High school physical education classes provide students with numerous opportunities for social interactions, but few studies have explored how social strivings impact class engagement. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among 2 x 2 achievement goals, social motivation orientations, and effort in high school physical…

Although research has shown that self-efficacy beliefs predict academic achievement across all academic subjects and levels, little is known about the effect of using spreadsheets on self-efficacy beliefs in mathematics. This study is an investigation of the effect of instruction that includes spreadsheet-based purposeful activities on secondary…

Educational systems in the United States are generating vast amounts of data on student achievement. This may provide researchers and policy makers with long sought-after insight on the factors explaining student performance. This study uses recent data from Washington 10th graders to examine why some students learned more math than others.…

Misbehaviour in high school impacts learning and instruction in the classroom as well as the educational climate of the institution. In this report, changes in administrators', teachers', and students' reports of misbehaviour between 1990 and 2002 were examined using two national US databases. There was little change in administrators'…

The main goals of this study were to find why some students in the 10th grade do not choose to major in any of the science disciplines, and how to arouse their interest in science. The assumption was that the way students perceive and evaluate their acquaintance with any kind of knowledge was very important in their learning process. If students…

The California Department of Education (CDE) has long asserted that success Algebra I by Grade 8 is the goal for all California public school students. In fact, the state's accountability system penalizes schools that do not require all of their students to take the Algebra I end-of-course examination by Grade 8 (CDE, 2009). In this dissertation,…

The purpose of this study was two-fold in nature. First, this study sought to identify whether extracurricular participation for students in a rural, Grades 7-12 building created significant differences when examining academic performance, attendance, gender, lunch status, and student discipline compared to their non-participant peers. Secondly,…

This study examined the effectiveness of the course, Math Recovery, on a group of ninth-grade students enrolled in the course Algebra/Geometry I measured by course grades and subsequent tenth-grade MAP scores. In addition, gender and race differences were investigated in this study to determine the impact, if any, on academic achievement. The…

This study uses the Mathematical Tasks Framework (Stein & Smith, 1998) to assess the cognitive demand of mathematical tasks implemented in four mathematics classrooms, and to investigate the role of technology in both low- and high-level cognitive demand tasks. The metaphor of using technology as an amplifier or reorganizer (Pea, 1987) is used…

In this article, the authors argue that teachers and researchers must expand current verbo- and logo-centric definitions of critical literacy to recognize how texts and responses are embodied. Ethnographic data illustrate the ways that youth perform critical literacy in ways that educators might not always be prepared to see, hear, or acknowledge.…

The purpose of the present study was twofold: First, the authors investigated if an extended version of the component model of reading (CMR; Model 2), including decoding rate and oral vocabulary comprehension, accounted for more of the variance in reading comprehension than the commonly used measures of the cognitive factors in the CMR. Second,…

Alcohol expectancies and drinking motives were compared for regular education students (n = 159) and students with emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD) receiving special education services (n = 51). Differences existed between groups with respect to expected negative social consequences and emotional and physical outcomes associated with drinking.…

Sustainable management of marine resources raises great challenges. Working with this socio-scientific issue in the classroom requires students to apply complex models about energy flow and trophic pyramids in order to understand that food chains represent transfer of energy, to construct meanings for sustainable resources management through…

Our research project aimed at understanding the complexity of the construction of knowledge in a CAS environment. Basing our work on the French instrumental approach, in particular the Task-Technique-Theory (T-T-T) theoretical frame as adapted from Chevallard's Anthropological Theory of Didactics, we were mindful that a careful task design process…

The term "expert learner" refers to students who are actively engaged with the materials learned and take responsibility for their own learning. Literature reviews suggested the use of metacognitive approach to help develop students to become expert learners. Research on development of expert learners can be traced from movements that…