The Social Emotional Health Survey-Primary (SEHS-P) was originally developed to assess U.S. elementary students' positive psychological traits: gratitude, zest, optimism, and persistence, and the higher-order latent construct of covitality. The present study evaluated the validity of a Chinese version of SEHS-P with a sample of 653 Chinese…

This study examined analytical pinyin (a phonological coding system for teaching pronunciation and lexical tones of Chinese characters) skills in 54 Mandarin-speaking fourth graders by using an invented spelling instrument that tapped into syllable awareness, phoneme awareness, lexical tones, and tone sandhi in Chinese. Pinyin invented spelling…

The purpose of these exploratory studies was to examine Chinese and American elementary teachers' perceptions of how various classroom activities contribute to student creativity, and how often teachers report engaging their students in these activities. Third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers in the Midwestern United States (N = 51) and in…

This study investigated the impact of cognitive strategy instruction (CSI) on mathematical word problem solving of students with mathematics disabilities. A sample of fourth-grade students in a Chinese primary school was divided into a treatment group (75 students) and a comparison group (75 students). The sample consisted of students with…

This study examined loneliness and its associations with social functioning in children across different historical times and contexts in China. We collected data from urban and rural groups of school-age children (N = 2,588; M age = 10 years) using self-reports and peer assessments. The results indicated that children in 2002 and 2005 urban…

As the breadth and depth of economic reforms increase in China, growing attention is being paid to equalities in opportunities to learn science by students of various backgrounds. In early 2009, the Chinese Ministry of Education and Ministry of Science and Technology jointly sponsored a national survey of urban eighth-grade students' science…

Three studies were conducted to explore Chinese children's understanding of shyness. In Study 1 (N = 174, M age = 10.18) interviews with Chinese children revealed a group of diverse attributes that characterized their conceptions of shyness. In Study 2 (N = 273, M age = 10.19) a rating procedure was used to identify attributes that were…

This paper reports on three studies of shy behavior in Mainland Chinese children. In Study 1 (N = 107, M age = 10.05), a Chinese Shyness Scale (CSS) was developed based on Chinese teachers' open-ended descriptions of children's shy behavior. In Study 2 (N = 388, M age = 10.80) and Study 3 (N = 198, M age = 10.20), the construct validity of the two…