Historically, research has focused on academic underperformance for students of color and those living in poverty, with less attention given to protective factors that promote academic achievement. Students' perceptions of their school environment (i.e., school climate) and their social-emotional competence have emerged as protective factors for…

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world, personally meaningful projects that allow conceptual transformation to occur within the educational process while fostering intellectual curiosity in a supportive learning environment. PBL supports students developing deep content…

Four-day school weeks are becoming increasingly common in the U.S., but their effect on achievement is not well-understood. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we conduct the most representative student-level analysis to date of the effects of four-day weeks on student achievement and within-year growth using NWEA MAP Growth data. We…

The purpose of this study was to determine if ongoing, sustained professional development in the area of reading resulted in an increase in student achievement on reading scores using i-Ready reading comprehension data. For the purpose of this study, students were divided into two groups: Group 1 was taught by teachers who received ongoing,…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the influence of social-emotional competence (SEC) and various other student- and school-level variables on the academic achievement of kindergarteners. Data were collected on a nationally representative cohort of kindergarteners as part of the United States Department of Education's Early…

This study tested a 5-year sequential mediation model linking paternal mind-mindedness in toddlerhood to child early academic achievement through a developmental process unfolding in the preschool years. A sample of 128 mostly White middle-class families (68 girls) living in Montreal, Canada was assessed for paternal mind-mindedness when children…

Nearly one in four students residing in the United States is from an immigrant family and these children's school readiness is related to their parent's nativity and other sociodemographic characteristics. Social-emotional skills are an important conduit for academic development, yet these relations have not been explored for children from…

Few researchers have investigated what occurs inside charter schools with respect to teaching and learning. To address this gap in the literature, the researcher conducted a descriptive, single-case study to examine how teachers at charter schools use research-based instructional methods to increase student achievement. The site for this study is…

Background or Context: Dual language education aims to foster the development of bilingualism, biliteracy, sociocultural competence, and academic skills in all school subjects. Early correlational research suggests that participation in dual language education is associated with higher achievement. Recent studies leveraged more comprehensive sets…

Policymakers have advocated academic skills building at kindergarten as a way of improving student achievement. However, early childhood educators have concerns with this policy as gains in achievement may come at the expense of children's social-emotional skills. Using a nationally representative data set of kindergartners, we find that advanced…

Formative assessment has been considered an essential concept for motivating and improving learning. However, implementing formative assessment has been confronted with challenges in Confucian-heritage culture (CHC) contexts such as Hong Kong and Shanghai, where the atmosphere of high-stakes tests dominates at policy and classroom levels. Whether…

Existing literature confirms that social-emotional development and school climate both impact elementary school student achievement. Yet no study has examined the joint impact of social-emotional development and school climate on achievement. Accordingly, the present study examined the association between school climate, social-emotional…

This study is based on collaboration between a school and a university on professional development training of 4th and 5th grade elementary school teachers in a southeastern state in the USA. The study was three-pronged and focused on teacher knowledge, pedagogy, and student achievement. We examined how the building of teacher capacity affected…

This paper documents the impact of home libraries on academic achievement, economic success, and health. It summarizes research that shows how children without access to reading materials at home are more likely to suffer learning losses when out of school and how home libraries are one of schools' and communities' best tools to combat learning…

Youths' development can be positively or negatively impacted by various factors in their internal and external environment. This study investigated the interactive effects of self-regulation and internalizing and externalizing problems on academic achievement (reading and maths) and positive youth development (PYD) across one year. Data were…