Science inquiry has been found to be effective with students from diverse backgrounds and varied academic abilities. This study compared student learning, enjoyment, motivation, perceived understanding, and creativity during a science unit on Models and Designs for 38 sixth grade students (20 male, 18 female; 1 Black, 1 Hispanic and 36 White). The…

What we choose to assess in science is what will end up being the focus of instruction. US science standards once treated content and inquiry as fairly separate strands of science learning, with content standards stating what students should know and inquiry standards stating what they should be able to do. In its content coverage, these standards…

The aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable instrument to assess why physics courses are perceived as one of the most difficult courses among high school students and to investigate the reasons why students have difficulty in learning physics through this scale. This study includes the development and validation studies of the…

Class size reduction policies have been widely implemented around the world in recent years. However, findings about the effects of class size on student achievement have been mixed. This study examines class size effects on fourth-grade mathematics achievement in 14 European countries using data from TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and…

Academic debates addressing the persistent gender gap in science reveal considerable contestation of the relevance and extent of the problem. Particular attention has been given to the question of whether women's high attrition rates should be ascribed to the structural and cultural barriers inherent to the academic system or instead…

The present study examines how the overall cognitive achievements in science of the younger children in a class where the students work in small multi-age groups are influenced by the number of older children in the groups. The context of the study was early-years education. The study has two parts: The first part involved classes attended by…

Curiosity is fundamental to scientific inquiry and pursuance. Parents are important in encouraging children's involvement in science. This longitudinal study examined pathways from parental stimulation of children's curiosity per se to their science acquisition (SA). A latent variable of SA was indicated by the inter-related variables of high…

This study focuses on "high achievement but low motivation" phenomenon that is prevalent in East Asian countries and districts, and uses eighth graders in Taipei that participated in TIMSS 2007 as an example to examine the direct and indirect effects of academic motivation, positive affect, and instruction on science achievement.…

Using all available waves of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) from 1995 to 2011, this study examines the factors influencing educational expectations of students in five Eastern European countries (Hungary, Lithuania, the Russian Federation, Romania, and Slovenia). We consistently find across countries and waves…

This study aims to investigate the impacts of information and communication technology (ICT) use on students' math and science achievements, with a special focus on examining the trends of these relationships over the past decade. Data from all five waves of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) from 2000 to 2012 were used.…

Active-learning approaches to teaching introductory physics have been found to improve student learning and affective gains on short-term outcomes [S. Freeman et al., "Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 111," 8410 (2014)]; however, whether or not the benefits of active learning impact women to the same degree as men has been a point of…

The purposes of this study were (1) to describe the biology learning such as lesson plans, teaching materials, media and worksheets for the tenth grade of High School on the topic of Biodiversity and Basic Classification, Ecosystems and Environment Issues based on local wisdom of Timorese; (2) to analyze the improvement of the environmental…

This study examined the achievement trends of advanced learners and the relationship between Illinois' school district characteristics and student performance using Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) scores. The 3rd grade students scoring in the Exceeds category in ISAT reading and math within 707 Illinois school districts during the…

Historically, AP Potential™ has used PSAT/NMSQT® scores to identify students who are likely to earn a 3 or higher on a specific AP® Exam--based on research showing moderate to strong relationships between PSAT/NMSQT scores and AP Exam scores (Camara & Millsap, 1998; Ewing, Camara & Millsap, 2006; Zhang, Patel & Ewing, 2014a). For most…

In most countries, students' socioeconomic status (SES) is strongly related to their educational achievement: the higher a student's SES, the higher his or her achievement scores, and vice versa. This lack of equity in student outcomes is of great concern to policy makers because educational achievement should not depend on family background. This…