Educational experiences of U.S. children during the 2020-2021 school year in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a historic event impacting children around the globe. Prior research on the educational experiences of children during the COVID-19 pandemic focused almost exclusively on spring 2020. This article extends this literature past the initial shock of spring 2020, capturing the first full school year (2020-2021) during the COVID-19 pandemic. This registered report study utilized a national sample of 1,666 United States twins in kindergarten through 12th grade from 43 states to provide the current descriptive report of children's educational experiences during this time, as reported by their parents. Specifically, we reported on school format, parents' role in education, parent-teacher interactions, schoolwork struggles, technology access, and school services. About half of children attended in-person schooling, with many children switching from online to in-person throughout the school year. Parents saw the pandemic as a risk to their children's education. During the 2020-2021 school year of the pandemic, parents felt they had a larger role in their children's education and were less satisfied in their interactions with teachers than what they experienced during the prepandemic part of the 2019-2020 school year. Children experienced more schoolwork struggles than they had in previous years, and this was similar across age groups. For most constructs, results were equivalent across age group, but parents of younger children tended to provide more schoolwork help. Overall, this article highlights the disruptions in their educational environments that children continued to experience through the first full school year (2020-2021) of the COVID-19 pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Understanding Heritability in the Context of Reading Ability and Instruction.

In this paper, we discuss what heritability is and how it is measured, and explain why estimates of heritability are not always the same in different scientific papers. After providing this foundational knowledge, we bust some common myths about heritability. We end with discussing how teachers can use their knowledge about heritability in their own practice.

The home math environment and math achievement: A meta-analysis.

Mathematical thinking is in high demand in the global market, but approximately 6 percent of school-age children across the globe experience math difficulties (Shalev et al., 2000). The home math environment (HME), which includes all math-related activities, attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and utterances in the home, may be associated with children's math development. To examine the relation between the HME and children's math abilities, a preregistered meta-analysis was conducted to estimate the average weighted correlation coefficient (r) between the HME and children's math achievement and how potential moderators (i.e., assessment, study, and sample features) might contribute to study heterogeneity. A multilevel correlated effects model using 631 effect sizes from 64 quantitative studies comprising 68 independent samples found a positive, statistically significant average weighted correlation of r = .13 (SE = .02, p < .001). Our combined sensitivity analyses showed that the present findings were robust and that the sample of studies has evidential value. A number of assessment, study, and sample characteristics contributed to study heterogeneity, showing that no single feature of HME research was driving the large between-study differences found for the association between the HME and children's math achievement. These findings indicate that children's environments and interactions related to their learning are supported in the specific context of math learning. Our results also show that the HME represents a setting in which children learn about math through social interactions with their caregivers (Vygotsky, 1978) and what they learn depends on the influence of many levels of environmental input (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) and the specificity of input children receive (Bornstein, 2002). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

A meta-analysis of the relation between math anxiety and math achievement.

Meta-analyses from the 1990s previously have established a significant, small-to-moderate, and negative correlation between math achievement and math anxiety. Since these publications, research has continued to investigate this relation with more diverse samples and measures. Thus, the goal of the present meta-analysis was to provide an update of the math anxiety-math achievement relation and its moderators. Analyzing 747 effect sizes accumulated from research conducted between 1992 and 2018, we found a small-to-moderate, negative, and statistically significant correlation (r = -.28) between math anxiety and math achievement. The relation was significant for all moderator subgroups, with the exception of the relation between math anxiety and assessments measuring the approximate number system. Grade level, math ability level, adolescent/adult math anxiety scales, math topic of anxiety scale, and math assessments were significant moderators of this relation. There is also a tendency for published studies to report significantly stronger correlations than unpublished studies, but overall, large, negative effect sizes are underreported. Our results are consistent with previous findings of a significant relation between math anxiety and math achievement. This association starts in childhood, remains significant through adulthood, is smaller for students in Grades 3 through 5 and postsecondary school, is larger for math anxiety than for statistics anxiety and for certain math anxiety scales, and is smaller for math exam grades and samples selected for low math ability. This work supports future research efforts to determine effective math achievement and math anxiety interventions, which may be most helpful to implement during childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The association of parent-reported executive functioning, reading, and math is explained by nature, not nurture.

According to the hybrid model (van Bergen, van der Leij, & de Jong, 2014), the significant association among executive functioning (EF), reading, and math may be partially explained by parent-reported EF's role as a common risk and/or protective factor in reading and math (dis)abilities. The current study used a sample of 434 twin pairs (Mage = 12.12) from Florida to conduct genetically sensitive modeling on children's parent-reported EF, reading, and math skills to determine the common and unique etiological influences among the three domains. EF was measured through parent report and reading and math were measured with standardized test scores drawn from Florida's Progress Monitoring and Reporting Network as well as standardized parent-administered assessments collected by mail. Our trivariate Cholesky modeling showed that no matter which parent-reported EF component was modeled, the overlap of parent-reported EF with reading and math was explained by common genetic influences. Supplemental analysis suggested that this might in part be due to general parent report of problem behaviors. Additionally, significant environmental influences, with higher shared environmental overlap than previous work, were also found for reading and math. Findings indicate that poor parent-reported EF is a common cognitive risk factor for reading and math disabilities, which is driven by a shared genetic basis among all three domains. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

A Meta-Analytical Review of the Genetic and Environmental Correlations between Reading and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms and Reading and Math.

According to the Multiple Deficit Model, comorbidity results when the genetic and environmental risk factors that increase the liability for a disorder are domain-general. In order to explore the role of domain-general etiological risk factors in the co-occurrence of learning-related difficulties, the current meta-analysis compiled 38 studies of third through ninth-grade children to estimate the average genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental correlations between reading and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, and reading and math, as well as their potential moderators. Results revealed average genetic, shared and nonshared environmental correlations between reading and ADHD symptoms of .42, .64, and .20, and reading and math of .71, .90, and .56, suggesting that reading and math may have more domain-general risk factors than reading and ADHD symptoms. A number of significant sources of heterogeneity were also found and discussed. These results have important implications for both intervention and classification of learning disabilities.

Inhibition, Updating Working Memory, and Shifting Predict Reading Disability Symptoms in a Hybrid Model: Project KIDS.

Recent achievement research suggests that executive function (EF), a set of regulatory processes that control both thought and action necessary for goal-directed behavior, is related to typical and atypical reading performance. This project examines the relation of EF, as measured by its components, Inhibition, Updating Working Memory, and Shifting, with a hybrid model of reading disability (RD). Our sample included 420 children who participated in a broader intervention project when they were in KG-third grade (age M = 6.63 years, SD = 1.04 years, range = 4.79-10.40 years). At the time their EF was assessed, using a parent-report Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF), they had a mean age of 13.21 years (SD = 1.54 years; range = 10.47-16.63 years). The hybrid model of RD was operationalized as a composite consisting of four symptoms, and set so that any child could have any one, any two, any three, any four, or none of the symptoms included in the hybrid model. The four symptoms include low word reading achievement, unexpected low word reading achievement, poorer reading comprehension compared to listening comprehension, and dual-discrepancy response-to-intervention, requiring both low achievement and low growth in word reading. The results of our multilevel ordinal logistic regression analyses showed a significant relation between all three components of EF (Inhibition, Updating Working Memory, and Shifting) and the hybrid model of RD, and that the strength of EF's predictive power for RD classification was the highest when RD was modeled as having at least one or more symptoms. Importantly, the chances of being classified as having RD increased as EF performance worsened and decreased as EF performance improved. The question of whether any one EF component would emerge as a superior predictor was also examined and results showed that Inhibition, Updating Working Memory, and Shifting were equally valuable as predictors of the hybrid model of RD. In total, all EF components were significant and equally effective predictors of RD when RD was operationalized using the hybrid model.