As result of several federal policies over the last few decades, accountability measures for student learning and success have increased tremendously. Therefore, many school districts, including East Tennessee School District which was the subject of this study, implemented district-wide benchmark testing such as the Collaborative Assessment…

Achievement in a course mostly depends on the students' characteristics and how teachers make their courses effective for their students' learning. Although different characteristics of teachers and students can affect learning outcomes, new approaches like STEM may cause new characteristics which affect students' achievement as STEM attitudes.…

Using the 2018 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) datasets for geography, we explore relationships between geography achievement in the eighth grade and contextual variables related to the content and organization of the geography/social studies curriculum. Differences in student achievement are associated with grade-level…

Student academic success is key to education. The problem was not all middle school students, grades 6-8, across southeastern South Carolina were performing at a level of academic readiness for the next grade level. The study filled gaps in the literature by examining participants' perceptions of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics…

Aspirations and expectations are conceptually and empirically different. Given their differential impact on various educational outcomes, it is expected that they, and consequently their convergence, would be affected by different factors. This study examines the factors leading to high aspirations, high expectations and to their alignment by…

Background: Computational thinking is derived from arguments that the underlying practices in computer science augment problem-solving. Most studies investigated computational thinking development as a function of learners' factors, instructional strategies and learning environment. However, the influence of the wider community such as educational…

This qualitative dissertation aimed to understand if an after-school kinesiology service-learning program changed the relationship between a large Research I institution and a local public school. Eight 7th- and 8th-grade students, three classroom teachers, and one administrator participated. Data collection methods included semistructured…

The importance of family background in determining a student's academic achievement has long been acknowledged by researchers. Nonetheless, the effect of schooling on this relationship has also been widely investigated. Some studies have shown that family background plays a far stronger role while the effect of schooling is minimal; others have…

The problem of practice being explored in this work was first identified at a suburban middle school in Massachusetts, where the assessment scores of students with learning disabilities were significantly lower than those of peers not on Individualized Education Plans. The collaboration between general education science teachers and special…

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an unanticipated, near-universal shift from in-person to virtual instruction in the spring of 2020. During the 2020-21 school year, schools began to reopen, and families were faced with decisions regarding the instructional mode for their children. We leverage administrative, survey, and virtual-learning data to…

As more states move to universal computer-based assessments, an emergent issue concerns the effect that device type might have on student results. Although, several research studies have explored device effects, most of these studies focused on the differences between tablets and desktops/laptops. In the current study, we distinguish between…

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of 'Pressure', which is taught by supporting scientific stories, on the academic achievement, attitude and motivation of 8th grade students. In this study, which aims to investigate the effects of scientific stories on student achievement, motivation and attitudes in science education, a…

Prior research has found that financial investments in North Carolina's early childhood education programs--Smart Start and NC Pre-K--generated positive effects on student achievement in reading and mathematics through eighth grade (Bai et al., 2020). The current study examined if these effects were moderated by two dimensions of educational…

Academic burnout is a serious problem associated with long-term adaptation and falling off the educational track. The current study aimed to examine burnout at two time-points and its associations with cognitive emotion regulation strategies (CERS) frequently used by adolescents ("refocus on planning," "positive refocusing,"…

This study investigated the relationship among academic achievement, academic emotions, and resilience of grade eight students in Guiyang, China. Via a convenience sampling approach, 172 students (45.9% female) were recruited in this study. Students' academic emotions and resilience were measured respectively by using the adolescent academic…