This study examined relations of social sensitivity to social, school, and psychological adjustment in rural Chinese, urban Chinese, and Canadian children. Participants were 4th to 6th grade students (M[subscript age] = 11 years) in China (n = 593 and 443 for the rural and urban samples) and Canada (n = 325). A self-report measure of social…

Peer feedback carries a number of potential benefits to students, yet how they learn in the process remains under-researched. Building on ideas of feedback as dialogue, this study aims to unpack the respective perceptions of the provider and the receiver of peer feedback in relation to the benefits and challenges of dialogue about academic…

Adolescent boredom is associated with maladaptation and negative developmental outcomes, yet little is known about the prevalence and correlates of high boredom. Drawing from a broad psychosocial framework, the present study examined rates of high boredom and sociodemographic and contextual correlates among nationally representative samples of 8th…

This study investigated the role of school-related variables in explaining academic proficiency (AP) performance in Hebrew (L2) and English (L3) among immigrant youth. The following sets of variables were examined: (1) school background (2) academic, linguistic and social-psychological support, and (3) professional staff and school resources…

Teaching is characterized by contradictory demands, resulting in teaching dilemmas. For example, to promote the continuous learning of students, teachers need to set up rules and control them, which in turn can undermine students' intrinsic motivation. Teachers have to become aware of these contradictions and need to understand that not all…

Researchers have noted with concern the often weak link between research evidence and policymaking, particularly in some areas such as education. In this introductory essay--dedicated to the late Carol Weiss--we consider this issue first by reflecting on how changing historical conditions can shape institutional demands on and for research…

This article examines the construction and design of literacy attainment data in the English school system in two different historical periods: the 1860s and the 1950s. These periods represent contrasting moments in the history of education in the UK when school structures and the governance of education varied, as did the design and…

Recently, critical policy scholars have used the concepts of enactment, context and performativity as an analytic toolkit to illuminate the complex processes of the policy cycle, in particular, the ways in which a multitude of official education reform policies are taken up, challenged and/or resisted by actors in local, situation-specific…

Strengthening some items in a list of words impairs free recall of the remaining items in the list--a phenomenon known as the list-strength effect (LSE; e.g., Tulving & Hastie, 1972). Research indicates that whether the LSE is observed depends on the nature of the strengthening manipulation, and the effect is attributed to the enhancement of…

Repeating an item in a list benefits recall performance, and this benefit increases when the repetitions are spaced apart (Madigan, 1969; Melton, 1970). Retrieved context theory incorporates 2 mechanisms that account for these effects: contextual variability and study-phase retrieval. Specifically, if an item presented at position "i" is…

Professional development plays a key role in motivating many adult learners. Understanding these students' career contexts allows for more effective program development and better student services. This article presents five broad categories of career context and provides a brief framework which educators can use to more effectively…

The recent proliferation of online learning designs presents a challenge: How can professional learning leaders decide which designs will be the most effective? A first step in considering how to shape professional learning is to understand the fundamentals of what makes learning meaningful to adults. Within a particular context, educators will…

Guiding documents under the "PEC" acronym are commonly used in environmental education centres (EECs) in Spain. They are written documents that are seen as necessary tools to safeguard quality. In this study, we analyse the guiding documents of twenty-three EECs in the province of Girona (Catalonia, Spain) in order to understand their…

A new job position, "educare giver," which was created after kindergartens and preschools in Taiwan were integrated in 2012, has caused several problems such as ambiguity in the role of childcare givers and inequity in the division of labour. Studies have provided a limited scope and have not examined the identities and struggles of…

Anaphoric expressions are among the most frequent language forms which depend on context for their resolution. Among efforts made in theorizing referential choice, distance approaches take into account how accessibility/continuity is reflected by choice of referring expressions. The thing is that individual's choices are made under major and minor…