Drawing, constructing, and explaining a model of a given abstract phenomenon is a challenging task. In this study, students were engaged in the "Project-Based Inquiry Science (PBIS)-Air Quality" learning unit, as part of their chemistry curriculum. The study aim is to determine how well students understand chemistry conceptually after…

Questionnaire scales that are mixed-worded, i.e. include both positively and negatively worded items, often suffer from issues like low reliability and more complex latent structures than intended. Part of the problem might be that some responders fail to respond consistently to the mixed-worded items. We investigated the prevalence and impact of…

"LifeSkills Training" (LST) is a popular drug prevention program shown to be effective at preventing youth substance use. The Middle School Health Survey (MSHS) is a questionnaire that was created by the developers of the LST curriculum to measure changes in knowledge and attitudes about drugs and life skills among youth. Despite the…

This study addressed the cross-cultural validation of the Chinese Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (CMRQ) in a sample of 522 seventh to ninth graders from two public schools in eastern China. Confirmatory factor analyses, item-total correlation analyses, and reliability analyses were conducted to assess the psychometric quality of the CMRQ.…

Although students with stronger executive functions (EFs) tend to do better on math computation (MC) assessments than students with weaker EFs, stressful testing situations may lower or affect their mathematical ability. Rumination is one maladaptive coping strategy that can negatively affect EF processes, but little is known about how it impacts…

To succeed in mathematics middle-years' students must move from additive to multiplicative thinking and from arithmetic calculations to generalised algebraic strategies. If we ask the right questions this progression can be monitored and prompted through fraction tasks. Students' solution strategies for fraction tasks vary from a dependence on…

Research on adults who identify as "tone deaf" suggest that their poor musical self-concept is shaped by a view of themselves as nonsingers even when their perceptual skills and singing ability are not significantly worse than the general population. Many of these adults self-selected out of further participation as children but…

This study examined the peer nominations of 213 children in Kindergarten (90), 3rd grade (58), and 5th grade (65) to examine their perceptions of peers who received pull-out services for unique needs. Using Coie, Dodge, and Coppotelli's [1982. "Dimensions and Types of Social Status: A Cross-age Perspective." "Developmental…

Teachers' perceptions of their school leaders, mainly principals, indirectly influence student achievement; this study attempted to uncover if there is statistically significant relationship in leadership and student achievement. The extent of this influence is analyzed in this study. This quantitative study examined teachers' perceptions of the…

This paper estimates the treatment effect of grade repetitions in French junior high schools, using a value-added test score as outcome and quarter of birth as instrument. With linear two-stage least squares, local average treatment effect is estimated at around 1.6 times the standard deviation of the achievement gain. With non-linear…

Video games are a very common leisure activity among teenagers and the aim of this study is to analyse their relations with cognitive and school performances. This study is part of a broad survey, conducted on 27,000 French teenagers (14.5 years old) in middle school (9th grade). The survey contained both a questionnaire on leisure activities…

This study used a secondary analysis of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2003 and 2013 8th grade mathematics scores to explore relationships between parents' education and their eighth-grade students' mathematics achievement. Information from the NAEP database identified parents' educational level and students' eligibility…

This study explored the relationship between school level and the psychosocial construct of an academic mindset operationalized on the Likert-style Project for "Educational Research That Scales" (PERTS) instrument; widely used in testing academic mindset interventions at the classroom level. Analyses were conducted using existing school…

This report presents further validation evidence for the Student Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (SSWQ). Analyses conducted with a sample of urban middle-school students (Grades 5-8, N = 335) targeted two limitations from previous validation studies: the lack of convergent validity evidence linking responses to the SSWQ with actual school…

The purpose of the study is to investigate if the effects of chewing cinnamon flavored gum can increase mood, feeling and spelling acquisition. 5th grade students (n = 22) at Ilshin elementary school in South Korea served as participants. The same students were required to take 4 spelling tests with 1 given every day over the course of 4 days. For…