This study investigated how domain specificity of academic motivation related to the connection between instructional clarity and academic achievement in science and mathematics. It focused on three aspects of domain-specific academic motivation--self-concept, intrinsic value, and utility value--drawing from the Expectancy-Value Theory model. The…

The present study ascertains the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and students' science self-efficacy using data involving 509,182 15-year-old students and 17,678 school principals in 69 countries/regions who participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015. Hierarchical linear modelling results show…

Breadth and depth of curriculum are important for success in science teaching and learning. Curriculum theorists recommend less breadth and more depth than overloaded, superficial science curricula. This study investigates breadth and depth in the official biology syllabi in the seventh to eighth or ninth years in four diverse jurisdictions,…

Digital technologies have the potential to revolutionize education by enhancing quality, fairness, and efficiency. However, equitable access to these technologies remains a challenge. ILSAs (international large-scale assessments) have shown that the relationship between digital use and performance varies across countries and over time. To fully…

Science achievements of individuals play a crucial role when students aim to pursue highly demanded occupations and advanced academic degrees. Enhancing science attainment is crucial in improving the effectiveness of science education. This study investigates the impact of home educational resources, students' attitudes toward learning,…

Background: The growth of teaching practices conducted to promote cognitive activation and active participation in the classroom in recent years has become the epicentre of an active debate regarding their effectiveness. Objectives: This study is aimed to shed some light on this topic by empirically analysing the causes and consequences of more…

As scientific literacy plays a contributing role in identifying, analysing, and solving environmental matters that our world is facing, there is growing consensus to mandate environmental matters in science classrooms following five decades of efforts in promoting environmental education. However, much remains unknown about the relationship…

The purpose of this study was to examine the predictive effects of inquiry-based and teacher-directed instructional practices on students' attitudes toward science and science achievement in a nationally representative sample of 7,708 15-year-old-students from Taiwan who took part in the sixth cycle of the Program for International Student…

This report presents a literature review that was conducted to answer the question -- what can be learned from high performing jurisdictions with respect to scientific literacy? The review intends to build a picture of the education systems, specifically science education, in the five jurisdictions which performed the best in the scientific…

This open access book presents original research on effective and equitable teacher practice in mathematics and science education across Nordic countries. It focuses on three key aspects of teacher practice: what teachers teach, how teachers teach, and how teachers assess their students. To provide a comprehensive understanding of teacher…

Beginning in the 1960s and early seventies, classroom research contributed to understandings and insights concerning the complexities and diversities of teaching. In the late 1990s, classroom research began to also include student voices in the classroom. Socio-cultural theory turned the empirical focus toward student interaction, and…

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2018 list top 1,000 universities in the world which represent only 5% of the 20,000 higher education institutions of the world. Out of these world countries, Finnish youth were the best young readers in the world according to results from the Programme for International Student Assessment…

In the educational literature on peer effects, attention has been brought to the fact that the mechanisms creating peer effects are still to a large extent hidden in obscurity. The hypothesis in the study reported in this article was that the Frame Factor Theory (FFT) can be used to reveal such mechanisms. Using data from the Swedish TIMSS 2015 (N…

Canonical coherence occurs when subject matter in school is organized to align with the logical structures of an academic discipline. Even though it is highly desired, this condition is an assumption that must be empirically tested, which was the rationale behind our examination of the coherence of topics from middle-school (grades 7-9) integrated…

Inquiry-Based Teaching Practice (IBTP) is an essential component of science education, and promoting its implementation is at the heart of various reform efforts. Even though science teachers regard IBTP as an essential pedagogical method, they rarely use it for various reasons. This study utilizes Bronfenbrenner's ecological framework to examine…