The aim of the current study was to obtain information from students in higher education on different motivational profiles that resulted from the combination of three academic goals (i.e. learning goals (LG), performance-approach goals and performance-avoidance goals). Moreover, information related to the relevance of each goal within each…

This paper investigates the role of the higher education system (HES) in the production of national innovation. We focus on the issue of institutional diversity of HESs and its impact on national innovation systems. We identify four key HES characteristics and hypothesize their influence on the production of national innovation. The empirical…

This work describes a single-session laboratory experiment devoted to teaching the principles of factorial experimental design. Students undertook the rational optimization of a luminol oxidation reaction, using a two-level experiment that aimed to create a long-lasting bright emission. During the session students used only simple glassware and…

This paper examines the contribution of quality mathematics teaching to student achievement gains. Quality of mathematics teaching is assessed through teacher demonstration of the five strands of mathematical proficiency, the level of cognitive task demands, and teacher mathematical knowledge. Data is based on 1907 grade 6 students who sat for the…

As schools aim to raise student academic achievement levels and districts wrangle with decreased funding, it is essential to understand the relationship between learning time and academic achievement. Using regression analysis and a data set drawn from California's elementary school sites, we find a statistically significant and positive…

Typically, English language proficiency tests yield multiple scores--usually for each of the four traditional language domains. In order to maximize the usefulness of test scores, they may need to be accompanied by information concerning how they complement one another. Using self-assessments by some 2300 TOEIC test takers, this study aimed to…

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of several factors beyond the professor's control and their unique impact on Student Teaching Evaluations (STEs). The present research pulls together a substantial amount of data to statistically analyze several academic historical legends about just how vulnerable STEs are to the…

Social capital is of particular value for the acquisition of education. Not only does it prevent scholars from dropping out but it improves the educational achievement. The paper focuses on access to social resources by traditional and non-traditional students at a German university and asks if there are group differences considering this…

There is a growing concern about the lack of political interest and engagement among Western youth. This has led to a revival of political socialization studies. One recent finding is that (late) adolescence is key to understanding the development of interest for politics. This study builds on this finding by examining political interest among…

The use of fixed (FE) and random effects (RE) in two-level hierarchical linear regression is discussed in the context of education research. We compare the robustness of FE models with the modelling flexibility and potential efficiency of those from RE models. We argue that the two should be seen as complementary approaches. We then compare both…

The introduction of a new standards-based secondary school assessment system, the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), necessitated significant changes to the admissions processes for New Zealand universities, particularly for competitive-entry programmes such as medicine, engineering and pharmacy. Selection to such programmes…

This article examines possible causal linkages between moral neutralization--a generic term for the related concepts of neutralization techniques, moral disengagement, and self-serving cognitive distortions--and aggressive behavior by using a set of repeated measures in a culturally diverse urban sample at ages 11.4 and 13.7 (N = 1,032). First,…

Although about 40% of high school graduates who take the ACT® test express interest in pursuing a career in a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field, the percentage of first-year students in college who declare a STEM major is substantially lower. The pool of prospective STEM workers shrinks further as the majority of STEM…

This paper explores the annotation and classification of students' revision behaviors in argumentative writing. A sentence-level revision schema is proposed to capture why and how students make revisions. Based on the proposed schema, a small corpus of student essays and revisions was annotated. Studies show that manual annotation is reliable with…

Almost from the start of the public schools system in America, students have been leaving school without high school diplomas. However, the dropout issue did not rise to the level of significance it has today until the early 1980s, when social pressures, along with business leaders, leveraged their influence on educators to address the dropout…