The issue of model uncertainty has been gaining interest in education and the social sciences community over the years, and the dominant methods for handling model uncertainty are based on Bayesian inference, particularly, Bayesian model averaging. However, Bayesian model averaging assumes that the true data-generating model is within the…

While the family is a critical determinant of educational achievement, methodological difficulties and the availability of data limit estimation of the family contribution in school effectiveness models. This study uses multilevel modeling to estimate the proportion of variation in student educational achievement between families, family-level…

The move from elite to mass systems of higher education has been accompanied by concerns relating to the quality of provision and standards, particularly in relation to the increasing proportion of higher grades awarded to students. Bayesian multilevel models were used to investigate the temporal trend of grade attainment in 101 higher education…

Educational disadvantage is a multilevel and multifactorial phenomenon, with a myriad of contributing factors having been identified within the social contexts inhabited by the student from a lower socioeconomic status (SES) background. Irish research has accumulated a comprehensive body of empirical evidence on the factors operating within…

This study examined the relationships between school-level school climate and race differences in student grades, accounting for school sociodemographic composition. We found that schools with more positive school climates had smaller race differences in student self-reported grades. The moderating effect of school climate remained after…

Although there is recognition that there may be differential outcomes for groups of students within schools, examination of outcomes for subgroups presents challenges to researchers and policymakers. It complicates analytic procedures, particularly when the number of students per school in the subgroup is small. We explored five alternatives for…

School climate is one of the variables that affect academic achievement, but the level of correlation between school climate and academic achievement differs. On the basis of these inconsistent results between school climate and academic achievement, researchers can use meta-analyses to shed light on relevant literature. The present study ran a…

In this study we examined the relationship of students' 21st century skills with their academic and behavioral outcomes. We investigated K-12 teachers' (n = 150) judgment of students' (n = 3,108) use of 21st century skills (i.e., persistence, curiosity, affect, and cognition behaviors) via a Likert-type rating scale. We compared teachers' ratings…

This investigation examined whether teacher practices, as measured by the Classroom Strategies Assessment System (CSAS), were associated with students' proficiency and gain scores, as measured by the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP), in 13 high-poverty charter schools in New Jersey. Results from two-level hierarchical linear models, fitted to a…

Students' abilities to self-assess their understanding can influence their learning and academic performance. Different factors, such as performance level, have been shown to relate to student self-assessment. In this study, hierarchical linear modeling was used to identify factors and quantify their effects on the changes observed in chemistry…

Summer learning loss (SLL) is a familiar and much-studied phenomenon, yet new concerns that measurement artifacts may have distorted canonical SLL findings create a need to revisit basic research on SLL. Though race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status only account for about 4% of the variance in SLL, nearly all prior work focuses on these factors.…

Background: Given the relatively low graduation and retention rate in undergraduate engineering programs in the United States, the factors that influence student success outcomes need to be examined. However, limited research systematically studied both student- and school-level factors and how they influenced undergraduate engineering student…

Background: The unprecedented access to information in the 21st century entails a deep understanding of information and communication technology (ICT)-related factors in education and their impacts on learning and teaching. The role of attitudes towards ICT is a proven factor in student achievement. However, there is no consensus about the…

This paper proposes a teacher effect change model in the form of a latent variable regression 5-level hierarchical model (LVR-HM5). Using multiple years of student achievement data, the LVR-HM5 attempts to simultaneously estimate teacher effect as well as teacher initial status and the gap parameter to model the change of such latent parameters…

Purpose: Collective efficacy (CE)--a group's belief in its capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to reach a goal--is an important organizational property because it facilitates goal attainment. The purpose of this sequential explanatory mixed-methods study was: (1) to affirm the link between CE and student achievement;…