At the end of 2009 the National Literacy Trust surveyed 17,000 children and young people online in the United Kingdom's largest ever study of young people's attitudes to literacy and literate behaviour. This survey was of special interest as it repeated questions asked by the National Literacy Trust in a survey of attitudes and reading behaviour…

This small-scale study reports the findings from an investigation into non-verbal communication. It primarily seeks to analyse whether 9 and 13 year-olds can encode and decode non-verbal communication in the context of classroom behaviour management. This research showed that, in contrast to previous published research, there were no distinct…

Children whose parents are warm and responsive yet also set limits and have reasonable expectations for their children tend to have better outcomes than their peers whose parents show less warmth and responsiveness, have low expectations, or both. Parenting behavior is related to family race and children's sex, age, and cognitive ability. However,…

Despite decades of research analyzing fear of crime among adults, little is known about youth fear of crime in general and youth fear of crime in school, specifically. Moreover, among existing studies most emphasize causes of fear, with little discussion of avoidance or the academic consequences of these feelings and behaviors in school. This…

An important pedestrian skill that young people with intellectual disabilities (ID) (mental retardation) find difficult is the ability to find a safe place to cross the road. Safe pedestrian behaviour relies on cognitive skills, including the ability to focus attention on the traffic environment and ignore irrelevant stimuli. Individuals with ID…

Background: This study examines whether the extent of states' physical education (PE) requirement policies and the prevalence of schools requiring PE are associated with children's physical activity (PA) and obesity. Methods: Two cycles (2002-2003 and 2006-2007) of cross-sectional data with individual- and state-level information were…

The Child Behavior Scale (CBS) is a teacher-report instrument that was developed over a decade ago as an alternative to more costly methods for assessing children's behavior and peer relations in school contexts. This investigation was undertaken to clarify how well the CBS achieves its aims with a broader age spectrum of youth (6- to…

To enhance scientific literacy in the general public efforts are needed that both inspire and engage the learner. Often such efforts are provided through school programs or science learning centers, however, in many rural communities such resources are unavailable. Alternate strategies are needed to provide individuals with quality educational…

The purpose of this study is to examine the contribution of gender to the academic self-perceptions of ability and related coursework plans for high school and college across academically advanced students. Participants were academically advanced students (N = 447) from grades 5 to 12. Findings revealed that (a) girls' self-perceptions of ability…

Collective efficacy, defined as informal social controls that operate under social norms of trust, is an emerging theoretical concept that has been applied to explain violence rates in neighborhoods, affiliation with deviant peers, partner violence, and adolescent delinquency. This study employed a multilevel design to examine the association…

The transition from primary to secondary school can often be a difficult time for children, and managing the transition smoothly has posed a problem for teachers at both upper primary and lower secondary level. At a time when "childhood" recedes and "adulthood" beckons, the inequalities between individual children can widen,…

In this study, we used logistic regression to examine how well student background and prior achievement variables predicted success among students attending accelerated and enrichment mathematics courses at a summer program (N = 459). Socioeconomic status, grade point average (GPA), and mathematics diagnostic test scores significantly predicted…

A crucial skill in scientific and everyday reasoning is the ability to interpret data. The present study examined how data features influence data interpretation. In Experiment 1, one hundred and thirty-three 9-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and college students (mean age = 20 years) were shown a series of data sets that varied in the number of…

This study tested 51 characteristics of bullying victimization, bullying victims, and bullying victims' schools to determine which were associated with reporting to school officials. It found that 11 characteristics in two categories--bullying victimization and bullying victims--showed a statistically significant association with reporting. The…

Employing an interactional analysis and focusing on the complexity of meaning making, this study investigates the uses of several types of avoidance strategies generated by a language-disordered boy who is struggling with literacy. The results suggest that these avoidance strategies may function as compensatory adaptations that assist him in…