No abstract

Existing research on the impact of bilingualism on metalinguistic development has concentrated on the development of phonological awareness. The present study extended the scope of existing research by focusing on morphological awareness, an aspect of metalinguistic awareness that becomes increasingly important beyond the initial phase of literacy development. Participants included three groups of fourth-grader children from the same school with comparable SES and non-verbal IQ: (a) monolingual English-speaking children from a general education programme, (b) Spanish-speaking children from a SpanishEnglish dual-language programme and (c) English-speaking children from the same Spanish-English dual-language programme. Researcher-developed measures of vocabulary and morphological awareness were administered. Results suggested that bilingual education can have a positive impact on the development of morphological awareness through cross-language transfer as well as increased sensitivity to structural language features. The findings contribute to a growing body of research on how bilingual experience may shape children's metalinguistic development.

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to quantitatively summarize the single-case research (SCR) literature on the use of behavior contracts with children and youth. This study examined the efficacy of behavior contracts on problem behaviors and academic behaviors across 18 SCR studies. Academic and behavioral outcomes were examined for 58 children and youth ages 5 to 21 using the TauU effect size index. Results indicated the overall moderate effect of the use of behavior contracts was ES = .57 (95% confidence interval [CI95] = [0.55, 0.58]) with a range of effects across studies (ES = .27 to ES = 1.00). Moderator analyses indicated that behavior contracts are beneficial for students regardless of grade level, gender, or disability status. Findings suggest that the intervention is more effective in reducing inappropriate behaviors than increasing appropriate behaviors, and that academic outcomes are positively affected by behavior contracting.