The "expert blind spot" (EBS) hypothesis implies that even some experts with a high content knowledge might have problems in science communication because they are using the structure of the content rather than their addressee's prerequisites as an orientation. But is that also true for students? Explaining science to peers is a crucial…

Data collected from surveys can result in hundreds of variables and thousands of respondents. This implies that time and energy must be devoted to (a) carefully entering the data into a database, (b) running preliminary analyses to identify any problems (e.g., missing data, potential outliers), (c) checking the reliability and validity of the…

The objective of the present study is to examine the correlation between the five factor personality traits of pre-service teachers and their attitudes towards the teaching profession and to test the mediating role of the pre-service teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. The study population included pre-service teachers that attended the…

In this prospective study, we recruited a sample of Belgian adolescents (N = 886) to investigate to what extent perceived teachers' motivating style relates to quality of motivation in the beginning of the school year and, in turn, changes in study effort and procrastination by the end of the school year. After controlling for initial levels of…

Contemporary research adopts an evolutionary theoretical perspective in which bullying is strategic behavior that is conducive to peer-group status enhancement. Within this view, a high social status (i.e., popularity) has been associated with bullying others, while a high affiliative status (i.e., preference) has been associated with defending…

One important aspect of digital citizenship, defined as "the norms of appropriate, responsible behavior with regard to technology use," is to reinforce ethical online behavior and discourage risky conduct. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of parental involvement and socioeconomic status on teens digital citizenship,…

This study focused on the ability to experience a high ratio of positive to negative emotions in 807 Israeli adolescents aged 12 to 15 years (50% girls). While considering possible gender differences, we tested a model positing that adolescents' self-control skills would link to their positivity ratio and indirectly through perceived social…

The authors tested theoretically driven predictions as to the ways in which syntactic awareness, or awareness of word order within sentences, might contribute to reading comprehension, the end goal of reading development and instruction. They conducted a longitudinal study of 100 English-speaking children followed from Grade 3 to 4. Children…

The primary purpose of this study was to collect evidence on the construct validity of grit using convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity principles. To accomplish this purpose and extend previous research on grit, college students from two schools completed an instrument comprised of a cognitive ability test, and a questionnaire. The…

Trait personality has been associated with achievement and many of its related outcomes in settings such as education, health, physical activity and sport. Scant trait personality research has been performed among school-age students in physical education, so this study investigates relations between the six-dimension (HEXACO) model of trait…

A recently validated trait personality framework is the HEXACO (honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience). Little is yet known about how the HEXACO personality dimensions and its subsets--particularly the dimension of honesty-humility--relates to physical activity and body size…

Framed from an integrative approach, the current article examined the associations between ethnic identity exploration (EIE), ethnic identity commitment (EIC), and acculturative stress by investigating the mediating role of ethnic attitudes (i.e., in-group favoritism and out-group derogation) in these relationships. Additionally, the moderating…

This study was designed to deepen insights on whether word-problem (WP) solving is a form of text comprehension (TC) and on the role of language in WPs. A sample of 325 second graders, representing high, average, and low reading and math performance, was assessed on (a) start-of-year TC, WP skill, language, nonlinguistic reasoning, working memory,…

There is an ongoing need for literature that identifies the effects of broad contextual risk on school readiness outcomes via family mediating mechanisms. This is especially true amongst diverse and urban samples characterized by variability in immigration history. To address this limitation, family profiles of sociodemographic and contextual risk…

Argument writing is challenging for elementary students. Previous experimental research has focused on scaffolding rhetorical goals, leaving content goals relatively unexplored. In a randomized experiment, 73 students in grades 5, 6, and 7 wrote persuasive texts about difficult-to-classify vertebrates. Each student received one of three sets of…