Purpose This study investigated component skills in oral language development utilizing and validating a new assessment battery in a large (N = 800) and representative sample of Greek students 4–7 ...

The present study examined the nature of the effects (direct or indirect) of vocabulary, phonological and morphological awareness on early reading skills in the consistent Greek orthography by test...

The present longitudinal study examined the role of a broader repertoire of oral language skills in predicting reading comprehension difficulties within an extended Simple View of Reading model. Ninety-one Greek children were assessed on listening comprehension, morphological awareness, vocabulary, reading accuracy, and reading fluency in Grade 2. Next, they were assessed on a standardized reading comprehension measure at the beginning and at the end of Grade 3. Based on their performance, they were classified into a group with reading comprehension difficulties ( N = 39) and a typically developing group ( N = 52). Hierarchical binary logistic regressions revealed that listening comprehension, reading fluency, and morphological awareness significantly predicted reading comprehension difficulties, whereas vocabulary lost its predictive strength when morphological awareness entered into the equation. These findings underline the substantial role of morphological awareness in predicting reading comprehension difficulties, supporting an extended Simple View of Reading model. Moreover, they suggest that although vocabulary remains an important factor, its role appears to be rather limited and possibly mediated by morphological awareness. Implications for both the assessment of reading comprehension difficulties and intervention policy are discussed.

The main aim of this study is to explore early childhood teachers’ social self-efficacy in Cyprus, Greece, and Portugal. In addition, this study examines the validity of the factorial structure of the Teachers’ Social Self-Efficacy Scale (TSSES). A sample of 349 early childhood teachers across the three countries participated in this study. An exploratory analysis and then a confirmatory factor analysis were employed to reveal the structure of the TSSES. Configural and metric invariance were established for the one-factor structure of the TSSES. The results showed that teachers in Portugal and Cyprus experience high levels of social self-efficacy, whereas Greek teachers experience moderate to high levels of social self-efficacy. The TSSES seems to be a reliable instrument for assessing social self-efficacy beliefs. Possible implications for practice are also discussed.

Teachers’ burnout, a psychological syndrome that emerges in response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job, can have serious consequences on children and staff in schools. The Maslach Burnout Inventory – Educators Survey (MBI-ES) is the most widely used scale to measure burnout among educational staff. However, this scale has revealed divergent results in factorial validity analysis across countries, calling for further cross-cultural research. This study examines the cross-cultural factorial validity of MBI-ES among a sample of 391 early childhood education professionals from four countries – Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, and Romania. Results of multi-group confirmatory factor analysis suggest that a 1-factor solution, exclusively focused on measuring emotional exhaustion, holds partial scalar invariance across countries. In light of previous research on this scale, the conceptualization of burnout, and the specificities of working in early childhood education and care contexts, these findings are discussed.