Student course evaluations were completed by 1,457 students in 43 Child and Family Development courses. The impact of six predictor variables (class meeting time, class size, expected grade, perceived fairness of grading procedures, pre-course interest in the subject, and post-course interest in the subject) on student ratings of instructors was…

Predictions derived from the central processing and script dependent hypotheses were assessed by measuring the reading ability of 116 Grade 2-5 Herero-English bilingual children in Namibia ranging in age from 7 to 12 and investigating possible predictors of word reading among measures of cognitive/linguistic processes. Tasks included measures of…

While many studies have reported the predictors of teacher attrition, we know little about what predicts the attrition of school leaders. Using the Colorado state data on elementary school principals' and assistant principals' career paths from 1999 to 2001 and school achievement-level data, we addressed two research questions: 1) How do the…

Objectives: The respect that African American youth feel promotes psychological wellness and social identity; conversely, a lack of respect compromises their identities and is viewed as a threat to safety. This article describes the development, psychometric analysis, and validation of the African American Respect Scale, a 20-item instrument…

The authors examined whether perceptions of parents and personal mental health significantly influenced perceptions of school achievement and enjoyment in a large sample of Canadian adolescents. Responses from more than 10,000 Canadian adolescents in the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) survey were used to create a Parental Support…

The goal of this study was to examine the links between difficult temperament (i.e., negative emotionality) and harsh parental discipline during toddlerhood, and reactive and proactive aggression in kindergarten. These links were assessed on a longitudinal population-based study of 1516 boys and girls followed longitudinally from the age of 17…

Objective: To evaluate the predictive power of executive functions, in particular, response inhibition, in relation to alcohol-related problems and illicit drug use in adolescence. Method: A total of 498 children from 275 families from a longitudinal high-risk study completed executive function measures in early and late adolescence and lifetime…

This essay, set in the future, reflects on the national accomplishments in social studies of the past 20 years. Among the educational highlights noted include: (1) the implementation of national standards assessments with results showing that curriculum reform worked; (2) the successful change of social studies courses to an issues-focused…

This paper reports on research to examine the types of motivation related to school achievement. A total of 1428 students from an inner city high school in the Montreal (Quebec) area participated in the study, 714 males and 714 females. The students ranged in age from 12 to 18, and approximately 40 percent were minorities (Hispanic, Asian, Black).…

This study investigated the efficacy of noncognitive variables for predicting college student achievement in an introductory psychology course. The sample included 102 new first-year students at a private urban university and 233 new first-year students at a rural public university. Data were collected on self-ratings of overall academic ability,…

This study examined the relationship between intelligence as defined by a verbal and nonverbal combined score, obtained on the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test and final grades received in the following six academic subjects: reading, math, spelling, science, English and social studies. The sample for this study consisted of 159 elementary students…

This paper reports on a continuing study of Australian Aboriginal and Navajo Indian children. The study investigates the relevance and applicability of goal theory to explaining indigenous minority motivation in school settings. Task, ego social solidarity, and extrinsic goal structures were examined as a means of explaining and predicting…

This study examined the predictive factors of demand for degrees and academic performance at the University of the Basque Country (Spain). The study followed two cohorts of university students from secondary education to the completion of the third year of higher education. The data analyzed included secondary school qualifications, selectivity…

The future of endangered languages is discussed, drawing on experiences in development of an atlas of language. Issues in the debate over language maintenance are examined, including the emotion-laden concept of ethnicity and relative youth of the concepts of human rights and linguistic geography. The fact that the atlas in question indicates only…

Differential predictors of the educational achievement status of homeless children were studied using multivariate statistical modeling. The effects of more general influences such as age, gender, and maternal educational level were studied before the influence of intellectual, behavioral, and emotional factors was examined. Participants were…