There are two difficulties associated with many previous evaluations of students' attitudes toward technology. First, most questionnaires focus on social and family environments, neglecting the schooling environment. Second, although some studies have considered the schooling environment, there has been no systematic review of these studies. To…

Recent upgrades to cognitive load theory suggest that evolutionary processes have shaped the way that working memory processes cultural and social information. According to evolutionarily educational psychologists, some forms of information are processed with lower working memory loads than other forms. The former are evolutionarily salient and…

School systems across the country are transitioning from paper-based testing (PBT) to computer-based testing (CBT). As this technological shift occurs, more research is necessary to understand the practical and performance implications of administering CBTs. Currently, there is a paucity of research using CBTs to examine working memory (WM)…

In some situations, memorisation is useful, even necessary. It can give students enough concrete facts on which to reflect; it can limit anxiety by reducing mathematics to a set of simple facts, rules and procedures; and it can help to develop fluency with numbers early in a child's development, before the child is asked to tackle more complex…

The Australian Geography Competition (AGC) was established in 1995 by the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland (RGSQ) and the Australian Geography Teachers' Association to promote the study of geography in Australian secondary schools and to reward student excellence in geographical studies. Initially focusing on students at the lower…

Global progress has arisen from scientific advances and we currently live in the age of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); science as a way of increasing the knowledge base, technology as a means of manifesting the science, engineering as a way of building and creating with it, and mathematics to devise the language we use…

"INSPIRE" is an Investing in Innovation (i3) development grant funded by the Office of Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. "INSPIRE" provides an innovative integrated K-12 STEM pipeline approach focused on STEM course content and instructional redesign. The INSPIRE model was implemented in Cabarrus County…

Traditionally, women and minorities have not been fully represented in science and engineering. Numerous studies have attributed these differences to gaps in science achievement as measured by various standardized tests. Rather than describe mean group differences in science achievement across multiple cultures, this study focused on an in-depth…

Video games are often regarded as promising teaching and learning tools for the 21st century. One of the main arguments is that video games are appealing to contemporary students. However, there are indications that video game acceptance cannot be taken for granted. In this study, a path model to examine and predict student acceptance of video…

Increasingly, school districts are recognizing that high school graduation rates may not be the ultimate measure of success, as evidence accumulates that students who obtain a college degree do markedly better than students who only graduate from high school. In New York City, while graduation rates have increased dramatically over the last…

In recent years, criticism of high school graduates' lack of readiness for college and work has led a number of states to raise high school graduation requirements--particularly in terms of the number and rigor of courses students must pass. This issue of "The Progress of Education Reform" addresses end-of-course assessments at the high…

This study describes the psychometric evaluation of Super's Work Values Inventory--Revised (SWVI-R), an instrument comprised of 12 scales measuring the relative importance placed on the following work-related value dimensions: Achievement, Coworkers, Creativity, Income, Independence, Lifestyle, Mental Challenge, Prestige, Security, Supervision,…

The purposes of this study were to: (1) examine whether or not the construction of concept maps by students improves their achievement and ability to solve higher order questions in chemistry, (2) investigate the differential effect of the treatment by gender and achievement level, and (3) explore the relationships between performance on concept…

To explore whether different balances of fiction/non-fiction reading and challenge might help explain differences in reading achievement between genders, data on 45,670 pupils who independently read over 3 million books were analysed. Moderate (rather than high or low) levels of challenge were positively associated with achievement gain, but…

This paper uses A-Level Information System data to compare academic performance in two subjects often viewed as relatively close substitutes for one another at A-level. The important role of GCSE achievement is confirmed for both subjects. There is evidence of strong gender effects and variation in outcomes across Examination Boards. A…