This report deals with 7th grade pupils' conceptions of mathematics, its learning and teaching. The report focuses on the identification and comparison of views expressed by pupil groups of different mathematical ability and achievement. The analysis is based on the results of the ability tests, subject tests and a questionnaire conducted among…

This study investigated the validation of Turkish version of the Teacher Communication Behavior Questionnaire (TCBQ) in a cross-study of elementary school science classrooms. The effects of gender and grade level on students' perceptions of their teachers' behaviors were also examined. Questionnaire includes five scales namely challenging,…

Despite the current legislation requiring sex education as part of the school curriculum in Portugal, great obstacles to its implementation remain. Furthermore, sex education is far from being systematically administered. Thus, the main interest in our project was to validate a scale that measures teachers' attitudes towards sex education. There…

The aim of this study was to explore comprehension monitoring and perceived use of reading strategies as factors of reading comprehension. Participants were elementary school students from the fifth to the eighth grade. Error correction and text sensitivity tasks from the Metacomprehension test (Pazzaglia, De Beni, & Cristante, 1994), and the…

Considerable evidence now exists of the problem of boys' underachievement in a wide range of academic subjects, including geography. This paper offers examples of, and suggests tentative solutions to, problems of underachievement based on the findings generated by a research project conducted in an English secondary school. In so doing it raises…

The great majority of children receiving intervention from child welfare and protection services (CWS) in Norway live at home. The purpose of this study was to assess mental health problems among these children. Data stem from a population-based study, the Bergen child study, conducted in 2006. Of a sample consisting of 4,162 children in the fifth…

This study examined the relative contributions of exposure to violence, parental monitoring, and television viewing habits to children's self-reported symptoms of psychological trauma. Children in grades 3-8 in 11 public schools completed an anonymous self-report questionnaire administered during usual school hours. The final sample was comprised…

The present research examines the achievement-related implications of establishing friendships with high-achieving versus low-achieving classmates. Fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-grade students (N = 929) participated. During the fall and spring semesters, the report card grades of children and their friends were obtained and children completed…

The purpose of this investigation was to apply a validated curriculum evaluation instrument, the "Science Curriculum Implementation Questionnaire" (SCIQ), in an educational context in which a science curriculum review had recently been completed and, by so doing, ascertain the accuracy and potential value of the instrument as a…

In 2002 a paper entitled "Writing Church-sponsored Religious Education Textbooks" by Engebretson was published in the "British Journal of Religious Education". This paper reported on and analysed some aspects of the development, by the Catholic Archdiocese in Melbourne, Victoria, of a series of religious education textbooks to…

The purpose of this report is to provide a detailed overview of the development and initial validation of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). The MSLQ is an 81-item, self-report instrument designed to measure college students' motivational orientations and their use of various learning strategies (Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, &…

Pupils transferring to secondary school are positive about science and look forward to practical work. The research reported here explored Y6 and Y7 pupils' perceptions of practical science in school and the world of work. Pupils at both ages saw practical work as a natural and enjoyable consequence of scientific endeavour and of use to society.…

The problem of juvenile delinquency in general and violence among youth in particular has been topping the public agenda in recent years. The phenomenon of violence is widespread among various groups, one of the major arenas being that of the school premises. Kenney and Watson (1989) aptly define violence in schools through the metaphor "the…

The purpose of this study was to monitor the development of teacher personal attribute and school environmental factors at an urban intermediate (years 7 and 8) school in New Zealand as a result of an extended science professional development intervention project. Over a 2-year period, a validated, comprehensive science curriculum delivery…

The purpose of this study was to construct and study the impact of a research-based sequence for teaching the concept of modelling to seventh-grade science students. We identified students' notions of models and the aspects of school science to be addressed regarding the model concept, which were then taken into account when we planned the…