Purpose: The importance of teacher leadership in enhancing school outcomes is recognized, but there remains a scarcity of research addressing the conditions for principals to nurture such leadership. This study examined how school contextual factors, i.e. faculty trust and academic emphasis, moderate the impact of principals' distributed…

STEM integration has attracted considerable attention in educational research, yet there has been a dearth of research exploring how STEM integration is perceived and implemented in regular school settings. The purposes of the study were to explore Taiwanese junior secondary teachers' conceptions of STEM integration with regard to their practices,…

Losing contact with nature has become a serious concern in recent years, not only because it depletes children and adolescents' physical health and well-being, but also because it creates apathy towards natural environments. Most past research has developed scales to measure adult's connection with nature (CWN), leaving adolescents' CWN a less…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among homework time, homework frequency, and learning achievements of Taiwanese students. Applying a 2-level hierarchical linear modeling on the TIMSS 2007 and 2011 data, our findings were as follows: (1) Within the context of TIMSS 2007 and 2011 students, the frequency of mathematics…

While inquiry-based pedagogy is expected to prepare students well for their future life and work in the modern world, research indicates that teachers still prefer the more traditional lecture-based teaching practices. To explore better the issues underpinning the adoption of inquiry-based teaching, this study hypothesized that inquiry-based…

This study examined changes of test anxiety under the reform of the examination system in Taiwan. We sampled 46,361 Grade 9 students in Taiwan for 9 consecutive years starting from 2011 to collect data on their test anxiety, cram school attendance frequency, and academic achievement. Students' test anxiety level was compared between three periods:…

Scholars generally agree that financial deprivation negatively affects students' educational outcomes. However, while absolute levels of resources are important, individuals' perceived relative economic wellbeing also shape their educational outcomes. This article asks whether attending school with peers from comparably richer families is related…

Purpose: Given the research gaps identified in a literature review, this study aims to uncover how the intensity of learners' motivational behavior and its predictors vary with grade level. Methodology: A large-scale survey was conducted to examine motivational behavior and its predictors among EFL learners across three education levels and ten…

The study was designed as a linked two-phase investigation, aiming to psychometrically develop and validate a Chinese version of the "Organizational Climate Diagnostic Instrument for Junior High Schools" (OCDI-JH) for use in Taiwan. Through extensive literature reviews, the complex phenomena of school climate were decomposed into a…

The purpose of this study is to investigate students' mental models of the marine environment and to further examine how these models are related to their perceptions of marine problems. One hundred twenty-eight ninth grade students from a large harbor city in southern Taiwan completed a survey including a drawing activity and a set of two-tier…

This research explores current teaching interventions in the development of school food education in urban schools of northern Taiwan, focusing on the relationship between teachers' teaching attitudes, teaching knowledge, and teaching commitments. As the urban schools of northern Taiwan (Taipei, New Taipei City, and Taoyuan City) are all…

This study was conducted to understand the effect of student-, classroom-, and school-level factors on the science performance of 8th-grade Taiwanese students in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2011 by using multilevel analysis. A total of 5,042 students from 153 classrooms of 150 schools participated in the TIMSS…

This study examined the similarities and differences between three distinct Chinese societies (Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China) regarding the contribution of gender and grade level to school violence, the ranking orders of perpetration and victimization behavior, and the correlates of school nonattendance due to violence. A cross-national random…

Virtual reality via mobile-rendered head-mounted displays (MVR) has emerged as a valuable language learning tool. However, research has yet to fully access its effects on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) listening. Therefore, this study investigated the impact of MVR on EFL learners' listening comprehension. Seventy-two seventh graders in…

General strain theory is an established criminological theory. Although the theory has been examined by many, the propositions of mediating effects through negative emotions, lower social control, and criminogenic social learning environment are understudied. In addition, previous studies that touched on these mechanisms were limited to…