The aim of this study was to describe students' perceptions of their psychosocial school environment and to examine the associations between such perceptions and students' perceived school performance. Our analyses were based on data from the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children 2006 study, involving responses by Finnish students from grades 7…

This "Fourth Annual Report Card" marks a new chapter for the Boston Opportunity Agenda. For the first time, the Boston Opportunity Agenda is reporting student outcomes across Boston Public Schools and Catholic and charter schools. This provides a comprehensive baseline view of the education pipeline for the city's K-12 students. The…

Many national reports indicate that more attention needs to be placed on writing and the teaching of writing in schools. The purpose of this quantitative study was to, first, examine the structure of the DWA and, second, to use the scores from the DWA to examine the relationship between ELL status and writing proficiency. Five major research…

The purpose of the quantitative research study was to determine if participation in the Health Sciences and Technology Academy (HSTA) led to significant differences in the math and reading/language arts scores on the West Virginia Educational Standards Test 2 (WESTEST 2), between students who participated in the program compared to students who…

Guided by Green-Demers, Leagult, Pelletier, and Pelletier's (2008) assumption that amotivation (absence of motivation) is a multidimensional construct, we designed this study to investigate the influence of inadequate teacher-to-student social support on amotivation of high-school physical education students. Five hundred and sixty-six ninth…

The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of the meta-cognitive strategies on the academic and gaming achievements. Exploring the effects of those achievements on the social problem solving of students is also of interest. For this purpose, the MMORPG [Massively Multiple Online Role Playing Game] "Gersang" was used. The…

Introduction: In this document we stress the importance of developing in children a structure for advanced numerical-algebraic thinking that can provide an element of control when solving mathematical situations. We analyze pupils' conceptions that induce errors in algebra due to a lack of control in connection with their numerical thinking. We…

Title I, Part A and Title II, Part A funds are provided to Houston Independent School District (HISD) through the 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), also known as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). Both funds focus on enhancing student achievement, Title I, Part A through providing…

The need to address social and economic changes has focused greater attention on our public education system and the need to better equip students with the skills needed for a global society. This quantitative study was grounded in the principles of the constructivist learning theory. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the added…

There is abundant evidence that ninth grade is a critical year for students, particularly those enrolled in large urban school districts. Despite the importance of the freshman year for subsequent academic success, the existence of teacher status systems within schools suggests that ninth graders, who are traditionally viewed by teachers as…

Across the nation, school policymakers are grappling with what to do about the increasing numbers of students who do not advance beyond ninth grade. National estimates put the student attrition rate before tenth grade at between 11 and 33 percent, and only about 70 percent of ninth graders make it to graduation. This policy brief focuses on one…

The purpose of this study was to examine the simple view of reading (SVR) and contributions of verbal proficiency and reading fluency to reading comprehension for fourth-, seventh- and ninth-grade readers (N = 271). The SVR explained a significant proportion of variance in reading comprehension for all grades with decreasing explained variance in…

Current high school Earth Science curricula and textbooks organize scientific content into isolated "units" of knowledge. Within this structure, content is taught, but in the absence of the context of fundamental understandings or the process of how the science was actually done to reach the conclusions. These are two key facets of scientific…

This study examines the determinants of homework motivation and homework effort in six school subjects at three levels: student level, classroom level, and school level. We hypothesized that several factors--including stable personality characteristics such as gender and conscientiousness, students' domain-specific homework motivation, and…

The transition from 8th grade to 9th grade is one that is replete with challenges for students, especially for minority students who live in economically disadvantaged communities. One low-income, high minority comprehensive high school in the western United States implemented five separate strategies to create a freshman transition program to aid…