This article describes an action research project conducted by the first author that examined the influence of class meetings on student-to-student as well as student-to-teacher relationships. Her action research project addressed the following overarching question: What influence do class meetings have on relationships in a first-grade classroom?…

When analyzed according to race and ethnicity, poverty level, parental education level, as well as other related factors in schools in America, academic achievement disparities negatively impact educational outcomes for poor children and children of color on a consistent basis. At all educational levels, academic achievement and attainments of…

The purpose of the study was to determine the effects of self-management as a tier two enhancement to the group contingency intervention, Class-Wide Function-related Intervention Teams Program (CW-FIT). Two classrooms, first and fourth grade, and two students in each of the classrooms participated in the intervention. The group contingency…

Online learning programs have exploded on the educational scene, growing at a rate of approximately 30% annually. Online programming is here to stay and is changing the face of education. Moreover, this new venue holds great promise for gifted students, with its ability to provide greater access to academically rigorous curriculum, highly…

In this essay we examine how educators work within a component of a class size reduction reform designed to strengthen the connections between families' home and school lives. We describe the accomplishments and struggles experienced by educators enacting this "lighted schoolhouse" based on our research in nine schools over three years.…

The observation and assessment of quality of teacher--child interactions in elementary school settings are increasingly recognized as important; however, research is still very limited in European countries. In this study, we examined the quality of the interactions between teacher and children in first-grade classrooms in Portugal and the extent…

What picture of schoolwork do we obtain if we take a close look at everyday classroom activities and consider what students and teachers do and say about them? This is the basic focus of the study reported here which examines a teaching and learning practice called "own work" ("eget arbete") in the context of primary classroom…

The aim of this paper is to decipher the essence of the joy of learning and the ways to enhance it at school. In the field of educational psychology, research on feelings is lacking, and the little that does exist has focused more on negative rather than positive feelings. The present paper is based on ethnographic and observational research of a…

The guidelines published by the National Association for the Education of Young Children on the use of developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) have, over the last two decades, had an important influence on young children's educational experiences. The efficacy of these guidelines for changing children's outcomes has been examined by only a…

In South Africa, the development of the 2001 White Paper No. 5 on Early Childhood Development (ECD) has been an instrumental policy in the development of changes to assist in preparing children for formal schooling, along with a strong focus on early childhood education. However the extent to which these are being enacted is relatively unknown.…

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) on the reading fluency (RF) of students from traditionally underrepresented groups. The study included 86 participants attending 1st through 4th grade within an inner-city charter school located in a high-poverty, urban…

Research has consistently shown that children and young people with autism spectrum conditions are more likely to be bullied than those with other or no special educational needs. The aim of this study was to examine risk and protective factors that could help to explain variation in exposure to bullying within this group. A sample of 722 teachers…

Prior research has documented that classroom-level variables have a significant effect on student outcomes; however, previous findings have typically focused on average student outcomes and have only recently begun to use hierarchical linear modeling techniques. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of classroom-level variables on the…

The purpose of the present study is to investigate first level of elementary school students' perceptions of the future state of the environment through the pictures they draw. The participants of the study are 131 first-grade students, 127 second-grade students, 160 third-grade students, 188 fourth-grade students, and 222 fifth-grade students,…

A number of studies, both small scale and of nationally-representative student samples, have reported substantial associations between school entry math ability and later elementary school achievement. However, questions remain regarding the persistence of the association between early growth in math ability and later math achievement due to the…