The paper explores the relationship of the global and the local assessment discourses as expressed by Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test items and school-based examinations, respectively. To this end, the paper compares PISA test items related to living systems and the context of life, health, and environment, with Greek…

This study is an evaluative analysis of 13 Music Education programs in Colombia that provide training for secondary school music teachers for 6th to 11th grade in the Colombian education system. The study utilized an analysis matrix from the International Research Project ALFA II-0448-A, which developed a similar study with Latin American and…

Historical thinking is an integral part of understanding and doing history, as well as a good example of the kind of critical thinking necessary in today's society. This study, conducted in two phases, investigated ways in which students are brought to this higher level of thinking in the social studies classroom. Data collection occurred…

This article is concerned with "commonsense science knowledge", the informally gained knowledge of the natural world that students possess prior to formal instruction in a scientific discipline. Although commonsense science has been the focus of substantial study for more than two decades, there are still profound disagreements about its nature…

We examine how extended engagement in argumentation with peers leads to enhanced metalevel understanding of argumentive discourse. Following such engagement, young adolescents demonstrated enhanced understanding of counterargument and use of evidence as objectives of skilled argumentation, relative to a nonparticipating comparison group. Among the…

The present study explores the differences in students' epistemological beliefs by gender and socio-economic status (SES). The Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire (Conley, Pintrich, Vekiri, & Harrison, 2004) was adapted and administered to 1230 seventh grade students. The multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed differences in…

There is a gap in academic achievement, as evidenced on standardized tests, between European American, Latino American, and African American students in the United States. In 2011, the United States average scale scores for 8th grade students on the NAEP mathematics assessment for European American, Latino American, and African American students…

In this article, we explore how we live among students and teachers as a/r/tographers and how we become creatively immersed in the wholeness of the classroom experience as a result. This is in contrast to our initial intentions of using ethnographic techniques and qualitative methods. As we began our project, it became apparent that another lens…

The present study explored how seventh graders develop their understanding of climate change issues. Particularly, I focused on identifying students' ways of reasoning in evaluating and generating arguments. I also investigated whether students reason differently about climate change issues depending on the relevance of the issues to their daily…

This research provides an analysis of the relationship between a student's beliefs and mathematical behaviors over a seventeen-year period. Romina, the student of focus in this case study, was among the original participants in a longitudinal study which explored how students build mathematical ideas when working collaboratively on problem-solving…

The research questions addressed in this study were: what types of epistemological beliefs do elementary students have; what types of metacognition do elementary students have; and what are the relationships among students' perceived characteristics of constructivist learning environment, metacognition, and epistemological beliefs. A total of 626…

This was a qualitative case study that compared data across six district-level literacy coaches' epistemological and ontological beliefs about how to teach reading. All six coaches were working as a cohort of literacy coaches on the development and implementation of a secondary reading intervention program for seventh-grade struggling readers.…

This study seeks to establish the relevance of middle school students' naive beliefs about knowledge and learning in science to their achievement motivation in this domain. A predominantly Hispanic and lower-income sample of 459 middle school students (sixth through eighth grades) completed measures of epistemic beliefs along with several measures…

Depression commonly co-occurs with anxiety and externalizing problems. Etiological factors from a central cognitive theory of depression, the Hopelessness Theory (Abramson et al. "Psychological Review," 96, 358-372, 1989), were examined to evaluate whether a negative inferential style about cause, consequence, and self interacted with stressors…

Much research has been done and reform is suggested relating to teachers' implementation of student-oriented learning environments, yet research on the role, beliefs, pedagogy, and knowledge of teachers simultaneously in classroom environments has been minimal (Kyle, 1994, "Journal of Research in Science Teaching", 31, 785-786). This…