There are international calls to enhance learner engagement in STEM. Further, there are international concerns about the gender disparity in interest, aspiration, and participation in STEM. These calls recognise the role that learners' motivation in, and emotional response to, STEM plays in their participation and achievement in STEM education.…

We explore the effects of a statewide policy change that increased the number of high school math courses required for admission to four-year public universities in North Carolina. Using data on cohorts of eighth-grade students from 1999 to 2006, we exploit variation by district over time in the math course-taking environment encountered by…

This research examines online course-taking in high schools, which is increasingly used by students falling behind in progress toward graduation. The study looks inside educational settings to observe how online courses are used and assess whether students gain academically through their use. Drawing on 7 million records of online instructional…

This paper uses Advanced Placement (AP) exams to examine how receiving college credit in high school alters students' subsequent human capital investment. Using data from one large state, I link high school students to postsecondary transcripts from in-state, public institutions and estimate causal impacts using a regression discontinuity that…

With the influence of social, economic and political change, the education system has undergone many changes in various periods, which in turn has affected training of teachers. With the recent change in the implementation of the Pedagogical Formation Education Certificate Program in Turkey, a decision is being made whether the students or…

Guided pathways are emerging as a strategy to help students complete a credential in a timely manner by encouraging or requiring them to select a program, and develop a degree plan or map, on a specified timeline. At a minimum, institutions may ask students to identify a meta-major, which is a broad area of academic programs with related courses…

High school students from lower-socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds are less likely to enroll in advanced mathematics and science courses compared to students from higher-SES backgrounds. The current longitudinal study draws on identity-based and expectancy-value theories of motivation to explain the SES and mathematics and science…

Academic initiatives have become cornerstones in many residential operations on college and university campuses. Despite efforts to enhance academic outcomes of residential students, existing research on residential GPAs reveals either dated or questionable results. Programmatic functions focused on integrating academics into the college living…

Background: A major concern in science education involves the under-representation of many groups in science and technology fields, especially by gender (Brotman and Moore, J Res Sci Teach 45:971-1002, 2008; Clark Blickenstaff, Gend Educ 17:369-386, 2006), stemming from an intersection of systemic obstacles (Cantú, Equity Excell Educ 45:472-487,…

I study the effect of coeducation on academic performance and science course enrollment using student-level data from a South Korean high school that, at the beginning of each academic year, quasi-randomly assigned students to either single-sex or coeducation classrooms. This paper presents two main findings. First, among girls with high…

Course selection can be a daunting task, especially for first year students. Sub-optimal selection can lead to bad performance of students and increase the dropout rate. Given the availability of historic data about student performances, it is possible to aid students in the selection of appropriate courses. Here, we propose a method to compose a…

In this paper, we discuss the theoretical and methodological issues in exploring identity and agency within a narrative of choosing mathematics. Taking as our starting point Bakhtin's emphasis on the dialogic space between interlocutors, we explore how an awareness of the addressivity and otherness of utterances, and of the role of genre and…

This empirical census study was a quasi-experimental analysis of certification level (primary vs. secondary) and in-field vs. out-of-field certification. The sample included chemistry teachers (n = 2312) and physics teachers (n = 1387) in New York State in 2011-12. Findings indicated that the number of out-of-field teachers was relatively low, but…

Intensive English programs (IEPs) help speakers of other languages gain necessary language, cultural, and educational skills to succeed in an English-speaking environment (Hamrick, 2012; Toner, 2017). Whereas previous research investigated factors influencing student choice of IEPs in the southeastern United States (Williams, 1994) and in…

Preschool teachers' science-specific competences have been shown to influence their science instruction, which in turn appear directly related to the development of children's science competences. Initial teacher education and in-service professional development may include learning opportunities to acquire science-specific competences necessary…