The current study tested changes in modern/contemporary art valuation among students ages 6-15. Participants rated abstract paintings and conceptual works (and two control categories--traditional Western figurative paintings and everyday objects) on the dimensions of liking and art classification. As we hypothesized, modern/contemporary art was…

Various factors at the individual and school levels contribute to the impairment of academic achievement. We examined whether academic class composition, measured as average class achievement and class heterogeneity (variance in achievement within class), moderates the associations of inattentiveness and hyperactivity/impulsivity with academic…

This article reports on findings from an ethnographic and comparative study examining interactions between educational systems and mutual respect in classrooms. I define mutual respect as the work of intervening on power asymmetries typically found in classrooms--both between teachers and students, and among students--by way of according children…

This article describes the challenges and triumphs in introducing music in the primary division of a private elementary school in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Data sources included classroom observations, field notes, lesson plans, professional development materials, photographs, audio-recordings, videos, surveys, and interviews. Data were analyzed using…

Three studies examined if teachers' beliefs about writing predicted their efficacy to teach writing. We surveyed primary grade teachers from Taiwan (N = 782), Shanghai (N = 429), and the United States (N = 214). At each location, teachers completed surveys assessing attitudes toward writing and the teaching of writing, beliefs about students'…

Adopting an interpretivist perspective grounded in symbolic interactionism, this article explores the types of interactional strategies used by K-5 teachers to develop social and emotional learning (SEL) with their students in Aotearoa New Zealand. A case study design was followed using interviews, audio from lesson video recordings, field notes,…

Although prior knowledge is an important predictor of future performance in mathematics, few studies have analyzed which areas of the subject are most critical. Most evidence is based on small- and medium-scale studies from developed countries, with results that cannot be generalized. We explore which areas of mathematics are the most important…

Based on the ecological-transactional model by Bronfenbrenner, this study tested the mediating roles of school, family, and child characteristics between academic achievement and both traumatic war experiences and stressful life events. It further examined which of these characteristics could protect academic achievement from negative trauma…

Taking a student's perspective, this study aims to characterize students' descriptions of teaching higher and lower in mastery goal emphasis, in elementary, middle, traditional, and democratic schools. Data were collected by student surveys and interviews from fifth- through eighth-grade Israeli students. Nineteen interviews, describing 5 science…

For years scholars have attended to either generic or content-specific teaching practices attempting to understand instructional quality and its effects on student learning. Drawing on the TIMSS 2007 and 2011 databases, this exploratory study empirically tests the hypothesis that attending to both types of practices can help better explain student…

This study examined whether instruction in genre knowledge enriches students' feedback on each other's writing, resulting in better writing quality. In total 140 sixth-grade students (age 11-13) participated in the study. Two approaches to peer response with additional instruction were compared. In one condition, students were taught specific…

Experiential education is a child-centered educational framework that is popular in Flemish kindergartens. In this study, the impact of five experiential practices (autonomy support, stimulation, emotional support, time for choice activities, and interest-based activities) and the moderating influence of initial achievement (language and…

The first aim of the present study was to examine in a single model how moral disengagement and moral emotions were related to bullying and defending behavior among schoolchildren. The second aim was to test whether the two moral dimensions interacted with each other to explain behavior in bullying situations. Data were collected from 561 Swedish…

The purpose of this study was to clarify equivocal findings in the parent-involvement literature and examine novel interactions in a New Zealand context. Specifically, this study tested direct effects of school year, parent education, family structure, and child gender on parent involvement in elementary school. In addition, interactions between…

A randomized controlled trial was used to evaluate the effects of a prosocial behavior after-school program called Mate-Tricks for 9- and 10-year-old children and their parents living in an area of significant socioeconomic disadvantage. The children were randomly assigned to an intervention (n = 220) or a control group (n = 198). Children were…