To be effective teachers of literacy for students who read braille, we need to know what our students' strengths and needs are as all these components come together in braille literacy. Using an appropriate assessment that addresses the skill sets involved in braille literacy is critical to putting together effective intervention packages for our…

This dissertation focused on mathematics instruction in early grades (Pre-K-3rd grade) by exploring teachers' beliefs about mathematics teaching and the teaching practices of one teacher. I specifically examined teachers' beliefs and one teacher's practices that reflect asset-based views of students and support mathematics learning with…

We report results from children learning to read in one of four different languages: Croatian, English, Estonian and Swedish. The languages all have an alphabetical script but vary greatly on the dimension deep-shallow (or complexity-simplicity, or opacity-transparency), i.e., how close orthography and phonology are related. These languages also…

Although there is a plethora of tools available to assess children's movement competence (MC), the literature suggests that many have significant limitations (e.g. not being practical for use in many 'real-world' settings). The FMS[superscript 2] assessment tool has recently been developed as a targeted solution to many of the existing barriers…

The FRIENDS Resilience programs provide cognitive-behavioral skills across the developmental spectrum and can be applied as a universal or selective prevention program. In the current study, we assessed whether, relative to the schools' existing counseling curriculum ("guidance"), FRIENDS improved social skills, problem behaviors, and…

Behavioral economics concepts can advance understanding, predicting, and controlling complex human behavior. Although there have been numerous attempts to apply behavioral economics concepts to applied settings, there are a limited number of experiments conducted in educational settings. The purpose of the studies in this paper is a to apply…

"Energy" is a term often used in everyday language. Even young children associate energy with the food they eat, feeling tired after playing soccer, or when asked to turn the lights off to save light energy. However, they may not have the scientific conceptual understanding of energy at this age. Teaching energy and matter could be…

The purposes of this study were to explore the structure of coping with everyday stressors in a young nonclinical population and examine the relationship between coping and mental health. A total of 1324 children from 91 second-grade classes in 35 schools participated. Mental health was assessed using the parent and teacher forms of the Strengths…

In this article, we report the findings of an exploratory empirical study that investigated the relationship between English Language Proficiency (ELP) on performance on the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities-Third Edition (WJ III) when administered in English to bilingual students of varying levels of ELP. Sixty-one second-grade…

Assessing the effectiveness of educational interventions relies on quantifying differences between interventions groups over time in a between-within design. Binary outcome variables (e.g., correct responses versus incorrect responses) are often assessed. Widespread approaches use percent correct on assessments, and repeated measures analysis of…

Although reading fluency is one of the five essential early-reading skills students must develop, many elementary-aged students in the United States do not read age-appropriate material fluently. As such, small-group interventions are practical and often more time efficient than individualized interventions aimed to address this problem. However,…

Educational leaders struggle with how to develop and sustain an effective, current and affordable educational technology program that meets the needs of the 21st Century learner and increases teaching and learning effectiveness. Thus, this study aimed to extend the research and provide practical guidelines to assist leaders in sustaining an…

As a first and second grade teacher at a public, progressive, East Village school, the word assessment is a daily part of the author's life. Assessment means watching and knowing the children in all areas. It is figuring out, as effectively as possible, how their minds and personalities work. Though she has found a place in her teaching for…

The purposes of this study were (a) to identify measures that when added to a base 1st-grade screening battery help eliminate false positives and (b) to investigate gains in efficiency associated with a 2-stage gated screening procedure. We tested 355 children in the fall of 1st grade and assessed for reading difficulty at the end of 2nd grade.…

Fluency has been identified as an important component of effective reading instruction, and repeated reading has been shown to improve oral reading fluency. In order to improve the efficiency of repeated reading interventions, more research is needed on the effectiveness of small group reading interventions. An alternating treatments, single…