By engaging students in everyday issues and events, STEM education can contribute to the development of citizens who are equipped to make the world a better place. However, students' STEM learning with this focus requires teachers to identify age and context appropriate issues. Student investigation of local issues and events can be motivating for…

The disengagement that leads to school dropout may start as early as middle school, but may be interrupted by motivational interventions. One approach is to promote the relevance of content through explanations and demonstrations of the value of this content to students' futures. CareerStart is an intervention that provides teachers prepackaged…

The examination of students' motivation towards lessons is an important aspect of educational studies. The constructivist approach significantly impacts the improvement of students' motivation. The present study aims to examine the use of the 5E learning model with concept maps to support students' motivation and compare the 5E approach and the…

There is increasing urgency to broaden access to inclusive and culturally sustaining K-12 civic education. Civic education can foster young people's development of their civic identity, which can support a functioning American democracy. Civic education often includes opportunities for learners to develop civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions,…

Science teachers in many countries were required to shift from face-to-face (F2F) instruction to distance learning (DL) during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the aim of helping science teachers learn how to support their students in negotiating such shifts in the future, we used an online motivation survey based on achievement goal theory to…

What will happen if students cannot go to school and can rely on online learning? This study aimed to examine whether students' basic learning needs could be met when teaching and learning can only be conducted through online mode. According to Ormrod (2011), the four basic learning needs are arousal, autonomy, relatedness and competence, which…

Learning engagement varies in different modes of instructions. With such consideration, the authors of this article conducted comparative analyses on student learning outcomes measured by their final mean grade point averages (GPAs) during three timeperiods (before, at the onset of, and during pandemic) when inperson, online, and hybrid…

Middle school students' prosocial behavior, classroom engagement, and sense of belonging tend to decline across the school year. This study addressed whether these declines are associated with students' perceptions of their relationship with their teacher and the extent to which their teacher promoted respect among classmates. Self-report surveys…

Research suggests that teachers' and students' engagement in formative assessment contributes to students' writing development by influencing both what and how students learn. However, while research exists on how teachers and students engage in formative assessment in traditional classroom settings, little work has examined the nature of…

While school self-concept is an important facilitator of a student's school engagement, previous studies rarely investigated whether it may also explain the change in students' school engagement during secondary school. Moreover, as social relations play an increasingly important role in adolescence, the current research distinguishes between the…

Despite the racial/ethnic diversity of the United States, a significant difference remains between the standardized achievement scores of White students and Black students, most commonly known as the achievement gap or the opportunity gap. Although it is recognized that the opportunity gap is rooted in structural racism, scholars have examined…

Racially and ethnically diverse populations from minoritized backgrounds are often exposed to research methodologies that amplify structural racism and negate their sociocultural reality. Although cross-cultural validation of measures is considered a requisite step to multigroup comparisons, researchers apply measures validated and standardized in…

Scores from computer-based tests are increasingly used to inform a variety of school- and student-level decisions. An underlying assumption is that the associated scores represent effortful responding by each student with respect to the tasks presented. An innovative method for examining evidence for this assumption involves an examination of item…

Effective social support from teachers, peers, and guardians is a key to promoting students' study wellbeing at school. However, little longitudinal research has examined the implications of distinctive combinations of social support for students' study wellbeing. To address this limitation, we measured multiple dimensions of school-related social…

Big-Fish-Little-Pond-Effect (BFLPE) suggests that students form their own self-concept by comparing their abilities to those of their peers. This study aims to examine how students' gender, socioeconomic status, science achievement, and engagement dimensions (motivational and behavioral engagement) predict students' self-concept in science by…