STEM education has experienced significant growth due to its pivotal role in innovation and economic development. While cognitive factors like prior knowledge are known predictors of STEM success, non-cognitive factors, including attitudes and demographics, also play vital roles. However, there is a notable scarcity of research focusing on the…

The capacity to interrogate data with critical thinking is a strong predictor of statistical literacy (SL). This data interrogation, from the data consumers' perspective, incorporates four complex response skills: "interpreting," "communicating," "evaluating," and "decision-making," and those skills are…

This dissertation uses three empirical papers to examine the relationship between student gender, student's income expectations for the future, and persistence in schooling. First, I use survey data from the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS) to examine how both children's and parent's earnings expectations for students in 12th grade vary by…

The purpose of this study is based on various variables (gender and state of taking private tutoring) to determine differentiation in private tutoring tendencies of 12th grade students and their opinions about private tutoring. Mixed method sequential explanatory design was used in this study. The quantitative study group consists of 717 students…

We aimed to examine high school students' level of mathematics anxiety and use of self-regulatory learning strategies as a function of different variables and to examine the correlation between these variables. The sample consisted of 330 students at 11th and 12th grades from three different high schools in the west of Turkey. We used the Revised…

This study examined whether there were gendered patterns in STEM endorsement choice in the Houston Independent School District (HISD) and how those patterns changed over time, in the wake of a policy change to guidance counseling. The first students required to choose high school endorsements were freshmen in 2014-2015 and graduated high school in…

There are substantial and ongoing concerns in the Australian and international secondary and tertiary education sectors about students' transition from secondary to tertiary mathematics. Of recent concern is the number of students choosing Advanced Mathematics (AM) in the last two years of secondary school. Declining enrolments in AM in secondary…

The role of motivation in chemistry learning has long been explored and has become an exciting research topic worldwide. The aim of this study was to explore whether gender, class and students' anxiety influenced the motivation to learn chemistry among upper-secondary school students in Indonesia. The Chemistry Motivation Questionnaire II and the…

Background: Math anxiety (MA) is a worldwide appearing academic anxiety that can affect student mental health and deter students from math and science-related career choices. Method: Using the Arabic version of the Modified-Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (m-AMAS), the prevalence of MA was investigated in a very large sample of students (N = 10093)…

The fairness and efficacy of the elite stream in general senior secondary education have long been a contentious issue. Based on the longitudinal data of the students who were enrolled in five senior secondary schools in X City in western China in 2017 and 2018, this study examined the effects of elite class streaming in improving student academic…

In this work, it was intended to investigate the exam anxiety of 12th grade students doing and not doing sports in high schools in Düzce. Exams might be a compelling process that creates excitement and stress. All student experiences the impacts of anxiety in different manners during the exam period. Experiencing a level of anxiety affects exam…

An emerging body of research documents a relationship between sleep quantity and delinquency during adolescence. Absent from this line of research, however, is an evaluation of whether the associations between sleep duration and different forms of delinquency vary across periods of adolescence and sex. The current study aimed to address this gap…

Students' attitudes towards Digital Game-Based Learning (DGBL) in developing countries such as Indonesia are rarely investigated despite the fact that digital games are being used in secondary education increasingly. This research aims to explore students' attitudes towards DGBL in chemistry. We used a quantitative study method using a…

The current study expands on previous research on gender differences and similarities in science test scores. Using three different approaches -- differential item functioning, differential distractor functioning, and decision tree analysis -- we examine a high school science assessment administered to 3,849 10th-12th graders, of whom 2,021 are…

Ever since males and females have enrolled in school, differences in their academic performance have been observed. It is generally believed that these differences stem from differences in motivation between the sexes, caused by differences in the developmental patterns of males and females. When viewing education as a whole, there is no denying…