We studied the effect of the number and characteristics of siblings (sex, age) on school achievement in several grades (kindergarten, first grade, and fifth grade), in two large French cohorts, with more than 16,000 children. Running linear mixed-effects models, we find that, independently of socioeconomic status, having more siblings is…

In the present study, we aimed to disentangle the impact of bilingualism and socioeconomic status (SES) on literacy in language-minority bilingual children (LMBC) and monolinguals exposed to French. We also wanted to explore the role of these two factors on cognitive and language skills, i.e., verbal knowledge (VK), morphosyntactic comprehension…

Over the past fifty years, extensive research has examined the influence of causal attributions on cognitions, emotions, and behaviours in educational contexts. However, these studies often relied on inferences about dimensional properties of attributions, and not on students' perceptions of them. This study innovates by directly assessing these…

Background: To prepare K-12 students for the globalizing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workplace, teachers must utilize pedagogies to improve students' 21st century skills, specifically in communication. Project Based Learning (PBL) has evidenced success in enhancing students' communication skills, while global…

Proportional reasoning is a key topic both at school and in everyday life. However, students are often misled by their preconceptions regarding proportions. Our hypothesis is that these limitations can be mitigated by working on alternative ways of categorizing situations that enable more adequate inferences. Multiple categorization triggers…

Research on the self-evaluation bias of students' school competence has focused mainly on its correlates for students' school adaptation. This study focused on teachers' theories about students with a positive or negative bias in their self-evaluation of competence. French students enrolled in the third and fifth grades of elementary school…

Little is known about whether manipulatives can support children's inferences of the mathematical structure of word problems. The objective was to test the effects of using manipulatives during problem solving on students' understanding of the additive relationships in word problems. Third and fifth graders (N = 45) solved one-step addition and…

This paper addresses the subject of the semiosis process in the transactions between teachers and students about the knowledge at stake in science education. We present a conceptualisation of these transactions as a joint action between students and teachers. This conceptualisation enables us to understand the semiosis process as it unfolds during…

The objective of this study was to confirm the existence of knowledge relating to the cursive writing movement for French pupils in 3rd year of kindergarten, 2nd grade and 5th grade of elementary school. 141 pupils were asked to watch a visual presentation of cursive handwriting to determine whether they were able to detect violations of two rules…

Revisions in writing aim at text improvement. Literature has shown that revision activity differs between novice and experienced writers. Our ultimate goal is to understand how children and adolescents develop the capacity to shift perspectives from language producer to language recipient -- a prerequisite ability to successful revision. In this…

In the present study, the frequency effect was examined specifically in text reading in developing and expert readers. Third graders, fifth graders, and expert readers read the same short text containing high- and low-frequency words while their eye movements were recorded. The frequency effect was observed in temporal and spatial measures of eye…

This case study investigated the practiced language policies of a French elementary school educator, Catherine, as she implemented the French National Cycle of instruction for the early elementary grades with a culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) class of students. The findings revealed that macro-level policies--such as curriculum and…

Aim(s): The sense of belonging is considered one of the basic human needs, supporting engagement in education and increasing wellbeing. Yet few studies have attempted to enhance levels of student belonging in school, which is what the current study aimed to do. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of a classroom-based, peer intervention…

Qualitative research conducted with 237 pupils from Canada, France, and Morocco, between 10 and 12 years of age, on the setting and functioning of simple electric circuits, demonstrates that similar explanatory systems of the students. For this, we had given them a paper and pencil questionnaire of a sixty minutes duration. The first question was…

A high comorbidity between reading and arithmetic disabilities has already been reported. The present study aims at identifying more precisely patterns of arithmetic performance in children with developmental dyslexia, defined with severe and specific criteria. By means of a standardized test of achievement in mathematics ("Calculation and…