This mixed-methods cross-national study investigated the effectiveness of reality pedagogy (an approach in which teachers become part of students' activities, practices and rituals) in terms of changes in student perceptions of their learning environment and attitudes towards science. A questionnaire was administered to 142 students in grades 8-10…

As part of an outreach initiative by the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria, an interdisciplinary educational module was developed to teach students about sustainability through the lens of mineral resources used to produce mobile phones. The overall goal of the module is to provide teachers of different subjects with a multifaceted tool to…

This article reports on a research project which focused on the aspirations and identities of students in an international school. Ten boys and ten girls were interviewed using semi-structured and photo-elicitation interviews. This research indicates convincingly that socio-economic background and international capital are crucial factors framing…

The Senegal Project is the culminating project in a unit on cultural foods in an 8th grade family and consumer sciences (FCS) course. Initially, students take a quick world tour by studying and cooking foods from Mexico, Italy, China, and India followed by a "more depth and less breadth" study of Senegal, a country with a culture vastly…

In educational effectiveness research, it frequently has proven difficult to make credible inferences about cause and effect relations. The article first identifies the main categories of threats to valid causal inference from observational data, and discusses designs and analytic approaches which protect against them. With the use of data from 22…

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's primary purpose is to investigate the ways in which eighth-grade students responded to a story told to them in a history lesson, which was intended to teach them tolerance. The author used a qualitative approach to gather data in this study. First, he researched the literature dealing with the importance of storytelling in education.…

The 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study data from 46 countries showed that, although the national level of teacher quality in the United States was similar to the international average, the opportunity gap in students' access to qualified teachers between students of high and low socioeconomic status (SES) was among the…

The "Evaluation of the National Assessment of Educational Progress: Study Reports" describes the special studies that comprised the design of the evaluation. In the Final Report, the authors presented a practical discussion of the evaluation studies to its primary, intended audience, namely policymakers. On this accompanying CD, readers…

In 2003, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) included a special focus on problem-solving. This report reviews the problem-solving aspects of each study in order to compare and contrast the nature of problem solving in each assessment. The report's authors develop…

In the scientific literature, the debate around the school and class effect is polarized, because the variance between schools and classes is explained either by school and class process or by group composition. The first aim of this article is to shed light on this debate and move beyond it by reviewing qualitative and quantitative studies…

The reciprocal relationship between mathematics achievement and self-concept is examined in this study to expand the existing knowledge to a cross-cultural setting. Based on analyses of educational data two years before and after Hong Kong's sovereignty switch in 1997, this investigation shows a weak reciprocal relationship among the eighth-grade…

For more than 50 years, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has been conducting comparative studies of educational achievement in a number of curriculum areas, including mathematics and science. TIMSS 2011 represents the fifth cycle of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS),…

In the "PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) 2006 Encyclopedia," each participating country, 39 in total, describes its education system and the reading curriculum as it is intended to be taught, and outlines the polices and practices that guide reading instruction and teacher education. This in-depth, qualitative…