Because of shifting demographics, the Taiwanese government opened the country to immigrants from Southeast Asia. Foreign-born brides of Taiwanese men have contributed significantly to this trend of new immigration, inspiring fears that their children, inadequately prepared for the literacy requirements of early education, might negatively impact the educational system and society. to better understand the socio-political implications of this cultural shift, the researcher gathered data from one hundred and twenty immigrant and native families with first graders in six major cities in Taiwan. Purposes of this research are to: (a) investigate to what extent, if any parenting style is impacted by differences in immigration status between native Taiwanese and Southeast Asian immigrant mothers, (b) examine to what extent, if any maternal parenting styles relate to children’s early literacy, and (c) determine to what extent, if any maternal parenting styles along with the children’s and familial characteristics associate with children’s early literacy. the study found that (a) immigrant mothers are statistically lower on authoritative and higher on permissive parenting style than native mothers; (b) immigrant mothers’ participation in integration programs does not relate to maternal parenting styles or children’s literacy performances; (c) children from immigrant families are significantly lower than their …

The purpose of this research was to examine the relation between students' personality traits and the extent of their engagement and facilitation in peer-led literature circle discussions. The research was guided by two questions. To what extent do reading ability, gender, and personality traits predict the quality of verbal engagement in literature circles? and How do highly engaged participants facilitate discussion in the circles? The researcher video-taped 17 fourth-grade students' literature circle discussions for a total of 136.7 minutes collected on two separate occasions across two weeks. To answer the first question student contributions in discussions were quantified into a measure of quality of verbal engagement score (cf. Costa & Kallick, 2000). This quality of verbal engagement score served as the dependent variable in a multiple regression. The seven independent variables were (1) extroversion, (2) agreeableness, (3) conscientiousness, (4) emotional stability, (5) openness, (6) reading ability, and (7) gender. The quantitative analysis in this study revealed that emotional stability was the only significant variable that predicted higher quality of verbal engagement. A post hoc analysis that included group size as an additional variable revealed that groups composed of three members correlated with higher overall quality of verbal engagement. The second …