This study examined the effects of the Living Skills school-based intervention program as a method of improving school adjustment and the social lives of at-risk elementary school students. Youth participants were referred to the program by teachers or school counselors based on perceptions of risk due to rejection and isolation, aggressive and…

This study highlights the efforts of a U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools Partnerships in Character Education Program grant awarded to an Appalachian region state education agency to study the effect of the integration of character education models into rural schools. More specifically, this study focuses on data…

Character educators have a special responsibility to look after children's welfare. At a time when one out of every five children lives below the poverty line, and the United States ranks next to last among the wealthiest nations of the world in looking after the well-being of its children, character educators cannot be silent. Character educators…

This teacher research inquiry is a critical discourse analysis of second grade classroom talk about racial identity and dialect difference within the theoretical framework of moral philosophy. Participants in the study, which took place in an urban public district in a Midwestern United States city, included ten African American students and a…

A total of 761 students (58.1% female) from selected fifth- and sixth-grade mathematics classrooms in Alabama were examined to investigate the relationships between individual learner variables (gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status [SES]) and mathematics performance. Specifically, this portion of the study examined individual learner variables…

Before and after the interventions of summer classes for parents and an interactive homework program, parents of children in an inner-city southeastern U.S. elementary school were interviewed and teachers surveyed to determine home and school factors that impacted parental involvement in their children's education. Beliefs about roles and…

The purpose of this pilot study was to determine the degree to which teachers' age, perceptions of fair pay, receipt of employer-sponsored health insurance, and administrative support, as operationalized by the Competing Values Framework, predicted antecedents of turnover. Teachers' thoughts of leaving their current job and commitment to a center…

Child care teachers and staff are important influences on preschoolers' nutrition and physical activity habits, and their views may be influenced by education level, years of field experience, and program involvement. For the 360 participants surveyed, responses on 5 of 18 survey items significantly differed by education level (e.g., less…

Child care teachers' experiences and their gendered understandings of their work were explored in this study. Two female child care teachers were interviewed individually and asked to describe their work as women's work. Analysis showed that teachers essentialized child care teaching, recognized the paradoxes of being a child care teacher,…

This study reports the construction of the Dialogic Reading Inventory (DRI), a tool for assessing a parent and child's storybook reading behaviors. Twenty-three parent-child dyads participated in the study. The Adult-Child Interactive Reading Inventory (DeBruin-Parecki, 1999) items were grouped into four categories and revised to reflect current…

The integration of children's trade books in the mathematics classroom has experienced a dramatic surge in its popularity; yet, though the positive benefits of this strategy have been well documented, these benefits may only be realized if the literature is of high quality. Utilizing a mathematics trade book evaluation instrument, this inquiry…

Five 1st-grade teachers read aloud two Caldecott Award-winning picture books to their classrooms of diverse, urban students. In this two-phase study, researchers analyzed teachers' transcripts for common elements, interviewed 1st-graders and focused on one teacher's read-aloud events while comparing them with her students' responses. Findings…

This study portrayed a picture of kindergarten through 3rd-grade teachers who teach visual arts, their perceptions of the value of visual arts, their visual arts teaching practices, visual arts experiences provided to young learners in school, and major factors and/or influences that affect their teaching of visual arts. The sample for this study…

Sixty-eight preservice teachers from a midwestern university responded to a questionnaire asking the construct of their family, their definition of "family", if they recognized 18 relationships as families, and if they would use those relationships as examples in their future teaching. We focus primarily on participants' responses to examples of…

Teasing is often regarded as a rite of passage, a normal and common activity of childhood. Yet teasing is a complex relational issue involving many elements, such as intent, verbal utterances, nonverbal behavior, meaning, interpretation, and emotional affect. Teasing within the sibling relationship can be a source of great parental frustration, as…