The level of arithmetic knowledge of a high school student was explored when solving additive word problems considering the semantic structure and syntactic component. The methodology was qualitative and developed in four stages: the first is the selection of the participant, the second is the design of a questionnaire with twenty additive…

Although there has been extensive research on students' understanding of the particulate nature of matter (PNM), there is still a lack of research on contexts that can be used to teach this challenging topic. In a previous design-based research study, the authors developed a teaching-learning sequence (TLS) on the PNM in the context of crystal…

Cognitive development of eighth-grade students, as identified by Jean Piaget, occurs during a time when many of them are transitioning between concrete operations and formal operations where the ability to think in abstract concepts becomes possible. Because of this period of transition, many eighth-grade students find difficulty in demonstrating…

Purpose: This study aimed to compare difficulty indices calculated for open-ended items in accordance with the classical test theory (CTT) and the Many-Facet Rasch Model (MFRM). Although theoretical differences between CTT and MFRM occupy much space in the literature, the number of studies empirically comparing the two theories is quite limited.…

The purpose of this study is to equate Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) mathematics subtest scores obtained from TIMSS 2011 to scores obtained from TIMSS 2007 form with different nonlinear observed score equating methods under Non-Equivalent Anchor Test (NEAT) design where common items are used to link two or more test…

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences between Finnish and Taiwanese textbooks for grades 7 to 9 on the topic of solving systems of linear equations (simultaneous equations). The specific textbooks examined were TK in Taiwan and FL in Finland. The content analysis method was used to examine (a) the teaching sequence, (b)…

South Africa participated in TIMSS from 1995 to 2015. Over these two decades, some positive changes have been reported on the aggregated mathematics performance patterns of South African learners. This paper focuses on the achievement patterns of South Africa's high-performing Grade 9 learners (n = 3378) in comparison with similar subsamples of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the overall level of student achievement on the 2012 Kansas History-Government Assessment in Grades 6, 8, and high school, with major emphasis on the subject area of economics. It explored four specific research questions in order to: (1) determine the level of student knowledge of assessed economic…

The study examined how student control over metacognitive prompts in a multimedia environment affects students' ability to solve mathematical problems in immediate comprehension tasks using a multimedia program and a delayed-transfer test. It also examined the effect on metacognitive discourse, mental effort, and engagement with multimedia-based…

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…

A total of 136 eighth-grade math students from 2 Singapore schools learned from either productive failure (PF) or vicarious failure (VF). PF students "generated" solutions to a complex problem targeting the concept of variance that they had not learned yet before receiving instruction on the targeted concept. VF students…

Despite the fact that homework forms an important cornerstone of student development, many students fail to capitalize on the long-term benefits of doing homework. Several executive skills, including cognitive flexibility, monitoring and planning are suggested as prerequisites for the completion of homework. It follows that homework difficulties…

Poems are usually expressed with elaborate rhetoric techniques, which make them hard to be understood. In this study, a cross-text annotation sharing mechanism is proposed to help students comprehend poetry by creating and sharing individual annotations. Furthermore, relevant annotations among various texts can be retrieved to stimulate and help…

Because of national, state, and local accountability to prepare students to be college and career-ready, secondary schools are looking for ways to maximize student academic growth while in high school. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between academic growth as measured by the changes in performance from students' 8th…

Embedding support devices in educational computer games has been asserted to positively affect learning outcomes. However, there is only limited direct empirical evidence on which design variations of support provision influence learning. In order to better understand the impact of support design on novices' learning, the current study…