The goal of the study was to compare how visual representations were integrated into the contents of the U.S. and Turkish textbooks used in life science. Data was collected from 6th, 7th, and 8th grade middle school topics common to both countries. Content analysis was used to analyse visual representations in textbooks. The visual representations…

As a condition of receiving federal funds, the Every Student Succeeds Act requires state education agencies to implement statewide assessments in mathematics and English language arts every year in third through eighth grade and once in ninth through 12th grade. The federal law also requires a science assessment once in each of three grade spans:…

As the largest international study ever taken in history, the Trend in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) has been held as a benchmark to measure U.S. student performance in the global context. In-depth analyses of the TIMSS project are conducted in this study to examine key issues of the comparative investigation: (1) item flaws in mathematics…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the implementation of a whole school one-to-one iPod Touch project in a middle school in the southeastern United States. While some focused studies have been undertaken in this new field of learning, there has been little research to date that documents activity within a whole school implementation…

This book contains a compilation of papers presented at the International Conference on Education and New Developments (END 2017), organized by the World Institute for Advanced Research and Science (W.I.A.R.S.). Education, in our contemporary world, is a right since we are born. Every experience has a formative effect on the constitution of the…

A self-report assessment scale of school connectedness was validated in this study based on the data from middle-school children in a northeastern state of the United States (n = 145). The scale was based on the School Bonding Model (Morita, 1991), which was derived reductively from the social control (bond) theory (Hirschi, 1969). This validation…

This article provides an extended, comprehensive example of how teachers, schools, districts, and external factors (e.g., parental pressure and policy mandates) shape curriculum research in the U.S. It retrospectively examines how three different middle school curriculum units were implemented and scaled-up in a large, diverse school system. The…

Quantitative literacy involves a set of skills necessary to reason about data. Such skills are imperative in our increasingly data-oriented world. Despite the importance of such skills, assessment of quantitative literacy has not been a focus in education and there is a lack of assessment tools that specifically address these skills. This study…

This study was designed to investigate the validity of four different aloud reading comprehension assessment measures: Maze, comprehension questions, Maze accurate response rate (MARR), and reading comprehension rate (RCR). The criterion measures used in this study were the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement (WJ-III ACH) Broad Reading…

"If someone were traveling to our area for the first time during this time of year, what would you tell them to bring to wear? Why?" This question was used to engage students in a guided-inquiry unit about how climate differs from weather. In this lesson, students explored local and national data sets to give "travelers" advice…

Worldwide, the interest of policy-makers in participating in studies from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) has been growing rapidly over the past two decades. These studies offer the opportunity to relate the teaching and…

This study examined whether or not an approved change to Kentucky's subgroup size increased the exclusion of the disabilities subgroup from middle grade AYP calculations, the influence poverty and disability have on these subgroups' inclusion in middle grade level AYP calculations, and the accuracy of middle grade AYP status determinations based…

This study explored the development of meta-cognitive knowledge and control, the relationship between the two constructs, the types of strategy knowledge Chinese students consider valuable and comparisons with US children's knowledge of strategies at the third-grade level. One hundred and twenty students were randomly sampled from third-, fifth-…

This study is examining student eligibility for and participation in alternate assessments, the technical quality of the alternate assessment instruments and implementation procedures, the alignment of assessments with content and achievement standards, and the use and effectiveness of alternate assessments in measuring student outcomes. The…

There is a lack of implementation of instructional strategies to assist middle school teachers in improving mathematics education for their students. Coaching is one solution to this problem, but its impact on student achievement is unclear. This case study evaluated the relationship between coaching and teacher efficacy and the impact of these…