Atypical social communication is a key indicator of autism spectrum disorder and has long been presumed to interfere with friendship formation and first impressions among typically developing youth. However, emerging literature suggests that such atypicalities may function differently among groups of peers with autism spectrum disorder. The…

An important factor in online learning is how students are afforded opportunities for interactions to create their own knowledge and attain high levels of student satisfaction. In open distance learning, three types of interaction were initially distinguished: interaction with content, with the lecturer and with fellow students. As technology…

Background: Common definitions of bullying, employed in research and public policy alike, are generally based on adult-imposed categories. To account for students' needs in school, research should aim to include their voices more often. However, a major challenge for educational research in general, and bullying research in particular, is finding…

For families and educators, understanding and working with children who experience a combination of deafness and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be challenging. Yet both understanding and work are crucial. For children with ASD to succeed, parents and educators need to understand them and to be able to work together to implement successful…

A critical mechanism through which mentors are thought to influence developmental outcomes is the mentee-mentor relationship. Attachment theories suggest that a mentee's perceptions of other relationships in her life may impact the quality of the mentor-mentee relationship. This study tests this hypothesis. Data were drawn from a sample of 205…

This qualitative study explored and described South African students' experiences and perceptions regarding academic success. Focus group participants related academic success not only to achievement, but also to goal attainment, feelings of satisfaction, and the application of new skills. Academically successful students were associated with…

Although high-quality friendships are presumed to protect peer-victimized adolescents from distress, evidence supporting this claim is mixed. This study investigated whether the protective function of high-quality best friendships for victimized youth varies depending on adolescents' perceptions of their best friend's victimization. Among a sample…

Classroom response systems (clickers) have been found to engage and attract student attention and facilitate the practical application of key ideas to solve problems. This study was designed to investigate the effects of clicker use on problem-solving among adult learners. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 60 students after…

The aim of this research on an astronomy course is to examine the situations that arose when WhatsApp, a social media application, was used as a tool for cooperation and interaction. In this work, a case study design was adopted. The WhatsApp group created for the research was composed of 87 participants and the messages exchanged in the WhatsApp…

Field-based learning in higher education is lacking both in practice at colleges and in research within the academic literature. This study aims to address these deficits by exploring the benefits and possibilities of executing field study in higher education across a variety of courses. We report the results of a qualitative research design that…

Twitter has become a common feature of academic conferences, used by organizers to provide information about the conference and by attendees to engage in discussion about the conference topics, share information, and create social links and networks within the community. This study examines the tweets from two conferences in Applied Linguistics in…

A growing body of literature focused on the pedagogical relationship between information literacy (IL) and metacognition suggests that facilitating learners' reflections promotes IL learning. However, activating and assessing this relationship is difficult. This article describes a constructivist activity that models for students how to practice…

Satisfaction and frustration of the basic psychological need for relatedness have been postulated to play a vital role for affective well-being. Yet, this prediction has not been thoroughly tested in schoolchildren's everyday lives. In this work, we examined the association between relatedness satisfaction and frustration at school on daily and…

Social capital (SC) has been described as the "glue" that facilitates close social relationships among individuals, groups, and communities. However, few studies have empirically tested the structure of this concept. We report two studies that advance and test a model of SC in youth involved in social organizations. A theory-guided…

The authors conducted the research in partnership with two schools in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in response to concerns over the effects of non-educational video gaming and texting on students' school experiences. Educational professionals wanted to refer to research findings when they advised parents to monitor their children's video gaming and…