Adolescents differ in the extent to which they believe that parents have legitimate authority to impose rules restricting adolescents' behavior. The purpose of the current study was to test predictors of individual differences in legitimacy beliefs during the middle school years. Annually, during the summers following Grades 5, 6, and 7, early…

This short-term longitudinal research examined the relationships among middle school students' perceptions of school environment, school engagement, and academic achievement. Participants were from a representative, ethnically diverse, urban sample of 1,046 students. The findings supported the theoretical conceptualization of three different, but…

This study focuses on the sexual phenomenon of "hooking up." A hook-up is defined as a single sexual encounter that may or may not include sexual intercourse with someone who is a stranger, brief acquaintance, or friend. The aim of this study was to document the prevalence of hook-ups in a sample of 1,011 urban middle and high school…

This article presents empirical evidence challenging the received wisdom that a nonword-reading deficit is a characteristic trait of disabled readers. On the basis of 2 large-scale empirical studies using the reading-level match design, we argue that a nonword-reading deficit is the consequence of normal developmental differences in word-specific…

Research conclusions concerning predictors of academic success have been, at best, less than convincing. In fact, these conclusions are more conflicting or mixed when emotional constructs are used. As a result, modern curriculum developers as well as classroom instructors seem to deemphasize, if not ignore, the role of the affective domain in…

The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics and predictive factors for children receiving special education services, and if they received special education services, factors associated with them discontinuing those services before eighth grade. In addition, a second purpose was to determine whether there are differences in the…

The study examined the knowledge of the functional relations between potential difference, magnitude of current, and resistance among seventh graders, ninth graders, 11th graders (in technical schools), and college students. It also tested the efficiency of a learning device named "functional learning" derived from cognitive psychology on the…

The general pedagogical knowledge of teachers is not often investigated in comparison to content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. In this article, a more comprehensive outlook on teachers' skills and knowledge without regard to subject-specific nuances is discussed in relation to classroom management strategies, the organization of…

The acquisition of reading skill was studied in 503 Italian children in first to eighth grade using a task that required reading of lists of words and non-words. Analysis of the metric characteristics of the measures indicated that reading speed but not accuracy was normally distributed across all ages considered. The role of specific effects…

During the 2013-2014 academic year, the S.E.L.F. Foundation engaged 32 predominately at-risk students at Key Middle School (KMS) in afterschool tutorials and enrichment activities to support their academic, social, and emotional development. Outcome measures consisted of reading and mathematics performance before and after program implementation.…

Based on a study of 149 parochial-school students enrolled in kindergarten through eighth grade, this article explores children's outdoor recess activities in an urban setting--with a focus on how age, gender, and size of play group influence their outdoor play preferences--and examines changes in children's activity preferences over a single…

This study investigated public middle school students' opinions on the benefits of wearing a school uniform. A review of related literature is provided along with results of the opinions obtained from 604 seventh- and eighth-grade middle school students attending a public school in Nevada that had recently initiated a school uniform policy.…

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…

This study examined the structure, internal consistency, and construct validity of the ClassMaps Survey, a measure of classroom characteristics that are related to students' resilience and classroom success. Participants were 1,019 fifth- through eighth-grade science students who completed the ClassMaps Survey, a survey describing their classroom…

This article contributes new evidence on the associations among immigrant generation, gender, and sexual risk behavior among Latino adolescents in the United States. Longitudinal data from 3,272 Latino adolescents (grades 7-12) who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) were examined for evidence of the…