As long as students use Web 2.0 tools extensively for social purposes, there is an opportunity to improve students' engagement in Higher Education by using these tools for academic purposes under a Personal Learning Environment approach (PLE 2.0). The success of these attempts depends upon the reactions and acceptance of users towards e-learning…

Early detection of loneliness in children, especially children with special needs who are at greater risk for loneliness, is crucial for planning appropriate interventions. A review of studies regarding the assessment of loneliness in children reveals the Children's Loneliness Scale (CLS) is commonly used in other cultures whereas information…

Chemical representations play an important role in helping learners to understand chemical contents. Thus, dealing with chemical representations is a necessity for learning chemistry, but at the same time, it presents a great challenge to learners. Due to this great challenge, it is not surprising that numerous national and international studies…

This study attempted to develop valid and reliable Capstone Project Attitude Scales (CPAS). Among the scales reviewed, the Modified Fennema-Shermann Mathematics Attitude Scales was adapted in the construction of the CPAS. Usefulness, Confidence, and Gender View were the three subscales of the CPAS. Four hundred sixty-three students answered the…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was twofold: first, to optimize the Environmental Attitudes Inventory (EAI) and second, to establish a baseline of the difference in environmental attitudes between first and final year students, taken at the start of a university's declaration of commitment to EfS. Design/methodology/approach: The…

Social-emotional health influences youth developmental trajectories and there is growing interest among educators to measure the social-emotional health of the students they serve. This study replicated the psychometric characteristics of the Social Emotional Health Survey (SEHS) with a diverse sample of high school students (Grades 9-12; N =…

Research in rural and remote schools and communities of Queensland resulted in the development and validation of the Rural and Remote Teaching, Working, Living and Learning Environment Survey (RRTWLLES). Samples of 252 teachers and 191 community members were used to validate the structure of this questionnaire. It was developed within the standard…

For decades, standardized reading comprehension tests have consisted of a series of passages and associated multiple-choice questions. Although widely used in and out of the classroom, there continues to be considerable disagreement regarding how or whether such tests have net value in the service of advancing educational progress in reading. This…

Early comprehension is an important, but not well-understood, contribution to early literacy and language development. Specifically, research regarding the nature of skills representative of early comprehension, including how they contribute to later reading success, is needed to support best practices to adequately prepare students. This article…

The aim of this article is to examine teachers' constructions of the literacy competence levels of multilingual students. The study is based on a Latour-inspired theoretical understanding of standardised literacy testing as a social practice, and focuses on teachers' perceptions of and practices concerning compulsory national standardised literacy…

Accurately measuring levels of technology proficiency in current and future classroom teachers are an important first step toward enhancing comfort level and confidence in integrating technology into the educational environment. The original Technology Proficiency Self-Assessment (TPSA) survey has maintained respectable psychometric properties for…

This article describes the development and validation of two forms of the Geometry Assessments for Secondary Teachers (GAST), which were designed to assess teachers' knowledge for teaching geometry. Both forms were developed by teams of mathematicians, mathematics educators, psychometricians, and secondary classroom geometry teachers. Predictive…

Two quasi-experimental field studies (N = 419; 248) tested the effects of an outdoor environmental education program based in local Protected Natural Areas (PNAs) on 3rd-to-6th-grade students' proenvironmental attitudes and behaviors. Results show the program increases children's place attachment, proenvironmental attitudes, ethics and…

Seven final year cohorts of Finnish pre-service primary teachers (N = 384) were given an exit survey, which measured their estimated attainment of knowledge and experience in the 10 domains of professional activity considered critical for new teachers in the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) standards. The results…

Although problem-based learning (PBL) has been widely used in medical schools, few studies have attended to the assessment of PBL processes using validated instruments. This study examined reliability and validity for an instrument assessing PBL performance in four domains: Problem Solving, Use of Information, Group Process, and Professionalism.…