Background: Education has much in common with professions that are using positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship to transform practice, yet the science behind peak human and group functioning has been slow to displace deficit-based framing of reform policies and improvement strategies in education. Purpose of the Study: This…

Research into second language anxiety (SLA) has largely focused on second language learners rather than immigrants. However, living in an environment where the target language (TL) is the language of everyday communication may constitute a significant source of anxiety that generalises beyond the language classroom [Pappamihiel, N. E. 2001.…

Comprehensive models of derived polymorphemic word recognition skill in developing readers, with an emphasis on children with reading difficulty (RD), have not been developed. The purpose of the present study was to model individual differences in polymorphemic word recognition ability at the item level among 5th-grade children (N = 173)…

The major social science theories on adolescent risk-taking--strain, social control, and differential association theories--have received substantial empirical support. The relationships between variables central to these theories and individual differences in temperament related to risk-taking, however, have not been adequately studied. In a…

Maximising educational attainment is important for both individuals and societies. However, understanding of why some students achieve better than others is far from complete. Motivation and achievement data from a sample of 782 secondary-school students in New Zealand reveal that two specific types of outcome goals, namely "maximal levels of…

The extent to which differences in family background characteristics explain differences in learning outcomes between children captures the extent of equality in educational opportunities. This study uses large-scale data on literacy and numeracy outcomes for children of school age across East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda) to investigate the…

The current study examined the effects of text-based relational (i.e., cohesion), propositional-specific (i.e., lexical), and syntactic features in a source text on subsequent integration of the source text in spoken responses. It further investigated the effects of word integration on human ratings of speaking performance while taking into…

The current study longitudinally examined the influence of aptitude on second language (L2) pronunciation development when 40 first-year Japanese university students engaged in practice activities inside and outside English-as-a-Foreign-Language classrooms over one academic year. Spontaneous speech samples were elicited at the beginning, middle,…

This study explored three methods to measure cognitive load in a learning environment using four logic puzzles that systematically varied in level of intrinsic cognitive load. Participants' perceived intrinsic load was simultaneously measured with a self-report measure-a traditional subjective measure-and two objective, physiological measures…

In this 8-year longitudinal study, we traced the vocabulary growth of Chinese children, explored potential precursors of vocabulary knowledge, and investigated how vocabulary growth predicted future reading skills. Two hundred and sixty-four (264) native Chinese children from Beijing were measured on a variety of reading and language tasks over…

The control-value theory of academic emotions has emerged as a useful framework for studying the antecedents and consequences of different emotions in school. This framework focuses on the role of control-related and value-related appraisals as proximal antecedents of emotions. In this study, we take an individual differences approach to examine…

Longitudinal associations of domain-general and numerical competencies with individual differences in children's understanding of fractions were investigated. Children (n = 163) were assessed at 6 years of age on domain-general (nonverbal reasoning, language, attentive behavior, executive control, visual-spatial memory) and numerical (number…

Perfectionism has been shown to predict individual differences in achievement goal orientations in university students, but research on perfectionism and goal orientations in school students is still very limited. Investigating 584 adolescent school students in a cross-sectional correlational design, the present study examined how self-oriented…

Four-year-old (n = 20) and five-year-old (n = 22) bilingual children were tested twice in six months on Armenian (minority language) and English (majority language) picture identification and picture naming tasks to examine receptive and expressive vocabulary growth in both languages. Parental education, Armenian/English language exposure, and…

In order to enhance our understanding of inter-individual differences in scholastic motivation, this study examined if self-determination predicts the school engagement of four different motivation types (MT) in a large sample of adolescent students (N = 1088) from Brandenburg, Germany: (1) peer-dependent MT, (2) teacher-dependent MT, (3)…