Grades are the universal tool for measuring students' performance at school. However, other competency-based evaluation methods have shown to have a stronger impact on the learning quality. We investigated how different methods are collectively represented and discursively constructed among students at an Italian high school class. Thematic…

Self-assessment, in the education framework, is a methodology that motivates students to play an active role in reviewing their performance. It is defined as "the evaluation or judgment of 'the worth' of one's performance and the identification of one's strengths and weaknesses with a view to improving one's learning outcomes". The goal…

National assessments can be used to explore the strictness of teachers in grading students by comparing student grades to their scores on standardised tests. Several factors influence teacher-given grades, including student gender, school type, geographical regions, and socioeconomic status. In this paper, we used data from the Italian institute…

In this study, the positive aspects that active participation in the Erasmus+ project "Different but together" has on students are highlighted. In the project initiated and coordinated by the Technological High School "Gheorghe Sincai" from Târgu Mure? (Romania), high schools from Italy, Greece, the Czech Republic and Turkey…

Assessing student mathematical knowledge is an important factor in the mathematics learning process because students obtain important feedback to improve their knowledge and learning. Despite the importance of student assessment, several researchers have shown that student grades comprise noncognitive and metacognitive factors and teachers'…

In this work, we explore the use of digital technologies and statistical analysis to monitor how Italian secondary school students' writing changes over time and how comparisons can be made across different high school types. We analyzed more than 2,000 exam essays written by Italian high school students over 13 years and in five different school…

Meaning-making in teaching-learning mathematical processes is a relevant issue analysed through different philosophical and educational frames. In particular, the use of digital tools in mathematics education affects the meaning-making processes. This paper discusses meaning-making from a phenomenological standpoint, in which interpretative…

The Corona Virus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has upset the students' daily routine, forcing them at first into a sudden transition to distance learning and then to a return to school modelled on the basis of infection containment measures. The present research involved 157 students from schools in central Italy with a mean age of 13.58…

Many studies have found that males, on average, perform better than females in mathematics, although the size of this gender gap is small and varies considerably across countries. Stereotype threat has been proposed as a principal cause of this gender gap. From this perspective, females' performance is affected by fear of confirming a negative…

Students' ability to assess their own knowledge is an important skill in science education. However, students often overestimate their actual performances. In such cases, overconfidence bias arises. Previous studies in physics education have shown that overconfidence bias concerns mainly content areas, such as Newtonian mechanics, where…

Youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) is a theoretical-methodological approach that has been designed to promote positive development (e.g., well-being and health, social-emotional and cognitive development, academic or career advancement) and civic engagement among young people. Although YPAR holds particular promise, there has been…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Astronomy Education Research.] In this paper we discuss the design and development of a learning progression (LP) to describe and interpret students' understanding about stellar structure and evolution (SSE). The LP is built upon three content dimensions: "hydrostatic equilibrium";…

The Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) is an international, non-profit educational organization. The Association's purpose is to advance the knowledge, theory, and quality of teaching and learning at all levels with information technology. The "EdMedia + Innovate Learning" conference took place in New York,…

The problem of taking a data set and separating it into subgroups, where the members of each subgroup are more similar to each other than they are to members outside the subgroup, has been extensively studied in science and mathematics education research. Student responses to written questions and multiple-choice tests have been characterised and…

The purpose of this multistudy report was to adapt the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale (BPNSFS) to the Italian context. Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, we investigated the dimensionality, reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity of the instrument in a sample of 544 participants (males = 41%) from 16…