It's time for educators to ditch deficit-based thinking and instead focus on the strengths of immigrant students, writes Jessica Lander. Here, she provides several concrete strategies teachers and schools can use to honor immigrant students' assets, while still providing rigorous English language instruction. For example, teachers can set high…

We investigated whether clustering based on feature similarity improves the representational quality of visual working memory (VWM). We hypothesized that similar items are organized into clusters, and their recall precision increases with fewer clusters because of reduced memory load. In a series of 6 experiments, participants remembered…

Students with learning disabilities (LD) are attending postsecondary education more than ever, but are also less likely to complete their education compared to non-LD peers. Using the Inputs-Environment-Outcomes model of Astin, we examined students with LD and non-LD peers during their first year of postsecondary studies. Using structural equation…

The 1-year longitudinal study presented here examined the extent to which the ability to build phonologically specific lexical entries as a result of increasing vocabulary size predicts word reading via its impact on phonological awareness within and across languages in 62 emerging English (L1) and French (L2) Grade 1 children (M = 75.69 months,…

Prior work showed that infants look longer at impossible figures than possible ones, although it is unclear whether they or older children understand "impossibility." We employed a series of matching and sorting tasks with pictures and objects to evaluate children's knowledge of this dimension. In Experiment 1, nearly all children…

Participatory performance, as defined by Thomas Turino, holds the potential to contribute to enhanced social bonding, cooperation, and the realisation of community among participants -- despite the conflict or 'paradox' between self-expression and collective affiliation which it often provokes. This study considers how managing this underlying…

The Digital Atlas for Schools is an innovative WebGIS development contributing to the use of geospatial information in schools. Based on a story map tool, it creates a geography curriculum constructed on ArcGIS Online. This article discusses the implications of implementing geospatial technologies so that learners can acquire spatial thinking and…

In this paper, we pursue a materialist approach to tool use to account for the material dimensions of learning mathematics with technology while decentralizing the human body from activity. We root this vision in theoretical advances on embodied mathematics learning and tool use that have been recently offered as alternatives to traditional…

Expectancy-value theory (EVT) is a popular framework to understand and improve students' motivation. Unfortunately, limited research has verified whether EVT predictions generalize to students with low levels of cognitive ability. This study relies on Grade 5 and 8 data from 177 students with low levels of cognitive ability and a matched sample of…

In this article we examine 4th and 5th grade Portuguese students' performance on problems of structuring 2D rectangular arrays of squares, which was analyzed and categorized into the five levels of sophistication described by Battista, Clements, Arnoff, Battista, and Borrow (1998). In general, the results suggest that students in the higher-grade…

Identity and agency are key to understanding student learning within classroom contexts. Utilizing figured worlds and local contentious practices as analytical frameworks, identity and agency are theorized as cultural practices that occur as part of the learning process in schools. Specifically, this article discusses self-authorship and the…

Stereotypes influence teachers' perception of and behaviour towards students, thus shaping students' learning opportunities. The present study investigated how 315 Australian pre-service teachers' stereotypes about giftedness and gender are related to their perception of students' intellectual ability, adjustment, and social-emotional ability,…

The present study explored the mediating effect of word detection on the relationship between visual-spatial attention and reading comprehension in Chinese. The participants included 287 Hong Kong Chinese children (167 third graders, 84 girls, "mean age" = 8.73, SD = 0.49, and 120 fourth graders, 45 girls, "mean age" = 9.93, SD…

Among models of working memory, there is not yet a consensus about how to describe functions specific to storing verbal or visual-spatial memories. We presented aural-verbal and visual-spatial lists simultaneously and sometimes cued one type of information after presentation, comparing accuracy in conditions with and without informative…

Contrary to popular belief, modern cognitive assessments--including the new Common Core tests--produce test scores based on sophisticated statistical models rather than the simple percent of items a student answers correctly. While there are good reasons for this, it means that reported test scores depend on many decisions made by test designers,…