The present study compares two methods for assessing peer influence: the longitudinal actor-partner interdependence model (L-APIM) and the longitudinal social network analysis (L-SNA) Model. The data were drawn from 1,995 (49% girls and 51% boys) third grade students (M[subscript age] = 9.68 years). From this sample, L-APIM (n = 206…

Mathematical difficulties have been distinguished as mathematics learning disability (MLD) and persistent low achievement (LA). Based on 1,880 Finnish children who were followed from kindergarten (age 6) to fourth grade, this study examined the early risk factors for MLD and LA. Distinct groups of MLD (6.0% of the sample) and LA (25.7%) children…

We examined the prevalence of comorbidity of dysfluent reading and math skills longitudinally in a representative sample (N = 1,928) and the stability of comorbid and single difficulties from first to fourth grades. The findings indicated that half the children who showed very low performance in one skill also evidenced low or very low performance…

This study investigated the cross-lagged associations between teacher-student relationships and problem behaviors in a sample of 440 Finnish students (half of them identified as being at risk of reading difficulties). The degree to which these associations were moderated by a child's gender, academic performance, risk for reading difficulties,…

The longitudinal relations of domain-general and numerical skills at ages 6-7 years to 3 cognitive domains of arithmetic learning, namely knowing (written computation), applying (arithmetic word problems), and reasoning (arithmetic reasoning) at age 11, were examined for a representative sample of 378 Finnish children. The results showed that…

The aim of this study was to examine the role of mothers' (language minority mothers, LM, n = 49, and Finnish-speaking mothers, MP, n = 368) parenting styles and maternal help with their children's homework in the children's (mean age 11.43 years) literacy skills at fourth grade in Finland. In addition, the moderating effect of a child's gender on…

This longitudinal study from Grades 1 to 4 investigated (a) the extent to which children select peers based on similarity in reading skills and (b) the extent to which children are influenced by the level of their peers' reading skills. The sample consisted of 1003 Finnish children in Grades 1-4, for whom reading fluency and comprehension were…

In order to advance our understanding of educational processes, we present a tutorial of intraindividual variability. An adaptive educational process is characterised by stable (less variability), and a maladaptive process is characterised by instable (more variability) learning experiences from one learning situation to the next. We outline step…

This longitudinal study aimed to investigate the extent to which primary school text comprehension predicts mathematical word problem-solving skills in secondary school among Finnish students. The participants were 224 fourth graders (9-10 years old at the baseline). The children's text-reading fluency, text comprehension and basic calculation…