The relationship between abilities and skill acquisition has been the subject of numerous controversies in psychology. However, while most researchers implicitly or explicitly accept the idea that abilities and skill acquisition should be related, empirical research has failed to provide evidence for a consistently strong correlation between the…

How are racial-ethnic identity and acculturation processes linked, and when do they have positive consequences for academic achievement and assimilation trajectory? To address these issues this study integrates two frameworks--segmented assimilation (Portes and Rumbaut 2001) and racial-ethnic self-schema (Oyserman et al. 2003)--that focus on how…

Principals' technology leadership is strongly correlated with teachers' integration of educational technology, and technology leadership is necessary for effective utilization of technology in schooling. The article describes a study that empirically investigated teachers' perceptions of elementary schools principals' technology leadership…

This study was conducted to explore the relationship between Internet self-efficacy and preferences toward constructivist Internet-based learning environments. The sample included 365 college students in Taiwan who all majored in early childhood care and pre-school education. Some of them were preservice pre-school teachers (n=185), and the rest…

This study challenges narrow definitions of teacher effectiveness and uses a systems approach to investigate teacher effectiveness as a multi-dimensional, holistic phenomenon. The methods of Nominal Group Technique and Interpretive Structural Modeling were used to assist U.S. and Japanese students separately construct influence structures during…

The retention of elementary general music teachers is of primary concern to the music education community. Teachers complete four years of college with additional coursework or masters degrees to improve and enhance their teaching expertise. With increased amounts of time and money involved in the training of these music teaching professionals,…

Existing research leaves a gap in explaining why African American adolescents do not exhibit more anxiety and depression than other youth, at the same time that they experience more contextual risk factors. The current study examined the roles of social support as well as possible mediators self-esteem and ethnic identity (sense of belonging to…

The study develops a school safety and student achievement model, incorporating the concepts of student background, school structure, school culture, school disorder, and student academic achievement, and fits it to 613 elementary schools in New York City, using Structural Equations Modeling technique. The model fits the data well based on both…

This is the first study to test whether the stages of change of the transtheoretical model are qualitatively different through exploring discontinuity patterns in theory of planned behavior (TPB) variables using latent multigroup structural equation modeling (MSEM) with AMOS. Discontinuity patterns in terms of latent means and prediction patterns…

The purposes of this study were to present a conceptual model for selection into the early childhood profession and to test the model using contemporaneous assessments. A stratified random sample of center-based child care providers in 4 Midwestern states (n=964) participated in a telephone interview, and 223 were also assessed with the Early…

Background: Research has shown that motivation is a key factor in the learning process as well as in school achievement. In essence, a number of researchers have highlighted the close link between motivation and achievement-related behaviours such as effort. Aims: The present study aims to acquire more specific information concerning the relations…

Scores from a revised version of the School Level Environment Questionnaire (SLEQ) were validated using a sample of teachers from a large school district. An exploratory factor analysis was used with a randomly selected half of the sample. Five school environment factors emerged. A confirmatory factor analysis was run with the remaining half of…

Background: Previous research suggests a link between inter-parental conflict and children's psychological development. Most studies, however, have tended to focus on two broad indices of children's psychological adaptation (internalizing symptoms and externalizing problems) in considering the effects of inter-parental conflict on children's…

This study investigated a measurement model of personality resilience and the contribution of personality resilience to lower achieving first grade students' academic achievement. Participants were 445 ethnically diverse children who at entrance to first grade scored below their school district median on a test of literacy. Participants were…

The authors examined circumplex models of interest structure across time (Grades 8, 10, and 12), gender, and analytic method in a secondary analysis of vocational interest type (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional) data generated from the American College Testing database (national sample of 69,987 students).…