This study explores the practical effects of lexical and collaborative learning on improving reading comprehension and analytical writing skills among twelfth-grade students in Chinese language classes. A sample of 30 students aged 17 to 19 was selected from a public high school in China. The Chinese Reading Comprehension Skills Test Paper…

In this study, high school physics textbooks published by People's Education Press (PEP) and Educational Science Publishing House (ESP) (a total of 6 books) in China were analyzed via a self-developed scale measuring nature of science (NOS) including three first-level indicators of scientific knowledge, scientific process, and scientific…

Problem solving is considered one of the most critical competencies for life. However, many students may perform well in school yet cannot transfer the skills they learned in school to solve real-world problems, especially in science education. This study discusses the characteristics of the problem from the physics education perspective, based on…

This paper presents a revised learning progression for the energy concept and initial findings on diverse progressions among subgroups of sample students. The revised learning progression describes how students progress towards an understanding of the energy concept along two progress variables identified from previous studies--key ideas about…

Critical thinking is a unifying goal of modern education. While past research has mostly examined the efficacy of a single instructional approach to teaching critical thinking, recent literature has begun discussing mixed teaching approaches. The present study examines three modes of instruction, featuring the direct instruction approach and the…

This study explores how contextual factors affect the instructional reaction of teachers to the changes in the high-stake testing. The results obtained from an investigation of 11 teachers from five senior middle schools show that contextual factors can be categorized into three, namely, traditional exam culture, leadership at district and school…

This study reports findings from an analysis of the 2002 Chinese National Physics Curriculum Guidelines and the alignment between the curriculum guidelines and two most recent provincial-level 12th-grade exit examinations in China. Both curriculum guidelines and test content were represented using two-dimensional matrices (i.e., topic by level of…

This document contains the second volume of the proceedings of the 29th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. Conference papers are centered around the theme of "Learners and Learning Environments." This volume features 43 research reports by presenters with last names beginning between Adl…