Purpose: Students in Turkey have difficulty reaching fluency in English. Affective factors in teaching English are as important as cognitive factors. Perceived self-efficacy, an affective factor, is known to influence learning a second language. This study explores the effects of a university preparatory school's English curriculum on its…

Metacognitive strategies concerning general skills, through which learners manage, direct, regulate and guide their learning. For several decades, researchers have recognized the importance of Metacognitive strategy use for successful English listening comprehension. Most of the previous studies of metacognitive strategies use in China have been…

Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a 20-hour blended learning visual literacy course applied to in-service teachers. For this purpose, we designed the course to train the educators and the instrument to measure the level of visual literacy of participants before and after the intervention. Then, we found the…

Any body of research evolves over time. Previous understandings become more nuanced, ideas are supported or rebuked, and, eventually we arrive at a clearer view of the issue. The research on score comparability across computerized devices is no exception. CCSSO [Council of Chief State School Officers] and the Center for Assessment have published…

Houston Independent School District (HISD) strives to provide an equitable education to all its students. To uphold the district's mission, the Teacher Appraisal and Development System (TADS) was designed with the goal of promoting effective teaching by providing systematic, rigorous feedback on teacher effectiveness in the classroom. Through the…

This Research Brief describes a model developed as an alternative method for making ESOL exit decisions in 2019-2020. Given the cancellation of the 2019-2020 Statewide student assessment, FSA ELA results which are used as one of the two major components for making ESOL exit decisions will not be available, and an alternative method is needed. This…

This paper considers an unavoidable feature of the school environment, class rank. What are the long run effects of a student's ordinal rank in elementary school? Using administrative data from all public school students in Texas, we show that students with a higher third grade academic rank, conditional on achievement and classroom fixed effects,…

English Language Learner (EL) students in the district's two main bilingual programs (Transitional and Dual Language) are instructed in both English and Spanish. The relative amount of instruction in each language depends on both program and grade level. In the Transitional bilingual program, students receive primary language instruction for…

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) has been shown to be a promising approach for improving a range of behavioral health and academic outcomes for youth. This study leveraged data from the scale-up of PBIS and a randomized controlled trial, both conducted in Maryland, to estimate the dollars saved per 100 students as a result of…

This study focused on drawing a picture of the dynamics and educational experiences of U.S. Army junior-enlisted soldiers in the rank of specialist in the RA. Those soldiers are eligible to participate in the U.S. Army's VolEd Program available worldwide. According to Gleiman and Zacharakis (2016): The military relies on continuing professional…

This mixed methods study explores how market-oriented policies, specifically privatization and decentralization of the educational system in Chile have impacted students' academic achievement since the Change in the Constitution in 1980. First, using teachers' interviews I identify variables that influences students' academic achievement and…

Survey respondents use different response styles when they use the categories of the Likert scale differently despite having the same true score on the construct of interest. For example, respondents may be more likely to use the extremes of the response scale independent of their true score. Research already shows that differing response styles…

Half of kindergarten teachers split children into higher and lower ability groups for reading or math. In national data, we predicted kindergarten ability group placement using linear and ordinal logistic regression with classroom fixed effects. In fall, test scores were the best predictors of group placement, but there was bias favoring girls,…

For years Georgia's HOPE Scholarship program provided full tuition scholarships to high achieving students. State budgetary shortfalls reduced its generosity in 2011. Under the new rules, only students meeting more rigorous merit-based criteria would retain the original scholarship covering full tuition, now called Zell Miller, with other students…

Purpose: A team member might exert little effort and exploit teammates' work (free riding), which can discourage their efforts. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether free riding devalues team projects and whether an online assessment system for individual scores (OASIS) system can reduce student perceptions of free riding and its harmful…