This study undertakes a comparative analysis of the learning of functions in Japanese and Indonesian curricula. Using praxeology, a primary construct of the anthropological theory of the didactic, this study analyzed how functions are approached in both countries' school mathematics textbooks. The analysis results revealed a noteworthy contrast:…

In this cross-national study, we explore the different ways of reasoning-and-proving (RP) presented in three 8th grade textbooks, one from each country: Turkey, Norway, and Slovakia. While the analysis revealed that all three textbooks contain similar numbers of problems involving some form of RP, differences exist in terms of the dominating ways…

Excellence gaps are differences in advanced education outcomes among student groups. This study replicates and extends an earlier study on the prevalence and magnitude of excellence gaps based on student sex and immigrant status using Grade 8 TIMSS data. Data were included for the 12 countries that have participated in each TIMSS administration…

This study examines emotional well-being variations among students (n = 13,398) across 5 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Secondary analysis is conducted using data from the "Responses to Educational Disruption Survey" (REDS), which focused on the pandemic experiences, including well-being, of 8th-grade students. The study…

This article informs the results of a study conducted at a public secondary school in Colombia whose purpose was to explore how eighth-grade students dispel judgment and stereotypes concerning cultural differences through authentic materials inserted in the IMAGE model. The research design involved a qualitative research method and the application…

Self-determination theory (SDT) proposes to explain the relations between motivational states and human development. In education, a central tenet of the theory is that experiencing autonomous motivation in school activities (i.e., genuine pleasure and enjoyment) fosters optimal learning processes, whereas experiencing controlled motivation (i.e.,…

Absenteeism and students' attitudes toward science have an impact on the exam results among eighth-grade students in Malaysia and Singapore. This study employed weighted least squares and quantile regression techniques on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 data to analyze the net effect of these two factors in…

This study examines the instructional decision making of an eighth-grade general education science teacher working with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) students in a heterogeneously grouped class without the support of a specialized English to Speakers of other Languages (ESOL) teacher. To do so, this study employs Erving Goffman's…

The goal of the study was to compare how visual representations were integrated into the contents of the U.S. and Turkish textbooks used in life science. Data was collected from 6th, 7th, and 8th grade middle school topics common to both countries. Content analysis was used to analyse visual representations in textbooks. The visual representations…

In recent years, the complexity of post-modern societies has gained increasing attention. In terms of education, the attention involves focusing on how students experience inclusion and meaningful learning, regardless of their ethnic and/or socioeconomic background. These matters are particularly relevant in health and physical education (PE),…

Using expert reviews and item response theory (IRT), this study evaluated the language- and culture-related construct-irrelevant variance and reliability of the 2019 TIMSS sense of school belonging scale (SSBS) for grades 4 and 8. The five items of the SSBS, which were identical for both grades, were reviewed for the language- and culture-related…

Using an ecological perspective, this one-year longitudinal study examined the moderating effect of sex in the associations among peer-related contexts (i.e., peer attachment, social preference goals) and cyberbullying involvement among adolescents from China, Cyprus, India, and the United States, along with investigating cross-cultural…

Writing is the result of our desire to express our feelings, thoughts, dreams, and ourselves. In today's education, with the penetration of technology into our lives, what we express not only on paper but also on the screen is within the scope of writing skills. Writing is a language skill that requires high-level mental skills such as producing a…

This study was conducted with both Bulgarian and Turkish eight-grade students, who studied in two different middle schools. It was aimed to understand Bulgarian, Romanian and Turkish students' metaphors on STEM disciplines. 18 Bulgarian, 23 Romanian and 20 Turkish students voluntarily participated in this study. Within this context, four separate…

This study examines the direct and indirect relationships between key motivational constructs and science achievement using TIMSS 2019 data sets for Japan, Norway, and the United States. The sample of the study includes 4,446 and 8,698 eighth graders in Japan and the United States, with 4,575 ninth graders in Norway. The structural equation model…