The growth of a STEM-focused economy has intensified the focus on developing kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) students' STEM competencies and on the STEM practices of K-12 STEM teachers. The present study utilised secondary analysis of nationally-representative STEM teacher survey data to examine the ways in which middle grades teachers'…

In this study, methodology and theory were linked to explicate the nature of education practice within schools facing exceptionally challenging circumstances (SFECC) in Trinidad and Tobago. The research design was an iterative quan>QUAL-quan>qual multi-method research programme, consisting of 3 independent projects linked together by overall…

These appendices accompany the report "Final Report of the i3 Impact Study of Making Sense of SCIENCE, 2016-17 through 2017-18." Science education has experienced a significant transition over the last decade, catalyzed by a re-envisioning of what students should know and be able to do in science. That re-envisioning culminated in the…

A mixed-methods study investigated the relationship between teachers within urban Title I elementary schools (e.g., high versus low performing) and their mathematics problem-solving beliefs in six constructs ("perseverance," "procedural," "conceptual," "importance," "effort," and…

Almost half of Tennessee's students are not on grade level in reading and math by the time they complete third grade, and very few of those students achieve proficiency in later grades. To combat this trend and support the skill development and academic achievement of all students, Tennessee has adopted a framework for addressing individual…

Studies of individual environmental education (EE) field trip programs have found that pre-visit preparation and post-visit follow-up activities can enhance desired student outcomes. We examined these relationships across a broad sample of single-day EE field trip programs for adolescent youth (grades 5-8) across the United States. We measured…

Employing achievement goal theory (Ames "Journal of Educational psychology," 84(3), 261-271, 1992), we explored science teachers' instruction and its relation to students' motivation for science learning and school culture. Based on the TARGETS framework (Patrick et al. "The Elementary School Journal," 102(1), 35-58, 2001) and…

High-quality measures of instructional practice are essential for research and evaluation of innovative instructional policies and programs, as well as for providing feedback to teachers and administrators. In this study, the authors examined whether using anchoring vignettes in web-based surveys improved the validity of teachers' self-assessments…

Background: Schools are an important environmental context in children's lives and are part of the complex web of factors that contribute to childhood obesity. Increasingly, attention has been placed on the importance of school climate (connectedness, academic standards, engagement, and student autonomy) as 1 domain of school environment beyond…

This study investigates factors associated with the listening perception of classroom communication by students with hearing loss, based on the students' and their teachers' views. It also examines how students with different degrees of hearing loss may perceive their classmates. To explore the relationships between the factors Structural Equation…

High-quality measures of instructional practice are essential for research and evaluation of innovative instructional policies and programs. However, existing measures have generally proven inadequate because of cost and validity issues. This paper addresses two potential drawbacks of survey self-report measures: variation in teachers'…

The present study describes the characteristics of students in Grades 3-12 with significant cognitive disabilities (SCD) and known hearing loss. The study analyzed results of a survey of teachers of students with SCD (n = 38,367) who were slated to participate in an alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards in 14 states in the…

There is growing consensus that the process of planning mathematics lessons is as complex as teaching them, yet there is limited research on this. This paper reports on one aspect of a project examining issues in primary teachers' mathematics planning. The results, taken from a questionnaire completed by 62 primary teachers, indicate that when…

Main idea and summary are essential elements of reading comprehension. We report results from Grades 4 and 5 student performance on two years of state-mandated standardized reading testing which indicate that students perform statistically significantly lower on main idea and summary questions on the tests than any other question category. In this…

With the changing students' generations and education content as well as modernization of educational technologies, various technical solutions are increasingly used by the teachers to supplement daily classroom activities. One of the novelties introduced in Lithuania in 2013 -- ActivInspire system -- was oriented towards mathematics and science…