Researchers claim that pedagogical agents engender opportunities for social learning in digital environments. Prior literature, however, has not thoroughly examined the discourse between agents and learners. To address this gap, we analyzed a data corpus of interactions between agents and learners using open coding methods. Analysis revealed that:…

Parents of children waiting for a diagnostic assessment for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience distress and anxiety while they wait. The present small-scale study took place in a multi-disciplinary therapeutic service in Ireland for children with ASD and was run between April and September 2011. The first author, an educational psychologist…

Background: After 14 years of civil war and two rounds of democratic elections, Liberia is working to reduce child abuse and exploitation. Young children's perceptions on protection and risk are rarely elicited to inform program planning and intervention. Objective: The aim of the present study was to explore young children's perceptions of child…

Previous studies on podcasting assessed the usage impact of this technology on some cognitive and affective variables such as learning, performance efficiency, satisfaction and anxiety. However, these studies assumed that students had adopted podcasting without questioning their opinions. In order to reach a deeper understanding of students'…

This study examined the role of incidental focus on form (FonF) in adult English-as-a-second-language classrooms. Specifically, it explored the extent to which the amount, type, and effectiveness of FonF were related to differences in classroom participation structure, that is, the organization of classroom talk within which FonF may occur. The…

This qualitative, grounded theory study investigated teacher perspectives on the relationship between executive function and reading aptitude. The influence of executive function may be underestimated in terms of its impact on reading aptitude, which could have significant implications on how reading aptitude is currently defined. The foundational…

Foster children are academically at risk as a result of abuse, neglect and family disruptions. Findings from previous studies have underscored the critical role played by foster parents in monitoring the academic progress of the children placed in the home. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological research study was to identify the skill…

The number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has increased dramatically both nationally and in Nebraska, accompanied by an equally substantial increase in public school education for this population in inclusive classroom settings. A growing body of research supports the need for teachers proficient in evidence-based…

Learning Chinese characters is a difficult task for adult English native speakers due to the significant differences between the Chinese and English writing system. The visuospatial properties of Chinese characters have inspired the development of instructional methods using both verbal and visual information based on the Dual Coding Theory. This…

Although 95% of the approximately six million students with disabilities aged 6 to 21 years of age are being served in regular schools, a substantial achievement gap continues to exist between these students and their peers in the general K-12 population. Recent studies indicate that an effective teacher is the single most important school-based…

With tightening university budgets, never before has the activity level of research grant proposal writing been more intense. With increased proposal numbers, including for the National Science Foundation's (NSF) prestigious CAREER award, has also come increased competition and decreased funding rates. This dissertation has searched for successful…

Objective: Some critics of treatment manuals have argued that their use may undermine the quality of the client-therapist alliance. This notion was tested in the context of youth psychotherapy delivered by therapists in community clinics. Method: Seventy-six clinically referred youths (57% female, age 8-15 years, 34% Caucasian) were randomly…

Reliability generalization (RG) is a meta-analysis that combines and synthesizes reliability coefficients from different studies to ascertain the average observed reliability across studies. An RG study was conducted on previously reported data from 16 samples of the Overexcitability Questionnaire--Two (OEQII) with a combined "N" of 5,275.…

Objectives: Pediatric fractures suspicious for abuse are often evaluated in emergency departments (ED), although corresponding diagnostic coding for possible abuse may be lacking. Thus, the primary objective of this study was to determine the proportion of fracture cases investigated in the ED for abuse that had corresponding International…

This study is a content analysis of a random selection of 20% (N = 1,168) of articles from "School Psychology Quarterly", "Psychology in the Schools", the "Journal of School Psychology", and "School Psychology Review". Across the four journals, 27% of the articles had a positive focus, and the percentage of articles focused on the positive has…