The study aimed to examine effectiveness of a visual perception training program upon an application period of 14 weeks on primary school first graders. Effects of the "Frostig Visual Perception Training Program" were evaluated within demographics of gender, age, parental education level, previous kindergarten attainment and family…

Children's white matter development is driven by experience, yet it remains poorly understood how it is shaped by attending formal education. A small number of studies compared children before and after the start of formal schooling to understand this, yet they do not allow to separate maturational effects from schooling-related effects. A clever…

Publicly funded prekindergarten (pre-K) has received substantial investments in recent decades. A robust literature base has shown that pre-K, in general, tends to be associated with shorter-term rather than longer-term impacts. Yet, these findings are not definitive across varying state contexts and student demographic groups. The current study…

We examined the efficacy of a Technology-Based Early Language Comprehension Intervention (TeLCI) designed to teach inferencing in a non-reading context. A group of Grades 1 and 2 students from 2 elementary schools in the U.S. Midwest identified as at risk of comprehension difficulties were assigned randomly to a business-as-usual control group or…

Although it is widely accepted that reading motivation erodes over the elementary years and school experiences shape motivation, few have examined young readers' motivation for their reading intervention programs. This two-year qualitative case study probed the motivation-related perceptions of four young children specific to their involvement in…

Background and context: Despite the growing importance of computer science (CS) education, high-quality CS curricula for students in kindergarten to lower elementary grades are lacking. It is also unclear how students from underrepresented groups such as female students, students from low socioeconomic status, and students with disability respond…

We investigate the beginning of the school discipline pipeline using a reform in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools that limited the use of out-of-school suspension for students in grades K-2. We find that the reform reduced the likelihood of out-of-school suspension by 1.4 percentage points (56%) and had precise null effects on test scores and…

A main objective of classroom management (CM) is to raise students' attention to their daily academic work by creating a classroom environment that supports academic and socioemotional learning. While studies have addressed CM effects on classroom-level behaviour or students' academic outcomes, students' attention skills been largely overlooked.…

Despite nearly forty years of research on the summer reading loss phenomenon, defined as the backsliding in reading achievement that may occur during the summer when students were not enrolled in school, consensus remains elusive regarding the most effective way to mitigate reading regression. This quantitative, non-experimental research study…

A pretest-training-posttest design assessed whether training to improve spatial skills also improved mathematics performance in elementary-aged children. First grade students (mean age = 7 years, n = 134) and sixth grade students (mean age = 12 years, n = 124) completed training in 1 of 2 spatial skills--spatial visualization or form…

Three generations of developmental epidemiologically based randomized field trials of the Good Behavior Game (GBG) have been delivered to Baltimore elementary schools. With the collaboration of family and community partners, all three trials were directed at decreasing proximal targets of aggressive behavior and improving learning in first-grade…

In this paper we use data from students who participated in the oversubscribed Boston Public Schools (BPS) prekindergarten program as a window into variation in the program's medium-term effects. We first examine whether, for the sample of students who applied to oversubscribed BPS prekindergarten programs, there is variation in the effects of the…

A pretest-training-posttest design assessed whether training to improve spatial skills also improved mathematics performance in elementary-aged children. First grade students (mean age = 7 years, n = 134) and sixth grade students (mean age = 12 years, n = 124) completed training in 1 of 2 spatial skills-spatial visualization or form…

While teaching summer school may require similar skills as reading intervention during the year, rarely are summer school instructors reading specialists. To support these instructors providing high quality instruction, this research study examined the impact of the 95 Phonics Booster Bundle: Summer School Edition (SSE). The SSE is a set of 25…

This study evaluated a parent-mediated preventive intervention for children's literacy skills 1 year after participation. Parents of 3 1/2 to 4 1/2-year-old-children (n = 69) recruited through early childhood centers were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (a) a target shared reading condition emphasizing phonological awareness…