The least restrictive environment (LRE) mandate suggests a preference for educating students with disabilities in general education settings provided their needs can be met there. This study examined national trends in the educational placements of students with disabilities ages 6 to 17 in the 50 states and the District of Columbia from 1990…

Speech is more difficult to understand when it is presented concurrently with a distractor speech stream. One source of this difficulty is that competing speech can act as an attentional lure, requiring listeners to exert attentional control to ensure that attention does not drift away from the target. Stronger attentional control may enable…

Shared reading, a key component of the home literacy environment, has well documented potential for the development of emergent literacy skills. This study explored shared reading interactions between parents and their young children (aged one to six years) with Down syndrome in Ireland. 191 parents completed an online questionnaire, providing…

Idioms play an indispensable role in communication. Knowledge of idioms is considered an indicator of proficiency. This study is aimed at investigating English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' knowledge of frequently used idioms and the effect of learner-related factors. The participants were 218 female EFL college students at the College of…

Gang involvement is associated with many negative outcomes. However, the social and emotional development of gang-involved youth has received little empirical investigation. This study examines the social and emotional outcomes of gang-involved youth. Data come from the 2009 Fairfax County Youth Survey administered to eighth, 10th, and 12th grade…

For school psychologists, social justice action involves protecting the educational rights, opportunities, and well-being of all students, "especially those whose voices have been muted, identities obscured, or needs ignored" (NASP, 2017). Facilitating social justice for students requires that school psychologists advocate for fairness…

The focus of this article is to highlight adult education in Saudi Arabia. It also investigates the roles of early official and volunteering initiatives that established the adult education and literacy system in Saudi Arabia. In addition, a brief overview of the development of adult agencies such as Night Literacy Schools and Adult Education…

The main purpose of this study is to determine the gifted students' self-efficacy of educational technology for technology and design. It is also aimed to find out whether there is a statistically significant difference in terms of the gender, the special talent area, the type of school, the grade level, the education level and income rate of…

This report outlines findings from the National Literacy Trust's tenth Annual Literacy Survey relating to children and young people's reading in 2020, in addition to findings from the Trust's survey of children and young people's reading during the COVID-19 lockdown. 58,346 children and young people aged 9 to 18 in the UK took part in the Annual…

Audiobooks have become increasingly popular in the digital age: streaming and subscription services, such as Audible and Spotify, have made audio stories available to a wide commercial audience, while apps like Libby and BorrowBox facilitate 'borrowing' of audiobooks from library services. With access easier and more widespread than ever, it is…

This occasional paper presents subgroup findings from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study on levels of, and trends in, the use of a number of substances for nationally representative samples of high school graduates ages 19-30, "Monitoring the Future National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975-2018. Volume II, College Students & Adults…

Using a structural life-cycle model, we quantify the long-term impact of school closures during the Corona crisis on children affected at different ages and coming from households with different parental characteristics. In the model, public investment through schooling is combined with parental time and resource investments in the production of…

State policies to promote postsecondary education historically have been devoted to funding and operating public colleges and universities. Increasingly, states are funding direct aid to their residents to attend public and private colleges within state borders. The majority of state aid is targeted based on the student's family income. States are…

This dissertation addresses several contemporary health challenges affecting the US population, drawing on methods and perspectives from health services research, social demography, and medical sociology. Paper 1 examines the pathways from educational attainment to difficulty with activities of daily living (ADLs) and instrumental activities of…

Background: Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) revealed that countries systematically differ in their respondents' literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments skills; skill levels also vary by gender, age, level of education or migration background. Similarly,…