The purpose of this predictive correlational study was to determine if a predictive relationship existed between teacher-student rapport, as perceived by students, and biology achievement scores. The Teacher-Student Likert Scale Questionnaire was used to measure students' perceptions of rapport with their science instructor. Students' scores on…

Since 1999 South African learners have participated in various international studies but sadly the learners have continued to perform dismally, which brings to question the quality of their education. Meanwhile, Singaporean students have been among the top achievers in all these competitions. Many comparative studies have been done between…

Homework has been associated with a range of academic and cognitive benefits for secondary students. Research has also revealed that students' homework behaviours can vary with demographic traits. An important factor that may account for some of this variation is the role played by teachers and schools in homework allocation. It is hypothesised…

Based on Foucault's concept of the dispositive, the paper attempts to show how societies and schools have been functioning for some time now by regulating three dispositives: juridical, disciplinary, and security. While the crises of the 1970s shifted the combination of dispositives in education in the West towards security, this shift in the…

The underrepresentation of women in STEM more generally and in physics specifically has been well established (e.g., Hyater-Adams, Fracchiolla, Finkelstein, & Hinko, 2018; Johnson, Ong, Ko, Smith, & Hodari, (2017); Lock & Hazari, 2016), and the field remains challenged by the negative consequences of this underrepresentation. Women's…

Equivalence-based instruction (EBI) has been used to successfully teach college-level concepts in research laboratories, but few studies have examined the results of such instruction on classroom performance. The current study answered a basic question about the ordering of training stimuli as well as an applied question regarding the effects of…

Philosophical debates about chemistry have clarified that the issue of emergence plays a critical role in the epistemology and ontology of chemistry. In this article, it is argued that the issue of emergence has also significant implications for understanding learning difficulties and finding ways of addressing them in chemistry. Particularly, it…

Although physics education research (PER) has improved instructional practices, there are not agreed upon principles for designing effective instructional materials. Here, we illustrate how close comparison of instructional materials could support the development of such principles. Specifically, in discussion sections of a large, introductory…

The spotter test is an assessment that has been used widely to test practical knowledge of anatomy. Traditional spotter formats often focus solely on knowledge recall, in addition to being an onerous marking burden on staff where consistency in marking free text responses can be questioned. First-year optometry students at the University of…

An essential component skill of monitoring and reflection during problem solving is work checking, a process used by experts while solving problems to determine if their solution is achieving the goal. The results of work checking may reveal errors or inconsistencies, indicating a need for iteration. Using think-aloud interviews, the authors…

It is widely recognised that high-stakes assessment can significantly influence what is taught in the classroom. Many argue that high-stakes assessment results in a narrowed curriculum where students learn by rote rather than developing higher cognitive skills. This paper describes a study investigating the various cognitive objectives present…

This study investigated the multiple-choice test of understanding of vectors (TUV), by applying item response theory (IRT). The difficulty, discriminatory, and guessing parameters of the TUV items were fit with the three-parameter logistic model of IRT, using the parscale program. The TUV ability is an ability parameter, here estimated assuming…

Testwiseness is defined as the set of cognitive strategies used by a student that is intended to improve his or her score on a test regardless of the test's subject matter. Questions with elements that may be affected by testwiseness are common in physics assessments, even in those which have been extensively validated and widely used as…

In a recent study, the 30-question Force Concept Inventory (FCI) was theoretically split into two 14-question "half-length" tests (HFCIs) covering the same set of concepts and producing mean scores that can be equated to those of the original FCI. The HFCIs require less administration time and reduce test-retest issues when different…

In this article we present several modifications of the mechanical waves conceptual survey, the most important test to date that has been designed to evaluate university students' understanding of four main topics in mechanical waves: propagation, superposition, reflection, and standing waves. The most significant changes are (i) modification of…