Why does the public have such polarizing views on the poor? This paper attempts to understand this issue by examining and exploring what predicts attitudes towards the poor. The exploration of this issue begins with a reference to the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) and how this particular framework has been used to explain polarizing issues such as abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research, among others. This paper argues that the MFT can provide a similar insight on attitudes towards the poor. With the MFT as a backdrop, the current study tested out the hypothesis using hierarchical multiple regression and explored the results further by using dominance analysis. Results showed that the Moral Foundations were good predictors of attitudes towards the poor. While Harm emerged as the only significant predictor, dominance analysis revealed the importance of each foundation as predictors. Harm is the strongest predictor followed by Fairness, Authority, Ingroup, and Purity. All five foundations appear to be better predictors as compared to one's political affiliation.

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The purpose of the present study was to explore the dimensionality of the English home language and literacy environment (HLLE) construct in multilingual home settings for fourth‐ and fifth‐grade emergent bilinguals. The authors also evaluated a framework of mediating mechanisms underlying the effects of emergent bilinguals’ English HLLE on English reading comprehension by testing the mediation role of morphological awareness and vocabulary. Confirmatory factor analytic results showed that home language use and home literacy environment are two distinct but internally related subdomains embedded within the general HLLE construct. This finding confirms the complex and multifaceted nature of HLLE as depicted in the literature. Moreover, findings from sequential mediation analyses indicated that HLLE had no significant direct effect on English reading comprehension but made a substantial contribution to morphological awareness, which in turn influenced vocabulary and further enhanced reading comprehension. The present study contributes to the current literature by providing a more comprehensive view of the pathways through which emergent bilinguals’ HLLE leads to reading comprehension.

This two-wave study examined the cross-lagged relations between teacher-student relatedness (student-teacher communication, teacher trust, and teacher alienation) and reading achievement of academically at-risk secondary students ( N = 787) in Singapore. Compared with the cohort, these students had lower aggregate scores in a national examination administered at Grade 6. The results of the study showed that teacher trust at T1 (Grade 7) served as a positive predictor while student-teacher communication at T1 served as a negative predictor of reading achievement at T2 (Grade 8), after controlling for reading achievement at T1, gender, and general cognitive ability. Reading achievement at T1 was found to be a negative predictor of all dimensions of teacher-student relatedness, except teacher trust, at T2, even after accounting for the effects of teacher-student relatedness at T1, gender, and general cognitive ability. The results of the study reflect the complexity of the relationship between students’ academic achievement and teacher-student relatedness.