The PairWork mini-unit discussed in this article combines the importance of middle school students learning how to work successfully with another student to accomplish a common goal while incorporating essential principles of social studies curriculum. The mini-unit utilizes six picture books featuring history's Dynamic Duos, or pairs of…

Student achievement and engagement are both influenced by the quality of the learning environment. Effective learning environments are characterised by high levels of engagement and interpersonal connection. When learners share a sense of connection to one another and the learning experience, they are said to be experiencing social synchrony, an…

The current study was undertaken to assess the soft skills needs of student teachers at Kuwait University, which led to the authors developing a two-part Likert-type questionnaire. The first part covered 49 soft skills categorized into five skills dimensions: employability, study, social, self-control, and problem-solving. The second part included…

This study examined the reciprocal relations among maternal sensitivity, paternal sensitivity, and children's social adjustment from 54 months of age to 5th grade. Using a subsample from the National Institute of Child Health and Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 829), we employed an autoregressive latent trajectory…

The current paper investigates verbal and nonverbal greeting behaviors in the Saudi context. The study aims to identify how Saudi males and females greet their parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends, and what role the addressee plays on the performance of the greeting behavior. The study further distinguishes the similarities and differences…

This paper examines the determinants of retention and GPA for a large population of students enrolled at a U.S. public four-year university. Using a Heckman selection model to correct for sample selection bias, we find that cognitive factors positively relate to GPA over the college career and that non-cognitive factors have a stronger association…

Social anxiety in adolescents oftentimes goes undetected because of the internalized nature of the disorder as well as adolescents' reluctance to discuss their mental health. A reliable and valid self-report measure for assessing symptoms of social anxiety in adolescents for use in an educational setting is particularly important because of the…

Higher education institutions face the challenge to promote diversity competence. We suggest a procedure which can help raise awareness for diversity issues amongst staff and students and thereby foster diversity competence and facilitate the implementation of diversity strategies within higher education institutions: to include a self-assessment…

Child physical activity (PA) is influenced by social environment. Self-perception and perception of others' behaviors may impact health behaviors such as PA. This study examines associations between child networks, perception of their own PA and the network's perception of their PA. Children (n = 89, M age = 10.00, SD = 1.34) at a summer care…

The purpose of the study was to explore whether gender or ethnicity moderated the links between language skills and teacher ratings of problem behaviour and between language and social skills in 386 English-speaking Hispanic and European American preschool children from low-income families. The "Preschool Language Scale-4" was…

This research note aimed to highlight the reflections of the researcher while conducting videoconferencing interviews as a part of his doctoral research project. The researcher drew some inferences based on recent literature and two videoconferencing interviews conducted with the doctoral students via Zoom. It was a crucial experience to deal with…

Mindfulness training contributes to greater well-being in students who encounter challenges that cause stress. Ongoing stress can be detrimental and have negative impacts on the brain, which results in academic and social difficulties. Mindfulness training can help protect the developing brain from the negative effects of excessive stress,…

The rapid integration of social media into personal, professional, and educational settings has catalyzed the need to assess social media competence. This study provides the rationale for developing an instrument to conduct such an assessment, and the research illustrates evidence of validity and reliability in assessing social media competence in…

While altered gaze behaviour during facial emotion recognition has been observed in autistic individuals, there remains marked inconsistency in findings, with the majority of previous research focused towards the processing of basic emotional expressions. There is a need to examine whether atypical gaze during facial emotion recognition extends to…

Disruptions impacting the teaching and learning aspects of instruction have been realized throughout the Twentieth Century as well as the dawning of the Twenty-First Century with the Information Age also referred to as the Digital Age and even the Fourth Industrial Revolution as artificial intelligence and serious gaming are introduced into the…