The focus of this article is the well documented association between low working memory capacity and difficulty with mathematical word-problem solving. We begin by describing a model that specifies how various cognitive resources, including working memory, contribute to individual differences in word-problem solving and by then summarizing…

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which children's executive function predicted their reading comprehension performance. Participants were approximately 18,000 kindergartners in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011. The results suggest that individual differences in reading comprehension were…

Individual differences (IDs) have long been considered one of the most important factors explaining variable rates and outcomes in second language acquisition (Dewaele, 2013). While traditional operationalizations of IDs have, explicitly or implicitly, assumed that IDs are static traits that are stable through time, more recent research inspired…

Beginning teachers often feel disillusioned and stressed during their first years of teaching. In the present study, we investigated changes in teacher candidates' constructivist beliefs and emotional exhaustion. We assessed 163 German mathematics teacher candidates 3 times: at the beginning of, in the middle of, and after they completed the…

Diagnostic competences are an essential facet of teacher competence. Many studies have investigated the "quality" of teachers' judgments of students' competences. However, little is known about the processes that lead to these judgments and about the ways to promote these processes in the early phase of teacher training. The aim of the…

We explored how gender and gender similarity affects friendship dissolution following the transition to middle school. We predicted that both gender and gender similarity (measured by perceived similarity to own-gender and other-gender peers) explain dissolution trends and that less own-gender similarity or more other-gender similarity predicts…

Experiences of contingent responsivity during shared book reading predict better learning outcomes. However, it is unclear whether contingent responsivity from a digital book could provide similar support for children. The effects on story recall and engagement interacting with a digital book that responded contingently on children's vocalizations…

Reading in difficult or novel fonts results in slower and less efficient reading (Slattery & Rayner, 2010); however, these fonts may also lead to better learning and memory (Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, & Vaughan, 2011). This effect is consistent with a desirable difficulty effect such that more effort during encoding results in better…

Visual-verbal-paired associate learning (PAL) is strongly related to reading acquisition, possibly indexing a distinct cross-modal mechanism for learning letter-sound associations. We measured linguistic abilities (nonword repetition, vocabulary size) longitudinally at 3.5 and 4.0 years, and visual-verbal PAL and letter knowledge at 4.0 and…

The aim of this research was to determine whether the attitudes and behaviors of helicopter parents of secondary school students differ according to gender, grade level, family income level, parental education level, and parental income level. The participants of the research consisted of randomly selected 374 girls, 301 boys; 675 students in…

Past research has examined parental support for children's math and reading skills in the early years through parents' reports of their activities with their children in somewhat inconsistent ways. In this study, we use data from a large sample of parents (n = 259; 103 males) collected through Amazon's Mechanical Turk to examine dimensions of…

Purpose: The value of shared reading as an opportunity for learning word meanings, or semantics, is well established; it is less clear whether children learn about the orthography, or word spellings, in this context. We tested whether children can learn the spellings and meanings of new words at the same time during a tightly controlled shared…

Foreign language learning in classroom settings has long been found to be associated with anxiety. Though it is known that sources of foreign language anxiety are varied, whether anxiety is related to learners' inherent beliefs about language learning is understudied. To this end, the present study examines the possible relationship between…

Considering the challenges associated with the teaching of engineering design, and recognising potential differences in design values of individuals from various backgrounds, this study investigated the utility of "adaptive comparative judgment" (ACJ) as a method for informing the teaching and practice of engineering design. The authors…

Differentiated instruction (DI) has received extensive attention in general teacher education. Little research, however, has specifically focused on language teachers' understanding of DI, particularly the developmental trajectory of their understanding. The present study, framed within and informed by sociocultural theory, investigated EFL…