Affective factors such as the achievement emotions are considered critical for students' academic performance in STEM degree programmes and careers. In this study, a reciprocal causation model was tested between two affective factors: enjoyment and anxiety, and organic chemistry course performance. Each variable was measured three times in four…

Science academic achievement is a key construct for examining students' science learning outcomes. While international comparative assessments like TIMSS and PISA have shown high science achievement of Korean middle school students, there is a lack of comprehensive investigation of factors influencing the achievement using domestic data.…

The purpose of this study was to estimate the longitudinal and reciprocal predictive relations between children's social skills, measured by an adaptation of the frequently used Social Skills Rating Scale, and their standardized academic achievement. A large nationally representative sample of elementary school students were assessed at least…

Virtual reality (VR) has a high potential to facilitate education. However, the design of many VR learning applications was criticized for lacking the guidance of explicit and appropriate learning theories. To advance the use of VR in effective instruction, this study proposed a model that extended the cognitive-affective theory of learning with…

Self-efficacy is an affective learning outcome that has been associated with academic performance and retention in STEM. Self-efficacy has been defined as students' beliefs about their ability to complete a given task, and it can be affected by a student's positive or negative experience in a course. In this study, students' chemistry…

This study explores the relationships among Taiwanese high school students' scientific epistemic beliefs (SEBs), conceptions of learning science (COLS), and motivation of learning science. The questionnaire responses from 470 high school students in Taiwan were gathered for analysis to explain these relationships. The structural equation modeling…

Energy literacy is a minimum required capacity for developing a sustainable society that participates in and discusses on energy and environmental (EE) issues. Understanding the energy literacy structure is of significant importance for providing effective energy education to promote people's awareness of EE issues. In this article, an energy…

Curricular coherence is an indication of the alignment of content ideas, the depth at which they are studied, and the sequencing of ideas within and across grade levels and has been identified as an important predictor of student performance. This study examined the contribution of inter-unit coherence on energy to the learning of this concept…

This study investigated changes in reported test-taking motivation from a low-stakes to a high-stakes test and if there are differences in reported test-taking motivation between school classes. A questionnaire including scales assessing reported effort, expectancies, perceived importance, interest, and test anxiety was administered to a sample of…

Numerous studies have attributed gender difference in mathematics achievement to various sociocultural influences. Singapore is a country of higher gender equality as represented in the Global Gender Gap Index and Singaporean girls perform as well or higher than boys in international mathematics assessments. This study develops a conceptual model…

This study used a Chinese-language version of the Index of Science Reading Awareness (ISRA) to investigate metacognitive awareness and the Reading Comprehension of Science Test (RCST) to explore comprehension of science text by Taiwanese students. Structural equation modeling (SEM) results confirmed the validity of the underlying models of…

This study was to analyze the effects of parental educational level (P.EDU), science attitude (ATT), and valuing science (VAL) on science performance after establishing gender invariance in a representative sample of the Taiwanese eighth grade population drawn from the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The…

The present paper aims to discuss how data from international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) can be utilized and combined, even with other existing data sources, in order to monitor educational outcomes and study the effectiveness of educational systems. We consider different purposes of linking data, namely, extending outcomes measures,…

Given the abundance of literature describing the strong relationship between inquiry-based teaching and student achievement, more should be known about the factors impacting science teachers' classroom inquiry implementation. This study utilises the theory of planned behaviour to propose and validate a causal model of inquiry-based teaching…

Informal science learning has been found to have effects on students' science learning. Through the use of secondary data from a national assessment of 7410 middle school students in China, this study explores the relationship among five types of extracurricular science activities, learning interests, academic self-concept, and science…