The ability to delay gratification is the cornerstone of all academic achievement and education. It is by delaying gratification that learners can pursue long-term academic and career goals. In general, "delay of gratification" refers to an individual's ability to forgo immediate rewards for the sake of more valuable ones later (Mischel, 1996).…

Teachers who engage in reflective practices are better able to recognize the complexity of teaching, use judgment to choose appropriate strategies for teaching and learning in their specific contexts, and experience improved self-confidence. For these reasons, many teacher education programs emphasize self-reflective practice. Self-reflective…

The present study demonstrated that a more differentiated view of positive parenting practices is necessary in the study of children's acquisition of self-regulation. Here, the unique contributions of maternal warmth and responsiveness to distress to children's self-regulation were tested in a sample of 102 German mothers and their kindergarten…

Inhibitory control (IC) is a dimension of child temperament that involves the self-regulation of behavioral responses under some form of instruction or expectation. Although IC is posited to appear in toddlerhood, the voluntary control of emotions such as anger begins earlier. Little research has analyzed relations between emotional development in…

Adolescents need to develop competencies to navigate an adult world that is complex and disorderly: a world of heterogeneous macro- to microecological systems containing contradictions and catch-22s. This exploratory essay examines adolescents' conscious processes of developing pertinent competencies for pursuing goals (agency) in these kinds of…

A sample of 209 children was followed longitudinally to examine the impact of growing perspective-taking skills on positive and negative emotionality in middle and late childhood. Perspective-taking skills were assessed through interviews. Teachers rated children's emotional reactivity and capacity to regain a neutral state following emotional…

The current study examined the role of empathy and self-regulation as mediators between positive parenting (mothering and fathering) and early adolescents' prosocial behavior toward 3 targets (strangers, friends, and family). Data were taken from Time 1 and Time 2 of the "Flourishing Families Project," and included reports from 500 families with…

The definition, measurement, prevalence, and relations of mastery-avoidance goals with engagement outcomes are still under debate. Study 1 (n = 256) aimed to investigate these issues among junior high and high school students in two domains. Findings indicated that students distinguished between the three commonly assessed achievement goals and…

This study examined the relations of maternal warmth, behavioral control, and encouragement of sociability to social, school, and psychological adjustment in migrant children in China. The participants were 284 rural-to-urban migrant children (M age = 11 years, 149 boys) in migrant children's schools and their mothers. Data on parenting were…

Research suggests that early self-regulatory difficulties among high-risk newborns can lead to poor interactional difficulties and negative long-term cognitive and social-emotional outcomes if not identified and treated early. This article describes why an individualized, developmentally supportive, relationship-based program, such as the Newborn…

Self-regulatory abilities are robust predictors of important outcomes across the life span, yet they are rarely taught explicitly in school. Using a randomized controlled design, the present study investigated the effects of a 12-week mindfulness-based Kindness Curriculum (KC) delivered in a public school setting on executive function,…

Research Findings: In this study, we examined self-regulatory skills, namely, effortful control and executive function, in Turkish preschoolers (N = 217) and their mediating roles in the associations between parenting and children's socioemotional competence. We also investigated the role of family socioeconomic status and maternal psychological…

Research Findings: This study examined concurrent associations between family sociodemographic risk, self-regulation, and early literacy and mathematics in young children from Azores, Portugal (N = 186). Family sociodemographic risk was indexed by low maternal education, low family income, and low occupational status. Behavioral aspects of…

The focus of this chapter is on the description and assessment of teachers' social psychological factors, using the scientific literature as a base. Research on teachers' social psychological domains has an ultimate goal of populating classrooms with competent people who can model and incite behaviors that assist students in their own learning.…

Few studies have examined social work students' reflections on and experiences working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and questioning persons and addressing the intersection of race/ethnicity and sexuality within practice. This study explored current master's of social work student (n = 11) and recent graduate (n = 7) reflections on…