Background: Fitness testing is a commonly applied learning and teaching practice implemented in both secondary and elementary school physical education (PE). Many teachers believe that by using a variety of different tests, they are able to provide students with feedback regarding their fitness status, and furthermore, increase students'…

It is well-documented that academic achievement is associated with students' self-perceptions of their academic abilities, that is, their academic self-concepts. However, low-achieving students may apply self-protective strategies to maintain a favorable academic self-concept when evaluating their academic abilities. Consequently, the relation…

Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the…

Children explore their environment through experiences and each experience is meaningful in developing their environmental consciousness and identity. On the basis of the drawn landscape experiences, the present qualitative study set out to find out what landscapes the participating students deemed worth conserving. The data consisted of the…

This study followed the development of reading speed, reading accuracy, and spelling in transparent Finnish orthography in children through Grades 2, 3, and 8. We compared 2 groups of children with familial risk for dyslexia--1 group with dyslexia (Dys _FR, n = 35) and 1 group without (NoDys_FR, n = 66) in Grade 2--with a group of children without…

This study explores strategies students use to construct their academic engagement in the social environment of school. The study is based on group interview data collected from 161 sixth (78) and eighth (83) grade students. Students reflected both engaging and disengaging episodes. Data were content analysed. The results show that students…

This article examines religiousness among Finnish 8th and 9th graders. It is explored using the RJT, an instrument developed on the basis of religious judgment theory. The frame of reference processes teenage religiousness and Oser's theory. The research data are based on a survey in which 617 adolescents from four different localities…

The general pedagogical knowledge of teachers is not often investigated in comparison to content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. In this article, a more comprehensive outlook on teachers' skills and knowledge without regard to subject-specific nuances is discussed in relation to classroom management strategies, the organization of…

This paper presents some preliminary results of the longitudinal aspect of a research project on self-confidence and understanding in mathematics. We have collected a survey data of 3057 fifth-graders and seventh-graders and a follow-up data of ten classes (191 pupils) one and a half years later. The longitudinal data indicates that the learning…