China is one of the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters. Chinese students' awareness and understanding about global warming have a significant impact on the future of mankind. This study, as an initial research of this kind in Mainland China, uses clinical interviews to survey 37 grade eight students on their understanding about global…

This article is based on a preliminary action research (AR) study conducted with selected schools in Limpopo. It intends to report on the progress made and research problem identified during the reconnaissance/preliminary study. The aim of this preliminary research is to ascertain whether the findings conform to the main research question of the…

In this paper, we propose computational scientific inquiry (CSI) as an innovative model for learning important scientific knowledge and new practices for "doing" science. This approach involves the use of a "game-like" virtual world for students to experience virtual biological fieldwork in conjunction with using an agent-based…

This study offers curriculum developers, teachers, and science education researchers a fine-grained profile on strengths and weaknesses in specific science domains and topics. The study involved a representative sample of 3844 Norwegian pupils in grade 8. Their responses on 216 TIMSS items in 18 topics from 4 science domains were modelled in a…

The goal of this study was to analyze the science and technology questions with respect to science process skills (SPS) included in the "Transition from Primary to Secondary Education" (TEOG) examination developed for use with 8th-grade students in Turkey. The 12 TEOG exams administered in the course of three academic years from 2014…

Data from the School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey, a nationally representative sample survey of students ages 12 through 18, were used to examine trends in bullying at school. The SCS study is completed every other year. Data from five consecutive surveys are included in this report: school years 2004-05,…

This study examined the dimensionality of morphological knowledge. The performance of 371 seventh- and eighth-graders on seven morphological knowledge tasks was investigated using confirmatory factor analysis. Results suggested that morphological knowledge was best fit by a bifactor model with a general factor of morphological knowledge and seven…

The motivation for this paper is the authors' recent work on several randomized control trials in which they found the primary result, which averaged across subgroups or sites, to be moderated by demographic or site characteristics. They are led to examine a distinction that the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) makes between "confirmatory"…

Questions about the nature and extent of students' active involvement and influence within schools and the wider community prompted this author to investigate ways in which student voice, as one important manifestation of active participation, was translated into action through a "students as researchers" activity. A three-phase…

Bloom's taxonomy for the classification of the objectives in cognitive domain was developed in mid 1950s and this taxonomy was revised by a group with Anderson and Krathwohl by making some changes and revisions. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the objectives of 8th grade English curriculum and TEOG exam questions (national assessment…

To date, there has only been little conceptual change research regarding conceptions about glaciers. This study used the theoretical background of embodied cognition to reconstruct different metaphorical concepts with respect to the structure of a glacier. Applying the Model of Educational Reconstruction, the conceptions of students and scientists…

High-quality professional development is needed to prepare teachers to help students learn how to conduct online academic research and meet Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts. This study created and evaluated a Web-based professional development program with five instructional modules designed to prepare middle-school teachers…

High-quality measures of instructional practice are essential for research and evaluation of innovative instructional policies and programs. However, existing measures have generally proven inadequate because of cost and validity issues. This paper addresses two potential drawbacks of survey self-report measures: variation in teachers'…

Glaciers and ice ages are important topics in teaching geomorphology, earth history, and climate change. As with many geoscience topics, glacier formation, glacier movement, glacial morphology, and ice ages consist of a wide variety of processes and phenomena. Accordingly, it must be decided which of those processes and phenomena should be part of…

The purpose of this study was to examine middle school students' recollections of their participation in a significant number of Sport Education seasons over a period of five years. Thirty-one (18 boys and 13 girls) eighth-grade students (average age at data collection = 13 years) who had all participated in at least 17 Sport Education seasons…