This article presents the problem of defining the concept of "competence", due to it being an integral and complex term that has been applied in many domains as well as in a more general sense for everyday life. However, no doubt, a competence can only be tested and valuated in the practice, and it is a person who becomes competent in a…

Recent research suggests that learners should be provided with opportunities to negotiate meanings with other cultures and critically evaluate and reflect on their own culture. Texts have a great potential to provide such opportunities, especially in contexts where learners do not have the chance to experience other cultures through real-time…

Effective teaching of English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) is considered to enhance workers' performance, efficacy, and professional development. Thus, what students and teachers believe to lead to effective EOP teaching is worth exploring. This study set out to compare students' and teachers' beliefs about effective EOP teaching. It employed a…

Research Findings: Children that experience neglect are at risk for maladaptive outcomes. One potential resource for these children is early childhood education (ECE), but there is currently limited evidence which is compounded by data limitations. This study used data from the National Study of Child and Adolescent Well-being II (N = 1,385) to…

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered formal classrooms and traditional learning environments with many educational institutions forced to teach online. Communicative L2 classes are impacted as in-person, face-to-face interactions are key to developing communicative competence. This qualitative research study investigates if L2…

Young children's social and emotional skills (SE skills) are highly predictive of the ease with which they transition to kindergarten as well as their success in the K-12 school system and in life after graduation (Belfield et al., 2015; Blair, 2002; Denham, 2006; Denham et al., 2014; Graziano et al., 2007; Jones et al., 2017; Moffitt et al.,…

Purpose: Literature suggests that less attention has been paid on teacher's and head of the school's outlook on when to introduce life skills education, which are the most important to be focused and developed first, and their opinion on effort already made to develop life skills among the students. Hence, the present study aims to focus on the…

This study sought to explore the experiences of teachers during COVID-19, their sense of morale, and the supports that were influential to that sense of morale. Three research questions were explored to better understand how teachers experienced teaching during COVID-19: (1) How do middle school teachers describe the experience of teaching during…

Ivymount Social Cognition Instructional Project (IvySCIP) supports teachers and related service providers to implement data-driven social and emotional learning (SEL) instruction for their kindergarten through 5th grade students with social cognition challenges, especially those with high functioning autism spectrum disorders (HF-ASD). Based on…

The fact that Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) also includes historical consciousness is known, but this dimension of ICC has so far been largely unexplored. This article aims to show that virtual cooperation between universities from two different countries can promote not only ICC but also critical historical thinking. Using…

The volume offers a collection of the most recent research coming from scholars and practitioners in the field of multilingualism research in various contexts of natural/immersion environments, school/formal instruction, grounded in multilingual societies and individual multilinguality of semi-monolingual countries. The studies included in the…

This paper describes the development and evaluation of Interaction Competence Elicitor (ICE), a spoken dialog system (SDS) for the delivery of a paired oral discussion task in the context of language assessment. The purpose of ICE is to sustain a topic-specific conversation with a test taker in order to elicit discourse that can be later judged to…

School is where adolescents spend the largest share of their waking time. The present study focused on the factors that contribute to students' adjustment to school from a self-determination perspective. We tested the predictive value of parental behaviors (autonomy support, structure, and involvement) on the different dimensions of school…

Teachers provide emotional and behavioral supports essential for success in the classroom. This study examined the roles of child interpersonal skills, teacher expectations, and school racial and poverty compositions on the quality of relationships formed between teachers and children. A subsample from the Early Childhood Longitudinal…

This study examined the development of social skills across five measurement points from 4th through 7th grade, and the influence of child gender and school-related factors on the level and growth of social skills, in a large sample of normally developing children in Norway (N = 2,076). On average, children's social skills scores increased…