STEM--science, technology, engineering, and mathematics--has become a fixture of the education debate, and much effort already has been put toward improving student performance. Yet troubling statistics persist: On the latest round of testing for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 40 percent of fourth graders nationwide…

There is international concern over persistent low rates of participation in postcompulsory science--especially the physical sciences--within which there is a notable underrepresentation of girls/women. This paper draws on data collected from a survey of more than 9,000 10/11-year-old pupils and 170 interviews (with 92 children and 78 parents)…

The use of assessment methods is a widely discussed topic in education. Exams that are commonly used, however, may not necessarily assess student understanding at a high cognitive level. By implementing alternative assessment methods, instructors can influence student learning. Portfolio-based assessment (PBA) is a purposeful collection of student…

Intense focus on student achievement results in mathematics and science has brought about claims that K-12 teachers should be better prepared to teach basic concepts in these disciplines. The focus on teachers' mathematics and science content knowledge has been met by efforts to increase teacher knowledge through funded national initiatives…

Ambiguity remains as to whether contemporary levels of racial segregation in and outside of the U.S. South are a serious problem. This article subsequently examines the math and science test-scores of 3rd-graders that participated in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. Test-score performances are estimated using multilevel statistical methods…

Educators and policymakers have set a goal that all students graduate from high school ready for college and careers. A substantial body of research supports the idea that the path to college and career readiness begins well before middle and high school. In an earlier policy report, ACT examined the percentage of academically far off track…

Assessments of U.S. students typically reveal stronger performance in science than mathematics yet their science performance remains uninspiring at best. Whether the metric considered is an international benchmark from TIMSS or PISA or the nation's NAEP report card, the mediocre portrait of U.S. science achievement has remained virtually unchanged…

Growing Science, Technology, Education, and Mathematics (STEM) talent Washington MESA--Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement--helps under-represented community college students excel in school and ultimately earn STEM bachelor's degrees. MESA has two key programs: one for K-12 students, and the other for community and technical college…

The aim of this study is to investigate the grades 4 to 8 students' attitudes towards science under the "liking school", "independent investigator" and "what I really think of science" titles. The affect of gender, grade level and science achievement on students' attitudes was analysed in "liking school",…

This work presents the evaluation and refinement of a chemistry attitude measure, Attitude toward the Subject of Chemistry Inventory (ASCI), for college students. The original 20-item and revised 8-item versions of ASCI (V1 and V2) were administered to different samples. The evaluation for ASCI had two main foci: reliability and validity. This…

This study compared the educational effects of computer simulations developed in a hyper-realistic virtual environment with the educational effects of either traditional schematic simulations or a traditional optics laboratory. The virtual environment was constructed on the basis of Java applets complemented with a photorealistic visual output.…

An examination of gender, social class and ethnicity performance and participation patterns in different UK countries shows that inequities occur in relation to gender, class and ethnicity but that the patterns of inequity look quite different in the three domains. Achievement is equal for different genders but many more males take mathematics…

Research showed that children's school-entry academic skills are strong predictors of their later achievement, thereby highlighting the importance of children's achievement at kindergarten entry. This article defines a particular type of parental involvement in children's education and uses a representative sample of American urban kindergarteners…

"Stereotype threat is being at risk of confirming, as a self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one's group" (C. M. Steele & Aronson, 1995, p. 797). A stereotype threat effect then is described as the detrimental impact on a person's performance or achievement measurements when they are placed in a stereotype threat environment. For…

The 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment focussed on students' scientific competencies, measured their knowledge and provided questionnaires focussed on different aspects of life. One aspect was students' experience with information and communication technology (ICT). A secondary analysis of variance of the Czech Republic data (N =…