Using socio-political theory as a framework, this study will focus on developing students as agents of change in their schools and community. Watts, Williams, And Jagers (2003) describe socio-political theory as the process by which individuals acquire the knowledge, analytical skills, emotional faculties, and the capacity for action in political…

Growth and development are frequently associated with milestones such as walking, talking in sentences, or successful toilet learning. Parents may not be aware that each milestone requires a complex balance of growth, experience, and other factors to occur--much of it without notice. There are a variety of lists of developmental milestones that…

In the current study, the author tested a model of risk for anxiety in fearful toddlers characterized by the toddlers' regulation of the intensity of withdrawal behavior across a variety of contexts. Participants included low-risk 24-month-old toddlers (N = 111) followed longitudinally each year through the fall of their kindergarten year. The key…

From a dynamic systems perspective, transition points in development are times of increased instability, during which behavioral patterns are susceptible to temporary decoupling. This study investigated the impact of the vocabulary spurt on existing patterns of communicative coordination. Eighteen typically developing infants were videotaped at…

Change in strategies is often mentioned as a source of memory development. However, though performance in working memory tasks steadily improves during childhood, theories differ in linking this development to strategy changes. Whereas some theories, such as the time-based resource-sharing model, invoke the age-related increase in use and…

In young infants, activation or inhibition of body movements on perception of environmental events is important to enable them to act on the world or understand the world. To reveal the development of this ability, we observed movement patterns in all four limbs under the two experimental conditions. Infants assigned to the interaction condition…

Identity is a critical developmental task during the transition to adulthood in Western societies. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate an empirically based, cluster-analytic identity status model, to examine whether all four of Marcia's identity statuses (diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement) would emerge empirically,…

Fourth grade is a pivotal year, in which students commonly face increased academic demands. According to Anderson, teachers can help students make a smooth transition to 4th grade by introducing these new challenges in ways that are in line with 4th graders' common developmental characteristics: incredible energy and emotion, industriousness and…

This paper reports the scale development and psychometric characteristics of the Parent Behavior Importance Questionnaire-Revised (PBIQ-R). To develop this measure, 502 subject matter experts (SMEs) evaluated 91 parenting behaviors in terms of parenting behavior specificity (e.g., bonding, discipline), importance level, and appropriateness for…

This essay is a call for a more psychoanalytically informed approach to educational psychology and teacher formation. To this end, the author gives an overview of a course in psychology that he recommends for inclusion in teacher education. This course is in two parts. The first part is an introduction to some important elements of psychoanalytic…

Background: Obesity is a major concern among American Indians and Hispanics. The Child Health Initiative for Lifelong Eating and Exercise (CHILE) is an evidence-based intervention to prevent obesity in children enrolled in 16 Head Start (HS) Centers in rural communities. The design and implementation of CHILE are described. Methods: CHILE uses a…

Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with left inferior frontal structural anomalies. While children often recover, stuttering may also spontaneously disappear much later after years of dysfluency. These rare cases of unassisted recovery in adulthood provide a model of optimal brain repair outside the classical windows of…

This study investigated whether the types and amount of playful activity and thought exhibited from early childhood to adulthood are related to aspects of moral development, such as empathy, behavior, and reasoning. It explored whether the assertions of theorists such as Piaget, Vygotsky, and Erikson regarding the facilitative effect of games with…

Research into complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF) as basic dimensions of second language performance, proficiency and development has received increased attention in SLA. However, the larger picture in this field of research is often obscured by the breadth of scope, multiple objectives and lack of clarity as to how complexity, accuracy and…

Over the past 5 years, a great deal of attention has been paid to the development of early warning systems for dropout prevention. These warning systems use a set of indicators based on official school records to identify youth at risk for dropout and then appropriately target intervention. The current study builds on this work by assessing the…