All school professionals working with children and adolescents deal with social skills issues. Even if not the primary issue or goal, teachers, counselors, school psychologists, other specialists such as nurses, speech and language therapists, etc., and some administrators make informal assessments of their students' ability to successfully…

This study examined the behaviors and experiences of students who needed assistance while working in peer-directed small groups on mathematics problems and the processes that helped or hindered their learning. Students in 4 seventh-grade classes worked in heterogeneous small groups throughout a 3-week unit on operations with decimal numbers.…

We present our recent research on children's learning goals and personal agency in the domain of learning in order to show the complexity of selves in Chinese culture. Our research poses challenges to the widely claimed collectivist self-concept in Chinese children and calls for reexamination of selves in specific domains across cultures.…

Globally, universities today are attracting students from widely diverse language and cultural backgrounds. However, whilst there are many well-intentioned and supportive institutional endeavours under way, in most cases, it is still apparent that students with certain background characteristics are more successful than others. Disparities that…

Awareness of issues of social competence and challenging behavior related to childhood language and communication disorders has been increasing. The purpose of this clinical exchange is to provide speech-language pathologists with basic information on communication disorders and challenging behaviors, as well as with insights into ways to support…

The purpose of this study was to examine the results of a prescriptive, classroom- based social skills intervention program for 7 students with high-incidence disabilities receiving services in a self-contained, special education classroom. Students participated in 12 hours of social skills training, led by a paraprofessional and a student…

This study examines teachers' perceptions of classroom motivation and achievement among students displaying culture-based classroom behaviors. Sixty-two elementary school teachers read scenarios of hypothetical students who behaviorally manifested themes purported to be consistent with a European/mainstream cultural ethos (competition,…

For more than thirty years, researchers have been interested in the issue of student retention in college. This study found that students who highly valued financial success were less likely to continue at the same institution from their first to their second year of college and were more likely to drop out of college than students who valued…

Developing children's capacity to learn is at the forefront of all endeavours in schools. Teachers strive to capitalise on a wide range of teaching styles and innovations to stimulate, motivate and engage their children to become "better learners". Since September 1999, the Centre for Science Education at Sheffield Hallam University has…

This paper reports on the outcomes of the first in a series of three systematic literature reviews in inclusive education. The aims include establishing what research has been undertaken in the area of effective pedagogical approaches to enable children with special educational needs to be included in mainstream classrooms, synthesising themes in…

Background: There has been limited research on differences in temperament between typically developing children and children with an intellectual disability (ID). Individual differences have generally been neglected in previous investigations of children with an ID. The present research investigated differences in temperament and social behaviour…

When a New York school district found a majority of its middle school students scoring below an acceptable level in four major academic areas, it tried many interventions, including a three-year experiment in single-gender classrooms. Although single-gender classrooms are no longer as common in the United States as in years past, recent…

There is a vast body of literature on school size but comparatively few high quality empirical studies comparing outcomes in schools of different sizes. This systematic review synthesizes the results of the published research from 31 studies on the effects of secondary school size from OECD countries since 1990. Overall the directions and patterns…

Objective: This study evaluates the efficacy, duration of action, and tolerability of methylphenidate transdermal system (MTS) in children with ADHD. Method: Participants were dose optimized over 5 weeks utilizing patch doses of 10, 16, 20, and 27 mg applied in the morning and worn for 9 hours. Following optimization, 80 participants were…

Elementary school children in three grade groups (Grades K/1, 3, and 5/6) completed either the auditory or the visual 1/9 vigilance task from the Gordon Diagnostic System (GDS) as well as subtests from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Third Edition and auditory or visual processing subtests from the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive…