Large first-year class sizes have resulted in many lecturers adopting coping strategies consisting of direct-transmission mode teaching, reduced practical time, and assessment. Recently several strategies have been implemented in an attempt to improve student participation and active learning; however, these changes have to be facilitated and…

One of the most intriguing questions for those who study intellectually gifted students is why some of them reach peak performances at school and others don't. Moderator theories of giftedness assume that domain-specific gifts are transformed into achievement in a process influenced by non-cognitive and environmental variables. Thus, the current…

Teacher value-added models (VAMs) must isolate teachers' contributions to student achievement to be valid. Well-known VAMs use different specifications, however, leaving policymakers with little clear guidance for constructing a valid model. We examine the sensitivity of teacher value-added estimates under different models based on whether they…

In this paper, we develop a multi-level comparative approach to analyse Trends in International Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS) and Programme of International Student Achievement (PISA) mathematics results for a country, Russia, where the two tests provide contradictory information about students' relative performance. Russian students do…

In educational environments, monitoring persons' progress over time may help teachers to evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching procedures. Electronic learning environments are increasingly being used as part of formal education and resulting datasets can be used to understand and to improve the environment. This study presents…

In large-scale assessment studies, language minority students typically obtain lower test scores in mathematics than native speakers. Although this performance difference was related to the linguistic complexity of test items in some studies, other studies did not find linguistically demanding math items to be disproportionally more difficult for…

The aim of the study was to examine the relationships between gender, previous knowledge, different personality traits, subject-specific motivational dimensions and students' math grade in secondary school. A total of 386 first-year students (142 boys and 244 girls) from secondary schools in Slovenia (mean age was 15.7 years) participated in the…

Mathematics-related beliefs play an important role in the willingness to engage in academic activities in mathematics education. Such beliefs might not be consistent with the beliefs students hold about context problems that require sufficient mathematical knowledge and the application of such knowledge to various real-life situations. This study…

This article addresses West Virginia's public schools, and their long struggle with student achievement levels in reading and math. Levels are significantly below the national average and there are poverty-based achievement gaps within the state. In 2013, a cross section of educators and education policy leaders from a range of experiences,…

We examined the link between social comparison with friends and self-perceptions of academic competence during adolescence and how personality may play a role in this link. Participants were 193 eighth-grade students who attended a rural, mid-Atlantic middle school. We used difference scores to measure the extent to which students' nominated and…

Title I students remain among the most challenging population for achieving significant gains in academic performance and standardized test scores. This multi-state, quasi-experimental, pre-versus-post study reflects the comparative Title I gains for math and reading scores for teachers participating in an online, on-demand professional…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the acute dose-response relationship of classroom exercise breaks with executive function and math performance in 9- to 12-year-old children by comparing 5-min, 10-min, or 20-min classroom exercise breaks to 10 min of sedentary classroom activity. Method: This study used a within-subjects…

This study examined the existence, magnitude, and impact of teacher spillover effects (TSEs) across teachers of four subject areas (i.e., mathematics, English language arts [ELA], science, and social studies) on student achievement in each of the four subjects at the middle school level. The author conducted a series of value-added (VA) analyses,…

This study investigated proportional reasoning and the related concepts of decimal, percent, and ratio. In particular, the research focused on analyzing the gaps and understandings that grades 6, 7, and 8 students have and advanced factors for such gaps and understandings. The study employed a mixed method approach in which quantitative data was…

This study examined the effects of explicit instruction in the SOLVE Strategy on the mathematical problem solving skills of six Grade 8 students with specific learning disabilities. The SOLVE Strategy is an explicit instruction, mnemonic-based learning strategy designed to help students in solving mathematical word problems. Using a multiple probe…