The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Third Edition (ECERS-3) is the latest version of one of the most widely used observational tools for assessing the quality of classrooms serving preschool-aged children. This study was the first assessment of its factor structure and validity, an important step given its widespread use. An ECERS-3…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between phonological awareness and music aptitude. I administered the Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation (IMMA) to second-grade students in a rural school in Pennsylvania (N = 17). Speech-language specialists administered a hearing screening and The Phonological Awareness Test 2…

This study assessed the relationships of student attributes, course characteristics and course outcomes to college students' ratings of course quality in three types of settings. The analysis utilised data from online surveys of samples of college students conducted in 2011 and 2012 at the Pennsylvania State University. Included in the analysis…

Alleviating disadvantage in low-income environments predicts higher cognitive abilities during early childhood. It is less established whether family income continues to predict cognitive growth in later childhood or whether there may even be bidirectional dynamics. Notably, living in poverty may moderate income-cognition dynamics. In this study,…

Curriculum-based measures (CBMs) are necessary for educators to quickly assess student skill levels and monitor progress. This study examined the use of the alphabet writing fluency task, a CBM of writing, to assess handwriting fluency--that is, how well children access, retrieve, and write letter forms automatically. In the current study, the…

Previous studies have found evidence for gender and racial/ethnic differences in depressive symptoms in adolescence; however, the mechanisms driving this relationship are poorly understood. The goal of this study was to examine the role of individual differences in dispositional coping in the relationships between gender and depressive…

Curriculum-based measures (CBMs) are necessary for educators to quickly assess student skill levels and monitor progress. This study examined the use of the alphabet writing fluency task, a CBM of writing, to assess handwriting fluency--that is, how well children access, retrieve, and write letter forms automatically. In the current study, the…

Higher levels of civic and community engagement in higher education are positively associated with students' academic performance and they also build upon citizenship skills such as informed voting. Yet, while these are worthy and important outcomes of higher education, students from disadvantaged backgrounds can have more difficulty navigating…

This study examines the accuracy of performance ratings from the Framework for Leadership (FFL), Pennsylvania's tool for evaluating the leadership practices of principals and assistant principals. The study analyzed four key properties of the FFL: score variation, internal consistency, year-to-year stability, and concurrent validity. Score…

This "Stated Briefly" report is a companion piece that summarizes the results of another report of the same name. This study examines the accuracy of performance ratings from the Framework for Leadership (FFL), Pennsylvania's tool for evaluating the leadership practices of principals and assistant principals. The study analyzed four key…

The rich language surrounding mathematical concepts often is reduced in many classrooms to a narrow process of memorizing isolated procedures with little context. This approach has proven to be detrimental to students' ability to understand mathematics at deeper levels and remain engaged with this content. The current generation of students values…

This study examined the possible relationship between emotional competence and transformational leadership in K-12 school leaders as a function of self-other agreement. The study found that, for those school leaders whose self-assessment of their leadership agreed with that of their subordinates, the self-ratings of emotional competence were…

Many studies have examined how people recall the locations of objects in spatial layouts. However, little is known about how people monitor the accuracy of judgments based on those memories. The goal of the present experiments was to examine the effect of reference frame characteristics on metacognitive accuracy for spatial judgments. Reference…

The literature suggests that while the number of students attending virtual charter schools continues to grow in Pennsylvania, math student academic performance in 6th and 7th-grade math in students attending cyber charter schools falls well below the state average. Although it is tempting to assume that the concern of summer slide would be…

Although states and school districts have begun to evaluate school principals, there is little evidence on the validity of principal evaluation measures. To fill this gap, we examined Pennsylvania's Framework for Leadership (FFL), a tool for measuring and evaluating principals' professional practices. Using data on more than 300 principals, we…