Science academic achievement is a key construct for examining students' science learning outcomes. While international comparative assessments like TIMSS and PISA have shown high science achievement of Korean middle school students, there is a lack of comprehensive investigation of factors influencing the achievement using domestic data.…

This three-article dissertation considers the pedagogical practices for developing statistically literate students and teaching data-driven decision-making with the goal of preparing students for civic engagement and improving student achievement. The first article discusses a critical review of the literature on data-driven decision-making…

We study whether changes in school emphasis on academic success (SEAS) and safe schools (SAFE) may explain the increased science performance in Norway between TIMSS 2007 and 2011. Two-level structural equation modelling (SEM) of merged TIMSS data was used to investigate whether changes in levels of SEAS and SAFE mediate the changes in science…

Educational effectiveness research has provided evidence about the importance of teacher beliefs and attitudes for teaching and learning. This study builds on the concept of academic optimism, which combines 3 aspects of a teacher's professional creed: self-efficacy, trust, and academic emphasis. The study explores the functioning of the…

The Trend in International Mathematics and Science Study reveals how the math and science achievement of students in participating countries compares with that of their international peers. Since 1995, the results have been surprising and disappointing for some countries. Astonished and disappointed by such outcomes, scholars and educational…

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…

Using Hofstede's culture dimensions and World Values Survey (WVS) dimensions, the study uses a series of multiple regressions to explore the relationship among national culture, creativity as measured by patents, economic productivity as measured by gross domestic product per capita, and student achievement as measured by Trends in International…

International assessments, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), are being used to recommend educational policies to improve student achievement. This study shows that the cross-sectional estimates behind such recommendations may be biased. We use a unique data set from one country that applied the PISA mathematics test…

This volume offers insights from modeling relations between teacher quality, instructional quality, and student outcomes in mathematics across countries. The relations explored take the educational context, such as school climate, into account. The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's Trends in Mathematics and…

Extensive support for the seemingly paradoxical negative effects of school- and class-average achievement on academic self-concept (ASC)-the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE)--is based largely on secondary students in Western countries or on cross-cultural Program for International Student Assessment studies. There is little research testing the…

During the last 20 years, there has been an increasing awareness that the U.S. is falling behind in its mathematics education of primary and secondary school students. For those who teach mathematics at the community college level, the deficiencies in mathematics education are painfully evident by the number of students requiring remedial math…

Though it is generally believed that doing homework promotes better learning, no consensus has been achieved concerning its importance and relevance to students' achievement. The historical up-and-down status of public attitudes toward homework indicates that understanding about the role of homework in students' learning is far from comprehensive…

The internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model and dimensional comparison theory posit paradoxical relations between achievement (ACH) and self-concept (SC) in mathematics (M) and verbal (V) domains; ACH in each domain positively affects SC in the matching domain (e.g., MACH to MSC) but negatively in the nonmatching domain (e.g., MACH to…

Japanese compulsory education had been praised because of its equality around the early 80s. However, since the third wave-educational reform that began in the 1980s and still persists, it has been pointed out that there are disparities between schools in terms of students' socioeconomic background and academic performance. Although there have…

Key system challenges identified by the Abu Dhabi Education Council provided the impetus for an aggressive strategic plan as necessary guidance and support for the development of the P-12 education system to contribute to advancing its positioning in the global knowledge economy. For the Abu Dhabi Education Council, the analysis served as a tool…