Cognitive interviews play an important role in articulating the intended construct of educational assessments. This paper describes the iterative development of protocols for cognitive interviews with kindergarten through second-grade children to understand how their spatial reasoning skill development aligns with intended constructs. We describe…

Due to its social and personal outcomes, the level of attainment of the objectives of fundamental education has always been a topic of global concern. Enhancing children's level of success in every discipline by assuring school attachment is one of the most essential factors in accomplishing the objectives of basic education. In this study, the…

Measurement of readability is an important tool for assessing reading disorders such as dyslexia. Among the screening procedures for dyslexia is the reading fluency test, which is defined as the ability to read with speed, accuracy and proper expression. The reading fluency test often consists of a sequence of unrelated written texts ranging from…

The purpose of this study was to explore the reading performance scores of elementary school students in one school district before and after school closures due to COVID-19. This nonexperimental, exploratory study of quantitative, archival data was designed to explore a single cohort (N = 2,006) of third- through fifth-grade students' i-Ready…

This quantitative research study of first-grade students in two rural school districts sought to understand the difference, if any, between teachers' professional development training in the science of reading and student achievement. The study also examined the statistical relationship between the science of reading professional development and…

In the United States, Muhammad (2020) explains how Black students who attend schools have a greater potential for success when they see themselves represented in the curriculum and when their cultural, gender, and racial identities are affirmed. This dissertation study examined the ways in which third grade Black girls and boys (n=8) see…

Educators need to provide students with opportunities to engage with digital texts to support their development in becoming digitally literate (Plowman et al., 2012). The purpose of this practitioner research inquiry was to explore how teachers can support readers in the meaning-making process during read alouds with picture e-books, which contain…

In today's era of high stakes testing, increased expectations for student achievement, and demands for schools to prepare students for life beyond public educations, schools are feeling the pressure to improve reading comprehension and proficiency levels for all learners. This includes students who come from economically challenged backgrounds and…

In this article, we report findings of a psychometric study comparing two screening tools: the Student Risk Screening Scale-Internalizing and Externalizing (SRSS-IE) and the Devereaux Student Strengths Assessment-mini (DESSA-mini). Participants included 3,110 kindergarten through fifth-grade elementary students from five schools in one district in…

We examined the role of morphological processing in the reading of inflections and derivations in Arabic, a morphologically-rich language, among 228 first-graders and 230 second-graders. All words were morphologically complex, with differences in number of morphemes and morphological transparency. Inflections consisted of three morphemes, with…

Being a schoolchild involves academic and social competencies often expressed from the viewpoints of politicians, researchers or parents. This article focuses on pupils' views, highlighting their experiences and reflections and aiming to give the pupils a voice in education. The study is based on data from 39 group interviews with 115 first-grade…

Resilience can be a protective trait to promote mental health when implemented in the early years. This study explored the use of storytelling to foster children's learning of resilience. A pedagogically appropriate storybook was used to facilitate and embed the skills of resilience in children at primary school. Teachers (n = 2) and…

The study employed a qualitative multiple case study approach to investigate second-grade students' perceptions of their classrooms' physical learning environment. Data were collected through interviews, participant-generated photographs, and observations. Participants in the study were 16 students in four classrooms in three school districts. A…

This paper examines the types of teacher questions that assist young students to interpret and explain their critical mathematical thinking (CMT). Focusing on students who enter their first year of formal schooling (aged 5-6 years), this paper draws on data from a one-on-one task based clinical interview conducted with 16 students. Teacher…

This paper complicates oracy by attending to moments of vibrancy and stillness in a public school classroom, where children were expected to follow particular rules that governed their bodily movement and language use. I argue that children's talk in classrooms cannot be separated from the making of meaning at the intersection of human bodies,…