School subjects divided into compulsory and elective courses. Compulsory courses are the basic courses that students must take to graduate, while elective courses give freedom for students. In Turkey, Biology courses taught as compulsory under the required courses in high schools. But, it is also instructed as elective courses called…

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Research for Education series represents a further effort by IEA to capitalize on it's unique datasets, so as to provide powerful information for policymakers and researchers. Each report focuses on a specific topic and is produced by a dedicated team of leading…

The author discusses the theoretical foundations for creative criticism, a term denoting the application of multimodal responses to literature for the construction of meaning. The author develops a theoretical framework from Bakhtin's principles of dialogical interpenetration, internally persuasive discourse, and utterance, as well as Dewey's…

Measurement activities were designed in this study on the basis of authentic professional practices in which linear regression is used, to study considerations of variability by students in Grade 12 (aged 17-18). The question addressed in this article is: In what ways do secondary students consider variability within these measurement activities?…

Generalization has been a major focus of curriculum standards and research efforts in mathematics education. While researchers have documented many productive contexts for generalizing and the generalizations students make, less attention has been given to the processes of generalizing. Moreover, there has been less work done with high school…

This paper is a quasi-experimental investigation into the effectiveness of using analogy in teaching new and unfamiliar physics concepts to students enrolled in a British curriculum school in the United Arab Emirates. The students (N = 34) were randomly assigned to one of two groups: the control group (N = 17) following the traditional teaching…

Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment (CDA) is an alternative assessment which can give a clear picture of pupils' learning process and cognitive structures to education stakeholders so that appropriate instructional strategies can be designed to tailored pupils' needs. Coincide with this function, the Ordered Multiple-Choice (OMC) items were…

National debate over law enforcement in schools has largely overlooked student reporting of violent threats to school resource officer (SROs). This statewide assessment of Virginia high school students (n = 99,358) found that the majority of Black (64%), Hispanic (72%), White (71%), and other racial/ethnic identity (71%) students agreed the SRO…

Providing scientific explanations for natural phenomena is a fundamental aim of science; therefore, scientific explanation has been selected as one of the key practices in science education policy documents around the world. To further elaborate on existing educational frameworks of scientific explanation in K-12, we propose a learning progression…

The aim of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of a questionnaire adapted from Students' Motivation Towards Science Learning questionnaire developed by Tuan and colleagues, to assess motivation to learn science among Namibian Grade 12 students (N = 755). The overall reliability of the scores on the 19-item questionnaire…

Understanding the relationship between energy and temperature can be challenging, but it is crucial to developing an understanding of the underlying mechanism behind climate change. In this article, the authors review the development of a unit that focuses on the relationship between energy, greenhouse gases, aerosols (a suspension of fine solid…

The purpose of this mixed methods case study was threefold: (a) to describe 7th through 12th grade science teachers' efficacy beliefs, perceptions of support, and concerns about using inquiry-based instruction and examine how they are related to one another, (b) to explore how teachers reporting different levels of concerns demonstrate levels of…

Revision is arguably the heart of the writing process, but teachers and students may sidestep the complexities in favor of the quick finish. By surfacing the classroom ecologies and practices involved in supporting student writers, the authors discover revision as a site for the development of agency. To more closely examine what happens in the…

This article considers the ways in which two senior secondary assessment policies that aim to be inclusive are enacted for students from refugee backgrounds. The final years of secondary school in Australia are shaped by high-stakes assessment requirements. Yet there have been policy moves in South Australia to be more inclusive of students by…

Growing class sizes and the rapid advancement of information technology have prompted institutions to implement blended learning in their academic offering. There are few reports in the literature on a holistic assessment of the effectiveness of the instructional design of blended learning courses for large classes. We defined effectiveness from a…