The maturation of the adolescent brain is focused on two tasks: developing autonomy and understanding self in context of the community. Therefore, parents and other adults must assure that young people have multiple opportunities to interact in supportive environments where they can develop the capacity to self-regulate and achieve autonomy.…

This longitudinal investigation focused on the language and literacy environments of 1046 children from low-income families across children's first three years of life. Children's language and cognitive abilities at 14, 24, and 36 months of age were examined in relation to the frequency of children's participation in literacy activities, the…

The importance of cognitive and language skills on reading and spelling development were investigated in a cross-linguistic longitudinal study of 737 English-speaking children (US/Australia) and 169 Scandinavian children (Norway/Sweden) from preschool to Kindergarten and Grade 1. The results revealed that phonological awareness and print knowledge…

Research on children's concepts of intelligence has not considered how children conceptualise specific thinking skills. This study extends previous research on the development of children's concepts of intelligence and produces novel data on children's understandings of effective thinking and thinking skills. Seventy-five children were sampled…

Children around the world are being exposed to traumatic events at a troubling rate. In large, nationally representative studies of children in the United States, researchers have reported that 71% of children have been exposed to at least one potentially traumatic event in the past year, and almost 70% of children have experienced multiple…

This study examined the prevalence, predictors, and outcomes of spanking and verbal punishment in 2,573 low-income White, African American, and Mexican American toddlers at ages 1, 2, and 3. Both spanking and verbal punishment varied by maternal race/ethnicity. Child fussiness at age 1 predicted spanking and verbal punishment at all 3 ages.…

Research Findings: This study analyzed data from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Study (EHSRES) to examine whether the association between family structural characteristics (maternal education, number of parents, employment status, and number of children), parenting practices (sensitive and negative parenting, cognitively stimulating…

This book presents the results and implications of a major new national study exploring the effects of institutional racial composition on African American students' development and their educational outcomes, taking into account individuals' background characteristics, their perceptions of the institutional environment, and their experiences in…

This article reports data from a 2-year longitudinal study on cooperative learning in school science. The study reported the effects of cooperative learning in science on science attainment, effective development and social connectedness, and interactions during transition from elementary to high school in rural and urban school settings. The…

In 2015, the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) collected responses from more than 315,000 first-year and senior students attending 585 bachelor's degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. This report presents selected NSSE results from students at 541 U.S. institutions or subsets of that group where…

This study of Kentucky's 4th-grade NAEP reading scores was designed to: (1) describe progress from 2002-2007; (2) examine score gaps by gender, race, eligibility for free/reduced lunch, and 75th/25th percentile 2002-2007, (3) explore relationships between teacher-quality and 2005/ 2007 scores. The study, begun at 2007 NAEP data training, was…

In September 2006, the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education released its final report entitled "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education" postulating that graduates today are lacking important skills such as reading, writing, problem solving, and critical thinking. In the field of…

This paper draws attention to the literature in the areas of learning, specifically, constructivism, conceptual change and cognitive development. It emphasizes the contribution of such research to our understanding of the learning process. This literature provides guidelines for teachers, at all levels, in their attempt to have their students…

Conflicting evidence has arisen from correlational studies regarding the role of executive control functions in Theory of Mind. The current study used dual-task manipulations of executive functions (inhibition, updating and switching) to investigate the role of these control functions in mental state and non-mental state tasks. The "Eyes"…

The relationship between preschoolers' puzzlemaking strategies and part-whole perception was investigated in the present study. Forty-eight two year olds and 48 four year olds were randomly selected from eight licensed childcare centers. Puzzlemaking strategies (image, form, color, and trial and error) were measured by performance in the…