The Achievement Goal Framework describes students' goal orientations as: task-based, focusing on the successful completion of the task; self-based, evaluating performance relative to one's own past performance; or other-based, evaluating performance relative to the performance of others. Goal orientations have been used to explain student success…

The educational importance of teacher self-efficacy necessitates research into variables presumed to significantly influence teacher self-efficacy. In the current study, the role of personal and programmatic variables on the self-efficacy of school-based agriculture teachers was explored. Self-efficacy was measured in five aspects of the…

This study reports the effect of computer models as formative assessment on high school students' understanding of the nature of models. Nine high school teachers integrated computer models and associated formative assessments into their yearlong high school chemistry course. A pre-test and post-test of students' understanding of the nature of…

The purpose of this research was to examine the effect of teacher read-aloud on adolescent learning in science and variation according to individual reading ability. The study gathered both quantitative and qualitative data for analysis from 2 treatment procedures. All seventh and eighth grade students participated in 2 consecutive units of study:…

This study investigated the development of representational competence among organic chemistry students by using 3D (concrete and virtual) models as aids for teaching students to translate between multiple 2D diagrams. In 2 experiments, students translated between different diagrams of molecules and received verbal feedback in 1 of the following 3…

Anson County School District wished to determine the relationship between Fast ForWord Scientific Learning data and North Carolina End of Grade reading scores at Anson Middle School in Anson County, North Carolina. The specific research questions that guided this study include: 1. How does the literacy intervention, Fast ForWord, affect EOG growth…

Developing a sense of community among students is one of the three pillars of an overall reform effort to increase participation in physics, and the sciences more broadly, at Florida International University. The emergence of a research and learning community, embedded within a course reform effort, has contributed to increased recruitment and…

Primary literature is essential for scientific communication and is commonly utilized in undergraduate biology education. Despite this, there is often little time spent "training" our students how to critically analyze a paper. To address this, we introduced a primary literature module in multiple upper-division laboratory courses. In…

In response to the continued reduction in higher education funding at the state and federal levels, educational administrators at both public and private institutions have had to reduce the number of course offerings, resulting in layoffs of those faculty members who do not meet regulated degree requirements for enough courses to retain their…

A semi-quantitative model has been developed to estimate the relative effects of dispersion, dipole-dipole interactions, and H-bonding on the normal boiling points ("T[subscript b]") for a subset of simple organic systems. The model is based upon a statistical analysis using multiple linear regression on a series of straight-chain organic…

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the feasibility of accounting for student performance in advanced high school coursework through the adjustment of high school grade point average (HSGPA) while separating out variables that are independently considered in the admission process, e.g., SAT/ACT scores, community affluence, type of…