Vygotsky measured his 'zone of proximal development' in years. To do this, he needed a scheme of age periods, and a set of tasks that could diagnose the next age period without defining it. In this paper, we compare the age periods in his late lectures with Halliday's categories of logico-semantic expansion as used by three adolescent…

Primary education is compulsory around the world. This means that around age 5 or 6, millions of children worldwide transition from home or preschool/kindergarten settings into primary school, with the success of this transition shaping school and life trajectories for years to come. Both developmental and environmental factors during early…

Introduction: Certain behaviors associated with high intellectual ability, such as inattention and early response, are often confused with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), making correct diagnosis more difficult. The objective of the present study was to analyze the performance of students with high intellectual ability and…

Background: Beliefs about one's own abilities and perspective-taking are essential for appropriate behavior in professional and social life, cooperative learning, and situations were conflict is occurring. The social comparison theory and previous research suggested positive relations between school students' beliefs about one's own abilities and…

This study further examined the Gifted Rating Scales (GRS) at the internal and external stages of test validation by (a) testing structural fidelity as indicated by the number of factors supported as well as the correspondence of the latent factor structure with the scoring model proposed by the authors and (b) examining the external relations of…

Frequency and contingency (i.e., co-occurrence probability of words in multiword sequences [MWS]) are two driving forces of language acquisition and processing. Previous research has demonstrated that L1 and advanced L2 speakers are sensitive to phrasal frequency and contingency when processing larger-than-word units. However, it remains unclear…

This article considers the important matter of language availability in the lives of babies and children. Without this language availability, knowing, thinking, and expression cannot blossom and mature. It draws on insights gained during a research study of 5-6-year-old children in low socioeconomic schools, designed to explore the impact of…

The authors examined whether individual differences in fluid intelligence (gF) modulate the testing effect. Participants studied Swahili--English word pairs and repeatedly studied half the pairs or attempted retrieval, with feedback, for the remaining half. Word pairs were easy or difficult to learn. Overall, participants showed a benefit of…

In order to be able to draw accurately and to interpret the drawings properly, the skills of the students' drawing skills and therefore spatial visualization and spatial orientation must be developed. The studies in the literature are mostly concerned with examining the spatial skills of students with various models or investigating the effects of…

It is very crucial to know how the notion of physical education is perceived by the Principals who are responsible for the school administration and to know the mission and visions they have put on these concepts. The aim of this study is to reveal the metaphoric perceptions of school Principals about physical education concept. The research group…

Identifying change at the individual level is an important goal for researchers, educators, and clinicians. We present a set of statistical procedures for identifying individuals who depart from a normative change. Using Latent Change Scores models (LCS), we illustrate how the Individual Likelihood computed from a statistical model for change…

Many science curricula and standards emphasise that students should learn both scientific knowledge and the skills associated with the construction of this knowledge. One way to achieve this goal is to use inquiry-learning activities that embed the use of science process skills. We investigated the influence of scientific reasoning skills (i.e.…

Using nationally representative data from the Family and Child Experiences Survey 2009 Cohort (n = 2,798), this study examined patterns of absenteeism and their consequences through the transition to kindergarten. Overall, children were less likely to be absent in kindergarten than from Head Start at ages 3 and 4. Absenteeism was fairly stable…

The bilingual advantage hypothesis contends that the management of two languages in the brain is carried out through domain-general mechanisms, and that bilinguals possess a performance advantage over monolinguals on (nonlinguistic) tasks that tap these processes. Presently, there is evidence both for and against such an advantage. Interestingly,…

Asian American students often report lower self-esteem than their peers from other racial groups even though they are doing better academically. The current study attempted to explore this paradox from an attributional perspective. Academic achievement, self-esteem and attributions for academic failures (i.e., low ability and low effort) were…