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.

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.

Previous research suggests that learning basic neuroscience constructs, especially about the malleability of the brain, impacts middle school and older students’ academic mindset, response to failure and academic persistence.  This research targets teacher beliefs using a similar model.  Teachers were taught introductory neuroscience concepts related to how the brain learns.  Session topics included: basic neurodevelopment, neuroplasticity, sleep and the brain, stress and the brain, exercise and the brain, growth mindset, growth mindset feedback, self- control and grit.   Results of this school level intervention suggest significant impacts on teachers’ mindset, teaching efficacy, teachers’ approach to learning and grit.  In particular, teacher mindset beliefs significantly increased after the teachers were taught the concepts.  Implications for schools and teacher preparation are discussed.

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.

Studies have documented widespread academic disengagement in middle and high school students. This disengagement has been tied to a myriad of negative outcomes, including failure to graduate from high school and transition into college and meaningful vocations. Supporting adolescents in cultivating a sense of beyond-the-self purpose is one factor that may combat student disengagement. MPower is a program designed to cultivate beyond-the-self purpose in an effort to promote student engagement and completion of high school (Klein et al., 2019). In a recent quantitative study, MPower participants compared to controls demonstrated a higher GPA, BTS purpose, self-efficacy, and decreased performance approach and performance avoidance goal orientations. In the current qualitative descriptive study, 11th and 12th grade (N=25) students in the Northeastern region of the United States, described their experiences in the MPower program. Three themes associated with the transformative aspects of MPower emerged from focus group data: 1) practice in strategic goal planning, 2) engagement in mentoring relationships, and 3) increased social support within a community. Because fostering youth purpose engenders many promotive and protective factors, these findings hold important implications for implementing similar programs more widely.

In this study, a cluster analysis was performed by creating a data set from students' personality traits and academic procrastination behaviours. Correlation analysis was done to examine the relationship between the variables, and the characteristics of the formed clusters and the association of the clusters with the perceived socioeconomic status were examined. Cluster analysis is a simple and practical method for classifying a set of complex data based on certain variables and making them more meaningful and using the results as an aid to decision-making. Clustering algorithms handle such data effectively, making it more meaningful. Following the analysis, it was revealed that two clusters had formed. The first of the clusters includes 65.2 % of the sample population; the level of procrastination and the mean score of neurotic personality traits were calculated higher than the other cluster. The remaining part of the sample population (34.8 %) constitutes the second cluster. The mean scores of studying systematically habits and extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience personality traits of the students forming this cluster are higher than the other cluster. No association was observed between the clusters and the perceived socioeconomic levels of the students. The distributions of socioeconomic levels within the clusters are similar to each other. When the correlations of these variables are examined; positive relationships were found between the level of procrastination and neurotic personality traits. Procrastination behaviour and neurotic personality traits were also negatively correlated with other variables.

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.

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.

Using R to conduct univariate meta-analyses is becoming common for publication. However, R can also conduct multivariate meta-analysis (MMA). However, newcomers to both R and MMA may find using R to conduct MMA daunting. Given that, R may not be easy for those unfamiliar with coding. Likewise, MMA is a topic of advanced statistics. Thus, it may be very challenging for most newcomers to conduct MMA using R. If this holds, this can be viewed as a practice gap. In other words, the practice gap is that researchers are not capable of using R to conduct MMA in practice. This is problematic. This paper alleviates this practice gap by illustrating how to use R (the metaSEM package) to conduct MMA on educational psychology data. Here, the metaSEM package is used to obtain the required MMA text outputs. However, the metaSEM package is not capable of producing the other required graphical outputs. As a result, the metafor package is also used as a complimentary to generate the required graphical outputs. Ultimately, we hope that our audience will be able to apply what they learn from this method paper to conduct MMA using R in their teaching, research, and publication.