Research Findings: The purpose of the present study was to examine the extent to which the quality of teacher-child interactions and teachers' self-reported curriculum emphases are related to children's reading skill development during their 1st school year. To accomplish this, we assessed the reading skills of 1,029 Finnish children (M…

Factors such as weak early literacy skills and living in poverty may put young students at risk for reading disabilities. While home literacy activities and access to literacy materials have been associated with positive reading outcomes for urban and suburban students, little is known about home literacy environments of rural early elementary…

Background: Educational processes and outcomes are influenced by a multitude of factors, including individual and contextual characteristics. Recently, studies have demonstrated that student and context characteristics may produce unique and cumulative effects on educational outcomes. Aims: The study aimed to investigate (1) the relative…

We addressed whether the degree of structure of reading content delivery to the children or degree of professional development support for the teachers was related to kindergarten through second-grade students' 2-year reading growth in high-poverty, low-performing schools. There were four categories of data sources: (a) classroom,…