Pathological thinking surrounding disenfranchised and marginalized communities remains a problem in education policy, popular discourse, and research on marginalized communities. Scholars employ a host of frameworks to challenge such pathological thinking, often through the language of deficits. We argue that in an effort to refute pathological…

Introduction: This study aims to investigate how mother-adolescent relationships evolved before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and their correlation with pandemic-related stress and adolescents' psychological distress. Methods: A longitudinal study involving 579 mother-adolescent dyads (junior high school students at Time 1; 50% male students)…

Research shows that Summer Bridge Programs (SBPs) are essential in supporting undergraduate students' first-year college transition experiences from underrepresented and historically marginalized backgrounds. A key component of SBPs is cultivating deeply supportive relationships participants establish with adults and peers on a college campus. The…

This study developed a structured intervention program based on Transformative Learning, Experiential Learning, and Humanistic Education principles to enhance public speaking confidence among university students experiencing public speaking anxiety, a common barrier to academic and professional success. The research had two objectives: (1) to…

We conducted a stimulus preference assessment to identify preference for praise delivered in English versus Spanish for bilingual students. Next, a concurrent-operant reinforcer assessment was used to evaluate the reinforcer efficacy of praise in each language. Participants showed limited to no preference for one language over another. One…

Lying during childhood is a common concern for caregivers. Lee et al. (2014) showed that a moral story and instruction implying reinforcers for honesty produced statistically significant improvements in children admitting a transgression. We evaluated the influence of this moral story and instruction on the consistency of honest reports when…

Having a clear and stable sense of how one performs in a field is a key contributor to goal pursuit. Performance feedback is often considered a crucial resource for developing this clear and stable self-knowledge but may be less optimally integrated when feedback is considered inaccurate or dishonest. The current paper investigates how such…

Self-cognition and self-acceptance are essential for mental health development and emotion in college students. The study investigated the efficacy of group drawing therapy in improving Chinese college students' positive self-cognition and self-acceptance. It is worth noting that Chinese college students in a collectivist culture have systematic…

South African university students (n = 18; aged 21-28) participated in the LifeMatters train-the-trainer (TTT) workshop. Ten trained participants (n = 10; aged 21-23) then implemented the program as youth facilitators at three local schools. The study aimed to describe changes in participants resulting from the TTT and implementation experience.…

Student behavior is a major concern for all teachers as classroom management is key to improving educational outcomes. Despite many schools utilizing punitive strategies, research suggests that positive behavior intervention supports (PBIS) are more appropriate and effective at improving student behavior. One such intervention, the Good Behavior…

Teaching elementary students how to read is undeniably crucial, yet a substantial number of children encounter difficulties despite early interventions (NCES, 2022). Cross-age tutoring, a pedagogical approach that pairs older students with younger peers, emerges as a cost-effective solution that brings academic and social benefits to both the…

Professional development for educators is often not evidence-based and insufficient to improve classroom management skills. Video-analysis has been shown to be effective at improving pedagogy of classroom teachers. We expanded on prior literature by using an early childhood general education teacher. A multiple baseline design across behaviors was…

Praise in the context of behavior-specific encouragement, positive reinforcement, and recognition may provide a linkage in positive youth development to teen leaders' feelings of contribution and motivation at 4-H Camp. Existing literature on praise in academic settings, combined with literature related to positive youth development, organized…

There is considerable evidence that parents/guardians play an important role in their children's education. The supportive behaviours of parents have important implications for children's learning. However, most research in this area has focused primarily on the perspectives of school leaders, teachers and parents. One area that thus remains…

Multitiered support for professional development (MTS-PD) is a framework for applying a three-tiered support system to teacher classroom management professional development through targeted training and coaching. In this study, we conceptually replicated two prior MTS-PD studies. Following a school-wide training on behavior-specific praise (BSP),…