Learning behavior of East Asian students has been debated due to their striking performance on international large-scale assessments. This study was a comparative study using latent class analysis to examine students' perceptions of learning strategies, students' reported learning strategy use, and the relationships between learning strategies and…

Abstract The 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has drawn a substantial amount of attention from science educators and educational policymakers because it marked the first time that PISA assessed students' ability to evaluate and design scientific inquiry using computer-based simulations. We undertook a secondary analysis…

The purposes of this study were to compare the differences in the use of geometry in elementary school mathematics textbooks among Finland, Mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan, and the USA and to investigate the relationships between the design of the textbooks and students' performance on large-scale tests such as TIMSS-4 geometry, TIMSS-8…

This study uses the Taiwan Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 Main Survey and Taiwan PISA 2015 Field Trial survey datasets to investigate how self-evaluated values (i.e. personal and general) and cognitive factors (i.e. self-efficacy and self-concept) of two groups of Taiwanese 15-year-old students separated by 8 years of…

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in Mathematics and Science Study are two highly respected studies of school pupils' academic achievement. English policy-makers have been disappointed with school children's performance on these tests, particularly in comparison to the strong results of young people from East…

This study investigated how the scientific competencies advocated by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) could be improved by using online argumentation. An online argumentation system served as an aid for argumentation instruction and activities among students during the experiment. Seventy-one 10th grade high school…

This study used a Chinese-language version of the Index of Science Reading Awareness to explore the science reading metacognition and comprehension of Taiwanese students. Structural equation modelling results confirmed the underlying model comprised three clusters of metacognitive knowledge: beliefs and confidence in science reading, knowledge of…

Due to the scarcity of cross-cultural comparative studies in exploring students' self-efficacy in science learning, this study attempted to develop a multi-dimensional science learning self-efficacy (SLSE) instrument to measure 316 Singaporean and 303 Taiwanese eighth graders' SLSE and further to examine the differences between the two student…

U.S. students have consistently lagged behind their peers in other nations on international science assessments--a performance increasingly at odds with the challenge of being able to live and compete in a global environment, powered by innovations in science, engineering and technology. A strong foundation in science is clearly critical if…

This paper discusses the contribution of international studies on educational effectiveness in the light of 4 papers presented at the new ICSEI Methodology of Research and Effectiveness (MORE) Network in Barcelona in January 2005 and published in this issue of the journal. A brief historical overview is used to provide a context for these papers…