This study explores the relationship between the books students select for independent reading and their motivation to read. Instructional recommendations based on key findings are presented. To gather data, study participants completed the Motivation to Read Profile-Revised. They also shared information about the books they had selected for…

Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) are now a popular tool to inform causal inferences. We discuss how DAGs can also be used to encode theoretical assumptions about nonprobability samples and survey nonresponse and to determine whether population quantities including conditional distributions and regressions can be identified. We describe sources of…

This study draws on complete friendship network data on two first-year biological sciences cohorts at a selective university in the United States to investigate how and to what extent allocating students to curricular groups and grading their performance in class shape (1) processes of friend selection at the dyadic level and (2) friendship…

Remembering information about others is important but challenging in various social contexts. For instance, in long-term collaborative educational settings, students often need to choose peers for academic support. In different contexts, the selection process can depend on group awareness, i.e., the state of being informed about relevant social or…

While much of the research on censorship and book banning rightly emphasizes efforts to silence and erase people who do not identify as white cis-heteronormative men, the role of colonialism in the construction and contextualization of censorship is underexplored. However, censorship's primary goal is to obtain power over stories--the control over…

Instructional leadership is a school leadership approach that prioritizes enhancing the quality of teaching and learning. This study explores how the principal's instructional leadership influences the school's middle leadership. The study participants were 24 principals from elementary schools in Israel, and data collection involved conducting…

Academic library literature contains several studies on the experience of autistic students navigating the world of higher education and its libraries. However, very little is published on the employment experiences of autistic academic librarians. This study attempts to examine employment barriers for autistic people currently or previously…

This multimodal/multimedia discourse analysis explored institutional practices regarding native and non-native English speaker teachers in five language centers in Medellín, Colombia, as reflected in interviews with coordinators and teachers, language centers' websites, social media, and recruitment materials. Data were analyzed using content and…

As one of the fundamental tasks in the online learning platform, interactive course recommendation (ICR) aims to maximize the long-term learning efficiency of each student, through actively exploring and exploiting the student's feedbacks, and accordingly conducting personalized course recommendation. Recently, deep reinforcement learning (DRL)…

Random forests are a nonparametric machine learning method, which is currently gaining popularity in the behavioral sciences. Despite random forests' potential advantages over more conventional statistical methods, a remaining question is how reliably informative predictor variables can be identified by means of random forests. The present study…

The fundamental significance of literacy achievement cannot be overstated. However, the 2022 National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) divulges alarming findings, with a mere 33 percent of the nation's fourth graders performing at or above proficiency in reading (NAEP, 2022). Exploring the nexus of research-informed pedagogy and practice…

In the United States, the student body is increasingly more diverse in ethnicity, family structure, and race; yet oftentimes libraries are not representative of these students. This dissertation aims to develop and provide a framework to help educators select books that reflect the lives of diverse students. In addition to diverse literature…

This report provides advice to policymakers and school leaders on the use of assessment centres as part of a teacher selection approach. It discusses the relationship between assessment centre scores prior to joining teaching, and teacher effectiveness over a six-year period. It draws from various stages of a wider research project, the overall…

Finding and retaining qualified teachers has been challenge for public schools in the United State over the past few decades. Teacher retention is one of the major factors impacting the number of qualified teachers available to our school system. This qualitative study was to help provide a better understanding of the teachers and administrators'…

The purpose of this research was to investigate the needs of parents and guardians who enroll their children in Out of School Time (OST) Programs in Philadelphia. It provides further guidance toward formalizing how OST programs recruit students and their families, and assessing parental engagement activities from a consumer's perspective. Applying…