Primary science is important for pupils as individuals and for society: amongst many other reasons, it can help children to understand and reason about themselves and the world, enable them to live healthy lives, and make informed choices. It is important to understand how to best organise, teach and assess primary science. Whilst several reviews…

This study analyzes how students' reported teaching practices of their teachers and their attitudes towards science are related to the science achievements of four high-performing countries/economies in PISA 2015: Hong Kong, China, Canada, and Finland. A study of these regions can shed light on the commonalities of and differences between the…

This open access book presents original research on effective and equitable teacher practice in mathematics and science education across Nordic countries. It focuses on three key aspects of teacher practice: what teachers teach, how teachers teach, and how teachers assess their students. To provide a comprehensive understanding of teacher…

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2018 list top 1,000 universities in the world which represent only 5% of the 20,000 higher education institutions of the world. Out of these world countries, Finnish youth were the best young readers in the world according to results from the Programme for International Student Assessment…

Classrooms with higher teaching quality were associated with higher learning outcomes in mathematics and science. Classrooms where teachers reported high degrees of limitations to teaching in the classroom--including disruptive students or students with language barriers--were associated with lower learning outcomes. These are two of the important…

Since students have lost their interest in school science, several student-centered approaches, such as using topics that are relevant for students, inquiry-based learning, and discussion-based learning have been implemented to attract pupils into science. However, the effect of these approaches was usually measured in small-scale research, and…

Introduction: Evidence has remained scarce whether teaching practices might be linked to students' educational equality. This study investigated (i) whether student-oriented teaching practices are associated with students' learning outcomes in mathematics, and (ii) whether student-oriented teaching might increase equality in learning outcomes…

Using Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2011 eighth-grade international dataset, this study explored the profiles of instructional practices reported by high- and low-performing mathematics teachers across the US, Finland, Korea, and Russia. Concepts of conceptual teaching and procedural teaching were used to frame the…

The aims of this study were to determine low-achieving students' attitudes towards chemistry and how the attitudes differ within a low achieving group. The most preferred teaching methods were also defined. Empirical data (n = 2949) were collected by stratified sampling from fifteen-year-old Finnish lower-secondary school students as part of a…

Given the abundance of literature describing the strong relationship between inquiry-based teaching and student achievement, more should be known about the factors impacting science teachers' classroom inquiry implementation. This study utilises the theory of planned behaviour to propose and validate a causal model of inquiry-based teaching…

This study analysed 10 top-performing regions in PISA 2015 on their science performances and instructional practices. The regions include Singapore, Japan, Estonia, Taipei, Finland, Macao, Canada, Hong Kong, China and Korea. The science performances of the 10 regions and their teaching practices are described and compared. The construct of…

This paper analyzed elementary teacher education (hereafter 'TED') programs in the top performing European (TIMSS) countries to help inform future elementary TED policy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Methodological emphasis revolved around how much emphasis should be placed on general content knowledge (GCK), as opposed to general pedagogical…

This manuscript details our efforts to assess and compare students' learning about electricity in three countries. As our world is increasingly driven by technological advancements, the education of future citizens in science becomes one important resource for economic productivity. Not surprisingly international large-scale assessments are viewed…