Using Young Lives longitudinal data from Peru, this paper explores the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) measured at the age of one, opportunities to learn (OTL) and achievement in mathematics ten years later. Four variables of OTL were measured: hours of class per year, curriculum coverage, quality of teachers' feedback, and level…

Engineering design activities can help educators to apply concepts and processes from within and across STEM domains. To facilitate these connections, there is a need for sustained, job-embedded, and collegial professional development that brings together teachers from across STEM domains to engage in design-based activities. These activities can…

The present study reports the development of a theoretically motivated measure that provides estimates of a preschooler's ability to recall auditory text, to make text-based inferences, to access knowledge from long-term memory, and to integrate this accessed knowledge with new information from auditory text. This new preschooler component…

Many college students struggle with first-semester general chemistry. Prior studies have shown that a student's prior knowledge of chemistry, a cognitive factor, does not account for the total variance when measured by examination scores. This study explored the role of self-regulated learning (SRL) to identify the degree of success or failure of…

The purpose of this study was to identify significant differences in academic achievement among virtual students of various backgrounds, demographics, and virtual learning environments. The study also sought to identify factors that may predict the academic achievement, as defined by final course grade, of virtual students. This study examined…

This study examined the suitability of the FIT-Choice scale in a Dutch educational context among two cohorts of preservice teachers (Ns = 62, 89), surveyed at the end and the beginning of their one-year program respectively. The relationships between the motivations for becoming a teacher and concurrent commitment were examined, as well as the…

This paper reports on findings based on analyses of a unique dataset collected by ACT that includes information on student achievement in a variety of subjects at the high school level, which allow us to examine the relationship between teacher effect estimates derived from VAM specifications employing different student learning assumptions.…

This study uses quantitative and qualitative designs to examine if motivations for choosing a teaching career influence the intention to teach or not to teach in urban settings, and if a short-term urban field experience has significant impact on the change in the motivations as well as the intention to teach in urban settings. Overall,…

This study investigated the effect of the interaction between test takers' background knowledge and language proficiency on their performance on the "TOEFL iBT"® reading section. Test takers with the target content background knowledge (the focal groups) and those without (the reference groups) were identified for each of the 5 selected…

Prior academic achievement is often considered the best predictor and therefore the preadmission criteria for highly competitive medical schools. Most studies that advocate this viewpoint analyzed cohorts based on results of a central examination taken by students who come from various pre-university setups and backgrounds. Far less is known about…

Quantitative and qualitative studies of various aspects of the perception of biotechnology were conducted among 469 Slovenian high school students of average age 17 years. Our research aimed to explore relationships among students' pre-knowledge of molecular and human genetics, and their attitudes to four specific biotechnological applications.…

Adaptive e-learning materials can help teachers to educate heterogeneous student groups. This study provides empirical data about the way academic students differ in their learning when using adaptive e-learning materials. Ninety-four students participated in the study. We determined characteristics in a heterogeneous student group by collecting…

Even with the history of debate over the merits of homework, there are significant gaps in the research record regarding its benefit to students. The focus of this study is on the association between time spent on homework and academic performance in science and math by assessing survey and transcript data from two nationally representative…

Background: Research in higher education on the effects of student-centred versus lecture-based learning environments generally does not take into account the psychological need support provided in these learning environments. From a self-determination theory perspective, need support is important to study because it has been associated with…

The absorptive capacity construct has been examined across various country, interorganization, and organizational level phenomena. This paper presents a framework that adopts the absorptive capacity framework to explain the relationship between creative and innovative performance at the individual level. The framework is illustrated by predicting…