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…

The aim of this study was to identify students' motivational beliefs in science and revealed the connections between the profiles and three cognitive dimensions of science achievement through the examination of the socio-economic status (SES) and gender covariates of the profile memberships. Latent profile analysis using science motivational…

Noticing the inconsistency in previous studies of gender differences in learning physics, it was determined to check whether a gender gap exists in a relatively large sample of competitors (N = 12,966) from Serbia. The aim of the research presented here was to analyze the achievements of male and female lower secondary school students, competitors…

Metacognition and curiosity play an important role in the educational process. Therefore, it is significant to examine their correlation with students' performance and satisfaction with classes. In order to examine whether the effect of metacognition and curiosity on physics performance and satisfaction with physics classes depends on gender, a…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread disruptions to education, with school closures affecting over one billion children. These closures, aimed at reducing virus transmission, resulted in significant learning losses, particularly in mathematics and science. Using data from TIMSS 2023, which assesses fourth and eighth-grade achievements across 71…

We investigated two research questions: which students are more likely to respond inconsistently to mixed-worded questionnaire scales, and which country samples have larger shares of inconsistent respondents? We defined an inconsistent response as strongly agreeing or disagreeing with both positively and negatively worded items of the same scale.…

Nearly 14 million species are estimated to exist on Earth, of which 1.8 million have been identified, and new species are being added to the world of science every day. Therefore, scientists are aware that there are still unidentified species living globally. Biodiversity is a wide concept encompassing all living things in our living space. This…

This study developed and validated the Science Practice Scale (SPS) and investigated the implementation of scientific teaching practices by Grade 8 science teachers in Jordan. The responses of 235 8th grade science teachers who participated in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study [TIMSS] of 2019 were analysed using the Rasch…

An abundance of empirical evidence indicates that spatial ability is significantly correlated with educational performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Previous studies have explored the relationship between spatial ability and science achievement in adults. However, the relationship between spatial ability…

This research explores whether classroom life (CL), textbooks (TE), and learning initiative (LI) are mediators between instruction (P) and science performance, as well as whether these mechanisms are moderated by gender. 484 eighth grade students completed the questionnaire with four subscales of P, LI, TE, and CL. For the needs of triangulation…

This study explores the association between intellectual risk taking and science achievement of gifted students and difference in grade levels and gender. The participants were 122 sixth, seventh and eighth grade gifted students in Turkey. In data collection, "science achievement test" and "intellectual risk taking scale in learning…

Boys in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia consistently and significantly underperform compared to girls across different grades and subjects, forming one of the largest gender gaps in student achievement in the world. Saudi Arabia offers a unique setting in which boys and girls attend separate schools on a universal basis starting from grade 1. This…

Using TIMSS 2015 data, the present study aimed to explore the profiles of attitudes toward science among Hong Kong eighth-grade students (N = 4138), and further to investigate how these attitudinal profiles might relate with gender and science achievement. In TIMSS, attitudes toward science are specified in terms of four factors: intrinsic…

In this study, we explored the gender differences in science achievement, interest, creativity, and so on, using a national representative sample from the National Assessment of Education Quality (NAEQ). NAEQ assessed the Grade-4 (n = 112,314) and Grade-8 (n = 74,808) students' scientific literacy of Mainland China in 2017. The findings indicated…

Using the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA's) Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2015 data, this brief explores the relationship between teachers' gender and students' mathematics and science achievement, as well as gender differences in science and mathematics teachers'…