Educational effectiveness research has provided evidence about the importance of teacher beliefs and attitudes for teaching and learning. This study builds on the concept of academic optimism, which combines 3 aspects of a teacher's professional creed: self-efficacy, trust, and academic emphasis. The study explores the functioning of the…

Numerous studies have attributed gender difference in mathematics achievement to various sociocultural influences. Singapore is a country of higher gender equality as represented in the Global Gender Gap Index and Singaporean girls perform as well or higher than boys in international mathematics assessments. This study develops a conceptual model…

This study was to analyze the effects of parental educational level (P.EDU), science attitude (ATT), and valuing science (VAL) on science performance after establishing gender invariance in a representative sample of the Taiwanese eighth grade population drawn from the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The…

This tutorial addresses possible sources of confusion in interpreting trait scores from the bifactor model. The bifactor model may be used when subscores are desired, either for formative feedback on an achievement test or for theoretically different constructs on a psychological test. The bifactor model is often chosen because it requires fewer…

In large-scale educational surveys, a latent regression model is used to compensate for the shortage of cognitive information. Conventionally, the covariates in the latent regression model are principal components extracted from background data. This operational method has several important disadvantages, such as the handling of missing data and…

The aims of this study are to: (a) assess if cognitive self-concept (competence) and affective self-concept in mathematics and science are different constructs, (b) evaluate the construct validity of self-concept in the context of conflation and separation, and (c) test if the relationships among cognitive and affective variables are invariant…

International assessments, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), are being used to recommend educational policies to improve student achievement. This study shows that the cross-sectional estimates behind such recommendations may be biased. We use a unique data set from one country that applied the PISA mathematics test…

Purpose: To advance a framework of indicators that promotes implementation of math standards under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), we tested a conceptual model of the resources and processes within schools that influence the opportunity to learn mathematics (OTL) in the classroom using a recent administration of the 2011 Trends in…

Socioeconomic status (SES) is often used as control variable when relations between academic outcomes and students' migrational background are investigated. When measuring SES, indicators used must have the same meaning across groups. This study aims to examine the measurement invariance of SES, using data from TIMSS, 2003. The study shows that a…

The aim of this study is to demonstrate the science success regression levels of chosen emotional features of 8th grade students using Structural Equation Model. The study was conducted by the analysis of students' questionnaires and science success in TIMSS 2011 data using SEM. Initially, the factors that are thought to have an effect on science…

In international achievement studies, questionnaires typically ask about the presence of particular household assets in students' homes. Responses to the assets questions are used to compute a total score, which is intended to represent household wealth in models of test performance. This study uses item analysis and confirmatory factor analysis…

This paper reports on secondary analysis of TIMSS 2003 data, based on a sound conceptual model, aiming to explain differential science achievement in South Africa from the perspective of educational effectiveness research. The conceptual framework was developed by refining existing school effectiveness models and including factors related to…