Background: When exposed to evaluative situations, up to 40% of students develop test anxiety, reflected, namely, by extensive worry, intrusive thoughts, and physiological arousal. Though the negative influence of test anxiety on later school performance is well documented, the role of students' initial achievement in the development of later test…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the 3-year trajectory of students' interest in learning physical activity (PA) knowledge during middle school and the effects of gender and prior knowledge on the trajectory. Methods: Using a repeated-measures design, a cohort of 447 sixth-grade students' interest in learning PA knowledge was…

Around the world, programming education is actively promoted by such factors as economic and technical requirements. The use of a robot in programming education could help students understand computer-science concepts more easily. In this study we designed a course in programming a robot for elementary school students and investigated its…

The present study evaluated the extent to which literacy skills (reading fluency, written spelling, and reading comprehension), together with nonverbal reasoning, prior knowledge, and gender, are related to students' online research and comprehension (ORC) performance. The ORC skills of 426 sixth graders were measured using a Finnish adaptation of…

Background: Recent effectiveness studies have investigated the relationship between two dimensions of effectiveness -- namely, quality and equity. Specifically, the question of whether effective schools can also reduce the initial differences in student outcomes attributed to student background factors has been examined. In this context, the…

Ages 10-14 mark a period in which children develop a strong sense of whether science is 'for them,' a time that typically coincides with the start of middle school in the United States and their first exposure to more rigorous science classes and testing. Experiences with science in and out of school can shape children's motivation to choose…

Learners' academic self-concepts and attributions have been widely evidenced to substantially regulate their educational development. Developmentally, they will not only operate in a mutually reinforcing manner. Rather, self-concepts will directly affect learners' outcome attributions in a particular academic setting. Current research in the…

The "Pathway to Academic Success Project" trains teachers to improve the reading and writing abilities of English learners (ELs) who have an intermediate level of English proficiency by incorporating cognitive strategies into reading and writing instruction. This What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) intervention report, part of the WWC's…

The "Pathway to Academic Success Project" trains teachers to improve the reading and writing abilities of English learners (ELs) who have an intermediate level of English proficiency by incorporating cognitive strategies into reading and writing instruction. This What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) intervention report, part of the WWC's…

The "Pathway to Academic Success Project" trains teachers to improve the reading and writing abilities of English learners (ELs) who have an intermediate level of English proficiency by incorporating cognitive strategies into reading and writing instruction. The cognitive strategies include goal setting, tapping prior knowledge, asking…

Modern knowledge-based societies, especially their younger members, have largely lost their bonds to farming. However, learning about agriculture and its interrelations with environmental issues may be facilitated by students' individual interests in agriculture. To date, an adequate instrument to investigate agricultural interests has been…

Because of the Common Core State Standards there is a renewed emphasis on the importance of visual literacies in today's classrooms. Students need prior knowledge before approaching these types of texts. This article describes the results of one 6th-grade language arts class's engagement in pre-reading prior to viewing a theatrical…

Categorization is one of the main mental processes by which perception and conception develop. Nevertheless, categorization receives little attention with the development of critical thinking in Taiwan elementary schools. Thus, the present study investigates the effect that individual differences have on performing categorization tasks.…

This paper surveys the consequences of pupils' participation in the extra-curricular environmental education (EE) programme Club P.A.N. (Peoples, Animals and Nature) by monitoring changes in their respective knowledge as well as in their environmental attitudes. The programme was conducted in Côte d'Ivoire in West Africa with the help of the local…

Independently learning from informative texts becomes increasingly important from the age of 11. Little information is available, however, on (a) how and to what extent late elementary education students already apply specific text-learning strategies, and (b) whether different learner profiles can already be distinguished. In this study, a…