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The German school system employs centrally organized performance assessments (some of which are called "VERA") as a way of promoting lesson development. In recent years, several German federal states introduced a computer-based performance testing system which will replace the paper-pencil testing system in the future. Scores from computer-based testing are required to be equivalent to paper-pencil testing scores so that the new testing medium does not lead to disadvantages for students. Therefore, the current study aimed at investigating the size of the mode effect and the moderating impact of students' gender, academic achievement and mainly spoken language in everyday life. In addition, the variance of the mode effect across tasks was investigated. The study was conducted in four German federal states in 2019 using a field experimental design. The test scores of 5140 eighth-graders from 165 schools in the subject German were analysed. The results of multi-level modelling revealed that students' test scores in the computerized version of the VERA test were significantly lower than in the paper-pencil version. Students with a lower academic achievement were more disadvantaged by the VERA computerized test. The results were inconsistent regarding the interactions between testing mode and students' gender and mainly spoken language in everyday life. The variance of the mode effect across tasks was high. Research into different subjects and in other federal states and countries under different testing conditions might yield further evidence about the generalizability of these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interdisciplinary research is of significance for creating breakthroughs and facilitating innovations and may achieve higher citation impact, although contrary results still exist. The current study looks into the relationship between interdisciplinarity and citation impact from a brand-new perspective—the process of citation accumulation—by exploring how interdisciplinarity, as measured by Rao-Stirling and DIV, affects the accumulating process of citations, based on scientific papers published by Chinese or US authors in 2009–2011 in Chemistry. Two metrics are used to measure how long it takes for a paper to reach its citation peak (PEAK_YEAR) and how sustainable the citation impact remains after the peak (SUS). The results show that compared with Rao-Stirling, DIV is more sensitive to the length of the citation window and more closely aligned with the nature of interdisciplinarity. In Chemistry, higher interdisciplinarity is more likely to encounter delayed recognition and greater citation sustainability, which may explain the inconsistency in the relationship between interdisciplinarity and citation impact. In conclusion, it is necessary to consider the length of the citation window when explaining the relationship between interdisciplinarity and citation impact. A longer citation window may be a better solution, as an alternative or supplement, in assessing the academic performance of interdisciplinary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Conference on Theoretical and Computational Algebra 2023 (TCA 2023) took place in Pocinho, Portugal, attracting over 80 researchers from Europe, Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the USA. The conference covered various topics in algebra and automated reasoning, with a significant focus on semigroup theory. As a result, the editors of 'Semigroup Forum' decided to dedicate a special issue to selected papers from TCA 2023. This issue includes 11 papers that underwent a rigorous refereeing process, with additional papers still under review for future publication. The conference also honored Dr. Gracinda M. S. Gomes, a retired professor from the University of Lisbon, who made significant contributions to semigroup theory and fostered collaboration between Portugal and the UK. [Extracted from the article]

This study was conducted to examine students' performance in paper-based and online-based tests. In the context of the study, students' performances were considered in the General Physics course between 2014 and 2015 and 2018–2019 academic years. The participants of this study are 417 students of Engineering and Science faculties at a public university of Kyrgyz Republic. Students' achievement scores in paper-based and online-based tests were obtained and appropriate statistical analysis methods were employed. According to the results, students' demographic data (i.e. gender, faculty and major) have different effects on their performance, and students performed better in online-based tests compared to paper-based tests. Additionally, the study aimed to analyze instructor perceptions related to testing types that interviews were conducted with 26 instructors of the General Physics course. The majority of the instructors indicated that they experienced difficulties related to the traditional form of evaluation due to the following reasons: lack of time to give personal feedback to each student, lack of time for objective evaluation, and difficulty of evaluation of crowded student groups. Therefore, they indicated the necessity of online test implementation in the context of the General Physics course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses hopeful futures for higher education and the use of technology in realising those futures through the lens of refugee education in Uganda. Through an analysis of qualitative research done with refugee students and teachers participating in a blended bridging programme designed to prepare students for entry and success in higher education, this paper explores the interplay between contingency and positions of hope for refugee students in relation to higher education and further assimilation into civic society. Two themes emerged from the analysis that suggested a prioritarian orientation for higher education to realise a more hopeful future. First, hope renders as an act of cultivation as refugee students become exposed to new concepts and develop confidence in relation to them. Second, digital technologies broaden the cultivation of hope towards greater civic participation, even if access to higher education is not achieved. Third, hope correlates to action not necessarily as a linear progressive trajectory but as a diligent watchfulness for positive possibility. The implications for higher education are that taking a prioritarian lens for refugees in educational design engages with the contingencies that impact all, placing the sector deliberately in search of positive possibility in its orientation and design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this concluding commentary, I embed the articles of the special issue "Transition from school into university mathematics: experiences across educational contexts" into the current landscape of research on secondary–tertiary transition, and discuss the advancement they made related to the synthesis published in 2008 by Gueudet. My aim is to elaborate a new synthesis across the topics of affect and the use of sociocultural perspectives that have framed the work of all contributions. For that, I focus on four major themes. First, I consider the complex relationship between affect and socio-cultural dimensions in the papers, which raises the need for theory networking in further research clarifying mutual roles of the two dimensions. Second, international diversity is only partially expressed in the collection of papers, thus should be a major topic of research in future that would provide a more comprehensive view on the transition from school to university mathematics. I thirdly discuss how the collection of papers deepens our understanding of the complexity and diversity related to the students' experience with the secondary–tertiary transition and its potential impact for teaching. Finally, I propose and justify the need for systematic design and evaluation of interventions targeting a change in students' affect related to the transition. In sum, the wide range of the significant findings in this special issue and their mutual relations add new perspectives to the research on secondary–tertiary transition and evidence a new spectrum of research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws attention to empirical work on widening access to understand the silence on race matters in English higher education. This work repurposes a critical race theoretical framework that offers a glimpse of how the issue of unequal access to higher education has been framed in the research field. It is argued here that the framing of widening access reveals a persistent colour-evasiveness that is dominant. The findings show that widening access policy has not benefitted students of colour as they are not accessing higher education with the same kind of success as their white peers. The paper concludes for a call for race-conscious interventions to remedy the continued race inequity in accessing highly rejective institutions based on the evidence gathered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this journal, Sciffer et al. (Large-scale Assessments in Education 10:1–22, 2022), hereafter SP&M, conclude that school socioeconomic compositional (SEC) or school socioeconomic status (school-SES) effects in Australia are substantial and substantively important for research and policy. This paper demonstrates that these claims are unwarranted. Their SEC estimates are much larger than estimates from comparable studies and a metastudy. Despite plausible theoretical reasons and empirical evidence, SP&M do not consider that school academic composition is a significant predictor of student achievement independent of SEC. SEC effects are confounded by academic composition and are typically trivial when considering academic composition. The second part of this paper compares SP&M's estimates with analysis of the same data, from the Australian National Assessments in Performance—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). In a model corresponding to SP&M analyses comprising demographics, SES, school-SES, and student-level prior achievement, the effects of school-SES are small, with standardized effects mostly less than 0.10. With the addition of academic composition measured by school-level prior achievement, school-SES effects are effectively zero. In contrast, academic composition has significant, albeit small, impacts on student achievement. Therefore, contrary to SP&M's (2022) conclusion, school-SES effects on student achievement in NAPLAN are negligible, whereas school-level prior achievement has small effects. That is not to say that school-SES is always irrelevant, but any assessment of its importance must consider both student- and school-level prior achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctoral students' program non-completion continues to be a worldwide phenomenon. Given the challenges across the globe following the 2020-22 pandemic, we need scholarly and skilled PhD and education (EdD) doctoral program graduates. A place to look for retention improvement is by studying what students learn and how they are taught in their university doctoral programs. One purpose of this case study was to describe how 12 EdD students in a program seminar responded to instruction in research and writing strategies during their first year of a four-year program. The second purpose was to examine student responses to formative assessments and describe and explain ongoing instructional adjustments using a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) framework within our own faculty community of practice. Analysis of surveys and student work indicated that writing and research strategies were instructive, engaging, and useful in building research and writing foundations. Analysis of multiple formative assessments helped us refine our instructional strategies during the year. Because all students completed the first high stakes program milestone (comprehensive paper) in year two, our findings suggested that the seminar's instructional strategies established a foundation for student success and timely program progress. Using multiple formative assessments over time was critical in strengthening our teaching practice as well. We recommended instructional practices associated with student research and writing skill development as well as student progress and retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formative writing assessment (FWA) has been gradually investigated from multiple perspectives. Nevertheless, there is restricted experimental evidence of how the teachers unobtrusively monitor and assess the simultaneous pausing of cognitive writing process in psychological regards by a micro-formative writing assessment (MFWA). By utilizing the sparsely used software inputlog, this creative study focuses on the simultaneous traces of the cognitive writing process at a renowned university. The data mainly consists of 24 writing texts and in-time interviews with those students. The software inputlog is used to elucidate the distribution of pauses and the traces of revision. The examination of student interviews provides very deep insights into cognitive understanding of memory. The findings chiefly suggest that pausing features of cognitive writing process are mainly used to diagnose the exact status quo of students' academic performance and to show the distribution of pauses, potentially due to the context of online writing. Moreover, from pause data gathered systematically, it is possible to transform writing process from formative assessment to simultaneous assessment. The paper has some implications for observing the dynamics of cognitive writing process and collecting fine grained data for language teachers to know the real psychological writing problems of students, which, in turn, promotes to the adjustment and reform of writing assessment in psychological regards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Poverty's impact on children's academic outcome is a cause for concern in most urban Asian cities as education is viewed as one of the main channels of social mobility. Few studies examined how poor children's hope could be enhanced through school social support. Objective: This paper examines how children from low-income families' perceived frequencies and importance of social support from teachers and classmates, influence their levels of hope in academic achievement. Method: Utilizing a partially-mixed sequential design—first, with survey data from a larger study on low-income children (n = 513), this paper explores if perceived frequency of social support is associated with level of hope as well as the role of perceived importance in moderating the frequencies of school social support on sense of hope; second, to enrich the child-reported results, two in-depth focus group discussions with elementary school teachers (n = 10) were conducted. Results: Statistical analysis reveals that the frequency of social support from teachers and classmates is associated with the level of hope in low-income children. Furthermore, when teacher's support was rated important by children, there was a positive association between social support and hope. Integrating statistical results and qualitative insights, this paper extends extant literature on social support typologies with a novel category; 'support in providing opportunities for success'. Conclusion: This paper underscores the important role schools play as a source of social support for children. Such social support aids higher hope levels in low-income children which could translate into better academic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2019, many countries have taken measures such as controlling the flow of people, logistics and reducing crowds. Educational institutions have shifted from traditional face-to-face teaching to online teaching. In order to understand the fatigue caused by long-term online teaching and its influence on teaching quality, this paper puts forward the concept of "student fatigue" according to the learning characteristics of students in our education system, and applies statistical principles to compile the student Fatigue Scale-18. In the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter, 1236 times of 319 college students in grade 2021 were tested for fatigue, and the average incidence of fatigue was 64.97%. The incidence of fatigue in boys is higher than that in girls. There was a slight difference in the incidence of fatigue in different seasons, but no statistical significance was there. The effect of fatigue on online teaching is empirically analyzed. The degree of fatigue is negatively correlated with test scores. Students with better learning foundations are less affected by fatigue, while girls' scores are less affected by fatigue. This paper analyzes the common causes of students' fatigue, combined with the current research status of students' fatigue at home and abroad, and puts forward that college education should pay attention to students' fatigue, regularly or irregularly monitor students' fatigue, so that the incidence of fatigue is controlled below 30%. The analysis revealed that the degree of fatigue and gender significantly influenced academic performance. A negative correlation was found between fatigue degree and academic performance, indicating that more severe fatigue led to poorer academic results. Boys were more affected by fatigue than girls. The relationship between academic performance and seasons showed no significant impact. Try to avoid severe fatigue. In order to reduce the impact of fatigue on students' study and health, preventive measures should be taken. It provides theoretical and empirical basis for preventing students' fatigue, improving teaching quality and ensuring students' health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural capital is vital for equitable educational development. This paper studies the effect of family cultural capital on the performance of middle school students with regard to gender, using a multiple linear regression model. Participants from four representative middle schools, totalling 1036 students, were selected during the online learning period. The study found that institutionalised and objectified cultural capital had a pronounced positive effect on students' school outcomes, but cultural capital that was embodied had both positive and negative effects. Significant differences in the effects of cultural capital on school success were found between male and female students. The educational level of a mother has a significant impact on the school attainment of female students in Chinese, English, math and overall achievement, whereas a father's education level has a significant effect on male students' English achievement and overall achievement. The results of the study showed that cultural capital contributed to the academic success of middle school students in different ways. The results presented above contribute to a better comprehension of the mechanisms of the influence of cultural capital on the school performance of middle school students, which has important implications for students' educational equity. This study recommends improving the mechanism of collaborative education among schools, families and society, by paying attention to vulnerable groups that lack cultural capital, improving the methods of educational evaluation and providing tailor-made education for all types of students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers hold many beliefs, shaped by their educational knowledge, experiences, and cultural, social, historical, and political environments. These teacher beliefs, together with teacher characteristics and school context factors can influence cognitive processes, expectations, instructional decisions, and practices which could affect learning experiences, student engagement, and achievement. Numerous studies have explored these factors, however, often separately or with only one or two others. This paper explores primary school teachers' self-reported perceptions on the relationships between teacher beliefs (including teacher class level expectations, self-efficacy, motivation, goal orientation, work engagement, passion for teaching, relatedness to students), teacher characteristics (including gender, ethnicity, teacher experience), and school context factors (including decile and year level taught), and the impact of these on student achievement and teachers' instructional practices. Associations were found between teaching self-efficacy and all the other factors explored; work engagement and teachers' years of teaching experience, gender, and school decile; and years of teaching experience and student achievement. Further, relatedness to students, passion for teaching, and teaching self-efficacy was found to be associated with teachers' instructional practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a review of recent empirical research investigating middle leadership practices in New Zealand secondary schools. Eight academic articles and one report are included to establish an analysis of the recent evidence of practices of curriculum middle leaders. The majority of the research utilises mixed methodology and aligns middle leadership practices within a paradigm of instructional leadership practice. Researchers found that effective middle leadership practices are associated with higher academic achievement and more equitable student outcomes. Effective middle leadership includes practices such as capability in instructional leadership, the ability to undertake problem-solving conversations with teachers and goal setting skills. Research reveals middle leaders found managing problems and conflicts challenging especially when they were concerned with teacher performance. They were required to coach and mentor staff with minimal leadership preparation, despite often being leaders of large teams of people with responsibility for considerable budgets and resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic performance is a crucial issue in the field of Online learning analytics. While deep learning-based models have made significant progress in the era of big data, many of these methods need help to capture the complex relationships present in online learning activities and student attributes, which are essential for improving prediction accuracy. We present a novel model for predicting academic performance in this paper. This model harnesses the power of dual graph neural networks to effectively utilize both the structural information derived from interaction activities and the attribute feature spaces of students. The proposed model uses an interaction-based graph neural network module to learn local academic performance representations from online interaction activities and an attribute-based graph neural network to learn global academic performance representations from attribute features of all students using dynamic graph convolution operations. The learned representations from local and global levels are combined in a local-to-global representation learning module to generate predicted academic performances. The empirical study results demonstrate that the proposed model significantly outperforms existing methods. Notably, the proposed model achieves an accuracy of 83.96% for predicting students who pass or fail and an accuracy of 90.18% for predicting students who pass or withdraw on a widely recognized public dataset. The ablation studies confirm the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over a century, since Aboriginal children were permitted to access mainstream Australian schools, there has been a significant gap in academic achievement between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students. Community engagement by schools is recognised as a key factor in Aboriginal student success, but school approaches to community engagement remain inconsistent and driven by deficit thinking. As part of the Aboriginal Voices Project, this paper explores community engagement at six New South Wales (NSW) public school sites and applies Decolonising Race Theory (DRT) as a critical Indigenous lens to interpret and understand the challenges that students, families, and schools face within their relationships. While we find evidence of school–community partnerships that prioritise Indigenous healing, for the schools in this paper, there is a complexity within relationships with community that reflects the interaction between assimilationist positioning of Aboriginal students that often contains positive and negative elements simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and discusses an authentic landmark in the history of science, namely H. v. Foerster's Cybernetics of Cybernetics, 1974. This is a book rarely known even by many specialists. This paper argues that von Foerster's book constitutes a unique achievement in the history of science. A thorough presentation is introduced that brings a complete panorama of concepts, problems and approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Score interchangeability of Computerized Fixed-Length Linear Testing (henceforth CFLT) and Paper-and-Pencil-Based Testing (henceforth PPBT) has become a controversial issue over the last decade when technology has meaningfully restructured methods of the educational assessment. Given this controversy, various testing guidelines published on computerized testing may be used to investigate the interchangeability of CFLT and PPBT mean scores to corroborate if test takers' testing performance is influenced by the effects of testing administration mode; specifically, if validity and reliability of two versions of the same test are affected. This research was conducted to probe not only score interchangeability across testing modes but also to explore the role of age and gender stereotypes, item review, ICT literacy and attitudes towards computer use as moderator variables in test takers' reading achievement in CFLT. Fifty-eight EFL learners homogeneous in both general English and reading skills assigned into one testing group participated in this study. Three different versions of TOEFL reading comprehension test, Computer Attitude Scale (CAS), and ICT literacy Scale of TOEFL Examinees were used in this crossover quasi-controlled empirical study with a common-person and pretest–posttest design to collect data. The findings demonstrated that although the reading scores of test takers were interchangeable in both CFLT and PPBT versions regarding testing administration modes, they were different regarding item review. Furthermore, no significant interaction was found between age, gender, and ICT literacy and CFLT performance. However, attitudes towards the use of computer led to a significant change in testing achievement on CFLT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational data mining is an emerging interdisciplinary research area involving both education and informatics. It has become an imperative research area due to many advantages that educational institutions can achieve. Along these lines, various data mining techniques have been used to improve learning outcomes by exploring large-scale data that come from educational settings. One of the main problems is predicting the future achievements of students before taking final exams, so we can proactively help students achieve better performance and prevent dropouts. Therefore, many efforts have been made to solve the problem of student performance prediction in the context of educational data mining. In this paper, we provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of student performance prediction and compare approximately 260 studies in the last 20 years with respect to i) major factors highly affecting student performance prediction, ii) kinds of data mining techniques including prediction and feature selection algorithms, and iii) frequently used data mining tools. The findings of the comprehensive analysis show that ANN and Random Forest are mostly used data mining algorithms, while WEKA is found as a trending tool for students' performance prediction. Students' academic records and demographic factors are the best attributes to predict performance. The study proves that irrelevant features in the dataset reduce the prediction results and increase model processing time. Therefore, almost half of the studies used feature selection techniques before building prediction models. This study attempts to provide useful and valuable information to researchers interested in advancing educational data mining. The study directs future researchers to achieve highly accurate prediction results in different scenarios using different available inputs or techniques. The study also helps institutions apply data mining techniques to predict and improve student outcomes by providing additional assistance on time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article previews the joint 2006 annual meetings of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society and the Association for the Study of Food and Society that will be held on June 7 to 11, 2006 in Boston, Massachusetts. It includes information on the meetings' theme, issues that will be addressed at various meetings, sightseeing suggestions, papers scheduled for discussion and procedures in submitting them, and giving out of awards for best student papers.

Driven by the focus on standardised assessment and performance-driven accountability, a considerable body of literature has documented differences in students' academic achievement across school sectors, both internationally and in Australia. However, few studies have to date explored the potential mechanisms underlying such differences, particularly through the lens of school climate and student engagement. And despite extensive literature on school climate and student engagement, including their relationships with achievement, the differences in these patterns across school sectors remain under-studied. In this paper, we leverage nationally representative data from a large-scale longitudinal survey in Australia with linked administrative data on student achievement to reveal different patterns of school climate and student engagement across government, Catholic and independent sectors. Employing multivariable regression analyses, we identify unique school climate and student engagement facets that are associated with improved achievement in each of these sectors, offering important pointers for educational policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-regulated learning is an essential skill that can help students plan, monitor, and reflect on their learning in order to achieve their learning goals. However, in situations where there is a lack of effective feedback and recommendations, it becomes challenging for students to self-regulate their learning. In this paper, we propose an explainable AI-based approach to provide automatic and intelligent feedback and recommendations that can support the self-regulation of students' learning in a data-driven manner, with the aim of improving their performance on their courses. Prior studies have predicted students' performance and have used these predicted outcomes as feedback, without explaining the reasons behind the predictions. Our proposed approach is based on an algorithm that explains the root causes behind a decline in student performance, and generates data-driven recommendations for taking appropriate actions. The proposed approach was implemented in the form of a dashboard to support self-regulation by students on a university course, and was evaluated to determine its effects on the students' academic performance. The results revealed that the dashboard significantly enhanced students' learning achievements and improved their self-regulated learning skills. Furthermore, it was found that the recommendations generated by the proposed approach positively affected students' performance and assisted them in self-regulation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing students' reading and numeracy skills remain key goals of contemporary schooling. In Australia, the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests have assessed these skills since 2008. Previous research found a significant gender gap in favour of females for the NAPLAN writing test, yet no study has examined whether gender gaps exist for reading and numeracy or their developmental pattern across the school years. Given the educational and public interest in NAPLAN and its considerable costs, it is important to understand what these tests reveal about student outcomes. The paper presents the first investigation of patterns of male and female student achievement on the NAPLAN reading and numeracy tests from 2008 to 2021. It applies the equivalent year level technique to explain the pedagogical significance of NAPLAN achievement and compares the findings with the writing gender gap to present a fuller picture of male and female achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the effects of immersive VR on an individual’s creativity and factors related to creativity including flow, attention and meditation (i.e., mental relaxation or stress). Sixty undergraduate students were invited to participate in an open-ended challenge to design a wearable technology functioning as a smart phone individually, either in the immersive VR condition (N = 30) or in the paper-and-pencil condition (N = 30). Surveys and electroencephalography (EEG) measurements were used to collect data. Findings showed that the participants in the immersive VR condition had higher quality creative products than those in the paper-and-pencil condition. The sequence analysis of the participants’ EEG brainwaves also showed that the participants in the immersive VR condition maintained a more stable focus or attention, while those in the paper-and-pencil condition were more relaxed. Research results led to a deeper understanding of using a VR support system for individual creativity. Recommendations for the design and application of an immersive VR creativity support system are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, while conceptual in nature, is informed by both research and practice. Exploring the "engagement interface" as the site for student engagement (SE), we offer a conceptual contribution in engaging with the Kahu and Nelson (2018) model by bringing in a fuller understanding of SE grounded in the higher education context rather than being uncritically transplanted from a compulsory education context. This involves consideration of the multiple facets of SE as well as the dynamic, shifting and multilocal nature of the construct. The paper then proceeds to enhance the details of the model, grounding them in a finer-grained reading of the literature and relating educational constructs to the model's proposed "mechanisms" in a conceptually substantiated way. This further extends Kahu and Nelson's aim of illuminating the "black box" of SE. Our third contribution is to practice by proposing tactics: informed by the literature, we invite practitioners to consider ways in which they can increase the likelihood of facilitating engagement with, and by, students more constructively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With additional features and increasing cost advantages, e-textbooks are becoming a viable alternative to paper textbooks. One important feature offered by enhanced e-textbooks (e-textbooks with interactive functionality) is the ability for instructors to annotate passages with additional insights. This paper describes a pilot study that examines the effects of instructor e-textbook annotations on student learning as measured by multiple-choice and open-ended test items. Fifty-two college students in a business course were randomly assigned either a paper or an electronic version of a textbook chapter. Results show that the e-textbook group outperformed the paper textbook group on the open-ended test item, while both groups performed equally on the multiple-choice subject test. These results suggest that the instructional affordances that an interactive e-textbook provides may lead to higher-level learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of web-based biology learning environment in improving academic performance via a meta-analysis. In looking for the studies on web-based biology learning environment, several keyword patterns from the abstracts (e.g., Pattern 1: web-based learning and biology education) were recruited in well-known databases (e.g., ERIC, EBSCO, Springer Link). Finally, 22 papers were apparent for the current meta-analysis examining the effect of web-based biology learning environment on academic performance. All statistical data from the studies were initially inserted into an Excel sheet and then imported into comprehensive meta-analysis (CMA) statistics software to calculate Hedges' g values. The overall effect-size of web-based biology learning environment pointed to a medium effect. Also, it was found that the educational level and type of experimental design, as moderator variables, did not positively affect the students' academic performance along with web-based biology learning environment. In light of the findings, it can be concluded that web-based biology learning environment is somewhat effective at improving the students' academic performance. The current study recommends that further studies should be undertaken to deepen the implementation processes of the studies with extreme values and explore what makes them unique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile edge computing (MEC) has revolutionized the way of teaching in universities. It enables more interactive and immersive experiences in the classroom, enhancing student engagement and learning outcomes. As an incentive mechanism based on social identity and contest theories, team competition has been adopted and shown its effectiveness in improving students' participation and motivation in college classrooms. However, despite its potential benefit, there are still many unresolved issues: What type of students and teams benefit more from team competition? In what teaching context is team competition more effective? Which competition design methods better increase student academic performance? Mobile edge computing provides the ability to obtain the data of the teaching process and analyze the causal effect between team competition and students' academic performance. In this paper, the authors first design a randomized field experiment among freshmen enrolled in college English courses. Then, the authors analyze the observation data collected from the online teaching platform, and predict individual treatment effects of academic performance in college English through linear and nonlinear machine learning models. Finally, by carefully investigating features of teams and individual students, the prediction error is reduced by up to 30%. In addition, through interpreting the predictive models, some valuable insights regarding the practice of team competition in college classrooms are discovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the importance of definitions in the context of academic discussion, highlights the inconsistent terminology used to describe e-learning, and examines a range of different definitions of e-learning used by academic authors since 2011. Following an outline of the methodology, the paper identifies 15 unique definitions of e-learning in peer-reviewed papers published between January 2011 and December 2022. The 15 definitions are analysed for significant properties, and these properties are reviewed to assess whether they are essential components of e-learning. The paper then proposes a functional definition of e-learning, including all essential elements of e-learning and eliminating elements that may be present in some, but not all, instances of e-learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This meta-analysis examines the correlation between goal orientation and related variables in online learning to examine the influence of individual goal orientation on online learning as well as the differences arising from diverse cultural backgrounds. The study analyzed 27 papers from 2000 to 2022, comprising 8 US and 19 Korean studies. The average effect size of goal orientation and related variables, such as learning satisfaction, self-efficacy, and task value, were also analyzed. In addition, moderating effect according to the country and type of goal orientation was examined to evaluate differences arising from cultures. It was found that learning immersion, learning participation, and intention to continue learning, showed a high average effect size with goal orientation, with the other related variables also demonstrating a significant average effect size. There was no moderating effect of the state in the relationship between goal orientation and academic achievement, although a moderating effect existed according to the type of goal orientation. Based on the results of this study, we analyzed the variables that can reinforce learning along with goal orientation in online learning situations. Therefore, our findings will help formulate various educational support directions that can lead students to successfully gain knowledge through online learning, which has been growing expeditiously in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 80,000 children in England were being looked after in Local Authority care in 2020 and a further 40,000 people were defined as 'care leavers'. Although a significant body of research highlights the prevalence of educational low achievement in the care experienced population, official government figures show that around 13% of care experienced pupils progress to higher education by the age of 19. In a climate of 'widening participation' in which universities encourage inclusion and student diversity, this research invited students with a care background to discuss their experiences of settling into university life. Data was collected using in-depth interviews with 42 students from four universities and an online survey completed by 192 students in 29 universities in England and Wales. Findings revealed that although care experienced students overcome significant challenges to progress to higher education, over half considered dropping out. Others reported feeling isolated and inadequately supported, both financially and pastorally, by their institution. This paper uses a lens of resilience to consider the environmental factors that impact upon student transitions, and concludes that universities must act to balance inequalities in order to appropriately welcome and appreciate care leavers for the skills and experience they bring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published accounts of school interventions often focus on a small 'slice' of the complex systems and layers of learning across schools and homes. A series of studies into a digital intervention in low SES schools, is summarised here providing a fuller picture of how students' engagement in digital contexts contributed to their social and emotional skills; and as a consequence, whether these skills impacted on achievement in writing. Overall, 9 to 13 year olds found self-regulation both harder and different when on line. The intervention was associated with higher levels of self-regulation when online, but had no effect on social skills. These patterns were related to specific features of the schools' practices and instructional foci. Students' use at home added to the general effects, with social media usages reducing ratings of self-regulation (e.g. chatting), others increasing social skills (e.g. commenting on blog posts), but high levels of parental monitoring positively impacted both. Parents' own digital experience and their beliefs were related to their guidance. Higher levels of social emotional skills (specifically, response inhibition and cognitive empathy) were associated with gains in writing achievement. Putting the slices together enabled a more complete picture of the intervention, including how: (a) it supported the development of self-regulation online but needed more focus on social skills; (b) higher levels of self-regulation and social skills impacted writing; and (c) the coherence between settings contributed to these skills, underlining the need to provide support and advice to some parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-cognitive abilities, also termed as Social and Emotional Skills (SSES), are believed to have a profound and far-reaching impact on individuals' growth and development. Previous psychological experiments confirmed that non-cognitive factors could have an impact on education, health and social well-being. The SSES reports by OECD offer insights on multiple facets of non-cognitive information during adolescents' growth, which seeks further understanding of the mechanisms and contextual features influencing the formation and development of students' non-cognitive skills as well as subject learning. Based on the OECD 2019 Suzhou data, this study tested a number of hypotheses concerning social and emotional skills and subject learning achievements, including mathematics, reading literacy and arts. The results confirmed that various social and emotional non-cognitive constructs emerged to be facilitating disciplinary learning, including mathematics, reading literacy and arts achievements. This paper offers some reflections on the integration of non-cognitive skills in designing the education policy guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A previous meta-analysis found that active learning has a positive impact on learning achievements for college students in STEM fields of study. However, no similar meta-analyses have been conducted in the humanities and social sciences. Because major dissimilarities may exist between different fields or domain of knowledge, there can be issues with transferring research findings or knowledge across fields. We therefore meta-analyzed 104 studies that used assessment scores to compare the learning achieved by college students in humanities and social science programs under active instruction versus traditional lecturing. Student performance on assessment scores was found to be higher by 0.489 standard deviations under active instruction (Z = 6.521, p < 0.001, k = 111, N = 15,896). The relative beneficial effect of active instruction was found to be higher for some course subject matters (i.e., Sociology, Psychology, Language, Education, and Economics), for smaller (≤ 20 students) rather than larger class or group sizes, and for upper level rather than introductory courses. Analyses further suggest that these findings are not affected by publication bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the incidence of the Colombian armed conflict on the academic performance of secondary students at the municipal level for the years 2003 and 2017. By using a General Nesting Spatial model, results suggest the conflict negatively affects academic performance. In 2003, a period of high conflict intensity, terrorist population attacks showed both direct and indirect negative effects on the test scores. In 2017, a period of low intensity, only direct negative effects were reported for the variables of forced displaced people, homicides, and victims of threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the teaching experiment regarding the use of mobile apps in the assessment of student learning. The study involved survey and self-description methods offered to students and instructors to assess the effectiveness of using mobile apps in learning. The study was conducted among 320 s-year students of the I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University and 8 instructors between September 1 and December 28, 2021, during the academic semester. Socrative and Plickers apps have been found to contribute to: better learning (φ* = 8.94, p ≤ 0.01); developing cognitive motivation among students resulting from diverse learning resources used with apps (φ* = 7.6, p ≤ 0.01); convenience of learning activities because students can work with the app both in the classroom and at home (φ* = 13.66, p ≤ 0.01); improved digital competence (φ* = 2.4, p ≤ 0.05). The research findings can be used by instructors in universities and secondary schools. Since didactic opportunities offered by mobile apps are quite significant, and considering other positive results of their use, this technology may be considered as an important tool for training young people and strengthening their cognitive motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effect of student response system (SRS) on students' achievement and achievement emotions in an English course. The participants were 9th grade students (n = 83, 40 female and 43 male) attending a high school in Turkey. Study involved one experiment and two control groups. In the experimental group, SRS was used to ask questions and to provide immediate feedback to the students. Paper and pencil form of the same questions (that were used in the experimental group) were asked to the students in the control group 1 and immediate feedback was provided. These questions were not used in the control group 2. Before and after the implementation, the English Achievement Test and Class Related and Test Related Achievement Emotions Questionnaires were administered to the experimental and control groups. Mixed ANOVA was used to examine the within and between group differences. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with experimental group students. The results showed that using an SRS had statistically significant effect on students' achievement in English. In terms of the achievement emotions, the SRS had a statistically significant effect on decreasing students' test anxiety. The SRS and using questions and immediate feedback in a paper and pencil format positively impacted students' class-related boredom and enjoyment, and test relief. The results of the interviews supported these findings. Students reported that lessons with SRS were more enjoyable and SRS helped them to learn the subject matter better. They also reported that SRS helped them for the self-assessment of their progress. The findings of the study also showed that technical problems that arise from the lack of internet infrastructure might cause time management problems during the implementation of SRS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mathematics assessment and testing are increasingly situated within digital environments with international tests moving to computer-based testing in the near future. This paper reports on a secondary data analysis which explored the influence the mode of assessment-computer-based (CBT) and pencil-and-paper based (PPT)-and visuospatial ability had on students' mathematics test performance. Data from 804 grade 6 Singaporean students were analysed using the knowledge discovery in data design. The results revealed statistically significant differences between performance on CBT and PPT test modes across content areas concerning whole number algebraic patterns and data and chance. However, there were no performance differences for content areas related to spatial arrangements geometric measurement or other number. There were also statistically significant differences in performance between those students who possess higher levels of visuospatial ability compared to those with lower levels across all six content areas. Implications include careful consideration for the comparability of CBT and PPT testing and the need for increased attention to the role of visuospatial reasoning in student's mathematics reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to conduct a three-way comparison of face-to-face, online, and blended teaching modalities in an undergraduate Child Development course to determine if there were differences in student academic outcomes and course satisfaction across modalities. Student academic outcomes were measured by three examinations, one research paper assignment, and the overall course total grade. Course satisfaction was measured by administering the Student Opinion Questionnaire (SOQ) across the three teaching modalities and the Constructivist On-Line Learning Environment Survey (COLLES) to online and blended modalities. Results indicated that students performed equally well on all three examinations, research paper, and the overall course total grade across three teaching modalities, allaying traditional reservations about online and blended teaching efficacy. The SOQ and COLLES analysis found students from the three modalities were equally satisfied with their learning experiences. A Two-Factor Model identifying Face-to-Face Interaction and Learn on Demand (Flexibility) as factors determining student academic outcomes was proposed. Implications, limitations, and future research direction were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abundant research conducted in many countries has underlined the critical role of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in developing human capital in fields important to a nation's global competiveness and prosperity. In the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States, recent long-term policy plans emphasize the ever-increasing need of transition to a knowledge-based economy and preparing highly qualified nationals with credentials in STEM fields to meet the current and future needs of the labor market. Yet, despite multiple educational reforms and substantial resources, national and international indicators of student performance still demonstrate insignificant improvement in GCC students' achievement in STEM subjects. Demonstrably, the GCC youth still lack interest in STEM careers and represent low enrollment rates in STEM fields. This paper presents the results of a systematic review conducted on STEM education research in GCC countries. The review seeks to contribute to the body of the existing STEM literature, explore the factors influencing student participation in STEM, and identify the gaps in STEM education research in those countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the question of whether parental migration is a significant source of human capital development or whether it is harmful to non-cognitive ability development. In light of this, a research question was raised: what is the effect of different statuses of parental migration on the non-cognitive abilities of left-behind children in rural China? To answer this research question, the study uses the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) data wave-I and employs the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method. The findings revealed that the decision of one or both parents to migrate hurts the non-cognitive abilities of the left-behind school-going children. The results imply that parental migration of one or both parents in rural China is detrimental to the non-cognitive abilities of the left-behind children (LBCs). Therefore, parents should stay or move with their children instead of leaving them with relatives or grandparents. Furthermore, the government must concentrate on removing obstacles to education, especially for migrants, by undertaking initiatives like expanding the number of schools for LBCs and waiving tuition fees. Moreover, the government needs to take action to improve the lives of LBCs and find solutions to their problems. Lastly, the authorities need to promote economic change to create a more balanced economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the significance of model-based teaching on the topic of ionic and metallic bonding in Year 12 Chemistry in a New Zealand secondary school. Based on the conceptualization of the sub-macro level understanding of the bonding structure and properties of ionic and metallic compounds, models and drawings were used as an effective visual aid tool to support students' learning. Based on performances during four sequential classes and the results obtained from a pre-test and post-test, a vast improvement was seen in students' understanding of the concepts of ionic and metallic bonding. The results in the post-test also show that the concept of ionic bonding was easier to grasp compared to metallic bonding. This is attributed to the misconceptions developed by the students while learning metallic bonding without the use of visual strategies. This paper argues that teaching Chemistry concepts, such as metallic and ionic bonding, without the use of visual strategies results in students' inability to clearly grasp the topic. The research demonstrates that models and drawings have many advantages while teaching such abstract concepts in Year 12 Chemistry. The students in this research were non-native speakers of English, therefore, this may have further impacted upon their inability to grasp the concepts when taught without concrete visual strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our understanding of multiple goals has been advanced through the lines of research that focus on their pursuit of academic achievement goals and of academic and social goals. These prior efforts, however, are not free from conceptual and methodological limitations. To further advance the field, we put this paper together with two purposes in mind. First, we propose a goal complex model as a new approach to studying the coordination, consequences, and social contexts of pursuing multiple goals. In doing so, we highlight the role of academic goals as the means towards pursuing social goals as the end goals. Second, we proffer a model that explains sociocultural influences on the development of social and academic goals as well as goal complexes. To this end, we highlight the role of parents, teachers, and classmates/peers in promoting students' social and academic goals and in facilitating the formation of goal complexes through these key social agents' influences on the students' goal-related beliefs. Conceptual implications and methodological recommendations for future research on students' multiple goals are discussed. Together, the goal complex approach and the sociocultural model we present in this paper provide the field with directions for future research that seeks to better understand students' pursuit of multiple goals as they navigate complex sociocultural demands in their day-to-day tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher quality is widely considered to be an important contributor towards student academic success. However, there is no universally agreed upon method to measure teacher quality and, often, different measures of teacher quality reveal different information about teachers. This paper examines the academic achievement of Mexican sixth grade students utilizing data from surveys administered to students, teachers, and parents, to assess measures of teacher quality. Two different methods of measuring teacher quality, subjective student evaluations of teachers and objective value-added estimates of teachers' contribution to students' academic performance, are identified and compared. The subjective measure of teacher quality is estimated based on student responses to questions about their teachers' behaviors. The objective measure estimates the change in students' standardized test scores across two consecutive years that can be attributed to their teachers. Estimates of the relationship between subjective and objective measures of teacher quality indicate that the measures capture similar information, but that discrepancies between the measures also exist. The analysis provides support for comprehensive student and value-added evaluations of teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarships are a reflection of academic achievement for college students. The traditional scholarship assignment is strictly based on final grades and cannot recognize students whose performance trend improves or declines during the semester. This paper develops the Trajectory Mining on Clustering for Scholarship Assignment and Academic Warning (TMS) approach to identify the factors that affect the academic achievement of college students and to provide decision support to help low-performing students attain better performance. Specifically, we first conduct feature engineering to generate a set of features to characterize the lifestyles patterns, learning patterns, and Internet usage patterns of students. We then apply the objective and subjective combined weighted k-means (Wosk-means) algorithm to perform clustering analysis to identify the characteristics of different student groups. Considering the difficulty in obtaining the real global positioning system (GPS) records of students, we apply manually generated spatiotemporal trajectories data to quantify the direction of trajectory deviation with the assistance of the PrefixSpan algorithm to identify low-performing students. The experimental results show that the silhouette coefficient and Calinski-Harabasz index of the Wosk-means algorithm are both approximately 1.5 times to that of the best baseline algorithm, and the sum of the squared error of the Wosk-means algorithm is only the half of the best baseline algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper goes beyond the most popular perspective of family social capital among existing research and examines the effect of peer social capital on adolescent academic achievement. Using the official data from a Chinese university and taking into account the endogeneity problems, this paper finds that peer academic performance has a significant effect on human capital accumulation among university students. We have different findings, however, from research abroad. First, peer social capital has an indirect rather than a direct effect. Second, the influence of initial randomly assigned peers tends to increase over time. However, this increase of influence is only present among peers from similar social class backgrounds. Among peers from different backgrounds, the influence remains almost unchanged. In addition to this, the influence of peer social capital is not significantly different among students from different social class backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicting students' performance in distance courses is a very relevant task to help teachers identify students who need reinforcement or extension activities. Nevertheless, identifying the student's progress is highly complicated due to the large number of students and the lack of direct interaction. Artificial intelligence algorithms contribute to overcoming this problem by automatically analyzing the features and interactions of each student with the e-learning platform. The main limitations of the previous proposals are that they do not consider a ranking between the different marks obtained by students and the most accurate models are usually black boxes without comprehensibility. This paper proposes to use an optimized ordinal classification algorithm, FlexNSLVOrd, that performs a prediction of student's performance in four ranking classes (Withdrawn < Fail < Pass < Distinction) by generating highly understandable models. The experimental study uses the OULA dataset and compares 10 state-of-the-art methods on 7 different courses and 3 classical classification metrics. The results, validated with statistical analysis, show that FlexNSLVOrd has higher performance than the other models and achieves significant differences with the rest of the proposals. In addition, the interpretability of FlexNSLVOrd is compared with other rule-based models, and simpler and more representative rules are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporal punishment (CP) is a widely spread disciplining practice among parents and caregivers globally. Our paper aimed to explore the relationship between the parental attitudes towards CP, expected outcomes of CP, and parenting practices on one hand, with the reported dysfunctions of their children, on the other. Additionally, we aimed to explore the relationship between the use of CP and the reported academic, developmental, and psychological–emotional dysfunctions of their children. The present study involved a nationally representative sample of 1186 parents in Serbia, who had at least one child aged 0–18 years at the moment of interviewing. The parents filled out a series of questionnaires on their attitudes towards CP, expectations of CP outcomes, and their parental practices. Findings indicate that parents that report having a child with dysfunctions have positive attitudes towards CP and expect positive outcomes of CP. These parents also report using more CP as a disciplining method, as well as other harsh disciplining practices. We also identified parental positive expectations of CP, use of physical assault, psychological aggression, neglect as significant predictors of reported child dysfunctions severity. Having all the results in mind, we can assume that children with health-related and school-related issues might be at potential risk of further maltreatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a large sample of students from a Dutch university to describe variations in academic performance following a change in the strictness of academic dismissal policies. The research setting includes one moment in which the performance threshold for academic dismissal has been changed, keeping constant other characteristics of the educational system. Using a descriptive approach, we show that after the threshold has been raised the number of credits earned by academically weak students increases. A higher threshold level also brings their study effort forward in time, as evidenced by a decrease in the number of no-shows and an increase in the number of credits earned during regular exams. We also show that some students perceive the minimum performance level as a target level. The evidence suggests that variations in the implementation of academic dismissal policies affect students' tendency to procrastinate, especially among weaker students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]