Background: Although there is an increasing recognition of the importance of critical thinking in science education across the world, the relevant research literature is extremely thin. There is an urgent need to generate more empirical evidence. Purpose: We examined two essential issues concerning critical thinking (the relationship between…

In recent years, developing students' knowledge integration of specific topics through effective teaching methods has been a concern in science education. This study explored an alternative teaching method, which aims to help lower secondary school students develop their knowledge structure about buoyancy towards a logically integrated conceptual…

Numerous studies have revealed an alarming prevalence of test anxiety among Chinese junior high school students. Prevention of test anxiety in this population has become crucial. Brief meditation intervention (BMI) has shown promising results for promoting students' well-being and reducing test anxiety, but its mechanism for reducing test anxiety…

Inspired by complex system theory, this study adopts a multilevel piecewise regression model to examine the relationship between homework time and the development of students in different grades using a large-scale testing database in China. The results indicate that the relationship between homework time and students' performance is positive when…

Bullying victimization is a significant public health concern and has been associated with various mental health problems. This study aims to investigate the heterogeneity and transition patterns of bullying victimization among Chinese adolescents, and the influence of interpersonal relationships on the dynamic process of victimization over a…

Based on data from China Education Panel Survey, this article examined the impact of teacher gender on student human capital development at the junior secondary education level. The research findings showed that female teachers were more capable of promoting cognitive and non-cognitive ability development of both girl and boy students than their…

Understanding factors that influence k-12 students' Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) performance is essential to improving their problem-solving ability. Most studies have focused on the relationship between students' psychological factors and STEM performance and have paid little attention to the relationship between…

Homework is a self-regulated activity that constitutes a large proportion of learning time. In mathematics, how long is the optimal homework time for achievement development and how to improve homework time efficiency have long been questions. The study examined how mathematics homework time was related to mathematics achievement among Chinese…

This paper is a lesson study of the instruction of China's Natural Resources (the third unit of eighth-grade geography), and its objective is to examine the efficacy of inquiry-based learning in geography education. In the experimental lesson, we reorganized the teaching content by integrating the learning materials from the four sections of…

Given its negative consequences for children's mental health and academic performance, parental burnout has recently drawn researchers' attention. However, its effects on children's behavior remain unclear. To fill this gap, this study examined the relationship between parental burnout and adolescents' phubbing as well as the mediating roles of…

In the classroom setting, social context and self-systems affect student engagement for school success. Students' perceived goal orientation of their teachers and grit influence their engagement in academic learning. However, adolescents' efforts for academic success related to teachers' goal orientation and grit remains under-researched in the…

Convergent evidence suggests that, for bilingual learners, well-developed morphological awareness in the first or second language may facilitate second language reading comprehension. However, there may be important differences between types of morphological awareness which could affect the degree to which second language reading comprehension is…

Previous studies have indicated a positive association between physical activity (PA) and mathematics achievement. The present study explored the association of PA outside school with math interest using longitudinal data from Kaifeng, a medium-sized city in Central China. A two-tier multilevel logistic model was conducted using 2,132 students'…

Based on Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and the assessment framework of PISA, this study aimed to develop a three-dimensional assessment framework to measure junior high school students' higher order thinking skills in mathematics in China. A total of 28,153 eighth graders from 11 districts and counties in Z city were involved in the…

This article focuses on the role of language ideology in four students' ethnic identity during one stage. I employ Bakhtin's concepts of ideological becoming, and of authoritative and internally persuasive discourse to explore how the student participants are conscious of language and social worlds, including their heritage language and ethnic…