The assessment of university students' economic knowledge has become an increasingly important research area within and across countries. Particularly, the different influences of prior education, native language, and gender as some of the main prerequisites on students' economic knowledge have been highlighted since long. However, the findings…

Parent-school engagement is widely embraced as a policy and educational ideal, yet to date there are few studies of how teacher education prepares students for this important aspect of their professional lives. In this paper, we consider findings from a recent Australian study that explored how the issue of parent-school relations is currently…

Process diagrams are important tools in biology for explaining processes such as protein synthesis, compound cycles and the like. The aim of the present study was to measure the ability to solve process-diagram problems in biology and its relationship with prior knowledge, spatial ability and working memory. For this purpose, we developed a test…

This study was undertaken to determine the effect of prior knowledge and classroom interaction on students' achievement in chemistry. Two schools were purposively sampled and quasi experimental design was adopted. The sample consists of 93 senior secondary II students from two schools in Dutsin-Ma, Katsina State, Nigeria. A 20-item Chemistry…

Some individual difference factors are more strongly correlated with performance on postreading questions when the text is not available than when it is. The present study explores if similar interactions occur with bridging skill, which refers to a reader's propensity to establish connections between explicit text during reading. Undergraduates…

Public education in the United States is sequenced in such a manner that a skill learned at one level is then transferred to a more complex skill at yet a higher level. In addition, the individual concepts or grade-level-expectations based on state Standards are designed this way. Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (1999) stated, "Educators hope…

The college completion agenda demands improved graduation rates among adult learners and prior learning assessment (PLA) is a promising solution. PLA permits students to earn college credit for knowledge acquired outside of higher education and is associated with improved student outcomes. The current study expanded the literature regarding adult…

This phenomenological study of the lived experience of leadership emergence was initiated to answer the question, "Where does leadership come from?" Leadership emergence was explored as the result of a nexus of contextual and structural influences. In response to these questions, a sample of leaders from a metropolitan area in a…

A two-step Bayesian propensity score approach is introduced that incorporates prior information in the propensity score equation and outcome equation without the problems associated with simultaneous Bayesian propensity score approaches. The corresponding variance estimators are also provided. The two-step Bayesian propensity score is provided for…

Proficiency-based instruction focuses on what students know and can do. Proficiency-based teaching and learning is a teacher-led initiative in Oregon that began in the early 1990s with efforts to establish a proficiency-based admissions requirement system for Oregon's state colleges and universities. Meanwhile, many public alternative schools…

Traditional measures of reading ability designed for younger students typically focus on componential skills (e.g., decoding, vocabulary), and the items are often presented in a discrete and decontextualized format. The current study was designed to explore whether it was feasible to develop a more integrated, scenario-based assessment of…

Previous studies in Malang, Indonesia, showed that there were the failure biology learning caused by not only the low students' prior knowledge, but also biology learning model has not improved the students' critical thinking skills yet, which affected the low of cognitive learning outcomes. The learning model is required to improve students'…

This case study provides an explanatory account on the underachievement of three gifted students studying physics in a Taiwanese university. The students' physics underachievement was diagnosed by Sato's student-problem analysis chart. These students were invited to complete a questionnaire and a follow-up interview in order to (1) understand the…

This article reports findings from a 3-year qualitative study exploring the experiences of African American preservice teachers as they prepared for the Praxis "basic skills" teacher-licensure exam, a gatekeeper to many teacher-education programs. Using the construct of self-efficacy, results illustrate how students assess their Praxis…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore high school administrators' instructional leadership in math and science. Specifically, the study explored the feedback administrators provided to math and science teachers as part of their instructional supervision. A central goal for this study was to determine how differences in these content…