Australia's schooling systems, like many around the globe, are currently pursuing a 'school improvement' policy agenda. Schools, and school leaders, are under pressure to improve student achievement as measured through high-stakes testing, the results of which are often publicised with little contextual information attached. Research has…

Previous research has primarily addressed the effects of language on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) mathematics and science assessments. More recent research has focused on the effects of language on PISA reading comprehension and literacy assessments on student populations in specific Organization for Economic Cooperation…

Asian Americans are becoming the fastest growing minority group, and enrolling at community colleges at a faster rate compared to 4-year institutions. In Nebraska, they represent approximately a quarter of the community college student population, comprise 2.3% of the state's population, and 7% of the state's workforce. Despite their increasing…

Young children asked to pretend to use a series of absent objects typically pantomime by using a body part as the object (BPO) rather than by acting as if using an imaginary object (IO). This replication of Lyons's work (1983, 1986) examines whether different pretend contexts when requesting pantomimes influence children's use of IO and BPO…

School climate has been established as an important construct to measure because of its connections to student psychological, social, and academic outcomes (Anderson, 1982; Koth, Bradshaw, & Leaf, 2008; Kuperminc, Leadbeater, Emmons, & Blatt, 1997). Prior research has also established relationships between student perceptions of school…

This paper explores the complex and changing nature of adventure as a form of cultural practice. Borrowing from Joseph Conrad's memoirs "The Mirror of The Sea" (1907), sea kayaking is contextualized here as a journey that takes place just as much between "landfall and departure" as it does between the paddler's ears (i.e., in…

No studies to date have examined whether immediate-early gene (IEG) activation is driven by context memory recall. To address this question, we utilized the context preexposure facilitation effect (CPFE) paradigm. In CPFE, animals acquire contextual fear conditioning through hippocampus-dependent rapid retrieval of a previously formed contextual…

This paper introduces Causal Agency Theory, an extension of the functional model of self-determination. Causal Agency Theory addresses the need for interventions and assessments pertaining to selfdetermination for all students and incorporates the significant advances in understanding of disability and in the field of positive psychology since the…

Although several studies related to social-context awareness (SA) and knowledge-context awareness (KA) argued that each (SA or KA) can individually enhance peer interaction in an online learning community, other studies reached opposite conclusions. These conflicting findings likely stem from different experimental settings. Most importantly, few…

Autonomy operates as a key term in debates about the rights of families to choose distinct approaches to education. Yet, what autonomy means is often complicated by the actual circumstances and contexts of schools, families, and children. In this essay, Terri S. Wilson and Matthew A. Ryg focus on the challenges involved in translating an ideal of…

Within the last 30 years, the African continent has experienced significant changes related to democracy, governance, and education; however, large-scale international studies of citizenship education have not included African nations. Despite this gap, youth political movements incubated in universities and secondary schools have been influential…

The embedded figures test has often been used to reveal weak central coherence in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, we administered a more standardized automated version of the embedded figures test in combination with the configural superiority task, to investigate the effect of contextual modulation on local feature…

In a series of analyses over mega datasets, Jones, Johns, and Recchia (Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66(2), 115-124, 2012) and Johns et al. (Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 132:2, EL74-EL80, 2012) found that a measure of contextual diversity that takes into account the semantic variability of a word's contexts provided…

Purpose: In this study, we explore students' views and experiences in relation to education about, through, and for human rights, peace, and sustainability in the global north and south. We investigate what students after nine years of schooling see as central issues and productive actions linked to key elements of global citizenship education…

The current study examines the contributions of family context (e.g. life events, home environments) to low-income preschool children's self-regulation (behaviour regulation and executive function) in the United States and Turkey. Participants were 1139 low-income children (486 from the U.S. and 653 from Turkey) and their parents. Children's…