This longitudinal study draws on positive youth development frameworks and ecological models to examine the role of school-, home- and community-based arts participation in students' academic (e.g., motivation, engagement) and nonacademic (e.g., self-esteem, life satisfaction) outcomes. The study is based on 643 elementary and high school students…

Parents' underlying beliefs concerning pedagogical issues may be an indispensable key to understanding the diverse activities that parents engage in with their children. Assessment, as a multifunctional educational mechanism, has long engaged the minds of not only teachers and students but also their parents. Thus, this study sought to delve…

The primary aim of this study was two-fold: 1) to identify salient psychosocial features of the classroom environment that influence students' motivation and self-regulation in science learning; and 2) to examine the effect of the motivational constructs of learning goal orientation, science task value and self-efficacy in science learning on…

The purpose of this study was to longitudinally examine the relationship between father involvement in school settings and student achievement. The sample, pulled from the first and second waves of the PSID-CDS data set, consisted of 596 families with children aged 5-12 at time 1. Results revealed variations in the relationship between father…

Building on the Wisconsin Model of Status Attainment, this study examined the contextual process of obtaining educational attainment and the subsequent work outcomes and career satisfaction. This study used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) with structural equation modeling techniques to assess US participants from…

Latent difference score models (e.g., McArdle & Hamagami, 2001) are extended to include effects from prior changes to subsequent changes. This extension of latent difference scores allows for testing hypotheses where recent changes, as opposed to recent levels, are a primary predictor of subsequent changes. These models are applied to…

Although economic pressure and family stress models have been examined with samples of men and women in first marriages, previous models have neglected to focus on men and women in stepfamilies and to examine stress sources unique to stepfamilies. This study examines the effect of economic pressure on both common stressors and stepfamily-specific…

Online learning constitutes the most popular distance-learning method, with flexibility, accessibility, visibility, manageability and availability as its core features. However, current research indicates that its efficacy is not consistent across all learners. This study aimed to modify and extend the factors of the Technology Acceptance Model…

There has been an increasing attention given to the role of social networking in educational settings. Teacher education is not an exception to this, for teacher education is approaching social media on two fronts: a) application to enhance learning in the process of teacher preparation or professional development b) applications in classrooms…

In this study, the role of teacher-student relationships and students' social and emotional skills as potential predictors of students' emotional and behavioural difficulties was investigated by tapping into 962 primary school students' perceptions via questionnaires. While significant correlations were found linking teachers' interpersonal…

Building on empirical documentation of children's involvement in interparental conflicts as a weak predictor of psychopathology, we tested the hypothesis that involvement in conflict more consistently serves as a moderator of associations between children's emotional reactivity to interparental conflict and their psychological problems. In Study…

Changes in motivation anticipate changes in engagement, but the present study tested the reciprocal relation that changes in students' classroom engagement lead to corresponding longitudinal changes in their classroom motivation. Achievement scores and multiple measures of students' course-specific motivation (psychological need satisfaction,…

Research Findings: This study investigates the effect of the early home environment on self-regulation in preschoolers, and how self-regulation relates to later school achievement, while taking into account family resources. Participants were part of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Study of Early Child Care and Youth…

This study examines the digital native pre-service teachers' (DNPSTs) perceptions of their competency, attitude, and pedagogical intention to use free and open source tools (FOSTs) in their future teaching. Participants were 294 PSTs who responded to pre-course surveys at the beginning of an educational technology course. Using the structural…

Theoretical models were tested using structural equation modeling to evaluate the interrelations among cognitive motivational variables and academic achievement using a sample of 128 predominately Hispanic pre-service teachers enrolled in two undergraduate educational psychology classes. Data were gathered using: (1) a quantitative questionnaire…