A growing body of literature claims instructor presence is crucial in an online course learning environment. In this paper, the authors contribute to this literature with empirical research related to instructor presence and how class size influences it. This study investigated whether class size was predictive of students' ratings of instructor…

Over the past decade, research into principals' work intensification has revealed that principals spend significant work hours on student discipline and attendance issues, and that they report high levels of emotionally draining situations. In the current study, we examined the relationship between student discipline issues and principals'…

Adolescence is characterized by frequent emotional challenges, intense emotions, and higher levels of expressive suppression use than found in older populations. While evidence suggests that contingent expressive suppression use based on context is the most functional, it remains unclear whether adolescents use expressive suppression…

Varsity athletes face an array of stressors, including balancing academic obligations with athletic competitions. Student-athletes appraising a situation as a "challenge" or "threat" directly impacts coping responses. Objective: To investigate whether pre-season self-reported mental toughness and self-regulation strategies…

The effects of different response option orders on survey responses have been studied extensively. The typical research design involves examining the differences in response characteristics between conditions with the same item stems and response option orders that differ in valence--either incrementally arranged (e.g., strongly disagree to…

The aim of the current study was to extend knowledge of occupational commitment by examining predictors at the teacher- and school-level. Several job resources hypothesized to be positively associated with occupational commitment were examined: helpful feedback, input in decision-making, teacher collaboration, and principal discipline support. The…

Covariates have been used in mixture IRT models to help explain why examinees are classed into different latent classes. Previous research has considered manifest variables as covariates in a mixture Rasch analysis for prediction of group membership. Latent covariates, however, are more likely to have higher correlations with the latent class…

This longitudinal follow-up studied continued effects of parental influences on narrative identity in young adulthood. Decades of research have shown the importance of parental shared reminiscing and positive parenting for the development of children's and youths' autobiographical memory and narrative identity. Yet, research on long-term…

This longitudinal study was aimed to describe and understand student adjustment trajectories during the college transition. Participants came from a large random sample of Quebec high school students. They completed a multidimensional measure of adjustment at two times before entering college and at two other times after college admission.…

Graded Response Method (GRM) is an alternative to multiple-choice testing where students rank options according to their relevance to the question. GRM requires discrimination and inference between statements and is a cost-effective critical thinking assessment in large courses where open-ended answers are not feasible. This study examined…

This study explored the extent to which teachers' instrumental (i.e., tangible aid to promote learning) and appraisal support (i.e., teacher feedback) enhanced students' achievement in mathematics. Participants included 13,950 fifteen-year-old Canadian students who participated in the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment. Based on…

Educational techniques that improve student engagement have repeatedly been shown to improve performance at the class level at many institutions and in multiple disciplines. However, knowledge of engagement in individual activities in large first-year classes, where there may be several subpopulations of students in different programs reflecting…

Vagal tone is widely believed to be an important physiological aspect of emotion regulation and associated positive behaviors. However, there is inconsistent evidence for relations between children's baseline vagal tone and their helpful or prosocial responses to others (Hastings & Miller, 2014). Recent work in adults suggests a quadratic…

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the relationship between the self-regulatory variable of goal orientation and the extent to which job seekers reach out to and use weak ties in their job search. Weak ties, as defined by Granovettor, are connections to densely knit networks outside the individual's direct contacts who could…

Teachers play an important role in promoting a positive school climate, which in turns supports academic achievement and positive mental health among students. This study evaluated the impact of a pre-service teacher education course addressing a range of contributors to school climate. Participants included a cohort of 212 pre-service teachers…