Studies analyzing explanations that have been constructed by science students have found that they were generally weak and lack necessary features. The goal of this study was to establish the competencies that one needs to construct a scientific explanation. Scientific explanations can be looked at in three ways, in terms of their function, form…

Though measures of long-term academic performance trends are valuable to education policy analysts and policymakers, they have been hard to come by at the state level, where most education policy is made. Such data are either nonexistent prior to 1990 or are unrepresentative of statewide student populations. A continuous series of state mean SAT…

The Nation's Report Card™ informs the public about the academic achievement of elementary and secondary students in the United States. Report cards communicate the findings of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a continuing and nationally representative measure of achievement in various subjects over time. NAEP collects and…

Using data from two cohorts of Grade 12 students in Toronto, we examined whether the transition to post-secondary education changed between 2006 and 2011, particularly for under-represented groups. We used multilevel, multinomial logistic regressions to examine how the intersections of race and sex affect post-secondary transitions in the two…

This paper asks whether concerns about social problems decline with age. Unconditional growth models (without covariates) revealed a decline over 25 years (age 18 to 43) in concerns about racial discrimination, treatment of Aboriginal Peoples, female job discrimination, unemployment and environmental pollution. Educational attainment was not…

This document provides the technical appendices to the full report entitled: iMentor's College Ready Program Examining Implementation and Impacts for 10th Graders, Dec 2017. The appendices provide the following information: (1) Background Characteristics and Baseline Equivalence; (2) Methods for Calculating iMentor's Effects on Non-Cognitive…

This qualitative design based research study examined the Connected Learning theoretical framework coupled with academic language scaffolds for Long Term English Learners (LTELs) in a secondary public school setting. The participants of this study were students that have been in the United States for more than six years and have yet to be…

We examined how social network (SN) groups contribute to the learning of chemistry. The main goal was to determine whether chemistry learning could occur in the group discourse. The emphasis was on groups of students in the 11th and 12th grades who learn chemistry in preparation for their final external examination. A total of 1118 discourse…

Background: Measuring adolescent perceptions of physical education (PE) activities is necessary in understanding determinants of school PE activity participation. This study assessed reliability and validity of the Physical Education Activities Scale (PEAS), a 41-item visual analog scale measuring high school adolescent perceptions of school PE…

Late in first decade of the 2000s, the closing of pulp and paper mills in the rural northeastern United States contributed to economic decline in the region and to rising concerns about population decline due to out-migration among local emerging adults in search of occupational or educational opportunities. In this context, and drawing on a…

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework for diagnosing teaching difficulties of a science topic in the science classroom. The development of the framework is presented as well as descriptions of the features of the framework. How the framework can be used is also elaborated? Furthermore, there is a detailed indication of an…

This paper reports on the design and implementation of a cybersecurity camp offered as a cybersecurity learning experience to a group of female and male high school students. Students ranged in grade level from freshmen to senior. Student demographics, including any existing pre-requisite knowledge, were unknown to camp designers prior to the…

This brief focuses on 12th grade students who are ready for postsecondary work, but are spending unnecessary time in high school. The brief discusses options for paying for the transition, including K-12 funds reimbursing families for tuition or 12th graders being eligible for Pell.

The study aims to understand psychological processes relevant to learning argumentative writing in high school. Multi-group path analysis was used to explore whether self-efficacy mediates the relationship between writing anxiety and use of self-regulation across students with different goal orientation profiles. A cluster analysis identified…

What is at stake in high school philosophy education, and why? Why is it a good idea to teach philosophy at this level? This essay seeks to address some issues that arose in revising the Ontario grade 12 philosophy curriculum documents, significant insights from philosophy teacher education, and some early results of recent research funded by the…