Categorizes motor, emotional reaction, social, and academic tasks that will enable parents to assess a child's educational readiness for school. Provides a parent self-rating scale to assess standing as a reading role model for children and a checklist to rate how conducive the home environment may be to school achievement. (NEC)

Path analysis of data collected on fifth grade boys indicated that mothers' educational expectations were strongly related to sons' academic performance. Results were related to a model which conceptualized two classes of parental behaviors as determining children's academic achievement: instigating behaviors and responsive behaviors. (Author/DST)

The behavior of children from a wide range of family backgrounds was observed in elementary school classrooms several years after program services had been delivered. The results indicated that program participants benefited, particularly in the area of academic learning behavior. (Author/BW)

Presents an overview of a developmental structuralist model based on integration of psychoanalytic and Piagetian developmental psychology. Includes discussion of patterns and insights from a clinical-descriptive intervention study of multirisk families and suggests lines for future research. (RH)

Like the family, the schools may be viewed as a self-contained social system with a unique organization and unique patterns of expectations that are binding on its members. The article reviews why it is becoming increasingly difficult for the school to stand in as surrogate for the family. (MH)

Investigated the relationship of self-concept, parental influence, race, sex, and socioeconomic status to occupational aspirations and expectations and career maturity in 259 10th graders. Black students seemed to have aspirations and expectations similar to whites but less career maturity. Parent influence was an important predictor for all…

Eric Jensen, a leading expert in the translation of brain research into education, argues that students' achievement capacity is greatly underappreciated. Drawing from a wide range of neuroscience research as well as related studies, the author reveals that the human brain is far more dynamic and malleable than earlier believed. He offers a…

This study estimates the effect of maternal education on birth outcomes using data from the Vital Statistics Natality files for 1970 to 1999. It also assesses the importance of four potential channels through which maternal education may improve birth outcomes: use of prenatal care, smoking behavior, marriage, and fertility. In an effort to…

Adolescence involves multiple academic changes and increased challenges with potential dramatic effects on student motivation and learning. This chapter focuses on the influence of one motivational process, perceived self-efficacy. The chapter provides background information on self-efficacy related to the larger theoretical framework of human…

This study investigated the effect of using predictable stories as reading materials on the oral and emergent literacy development of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) beginners. A child-centered, literature-based curriculum integrating whole language philosophy was developed for a group of kindergarten students at a public high school in Taipei,…

This study used data from the National Survey of America's Families to examine contemporaneous relationships between patterns of parent work and positive child outcomes among low-income families by focusing on how parents organized their work schedules, relationships between patterns of parent work and child wellbeing, and relationships between…

This paper describes a longitudinal case study that examined the various products that a primary grade student created as he co-researched with his teacher how to implement self-selected science inquiry in a suburban first grade classroom in New Jersey. Transcriptions of science presentations and interviews, parent and student reflection, and the…

This information brief discusses the parental role in supporting a postsecondary student with a disability. It stresses that parents continue to be important role models and guides for their young adult sons and daughters and that parents may be a key part of the support network students with disabilities need to succeed in the postsecondary…

This study examined the emotional tone and degree of influence in adolescents' relationships with parents and friends. Early adolescent relationships were compared to middle adolescent relationships, and at both ages, relationships with mothers, fathers, and friends were compared. Using a self-report questionnaire, seventh- and tenth-grade…

This study employed self-reports from seventh- and tenth-graders to examine parents' level of education and features of parent-adolescent relationships as predictors of adolescents' academic performance. Features of parent-adolescent relationships were assessed as follows: mothers' and fathers' influence with respect to academic performance,…