We investigated the degree to which parent positive personality characteristics in terms of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability predict similar adolescent personality traits over time, as well as the role played by positive parenting in this process. Mothers and fathers of 451 White adolescents (52% female, mean age = 13.59…

Education reform advocates who base policy decisions on empirical research often face the argument that because background variables explain so much of student outcomes, it follows that policy interventions cannot be effective. This policy brief explains the logical fallacy in the argument, illustrating with two examples, one taken from the…

Specializing too early in life can lead to emotional stress, loss of motivation, and burnout, but the research is inadequate to resolve the question of whether early specialization or diversification is more beneficial from a psychological perspective. Nevertheless, some best practices are recommended based on the known benefits and detriments.…

This article presents an interview with Shonda Schilling, wife of retired professional baseball pitcher Curt Schilling. In addition to her role as mom, advocate, and author, Schilling is also a melanoma survivor and the Founder of Shade (http://www.shadefoundation.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to eradicating melanoma through the…

Text messaging services are becoming an increasingly popular way to provide sexual health information to teens, but little is known about who uses such services. This study assessed whether teens at a greater risk for negative sexual health outcomes use a sexual health text message service. A text message service that connects teens with sexual…

Charter schools have substantial bipartisan support for their expansion. Yet, the bulk of charter school research ascertains that the majority of students in charter schools do not significantly outscore their traditional school peers on measurable indicators of academic performance. Additionally, students in charter schools do not have comparable…

Individuals are at an increased risk to drop out of the STEM pipeline if they are female or Latino, and during certain periods including high school. Families are a potential untapped resource of support for high school students. Based on the expectancy-value model, we examined if a variety of parental behaviors predicted students' ability…

In this article, we explore challenges encountered by K-12 educators in establishing classroom cultures that support creative learning activities with the Scratch programming language. Providing opportunities for students to understand and to build capacities for creative work was described by many of the teachers that we interviewed as a central…

The principle focus of this article is to understand the influence of socialisation in the family on the success of girls at school. Eight low-income families with children of both sexes in the city of São Paulo, Brazil were studied through interviews and observation methods. It was found that socialisation in the family favoured in girls, and not…

Exploring a unique region concerning educational reforms in the past 20?years, the present study empirically investigates the attitudes towards parental involvement in school life in a comparative perspective of south-eastern European (SEE) countries for the 2008/2009 school year. Based on a multiple regression model for nine different countries,…

Despite the increased attention to students leaving secondary education without a diploma numerous students still dropout yearly. This paper makes a distinction between the "individual perspective" and the "institutional perspective" of dropping out. The former is explored by multinominal logit models. We observe that…

Research has shown that parental involvement is an important component of students' academic achievement, yet in rural areas, such involvement may be difficult to attain. The purpose of this collective case study was to investigate the perceptions of parents of young elementary students in a rural school district regarding their role in…

This study examined the effects of a home-reading program on parent-teacher communication and on the ability of parents to select reading material for their children. In this qualitative case study, parents of 4th grade students participated in a reading homework program with their children. Using constructivist theories, the study's…

This study explored the roles of individual factors (age, gender, locus of control, self-esteem, and loneliness), parenting style, and academic achievement in discriminating students involved in bullying (as bullies, victims, and bully/victims) from those not involved. Participants comprised 742 middle school students (393 females, 349 males). The…

The Title VI Indian Education Formula Grants program represents the U.S. Department of Education's largest investment in addressing the unique academic and cultural needs of American Indian and Alaska Native children. The program is aimed at supporting services that (1) are responsive to the unique cultural, language, and educational needs of…