Significant adults who support and teach children are only too aware of the effects of adverse experiences on intellectual, social and personal development. Less easily predicted, however, is a small number of young people who, despite many negative experiences, seem to make a considerable success of their lives. In this paper, the intriguing…

This paper reviews the literature on home education with reference to issues that may concern educational psychologists. It notes the fast growing number of families (at present, 1% of the UK school population) who have chosen to educate their school-aged children at home. The great majority of home-educated children are reported to be well…

This paper reports an investigation of the factors that educational psychologists in training (EPiTs) look for when applying for jobs in educational psychology services. Relevant literature on "job attraction" is reviewed and a three-stage research process employed. This involved a focus group approach to questionnaire generation followed by…

This paper describes the evaluation of a local authority behaviour support initiative that involved the re-location of four behaviour support teachers from pupil referral units into three mainstream secondary schools to work with pupils at risk of exclusion. The evaluation was largely illuminative (Parlett, 1981) and focused on the effect of…

Recent national changes in "Early Years" policy are likely to have major impact on the practice and profession of educational psychology. In this paper, implications at the individual, service and systemic levels are examined and practice examples given of how an Educational Psychology Service (EPS) might rise to the new challenges these major…

Develops a motivational science perspective on student motivation in learning and teaching contexts that highlights 3 general themes for motivational research. The 3 themes include the importance of a general scientific approach for research on student motivation, the utility of multidisciplinary perspectives, and the importance of use-inspired…

Evaluates theory and methodology underlying previous tests of the developmental proposal that self-concept becomes increasingly multidimensional with age. Develops and provides strong support for a new differential distinctiveness hypothesis, demonstrating that increasing distinctiveness--substantial age-related declines in correlations among…

Investigates readers' ability to identify main ideas in narrative texts and the development of this ability. Results reveal that even the youngest students were able to identify the main ideas, but they did so less consistently than did older students. Findings have implications for theories of text comprehension development and for educational…

Examines the common and distinct contributions of context-free and context reading skill to reading comprehension and the contributions of context-free reading skill and reading comprehension to context fluency. Results support the conclusion that word level processes contribute relatively more to fluency at lower levels while comprehension…

Structural equation modeling evaluated the contribution of phonological, orthographic, morphological, and oral vocabulary factors to word reading, spelling, and reading comprehension outcomes in at risk 2nd and 4th graders. For 2nd-grade children, morphology contributed uniquely to reading comprehension, and oral vocabulary and orthography…

Two unique measures of morphological awareness were orally administered to kindergarten and 2nd-grade Hong Kong Chinese children. Both tasks of morphological awareness predicted unique variance in Chinese character recognition in these children, after controlling for age, phonological awareness, speeded naming, speed of processing, and vocabulary.…

The authors examined inflectional and derivational morphological forms within narratives written by 247 3rd and 4th graders. Results indicate that children's control of morphological structures in their writing mirrors that in their speech: inflectional morphology is largely mastered by age 9 or 10, but skills with derivational morphology continue…

Hypothesizes that learners who studied statistics examples with conceptually oriented equations would transfer more successfully to novel problems compared with learners who studied examples using computationally oriented equations. This hypothesis was supported across 2 experiments. The authors also examined the implications of providing learners…

Combined fading with the introduction of prompts designed to encourage learners to identify the underlying principle illustrated in each worked-out solution step. Across 2 experiments, this combination produced medium to large effects on near and far transfer without requiring additional time on task. Thus, the instructional procedure is highly…

Model proposes that young people's perceived autonomy support in physical education will affect their perceived locus of causality, intentions, and physical activity behavior in leisure time. Results support the trans-contextual model indicating that perceived autonomy support in an educational context influences motivation in a leisure-time…