In 2009 the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture assigned the National Board of Education with the task of carrying out a nationwide evaluation of all seven cross-curricular themes. The evaluation is one of the largest education evaluation projects the National Board of Finland has ever organised. The present authors were invited to evaluate…

Prompting students to construct multiple solutions for modelling problems with vague conditions has been found to be an effective way to improve students' performance on interest-oriented measures. In the current study, we investigated the influence of this teaching element on students' performance. To assess the impact of prompting multiple…

This study reports on the construction of a questionnaire to assess ninth-grade students' use of self-regulated strategies for school writing tasks. Exploratory and confirmatory factorial analyses were conducted to validate the factor structure of the instrument. The initial factor analytic stage (n = 296) revealed a 13-factor scale, accounting…

Research in the sociology of education argues that the educational system provides different learning opportunities for students with different socioeconomic backgrounds and that this circumstance makes the educational process an important institutional context for the reproduction of educational inequality. Using combined survey and register data…

The aim of this study is to examine Finnish ninth graders' attitudes towards the consequences of climate change, their views on climate change mitigation and the impact of a set of selected predictors on their willingness to act in climate change mitigation. Students (N = 549) from 11 secondary schools participated in the questionnaire-based…

Recognizing the importance of formative assessment, this mixed-methods study investigates how four teachers and 100 students respond to the new emphasis on formative assessment in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing classes in Norway. While previous studies have examined formative assessment in oral classroom interactions and focused on…

People around the world differ in race, language, religion, gender, and social and economic traits. Peace and calmness in the world can be created by teaching the value of "tolerance" to all people. In this age, war, violence and terror occur frequently. Thus, it was particularly important that the United Nations Educational, Scientific…

The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of an expectancy-value-based questionnaire measuring five aspects of test-taking motivation (effort, expectancies, importance, interest, and test anxiety). The questionnaire was distributed to a sample of Swedish Grade 9 students taking a low-stakes (n = 1,047) or a high-stakes (n =…

This study sought to develop a short version of the ADSI, and investigate its psychometric properties. Methods: This is a secondary analysis. Analysis to determine the Cronbach's Alpha, correlations to determine concurrent criterion validity and known instrument validity and a logistic regression to determine predictive validity were conducted.…

In explaining academic achievement, school climate and social belonging (connectedness, identification) emerge as important variables. However, both constructs are rarely explored in one model. In the current study, a social psychological framework based on the social identity perspective (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) is…

This article describes the development and field test of the Sound Concept Inventory Instrument (SCII), designed to measure middle school students' concepts of sound. The instrument was designed based on known students' difficulties in understanding sound and the history of science related to sound and focuses on two main aspects of sound: sound…

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic rise in the number of middle and high school students from Asian countries participating in U.S.-based summer experiences (Perlez & Gao, 2013). Although summer science camps have been shown to improve students' attitudes and interests related to science and science learning (Bhattacharyya, Mead &…

Researchers have been demonstrating interest in doubts regarding religious faith for thirty years. The current study goal was examining differences between three groups of religious male adolescents in Israel, regarding faith identity, doubts in religious faith (past and present), religious behavior, and the connection between them. Three…

This research aimed to investigate second language learners' motivation and learning of English and the ways in which the teachers supported the students' motivation and learning in natural classroom settings. Based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT), questionnaires were developed and data were collected from students and their teachers in twelve…

This study probes students' beliefs about nature of mathematics, difficulty in learning mathematics sourcing from these and their influence on achievement in mathematics. Questionnaire survey on 458, 9th standard students randomly selected from schools of Malappuram district elicited data on nature of school mathematics and difficulty arising out…