Direct Behavior Rating (DBR) has been proposed as a promising approach to assess student behavioral progress in classroom settings. The current study examines raters and occasions as well as their interactions as sources of error in the use of DBR--Multi-Item Scales (DBR-MIS) and DBR--Single-Item Scales (DBR-SIS) for academically engaged (AE) and…

In an era of globalization and global migration multilingualism represents a central educational goal for international political institutions and educational systems. However, except for bilingual schooling programs, institutionalized learning usually takes place monolingually, especially in Europe. Peer-Learning seems to be a promising method…

A better understanding of how distractor features influence the plausibility of distractors is essential for an efficient multiple-choice (MC) item construction in educational assessment. The plausibility of distractors has a major influence on the psychometric characteristics of MC items. Our analysis utilizes the nominal categories model to…

Writing can be a challenging task for students--especially for those who have grown up as second language (L2) learners. In particular, planning and structuring written content can be especially difficult for them. For this reason, the effects of a combined strategy instruction intervention consisting of a graphic organizer and storytelling on the…

The ability to recognize and name the sounds of alphabet letters is a crucial prerequisite for students as they embark on their journey to learn how to read. Regrettably, some children face significant challenges in this area. In this single-case multiple baseline study, we utilized mnemonic pictures to facilitate the memorization of the…

In this study, we analyse a 9-year-old child's argumentative participation in a group discussion, from a microgenetic development angle. Specifically, we follow one child through the discussion and analyse the development process, defined as changed participation and as interactionally contingent upon the other participants and the teacher. The…

This study aims to investigate the nature of phonological awareness in young L3 learners, and the extent to which it changes over time as L2 and L3 learning progresses. Two groups of 12 closely matched multilinguals (total= 24, aged 12-13), who shared their L2 (English) but their L1/L3 (German/Polish) were mirrored, mimicked L2 and L3 accents in…

The importance of different criteria for tracking recommendations is usually inferred using regression weights as a cross-student measure. The few studies that have applied alternative approaches or differentiated between student groups sometimes reach different conclusions. According to research on judgment and decision making (JDM), different…

This study investigates for the first time the comprehension of rhetorical questions (RhQs) in bilingual children. RhQs are non-canonical questions, as they are not used to request information, but to express the speaker's belief that the answer is already obvious. This special pragmatic meaning often arises by means of specific prosodic and…

The SSIS SEL Brief + Mental Health Scales (SSIS SELb+MHS) are multi-informant assessments developed in the United States to assess the social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies and emotional behavior concerns (EBCs) of school-age youth. Although there are translations of the SEL items of the SSIS SELb+MHS available in other languages, a…

Vocabulary knowledge is one of the most important elements of reading comprehension. Text coverage is the proportion of known words in a given text. We hypothesize that text comprehension increases exponentially with text coverage due to network effects and activation of prior knowledge. In addition, the lexical threshold hypothesis states that…

By focusing on 179 elementary school children, the present cross-sectional questionnaire study aimed to examine gender and immigrant-native differences in competence and affect self-concepts as well as academic achievement and the relations of those two self-concept components to academic achievement in the domains of mathematics and German.…

Reading a word requires several component processes. The dual route cascaded (DRC) model provides a characterization of these component processes and their involvement in different reading routes. We tested how relevant precursor skills associated with these component processes predict the use of the sublexical and lexical route in beginning…

This single case study (multiple baselines) evaluates the efficacy of an intervention called "reading racetracks" among three eight-year-old boys with diverse backgrounds, including learning disabilities, limited language proficiency due to migration, and socio-economic challenges. Conducted over three weeks, the training demonstrated…

The current study examined German spelling errors among students with German as their first language (L1) and those with German as their second language (L2) in Grades 3-4 (elementary school students; n = 127) and Grades 5-7 (secondary school students; n = 379). Five hundred and six students participated in the study. We performed two separate…