An emerging consensus in the teacher education literature confirms that supporting educational reforms and improving designs for national programs can be accomplished simply by maximizing the match between teachers' expressed needs and the content by which those professional development needs are met. This paper presents an interpretation of…

Perceived loneliness and social competence were assessed for 127 children with ASD without comorbid ID, 4-7 years old, through child self-report. Using an abbreviated version of the "Loneliness and Social Dissatisfaction Questionnaire" (LSDQ; Cassidy and Asher in "Child Dev" 63:250-365, 1992), the majority of children reported…

The Skills and Needs Inventories in Functional Behavior Assessments and Intervention (SNI-FBAI) was developed and administered to 338 special educators and 28 teaching support staff across seven special education schools in Singapore. The SNI-FBAI was evaluated in terms of its content, face, and construct validity. Internal consistency was also…

The psychometric measures of accuracy, reliability and validity of peer assessment are critical qualities for its use as a supplement to instructor grading. In this study, we seek to determine which factors related to peer review are the most influential on these psychometric measures, with a primary focus on the accuracy of peer assessment or how…

Students' sense of "belongingness" and their engagement in academic study have been identified as key contributors to student success. A short instrument that can identify changes over time in students' sense of belonging to their institution, their academic engagement and their self-confidence has been developed and used in conjunction…

The Science Teachers' Pedagogical Discontentment (STPD) scale has formerly been developed in the United States and used since 2006. Based on the perceptions of selected teachers, the scale is deeply rooted in the cultural and national standards. Given these limitations, the measurement integrity of its scores has not yet been conclusively…

The relevance of research: The relevance of the problem studied is caused by the acceleration of transition of the Russian economy on an innovative way of development, which depends on the vector of innovative sphere of services and, to a large extent, information and communication services, as well as it is caused by the poor drafting of…

Guided by the Interactive-Constructive-Active-Passive framework, the purpose of the study was to investigate whether teaching presence would impact online learners' passive, active, constructive, and interactive engagement behaviors. A total of 218 middle-school English teachers participated in an online professional development course.…

Both general (i.e., shared across different cognitive measures) and specific (i.e., unique to particular cognitive measures) influences can be postulated to contribute to the relations between adult age and measures of cognitive functioning. Estimates of general and specific influences on measures of memory, speed, reasoning, and spatial…

This article describes the development and preliminary validation of the Bullying, Harassment, and Aggression Receipt Measure (BullyHARM). The development of the BullyHARM involved a number of steps and methods, including a literature review, expert review, cognitive testing, readability testing, data collection from a large sample, reliability…

Adolescents typically exhibit a marked decline in academic intrinsic motivation throughout their school careers. Following self-determination theory, it is hypothesised that traditional school environments insufficiently satisfy three basic psychological needs of youths during maturation, namely the needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness.…

This mixed-methods study explored early adolescents' national American identification, and meanings attached to being American. Participants (N = 102; 51% female; ages 10-12, [x-bar] = 11.45, SD = 0.70) were racially and ethnically diverse from primarily middle- to upper-middle class families (median household income = US$150,000-US$199,999; 75%…

Idea generation is an important component of most major theories of writing. However, few studies have linked idea generation in writing samples to assessments of writing quality or examined links between linguistic features in a text and idea generation. This study uses human ratings of idea generation, such as "idea fluency, idea…

In the area of science education research, studies have attempted to investigate conceptions of learning, approaches to learning, and self-efficacy, mainly focusing on science in general or on specific subjects such as biology, physics, and chemistry. However, few empirical studies have probed students' earth science learning. This study aimed to…

The aim of this study is to determine perceptions of secondary school students towards effectiveness of their school in terms of effective school characteristics such as "Secure and Regular Environment," "High Academic Expectations," "Instructional Leadership," "Learning Opportunities," "Monitoring…