The goals of the study were to examine the predictive power of general cognitive ability, working memory, and self-efficacy in first grade for academic functioning of children at risk for learning disabilities in second grade. The study involved 82 children (age 6-7 years) from five local public elementary schools in middle-class neighborhoods in Jerusalem, including 41 children at risk for specific learning disabilities and 41 typically developing peers. In the first stage of the study, (performed at the end of first grade), general cognitive ability and working memory were assessed using subtests from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (the subtests consisted of:  Vocabulary and Block Design for general cognitive ability; Arithmetic and Digit Span for working memory). Academic self-efficacy was rated using a structural interview. At follow-up, academic functioning was assessed at the end of second grade. A serial-multiple mediation analysis revealed significant mediating roles for levels of performance in the Arithmetic subtest and for academic self-efficacy in predicting the academic functioning in second grade. The significance of the Arithmetic subtest, based on contemporary research on the structure of the intelligence was proposed. Educational implications call for sensitizing teachers to the unique role of academic self-efficacy in shaping trajectories of academic functioning development among children with RLD and in using effective strategies of promoting self-efficacy.

The majority of research on the relationship between phonological awareness and written language focuses on demonstrating the influence of the former on the latter. However, the aim of this study is to analyse the effects of an Early Years written language programme on phonological awareness. The sample comprises 56 Spanish children aged 5-7 who are at risk of developing learning disabilities. A mixed design was used, with four assessments and three intervention stages, two study variables (syllable and phoneme awareness) and two groups (instructed and uninstructed). The results show that instructed groups achieved better scores for phonological awareness in all the assessments. The findings corroborate the short and medium-term efficacy of systemic and structured intervention in reading and writing with regard to the acquisition of phonological awareness among young Spanish children at risk of developing learning disabilities.

This study examined teachers’ attributions and emotions for their subjectively perceived interpersonal relationships with their students as positive or negative, and whether hope (pathways thinking, agency thinking) influences the perceived positive or negative interpersonal relationships, the subsequent attributions and emotions, and the impact of attributions on emotions. Fifty teachers, of both genders, completed the questionnaire for each of their five students who were randomly selected from their teaching classes. The results revealed that the positive interpersonal relationships were predominately attributed to stable, personally controllable and self-student controllable factors, whereas the negative interpersonal relationships were primarily attributed to external, external controllable, unstable, and self-student controllable factors. Also, teachers reported positive emotions of high intensity (sympathy, cheerfulness, exciting, love, not anger, calmness) for the positive relationships, and negative emotions of moderate intensity (no enthusiasm, shame, anxiety, no excitement) for the negative relationships. Yet, the high hope teachers made adaptive attributional and emotional appraisals for the positive and, mainly, negative interpersonal relationships. Agency thinking, as compared to pathway thinking, was a better and worse formulator of the appraisals in negative and positive interpersonal relationships, respectively. Hope, additionally, had direct effect on the emotions, beyond that afforded by attributions, particularly in negative interpersonal relationships.

This paper presents findings from an extensive study conducted in Brazil. The main subjects of the study were Bulgarian children living and studying in Brazilian schools. The main goal was to indicate what kind of problems and obstacles they experience during the school time in Brazil and how the Brazilian government and people support these Bulgarian children. The data was collected by a Bulgarian research team that travelled to the remote regions of Brazil where many Bulgarian citizens live and work. The researchers took interviews with the Bulgarian children and their parents as well as school staff at the schools in Brazil with a high population of Bulgarian children. The analysis revealed many different problems that Bulgarian children and their parents highlighted, such as problems with the language of instructions, misunderstandings of school rules and general problems related to living in the remote areas of Brazil, such as weather and heat-related issues. Although many Bulgarian families reported some problems, they were still determined to continue their life and career in Brazil, and they want to continue to pursue their dreams.

This work has two objectives. The first is to describe a program to strengthen socio-cognitive abilities in initial education children (called PHSC), which is focused on training teachers on its implementation in the classroom. The second objective is to examine the effectiveness of the program when it is applied in schools with different socio-cultural contexts. It involved a total of 257 initial-level students attending two pre-primary schools in the province of Mendoza. One school was in an urban area of a more stable social environment, and the other in a socially-vulnerable area.  The program was administered by teachers who had been trained for it. Pre- and post-assessments were conducted using socio-cognitive tests on the students. The teachers responded to the Executive Functioning Scale for initial education children before and after implementation of the PHSC program, and parents responded to an on-line survey to find out whether they had noticed any improvements or positive changes after the application of the program. The results suggest the possibility that this program, implemented by teachers, could improve the socio-cognitive abilities in children of both of the different social contexts, as well as being a driver to create conditions of equal opportunities and generate learning benefits in all their students.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the first human rights treaty with the ultimate goal of providing conditions conducive to child health and development. The CRC is grounded on four guiding principles: (1) non-discrimination; (2) best interests of the child; (3) the right to life, survival, and development; and (4) respect for the views of the child. These CRC principles are consistent with a social justice approach within the field of school psychology. This article highlights implications for school psychologists and encourages school psychologists to be at the center of the process of measuring, advocating, and actualizing all rights under the CRC, including the right to participation, in schools throughout the world. A summary of the Rights Respecting Schools initiative is offered to provide a concrete example for school psychologists and other school-based professionals.

The aim of this study was to examine if perceived family violence of victimized children is related to their perceived aggressive behavior. It has been acknowledged that children learn and behave what they observe and practice including violence. A stratified random sample (N =1160) of Omani school students was drawn from grades 6 to 9. The study used perceived family violence and perceived aggressive behavior measures to collect data. CFA was performed to test the proposed factor structure as well as the structural model. The invariance test lent support to the hypothesis that the structure of constructs is invariant across gender. However, the relations between constructs were not invariant. Children (boys and girls) who expressed high verbal violence on them reported they were more verbally and physically aggressive. Boys, but not girls, who reported high physical violence on them reported they were more verbally and physically aggressive. The relation between perceived family violence and perceived aggressive behavior seem to be dependent on gender and types of family violence as well as the kind of children’s aggressive behavior.

The main purpose of this study case is to investigate the contribution of the school community to the improvement of the school. In that context, a two-phase research was conducted. In the first phase, the self-evaluation process was implemented during the first year of the research with the participation of the school community. An overall picture of the school was created, with its strong and weak points reflected in the school's final self-evaluation report. Upon the completion of the school self-evaluation process the school community decided on the implementation of actions in order to reduce a number of dysfunctional behaviors, such as bullying incidents that occurred in the school on the part of some students. The school actions and the relevant results constituted the second phase of the research work. The results showed that some of the dysfunctional behaviors were found to be decreased to a statistically significant level after action was taken by the school community.

The objective of this study was to design an instrument to evaluate parental involvement in the education of their children, and, subsequently, to investigate the content validity of that instrument. The questions on the questionnaire have been written according to the dimensions that shape the construct of parental participation: parenting, learning supervision, communication, parental networks, and relationships with the community. Further, for the study of content validity, expert judgment has been used, and the Aiken V coefficient has been estimated. The results indicate a wide degree of agreement among the judges, showing evidence of content validity regarding the criteria of clarity, relevance, and sufficiency of the questions with Aiken V values that ranged between 0.73 and 1, with confidence intervals of 99 %. It was concluded that the instrument can be used successfully in the evaluation of parental involvement in education.

The emotional lives of teaching at the universities have remained under research.   This study used a qualitative approach to investigate the emotional lives of lecturers teaching at two selected universities. This study sought to identify, understand and interpret the emotional lives of teaching with interpretive phenomenology research design. In purposefully selected two universities, 12 lecturers participated in the study. Semi-structured individual interviews were employed, the data generated were interpreted, the emerged themes were: work condition, resources and accreditation panel, trade union and government disagreement, and experienced emotions and effects on participants. A further interpretation of the emerged themes revealed that the emotional lives of the participants are dependent on teaching resources, academic war and convenient behaviour. The dependence is thereby suggestive that change in the management of teaching resources, academic war and behaviour of lecturers could positively influence the nature of their emotional lives. The paper used two universities, which lays the foundation for subsequent studies because this is the first study to examine the emotional lives of teaching in Nigerian universities. The study made recommendations for further studies and drew implications for policy and practice.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by difficulties in communication and repetitive behaviors. The early detection of ASD is a clinical priority in education centres and medical services. COREAT is a computer adaptation of the Repetitive Behavior Scale-Revised (RBS-R) which has been designed to facilitate the diagnosis of individuals with ASD and intellectual disability. This article describes the development, an initial evaluation of the feasibility and the preliminary outcomes of COREAT. The development of COREAT consists of two phases. Phase 1: Performing a prior analysis of the psychometric properties of the RBS-R scale. Phase 2: Developing the mobile application (pilot tests, testing real cases n = 11, and final feedback). Descriptive data of the pilot study shows that 91.31% of participants indicate that COREAT is very accessible and intuitive. COREAT proves to be a useful diagnostic resource for professionals and families. Cross-cultural differences must be analysed.

Findings from a research synthesis of the relationships between family needs and parent, family, and child functioning are reported. The synthesis included 31 studies conducted in 12 different countries. The studies were conducted between 1987 and 2021 and included 4,543 participants. Eight different family needs scales or adaptations of the scales were completed by the study participants (mothers, fathers, or grandmothers of children with developmental disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, or medical conditions). The outcome measures included caregiver psychological health, parenting stress, parenting burden, parenting beliefs, family coping strategies, family functioning, family support, and child functioning. The correlations between family needs and the outcome measures were used as the sizes of effects for evaluating the strength of the relationships between measures. Results showed that unmet family needs were associated with more negative and less positive family and family member functioning and fewer unmet family needs were associated with more positive and less negative family and family member functioning. The sizes of effect for parenting stress and burden were larger than were the sizes of effects for each of the other outcome measures. Child condition and study quality moderated the relationship between family needs and parenting stress and burden but not the other outcome measures. The results are discussed in terms of one component of family systems intervention models.

This research is motivated by the high level of imitation of adolescents on the negative behavior of adults, in addition to the high concern of educators on the failure of character education in schools. As many as 40% of adolescents have been bullied at school and 32% reported being victims of physical violence indicating high levels of juvenile violence, bullying, and lack of empathy. So schools need to strengthen their conscience and compassion to deal with this. The study aims to investigate the effect of character education management with a reflective pedagogical paradigm on conscience and compassion. This study was conducted with a quantitative experimental method with a quasi-experimental type. Data collection instruments both questionaries and documentation are used as instruments to collect the data. Hypothesis testing is done through multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) because the dependent variable is more than one. The results of this study prove that based the MANOVA test, the study revealed that there was a significant and positive influence between character education and the reflective pedagogical paradigm on the conscience of students 71.5%, and compassion of students 69.1%. It turns out that aspects of students' conscience and affection can be influenced by character education with a reflective pedagogical paradigm. This shows that schools need to manage their character education system with a reflective pedagogic paradigm so that students feel changes in attitudes and behavior due to the involvement of all school members in strengthening and sharpening character education.

The COVID-19 pandemic required teachers to quickly adapt to changes in teaching likely impacting teachers’ emotional exhaustion and feelings of teaching efficacy. Further, teachers’ experience in the classroom may have shaped how they responded to the crisis and changes. Although teachers faced these unprecedented shifts, it is possible that both internal (i.e., hope) and external (i.e., social support) sources of support may act as promotive factors for teacher outcomes. The present study describes how teachers’ emotional exhaustion, teaching self-efficacy, and supports (hope and colleague) were associated with one another one year into the pandemic. Associations were compared across early-/mid-career and veteran teachers. Results showed higher emotional exhaustion and lower hope for early-/mid-career teachers compared to veteran teachers, and a negative relation between emotional exhaustion and hope for early-/mid-career teachers. Pre-pandemic emotional exhaustion predicted hope during the pandemic for all teachers. Implications include supporting teacher well-being and career longevity considering acute stress.

At the beginning of primary school, young children need to adapt academically, socially, and emotionally to their new school environment. Enjoying going to school and becoming socially integrated are important preconditions for successful learning. However, children from disadvantaged families have fewer resources and receive less support, and such deficits can result in lower attainment, negative emotions, and lower well-being. In recent years, interest in emotions and well-being in school has grown in educational research. However, studies analyzing the affective characteristics of disadvantaged students, especially in primary school, are still scarce. In this study, we analyzed reciprocal relationships between school enjoyment, social integration, and achievement using cross-lagged structural equation modeling (Grades 1 and 2), while controlling for family background and sex. We used data from the National Educational Panel Study in Germany (NEPS; N = 4,986). Results showed positive effects of school enjoyment on achievement and social integration on school enjoyment. Additionally, a better home learning environment had positive effects on school enjoyment and social integration in Grade 1. Effects of socioeconomic and migration background on school enjoyment and social integration were not significant. Our results show no evidence that educationally disadvantaged students are additionally disadvantaged in their school enjoyment or social integration at the beginning of primary school.  

Television watching and video/computer playing are favorite leisure activities among children and adolescents. Individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have several special characteristics in relation to attention and impulsivity compared with non-ADHD individuals. This study investigates parental perceptions of electronic media use among children and adolescents with ADHD and a control group. A total of 54 participants with ADHD and 51 controls aged 7-15 years old took part in the study. A questionnaire was constructed to collect quantitative data from parents. ADHD children tend to spend more time per day on electronic devices compared to non-referred children. Age but not gender seemed to affect the frequency of children’s media play. Inattention, anxiousness and disorganization are more common in the ADHD group in activities such as reading, doing homework, doing sports or playing with toys in comparison to media activities. Parents of both groups worry a lot about their child’s habits of videogame playing. Finally, parents of ADHD children recognize some of the benefits of videogames in the areas of memory, attention and motivation but not in the academic area. In conclusion, the present study highlights important aspects of the topic of media use by children with ADHD as well as risk factors to take into account.  

Hispanic college students typically report a lower sense of belonging than their White peers, citing challenges related to first generation student status, low-income family backgrounds, and academic underpreparedness. The present study asked whether Hispanic students would have a lower sense of belonging than non-Hispanic White students and whether academic self-efficacy would be able to provide a greater buffer against belonging loss for Hispanic students compared to their non-Hispanic White peers. The participants of this study were Hispanic (n = 68) and non-Hispanic White (n = 420) first year students at a predominantly White small liberal arts college. Academic self-efficacy was a significant predictor of change in belonging for Hispanic students but not for non-Hispanic White students. These results suggest academic self-efficacy is a worthwhile target of belonging interventions for Hispanic students.  

Education being one of the cornerstones of the Philippines, teachers may experience pressure and burnout from carrying the workload and responsibilities of being second to parents being the steppingstone for the development of young children. This study used a moderation analysis research design to examine if resilience moderates the relationship between work-related burnout and psychological well-being. Using a non-probability purposive sampling technique, over 233 Filipino public elementary school teachers from Quezon City, Philippines, participated. Results revealed a substantial negative relationship between psychological well-being and work-related burnout, and a positive relationship exists between resilience and psychological well-being. Furthermore, linear regression analysis showed that work-related burnout negatively predicted psychological well-being. Moreover, this study found that resilience does not moderate the association between work-related burnout and psychological well-being among public elementary school teachers.

The current study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of an online dynamic test in reading and writing, differentiating in typically developing children (n = 47) and children diagnosed with dyslexia (n = 30) aged between nine and twelve years. In doing so, it was analysed whether visual working memory, auditory working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and reading self-concept were related to the outcomes of the online dynamic test. The study followed a pretest-training-posttest design with two conditions: experimental (n = 41), who received training between the pretest and posttest, and control (n = 37), who received training after the posttest. Results showed that typically developing children and children diagnosed with dyslexia in both conditions could improve their reading and writing accuracy scores, while the training in prosodic awareness might have tapped into children's potential for learning. Moreover, results revealed that in children diagnosed with dyslexia, training in the domain of writing competence could compensate for cognitive flexibility. However, training was not found to compensate for reading self-concept in children diagnosed with dyslexia.

Acquiring mastery in reading is considered one of the primary academic skills during the early years of elementary school. Additionally, attaining proficiency in reading during the early grades of elementary school serves as a strong predictor for future academic achievements and overall success in life. This cross-sectional study aimed to examine the effect of several linguistic and cognitive variables on decoding abilities in the Bosnian language. The sample consisted of 153 children in the 2nd to 5th grades of elementary school. To assess decoding abilities, we employed tasks involving reading real words and non-words (pseudowords). The key predictors for both tasks included phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming of letters, working memory, and processing speed. Both models accounted for approximately 64% of the variance in the scores, signifying a substantial advancement compared to existing models of reading in the Bosnian language. The results of this study may contribute to the development of targeted and effective reading interventions in early elementary education.