"Promoting public understanding" is what the programming mandate asks the Swiss public broadcasting company SRG SSR to do. From a sociolinguistic perspective, this means linking speech communities with other speech communities, both between and within the German-, French-, Italian-, and Romansh-speaking parts of Switzerland. In the…

The "Social Skills Improvement System" (SSIS; Gresham & Elliot, 2008) is designed to assist in the screening and classification of students (ages 8 to 18) who are suspected of having significant social skills deficits, and to offer support in the development of interventions for those found to display significant social skills…

Impairment in the development of reciprocal social interaction and other social skills is one of the defining characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). There is a need for assessment tools that will help guide social skills interventions and document outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine the potential usefulness of two…

The purpose of this study is to compare the assessment results of social skills of students with mental retardation by their teachers and mothers through relational model by using descriptive statistics. The research group in this study consisted of mothers and teachers of 562 children with mental retardation aged between 6 and 12 who enrolled in…

In many schools, the school librarian is solely responsible to ensure the implementation of the school's reading program, technology plan, and information skills training. It may be a worthy goal to be a superhero, but school librarians should understand that they don't have to do all this alone. A school Literacy Committee can be a tremendous…

This study examined the effectiveness of a multicomponent psychoeducational prevention program ("EQUIP for Educators") Two aspects were examined: (1) if there was a significant relationship among the three psychometric measures: Social Skills Rating System (SSRS), Children's Inventory of Anger (ChIA), Sociomoral Reflection and…

Today there is an increasing amount of research promoting the effectiveness of extensive reading (ER) towards increasing learners' vocabulary, comprehension, reading speed, and motivation towards reading. However, little has been done to measure the effects of ER on learners' reading levels. This quantitative study examined the effects of ER on…

Background: Although distinctive neuropsychological impairments have been delineated in children with chromosome 22q11 deletion syndrome (22q11DS), social skills and social cognition remain less well-characterised. Objective: To examine social skills and social cognition and their relationship with neuropsychological function/behaviour and…

Practice is important in learning, maintaining, or improving any skills. Studies by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that students perform better when they do independent reading. In order to be a good reader, a person must practice reading, but reading practice declines markedly after fifth grade. Educators and parents…

A growing, sizable proportion of school children do not live in conventional family environments. Among these, internationally adopted children have gained increasing visibility in recent years. While other areas of their behavior have been widely explored, little is known about adopted children's social competence and their integration into peer…

Children with a history of child maltreatment often have limited social interactions with other children and adults. This study examined the effects of a Peer Engagement Program, consisting of peer mentoring and social skills training with positive reinforcement, in three children with low levels of oral and social interaction. A multiple…

A 7-month study of 178 students in grades 1-4 at two Blue Ribbon schools compared two daily 20-minute treatments. Eighty-eight students used the 2000-2001 version of Project LISTEN's Reading Tutor (www.cs.cmu.edu/~listen) in 10-computer labs, averaging 19 hours over the course of the year. The Reading Tutor served as a computerized implementation…

Direct observation of peer relating is potentially a sensitive and ecologically valid measure of child social functioning, but there has been a lack of standardised methods. The Manchester Inventory for Playground Observation (MIPO) was developed as a practical yet rigorous assessment of this kind for 5-11 year olds. We report on the initial…

The Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders (SSBD), a screening system to identify elementary students at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders, was evaluated for use in middle and junior high schools. Teachers completed SSBD Stages One and Two on students in grades 6 to 8 who had characteristics of internalizing or externalizing…

In this study, preliminary evidence of the potential for Direct Behavior Rating (DBR) in screening assessment of school social behavior is provided through evaluation of the concurrent validity of DBR with a commonly used criterion measure. The teacher-completed form of the "Social Skills Rating System" (SSRS) was selected as the…