The present study examines the role of orthographic complexity on Italian children's word reading. Two experiments are reported in which elementary school children (3rd and 5th graders) read aloud words containing simple or contextual letter-sound conversion rules. In Experiment 1, both groups of participants read words containing contextual rules…

Previous studies have identified peer provocation as a challenging class of situations for youth. The work presented here builds on previous methods of assessing peer provocation by (a) increasing the contextual detail of the vignettes; (b) developing a reliable, descriptive coding system of the range of youth responses to physical, verbal, and…

This paper uses recent data on U.S. children from the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) to create indices that tally the number of problems or risks that individual children experience. We compare results with those from indices developed elsewhere that assess the change across sets of population-level indicators. While the two types of…

The author provides a look at the transformation the open Internet venue causes for knowledge resources from which students are expected to learn in their education. Knowledge content richly interacts within itself in the Internet venue. Mobiles will amplify this interconnectivity of cognitive content in powerful new ways. Changes are coming, and…

The results of the study reported in this article found that primary-aged students used context knowledge in three broad ways: (1) to rationalise the data or their interpretations; (2) in taking a critical stance toward the data; and (3) in ways that were not necessarily productive or pertinent in addressing the task at hand. When teaching…

In the last decades there has been an increasing interest in vocabulary learning strategies given that they are found to facilitate second/foreign language vocabulary learning and recall. As many learners do not develop sufficient mastery of the strategy repertoire, explicit instruction on vocabulary learning strategies may help them to become…

Stress exposure and reactivity models were examined as explanations for why girls exhibit greater levels of depressive symptoms than boys. In a multiwave, longitudinal design, adolescents' depressive symptoms, alcohol usage, and occurrence of stressors were assessed at baseline, 6, and 12 months later (N=538; 54.5% female; ages 13-18, average…

In this article, the authors draw from feminist, critical, and multicultural research traditions to identify fundamental assumptions for researching from a feminist-informed, critical, multicultural stance. Core considerations include amplifying marginalized voices, interrogating the politics of knowledge production, ensuring research benefits to…

Using a short-term longitudinal design (6 months), this study examined cumulative contextual risk as a predictor of effortful control (EC) and social competence in a community sample of children (N = 80, ages 33-40 months at time 1). Maternal parenting was examined as a mediator of contextual risk. EC was assessed using laboratory tasks, and…

In the field of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), scripts are designed to support collaboration among distant learners or co-present learners whose interactions are (at least partially) mediated by a computer. The rationale of scripts is to structure collaborative learning processes in order to trigger group interactions that may…

Education is compulsory for all children in Ireland from the ages of six to sixteen, or until students have completed three years of second level education. At primary level, a range of assessment approaches are recommended including teacher observation, questioning and discussion, samples of children's work, portfolios, projects, tasks and tests,…

Guidelines for the development of national assessment in the Nine-Year Basic School (2000) were designed by the Expert Counselling Committee for the development of national assessment in the Nine-Year Basic School Program founded in 1999. National assessment in nine-year basic schools was carried out for the first time in the academic year…

This study investigates usage and knowledge of musical narrative functions in contemporary multimedia. A group of young adolescents were given the task of adapting musical expression, using the non-verbal research tool REMUPP, to fit different visual scenes shown on a computer screen. This was accomplished by manipulating seven musical parameters:…

This paper reports the first part of a 2-year longitudinal study, which examined the impact of age of entry to school on the reading development of 60 summer-born boys during Key Stage One. The sample was drawn from 18 schools in six Local Education Authorities operating different admissions policies. Thirty-one had attended nursery part-time,…

A study into how academics learn to assess student performance affirms the significance of context in understanding learning in the academic workplace. The study involved three case studies in academic departments with significant differences in the teaching, research and professional dimensions of academic life. This article reports on the…