact invariance test) may not be suitable for companions of many subgroups. This study employed an alignment optimization method (a.k.a., approximate invariance test) and data of the working age (25-65 years old) U.S. adults (n = 5,509)…

Computer gameplay and social media are the two most common forms of entertainment in the digital age. Many scholars share the assumption that leisure-time digital consumption is associated with CS affinity, but there is a dearth of research evidence for this relationship. Female students generally spend less time on gaming and more time on social…

In 2018, a resurgence of youth activism burst forth calling for widespread climate action. The contemporary youth climate movement is a cogent case to unpack how political participation of youth is shaped by schools. In this study we use administrative data from public schools in New York City (n=1,313) to examine two measures of youth…

The expansion of early childhood education and care (ECEC) programs has generated increasing interest in establishing appropriate structural standards that can optimize child outcomes. To contribute to this discourse, this study aims to investigate the characteristics and influencing factors of classroom quality. Ninety-six classrooms (202…

This study investigated direct and indirect pathways from listening comprehension (LC) to reading comprehension (RC) via fluent word reading (FWR) in grades 1-3, and path equivalence across these grades. LC's total effects predicting RC range from 0.45 to 0.59 in grades 1-3, a stronger relationship than found in previous studies. Overall, LC's…

The widespread shift to distance learning during the pandemic created a critical juncture for strengthening technology integration in adult foundational education (AFE). This paper presents results from a pilot survey on technology use and related professional learning (PL); 58 AFE practitioners from four states participated. Findings are…

This study examined the predictive power of students' demographic characteristics, reading attitudes, school characteristics, and teacher-informed reading activities on three metacognitive reading skills: understanding and remembering, summarizing, and assessing credibility and their influence on 15-year-old students' reading scores. The dataset…

Reading self-concept plays a significant role in academic achievement. Considering increasing numbers of English learners (ELs) in the United States, there is an urgent need to investigate self-perceptions of ELs in comparison to those of native English speakers (NES). We applied Elastic Net analysis (ENET), a machine learning approach, to PISA…

When estimating an average treatment effect with observational data, it's possible to get an unbiased estimate of the causal effect if all confounding variables are observed and reliably measured. In education, confounding variables are often latent constructs. Covariate selection methods used in causal inference applications assume that all…

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…

There is a persistent stereotype that gifted students feel ostracized and have less sense of belonging than their normative peers. To explore this stereotype, data from 9251 15-year-old students in the U.S. were used to explore differences in the sense of belonging across achievement levels in various domains (i.e., mathematics, science, and…

Three-dimensional science instruction advocates for classroom contexts that place equal emphasis on science content, crosscutting concepts, and science practices. This instructional change requires a shift away from content first approaches. Such a shift can be problematic for educators that insist that strong content understanding is necessary…

This study examined the impacts of contextual and personal variables on out-of-class technology use for English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) learning among 1079 adolescents. It was found that girls reported more individualized and collaborative out-of-class technology use, and less computer anxiety in technology use than boys did.…

The current study followed literacy skills development amongst 79 Arabic native speaking pupils from kindergarten to fourth grade. Based on reading comprehension attainments in fourth grade, two groups of skilled and poor readers were identified. Poor readers showed significantly lower performance on measures of phonological and morphological…

It is widely known that the presence of multicollinearity in a dataset can have detrimental effects on determining which predictors are responsible for the variation in the response (e.g. Pedhazur, 1982). There also exist some indication that the presence of multicollinearity does not impact one's ability to accurately estimate/predict the value…