Background: The importance of high school completion for jobs and postsecondary opportunities is well- documented. Combined with federal laws where high school graduation rate is a core performance indicator, school systems and states face pressure to actively monitor and assess high school completion. This proposal employs machine learning…

Students should be provided with more meaningful learning experiences to attract more students to STEM careers, Out-of-School learning environments can offer students exciting and motivating learning opportunities that formal environments cannot provide. Therefore, national education reforms in many countries that are working on popularizing STEM…

This quantitative research examined factors that affect elementary students' creativity and how those factors correlate. Aiming to identify significant factors that affect creativity and to clarify the relationship between these factors by path analysis, this research was designed to be a stepping stone for creativity enhancement studies. Data…

There is growing interest in the introduction of Einsteinian concepts of space, time, light and gravity across the entire school curriculum. We have developed an educational programme named 'Einstein-First', which focuses on teaching Einsteinian concepts by using simple models and analogies. To test the effectiveness of these models and analogies…

This paper investigates the structure of German sixth-grade students' interest in science (N = 474; age 11-12 years) by considering different subject-related contexts (biology, chemistry, and physics) and different activities. Confirmatory factor analysis models were designed to validate the hypothetical structure of interest, connecting the whole…

The use of scientific models has been regarded as an important skill for scientific enquiry. However, although many national curricula and major international science education reform movements have stressed the use of scientific models in science teaching and learning, students and teachers generally do not know how to perceive models properly.…

This study examined the influence of student demographic variables (i.e., SES, race, attendance, and gender) and the school variable of placement in an inclusion setting on the academic achievement of general education students in grades 6, 7, and 8 (n = 1200) in an urban school district as measured by the 2010-2011 NJASK, the state's annual…

Drawing inferences about the extent to which student performance reflects instructional opportunities relies on the premise that the measure of student performance is reflective of instructional opportunities. An instructional sensitivity framework suggests that some assessments are more sensitive to detecting differences in instructional…

The relationships of different levels of phonological processing (sounds in heard and spoken words for whole words, syllables, phonemes, and rimes) to multi-leveled functional reading or writing systems were studied. Participants in this cross-sectional study were students in fourth-grade (n = 119, mean age 116.5 months) and sixth-grade (n = 105,…

According to the compensation model of aggression (Staub, 1989), some people bully to defend against their own feelings of weakness and vulnerability. Classmates and teachers rated a sample of American sixth graders in terms of trait: defensiveness (i.e., defensive egotism), self-esteem, bullying, and related behaviors. Consistent with the model,…

The main purpose of this study was to state the relationship between the parenting style and students' attitude toward leisure reading. A total of 147 (65 male and 82 female) students from two classes (class five, 80 and class six, 67) were participated in the present study. The Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ) and the Elementary Reading…

This study supported associations between three theoretically driven conceptualizations of racial and ethnic identity (REI; Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure; Multidimensional Racial Identity Measure; Bicultural Identity Measure) and with adaptive functioning among Canadian indigenous adolescents in middle school to high school. Age differences…

Despite the abundance of research in Modeling-based Learning (MbL) in science education, to date there is only limited research on MbL practices among K-6 novice modelers. More specifically, there is no information on how young/novice modelers' modeling enactments look so that researchers and educators have an idea of what should be expected from…

Many social interactions require the synchronization--be it automatically or intentionally--of one's own behavior with that of others. Using a dyadic drumming paradigm, the authors delineate lifespan differences in interpersonal action synchronization (IAS). Younger children, older children, younger adults, and older adults in same- and mixed-age…

This study examined the science self-efficacy beliefs of students at the transition from elementary school (Grade 6) to middle school (Grade 7) and the transition from middle school (Grade 8) to high school (Grade 9). The purpose was to determine whether students' perceived competence is impacted at these important school transitions and if the…