Background: Extant research has traditionally associated children's achievement motivation with socio-emotional parental behaviours such as demonstrations of affect, responsiveness, and the degree of parental control. Aims: This study explored the extent to which parental socio-emotional and instructional behaviours (including the contingency…

Analyzing the rate at which languages change can clarify whether similarities across languages are solely the result of cognitive biases or might be partially due to descent from a common ancestor. To demonstrate this approach, we use a simple model of language evolution to mathematically determine how long it should take for the distribution over…

We investigated effects of examiners' ascribed likability and examiners' gender on test performance during a standardized face-to-face testing situation assessing self-estimated and de facto verbal knowledge. One hundred fourteen nonpsychology students were individually tested by one of 22 examiners. A moderated regression analysis…

This article presents our new Academic Vocabulary List (AVL), derived from a 120-million-word academic subcorpus of the 425-million-word Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA; Davies 2012). We first explore reasons why a new academic core list is warranted, and why such a list is still needed in English language education. We also provide…

Given the long history of discussion of issues surrounding statistical testing and effect size indices and various attempts by the American Psychological Association and by the American Educational Research Association to encourage the reporting of effect size, most journals in education and psychology have witnessed an increase in effect size…

A framework is introduced for considering dimensionality assessment procedures for multidimensional item response models. The framework characterizes procedures in terms of their confirmatory or exploratory approach, parametric or nonparametric assumptions, and applicability to dichotomous, polytomous, and missing data. Popular and emerging…

Natural language processing (NLP) provides a powerful approach for discourse processing researchers. However, there remains a notable degree of hesitation by some researchers to consider using NLP, at least on their own. The purpose of this article is to introduce and make available a "simple" NLP (SiNLP) tool. The overarching goal of…

Empirical Bayes' (EB) estimation is a widely used procedure to calculate teacher value-added. It is primarily viewed as a way to make imprecise estimates more reliable. In this paper we review the theory of EB estimation and use simulated data to study its ability to properly rank teachers. We compare the performance of EB estimators with that of…

"Wisconsin Public Schools at a Glance" provides in a single page document statistical information on the following topics: (1) Total number of public schools (2014-15); (2) Staff (2013-14); (3) Students (2013-14);(4) Report Cards (2013-14); (5) Attendance and Graduation (2012-13); (6) Student Performance (2013-14); and (7) School Funding.

Background: Calculus is a foundational course for STEM-intending students yet has been shown to dissuade students from pursuing STEM degrees. In this report, we examine factors related to students and instructors reporting a lack of time in class for students to understand difficult ideas and relate this to students' and instructors' perceptions…

Group homes are a frequently used but controversial treatment setting for youth with mental health problems. Within the relatively sparse literature on group homes, there is some evidence that some models of treatment may be associated with more positive outcomes for youth. This article explores this possibility by examining differences across…

Although the literature on school choice rationalities is extensive, different authors interpret the processes of school choice for poor families in different ways. Positions vary between those that consider that poor families have the same capacity to choose as middle class families and those that value structural factors as constraints for…

Innovation in the workplace has been claimed to be a key factor in organizational survival and success. As future workers, university students are a major source of future innovations in organizational settings. Before they enter the labour market, it is in the context of Higher Education that they start developing some of their long-term…

Background: Understanding why youth actively transport to school (ATS) has important health, programming, and policy implications. A growing body of research has revealed that there are common factors that influence this behavior. Collectively, these influences can be categorized into 3 domains: the physical environment (PE), sociocultural…

Previous research has shown that children aged 4-5 years, but not 2-3 years, show adult-like interference from a partner when performing a joint task (Milward, Kita, & Apperly, 2014). This raises questions about the cognitive skills involved in the development of such "corepresentation (CR)" of a partner (Sebanz, Knoblich, &…