This study examined the effect of schema-based instruction (SBI) on 7th-grade students' mathematical problem-solving performance. SBI is an instructional intervention that emphasizes the role of mathematical structure in word problems and also provides students with a heuristic to self-monitor and aid problem solving. Using a…

Shortcomings of educational quality in rural schools remain a key focus in the literature related to developing countries. This paper studies whether rural primary schools in Malaysia, an upper middle-income developing country, are still experiencing lower levels of educational resources, school climate, school leadership, and parental involvement…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of some of the changes such as student centered learning (i.e. inquiry science instruction), outfitting classrooms with latest technology and computers that the reform movement has brought about on students' TIMSS 2007 science achievements. Two-staged stratified sampling was used in the selection…

Nonlinear multilevel latent variable modeling has been suggested as an alternative to traditional hierarchical linear modeling to more properly handle measurement error and sampling error issues in contextual effects modeling. However, a nonlinear multilevel latent variable model requires significant computational effort because the estimation…

The purpose of the study is to further investigate the validity of instruments used for collecting preservice teachers' perceptions of self-efficacy adapting the three-level IRT model described in Cheong's study (2006). The focus of the present study is to investigate whether the polytomously-scored items on the preservice teachers' self-efficacy…

Intraclass correlations are used to summarize the variance decomposition in popula- tions with multilevel hierarchical structure. There has recently been considerable interest in estimating intraclass correlations from surveys or designed experiments to provide design parameters for planning future large-scale randomized experiments. The large…

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of institutional type on the moral reasoning development of 1,469 first-year students. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to account for students nested within institutions. Moral reasoning gains were related to, but not dependent upon, institutional type, with students at liberal arts…

This article examines the relationship between after-school program quality, program attendance, and academic outcomes for a sample of low-income after-school program participants. Regression and hierarchical linear modeling analyses use a unique longitudinal data set including 29 after-school programs that served 5,108 students in Grades 4 to 8…

This study examines how teacher and staff perceptions of the school environment correlate with student self-reports of bullying, aggression, victimization, and willingness to intervene in bullying incidents using multi-informant, multilevel modeling. Data were derived from 3,616 6th grade students across 36 middle schools in the Midwest, who…

The objective of the present study was to develop a scale that is appropriate for use internationally to measure affective, behavioral, and cognitive dimensions of student engagement. Psychometric properties of this scale were examined with data of 3,420 students (7th, 8th, and 9th grade) from 12 countries (Austria, Canada, China, Cyprus, Estonia,…

A potential method for teaching geospatial thinking and reasoning (GTR) is through geospatially enabled learning technologies. We developed an energy resources geospatial curriculum that included learning activities with geographic information systems and virtual globes. This study investigated how 13 urban middle school teachers implemented and…

In order to examine metacognitive accuracy (i.e., the relationship between metacognitive judgment and memory performance), researchers often rely on by-participant analysis, where metacognitive accuracy (e.g., resolution, as measured by the gamma coefficient or signal detection measures) is computed for each participant and the computed values are…

The long-term effects of secondary-school reforms in the first half of the 20th century are investigated through the long-term follow up of a sample of people born in Scotland in 1936 who were first surveyed in 1947. Members of the sample who were living in the Lothian region of Scotland were re-interviewed in 2004-2007, providing information…

Collaborative learning has been found to benefit students in various disciplines. Moreover, in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics literature, it was noted that minority students benefited the most from collaborative learning. Studies on the effects of collaborative learning in communication are limited. As a result, I examined…

Family educational involvement is consistently and positively associated with child achievement, but little work has closely examined the involvement practices of families of color, particularly immigrant families. Utilizing data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort 1998-99 (ECLS-K), this study used Hierarchical Linear…