Many school change efforts aim to foster conditions for the development of students' twenty-first century skills in an equitable and comprehensive way, but methods to measure the frequency and quality of opportunities that students receive in school are lacking. In this study, we describe the design, testing, and initial evaluation of a…

We present the validation of a questionnaire for compulsory secondary school students (seventh to tenth grade), designated "Educational learning environments for ESO pupils" (CEApA_ESO), for the purpose of evaluating learning environments. Although many instruments have been developed in this area, our work attempts to comprehensively…

Favourable home learning environments (HLEs) support children's literacy, numeracy and social development. In large-scale research, HLE is typically measured by self-report survey, but there is little consistency between studies and many different items and latent constructs are observed. Little is known about the stability of these items and…

Proponents of performance assessments purport that they allow more options for student choice and autonomy and, therefore, are more motivating and more preferred by students. This study explored the role of stakes and the student's familiarity with the format in these examination preferences. A survey of 148 college students suggested that: their…

Across several decades, educational researchers have investigated the contribution of the learning environment to the attainment of educational goals, such as improving academic achievement and motivation to learn. The term learning environment not only includes physical activities in the classroom (e.g. experiments kits, computers), but also…

This study investigated the effects of two contrasting learning environments on students' course experiences: a lecture-based setting to a student-activating teaching environment. In addition, the evaluative treatment involved five research conditions that went together with one of four assessment modes, namely, portfolio, case-based, peer…

The "University-Level Environment Questionnaire" (ULEQ) was field-tested and validated on a sample of 489 academics from 52 departments in 28 Australian universities. The final form of the ULEQ consists of 42 items assigned to seven scales: Academic Freedom, Concern for Undergraduate Learning, Concern for Research and Scholarship,…