Why is instructional gesture ineffective in some contexts? And what is it about learners that predicts whether they will learn from gestures? This between-subjects linear measurement training study compares gesture instruction to two controls--operant action and transient action--in a diverse sample of first-grade students (N = 174, M[subscript…

This exploratory study occurred in 10 title 1 schools located within a Midwestern state. The sample included 23 general educators and 551 students in second through fifth grade. Fifty-seven students identified as at risk for an emotional or behavioral disorder represented the targeted sample. The purpose of this study was to determine if teachers'…

In this Information Age, mathematics learning has shifted from independent to collaborative, and the ability to utilize both intrapersonal and interpersonal skills in learning has become essential. To cultivate multiple intelligences in mathematics classrooms, integrating project-based learning into mathematics instruction can be a promising…

Research into reading difficulties in Russian has been taking place for about a century, since the 1920s. Early research established a line of studies on reading acquisition difficulties in the context of highly structured practices of teaching reading. These practices were propagated in the mid-late 19th century by Konstantin Ushinskii, who…

Individual differences in children's social communication have been shown to mediate the relationship between poor vocabulary or grammar and behavioural difficulties. Moreover, there is increasing evidence that social communication skills predict difficulties with peers over and above vocabulary and grammar scores. The essential social…

Structured thinking activities (STAs) are pedagogical tools used to support metacognition in classrooms. Despite their popularity, little is known about how pupils use STAs as platforms to think about and manage their own thinking (i.e. as metacognitive tools). This case study investigated pupils' use of STAs in relation to metacognition…

VR technology is being widely used in education due to it's a sense of immersion, real-time interaction, and ability to stimulate imagination. However, there is a lack of research comparing students at different stages. This study used a quasi-experimental design involving 73 fourth-grade and 86 eighth-grade students in two schools in northwest…

Word boundary information is not marked explicitly in Chinese sentences and word ambiguity happens in Chinese texts. This introduces difficulty to parse characters into words when reading Chinese sentences, especially for beginning readers. In an eye-tracking study, we tested whether explicit word boundary information as provided by alternating…

Research on the implementation of CLIL at the onset of primary school is limited and has largely overlooked the role of other sources of individual differences. This study investigated the effects of the CLIL approach to English learning, together with the effects of out-of-school exposure to the language through media and other sources of…

Children's relationships with their teachers are a potential resource for enhancing developmental and academic outcomes. The effects of positive or negative teacher--child relationships can be either beneficial or detrimental to students' academic progress, behaviors, and emotions. In the current study, we utilized a qualitative research design to…

The aim of the study is to investigate the errors that first grade students have made in their writing of vertical numbers which have just been applied by removing cursive writing. Considering the aim of the study, vertical number writing styles of the first-grade students in primary school were analyzed. The sample of the study consists of 116…

Affect and mathematical competence are each multifaceted constructs. Accordingly, the studies in this Special Issue address multiple pathways between the two in young children. This commentary highlights the variability of these pathways and asks how affective variables are specifically related to core mathematical activities such as problem…

Elementary schoolchildren's working memory performance (WMP) fluctuates from moment to moment and day to day, yet the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. In the present study, affective states were investigated as predictors of these fluctuations. Interindividual differences in the intraindividual affect--WMP associations were expected,…

The past decade has witnessed a plethora of research to study the relationship between reading strategies and reading comprehension, but few studies have examined the brain functionality; more specifically the relationship between hemispheric dominance and reading strategies. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate whether there would be any…

Two studies examined the role of input distribution in English construction learning, by child learners from a Mandarin first-language background, and the extent to which phonological short-term memory and awareness predicted such learning. In the first study, 4th-grade students of Mandarin Chinese (N = 121) learned the English object-cleft…