Clarity of school rules and teachers' use of praise are strategies suggested to facilitate a positive classroom climate. Studies indicate difficulties for teachers to use such approaches in classrooms with higher levels of disruption. To study (1) if student-rated clarity of school rules, use of praise, and classroom climate differ between…

During the past decade, numerous schools in Sweden have implemented education for sustainable development (ESD) as an explicit guiding approach in teaching. In this paper, we investigate the effect of this approach in comparison with that of pupils taught in ordinary schools. Accordingly, we introduce the concept of sustainability consciousness to…

Background: Physical activity and structural differences in the hippocampus have been linked to educational outcome. We investigated whether a curriculum-based physical activity intervention correlates positively with children's academic achievement, psychological well-being, health-related quality of life (HRQoL), fitness, and structural…

The aim of the study is to compare gender patterns of student attitudes toward school, teachers and peers in grade 6 over time. In 1967-68 and in 2003, 1500 pupils responded to the same 40-item questionnaire. A confirmatory factor analysis was applied. In the gender comparison the within-class level was used. The more traditional school factors,…

This paper presents the results of an interview study of 104 12-year old children. The aim was to learn more about how children use the Internet, what they find negative on the Internet and what coping strategies they use. The media debate seems to display consensus regarding what threats the Internet poses to young people. However, this study…

Background: This investigation focuses on student attitudes and looks at school quality from the perspective of affective variables rather than students' knowledge or abilities. The concept of attitude includes ways of feeling, thinking and behaving and maintaining an expression of one's identity within the environment. The analysis focuses on…

The value of using inductive and deductive methods in instructing a mathematical principle and foreign language alphabet are tested with sample groups of sixth and eighth grade students in two separate educational experiments. In both cases, the instructional methods used were--(1) instruction in principle before application to examples, (2)…