Research Findings: Prior research has demonstrated the importance of young children's executive functioning (EF) skills for their success in schooling and beyond. However, the field lacks an understanding of how children's EF skills manifest in context. In the present study, we relate children's classroom off-task behavior to their EF skills.…

The consequence of a change in school leadership (e.g., principal turnover) on student achievement has important implications for education policy. The impact of such an event can be estimated via the popular Difference in Difference (DiD) estimator, where those schools with a turnover event are compared to a selected set of schools that did not…

Efforts to increase moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in school-aged children are associated with improved health, cognitive, and academic outcomes. However, questions remain about whether similar benefits are observed in early childhood. We hypothesized that motor competence, not MVPA, would be related to improved cognitive and…

Visual representations of information are prevalent in many academic domains, and students must learn how to interpret and use these visual representations. How do students acquire this representational competence? Past work has focused on the role of explicit instruction. In this work, we consider another route for acquiring representational…

Background: Children with motor delays are at increased risk for delayed means-end problem-solving (MEPS) performance. Objectives: To evaluate children with motor delays: 1) the impact of motor delay severity and MEPS mastery timing on developmental trajectories of MEPS; and 2) the effectiveness of Sitting Together And Reaching To Play…

Objectives: We conducted a mixed-method focus group study to (a) assess the appropriateness and likely effectiveness of strategies that target individual behavior change mechanisms associated with perceived barriers of lack of time and unsupportive leadership and (b) identify recommendations regarding strategies for overcoming the barriers.…

Little is known about whether a widely used mindfulness measure in adults--the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ)--is also reliable and valid in adolescents. The current study evaluated the psychometric properties of a 20-item short-form FFMQ in a sample of 599 high school students (M[subscript age] = 16.3 years; 49% female) living in the…

Numbers and variables often follow the same principles of arithmetic operations, yet numbers can be computed to a value whereas variables cannot. We examined the effect of symbols--numbers versus variables--on middle school students' problem-solving behaviors in a dynamic algebra notation system by presenting problems in numbers (e.g., 3+5-3) or…

This study examined the amount and types of narrative instruction (i.e., story comprehension, oral storytelling, and story writing instruction) that general education English language arts teachers provide to students in Grades 1 through 4. The research team conducted 121, [approximately]30-minute classroom observations. Educators were asked to…

Introduction: Identifying a dose of physical activity (PA) that can improve cognitive function in children has important implications for school-day PA recommendations. Researchers and educators have interest in this link as it relates to both health and academic performance. This study examined the dose-response relationship between PA and…

Understanding fraction magnitudes is important for achievement and in daily life. However, adults' fraction reasoning sometimes appears to reflect whole number bias and other times reflects accurate reasoning. In the current experiments, we examined how contextual factors and individual differences in executive functioning (Experiment 1),…

English learners (ELs) are the fastest-growing population of students in the United States and currently represent nearly 10% of public school enrollment; however, they also constitute less than 3% of gifted program enrollment in these schools. Although an increasing number of studies explore this underrepresentation, research that specifically…

Scale-up of universal social-emotional learning (SEL) programs has become a priority in schools to promote positive social outcomes for all students. Although studies have examined student outcomes associated with school-based SEL when extensive training and support are provided, research on teacher SEL implementation practices under typical…

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of adaptive learner models that seek to predict student correctness. Improvements on earlier models have shown that separate predictors for prior successes, failures, and recent performance further improve fit while remaining interpretable. However, students who engage in "gaming" or other…

This instrumental case study is focused on understanding more about literacy instruction in K-3 classrooms during the pandemic-impacted 2020-2021 school year. The study aims to examine (a) how teachers described their literacy instruction before and during the COVID-19 pandemic; (b) the types of literacy instructional practices teachers…