This longitudinal study covering two educational transitions examined 1,821 Finnish students' participation in and identification with school and their associations with students' academic achievement and truancy. The students were surveyed (a) at the end of primary school, (b) at the beginning of lower secondary school, (c) at the end of lower…

The purposes of this research were 1) to develop student's scientific reasoning ability on the concept of light and image at a criterion of 70 using inquiry-based learning 5E with prediction observation and explanation strategy and 2) to compare students' scientific learning achievement on the concept of light and image after using inquiry-based…

Control of variables strategy (CVS) is a core scientific reasoning skill related to domain-general experimentation for evaluating an experimental system and deducing valid conclusions. This study aims to develop, validate, and explore latent factors predicting item difficulty in the test, measuring CVS in physics for high school students. The…

Purpose: The extant literature suggests that individual differences in speech perception can be linked to broad receptive language phenotype. For example, a recent study found that individuals with a smaller receptive vocabulary showed diminished lexically guided perceptual learning compared to individuals with a larger receptive vocabulary. Here,…

Background: The idea of using low-stakes assessment results is often mentioned when designing educational system reforms. However, when tests have no consequences for the students, test takers may not make enough effort when completing the test, and their lack of engagement may negatively affect the validity of the conclusions of the studies that…

Research on what neural mechanisms facilitate word reading development in non-alphabetic scripts is relatively rare. The present study was among the first to adopt a multivariate pattern classification analysis to decode electroencephalographic signals recorded for primary school children (N = 236) while performing a Chinese character decision…

Purpose: Liquids are among the last sounds to be acquired by English-speaking children. The current study considers their acquisition from an articulatory timing perspective by investigating anticipatory posturing for /l/ versus /[voiced alveolar approximant]/ in child and adult speech. Method: In Experiment 1, twelve 5-year-old, twelve…

Narrative Story-Stem Tasks (NSST) assess young children's perceptions of close relationship qualities via the spontaneous narratives they create in response to story beginnings using doll-like figures. Most NSST research to date has focused on family relationships. This study extends this research to children's perceptions of relationships with…

Metadiscourse, a linguistic means that is used in the production and organization of ideas, is vital in achieving successful communication. In language studies, metadiscourse in writing and speaking have been disparately investigated, where the former received more attention than the latter. Thus, the present study analyzes metadiscourse in the…

Third culture kids represent a significant portion of the population in the United Arab Emirates. However, little is known about the psychological problems that may be encountered by these kids. The third culture kids' problems that received adequate attention included relationship and identity problems, unresolved grief, and high rates of…

This study examined indirect associations of MyTeachingPartner coaching with pre-K students' (N = 1,570; 73% low income) school readiness, via improvements of teachers' (N = 393; 47% Black; 41% Head Start) classroom interactions. Data were collected across 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 in 10 urban sites across the eastern United States. The number of…

The purpose of this study is to ascertain whether a student's sense of financial security can increase the degree of predictability of retention over and above the more traditional predictors typically found in the literature, and to get a better sense for how student financial security impacts student persistence decision-making in college. To…

Feinberg and Wainer (2014) provided a simple equation to approximate/predict a subscore's value. The purpose of this note is to point out that their equation is often inaccurate in that it does not always predict a subscore's value correctly. Therefore, the utility of their simple equation is not clear.

When we speak about heterogeneity in a meta-analysis, our intent is usually to understand the substantive implications of the heterogeneity. If an intervention yields a mean effect size of 50 points, we want to know if the effect size in different populations varies from 40 to 60, or from 10 to 90, because this speaks to the potential utility of…

This study investigated the effect of personal identity and social comparison on college graduation. First-year college students completed an online survey measuring exploration and commitment to personal identity and perceptions of the prototypical student. Those who perceived the typical student as favorable but dissimilar to themselves had the…