The current study investigated how ethnicity and gender affect changes in the self-esteem of early adolescents during the middle school years. Self-report data were collected from more than 4,000 early adolescents from three ethnic groups: European American, African American, and Hispanic and analyzed using a consecutive three-year cross-sectional…

Objective: This study examines peer and parenting characteristics of 149 boys and girls with and without subclinical attention problems. Method: Multivariate analyses showed that children with attention problems had higher levels of negative peer nominations and conflict and betrayal in friendships, and their parents tended to use higher levels of…

Although she is now teaching Spanish in a new school full time, Linda Smrokowski, spent 9 years teaching in a once-per-week second language program. Because many once- or twice-per-week programs still exist, she shares strategies for writing and implementing detailed lesson plans that worked for her while she was teaching in a once-per-week…

The initial phase of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI) provided all 7th and 8th grade students and their teachers with laptop computers. In the fall of 2003, a survey of all teachers involved with the program was administered by Maine Education Policy Research Institute to determine how and to what extent the technology was being…

This paper presents some preliminary results of the longitudinal aspect of a research project on self-confidence and understanding in mathematics. We have collected a survey data of 3057 fifth-graders and seventh-graders and a follow-up data of ten classes (191 pupils) one and a half years later. The longitudinal data indicates that the learning…

It has been suggested that the ability to learn a foreign language is related to working memory. However, there is no clear evidence about which component of working memory may be involved. Two experiments investigated working memory problems in groups of seventh and eighth grade Italian children with difficulties in learning English as a second…

In today's schools bullies have the power to be more tenacious, more vicious, and meaner than ever. We are all beginning to understand that victims of bullying are at a greater risk for depression, suicide, and hurting others through violent acts. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate common threads of effective Bully-Free…

The Technology Immersion Pilot (TIP), created by the Texas Legislature in 2003, was based on the assumption that the use of technology in Texas public schools could be achieved more effectively by "immersing" schools in technology rather than by introducing technology resources, such as hardware, software, digital content, and educator…

The students targeted were third and fourth grade students with learning-disabilities and seventh-eighth grade science students who exhibited poor test scores, motivation, and behaviors that negatively impacted their learning. The objective of this study was to change the level of student engagement in order to increase their academic achievement…

This study examines the association between acculturation and subsequent binge drinking among Asian American adolescents and investigates the mediating effect of friends' alcohol and tobacco use. Data from a nationally representative sample of 714 Asian American adolescents in grades 7 to 12 were analyzed. There was no gender difference in terms…

This study reports on research examining what students think about aspects of solution chemistry and seeks to establish what alternative conceptions they hold in this area. To achieve this aim the researchers developed a test comprising of open-ended questions that evaluated students understanding of solution chemistry. The test was administered…

This study examined the motivational responses of adolescent girls in the physical education setting to having choices of walking activities. Seventh and 8th grade girls (N = 1,110) in 42 intact physical education classes participated in this study. Classes were randomly assigned to choice (n = 21) and no-choice (n = 21) groups. Participants'…

This follow-up study to van Kraayenoord and Schneider (1999) examined the performance in reading, metacognition and motivation related to reading of students in Grades 7 and 8. Results showed significant correlations between all of the variables. A multivariate analysis of variance showed that "good" and "poor" readers differed…

A prominent theme permeating national science education reform reports such as the "National Science Education Standards" (National Research Council [NRC], 1996) and "Project 2061: Science for All Americans" (Rutherford & Alhgren, 1990) recommends the incorporation of cooperative learning in the science classroom. Although…

While the influence of individuals' participation in practices of economic subsistence on the development of mathematical knowledge has been widely reported in the literature, there are not as many studies about the relationship between cultural life and mathematical cognition in the context of recreational practices. This article reports a study…