This study identifies multiple profiles of successful essays via a cluster analysis approach using linguistic features reported by a variety of natural language processing tools. The findings from the study indicate that there are four profiles of successful writers for the samples analyzed. These four profiles are linguistically distinct from one…

The purpose of a recent study was to determine what learning environments best address the needs of 21st-century students at the secondary level. This study concluded that the presence of a positive 21st-century learning environment is related to student satisfaction and student-teacher relationships. While the majority of the literature on…

The practice of screening students to identify behavioral and emotional risk is gaining momentum, with limited guidance regarding the frequency with which screenings should occur. Screening frequency decisions are influenced by the stability of the constructs assessed and changes in risk status over time. This study investigated the 4-year…

Observational methods are increasingly being used in classrooms to evaluate the quality of teaching. Operational procedures for observing teachers are somewhat arbitrary in existing measures and vary across different instruments. To study the effect of different observation procedures on score reliability and validity, we conducted an experimental…

This study investigated the response of students and teachers to the use of ICTs to promote teaching and learning outside of the classroom and regular school hours in a Caribbean secondary school. Following an action research design, Grades 10 and 11 Biology students were given access to subject content and learning support through online…

Schools are often encouraged to facilitate extra-curricular learning within their own premises. This study addresses the potential of social networking sites (SNS) for supporting such out-of-class study. Given concerns that learning on these sites may happen at a surface level, we adopted self-determination theory for designing a social networking…

"Experience" is one of the most used terms in (science) education, and it is recognized as being related to learning (education). Yet "what" experience is and "how" it is related to learning and change remains untheorized. In this paper, we mainly draw on the work of J. Dewey and L. S. Vygotsky but also on M. Bakhtin…

This article introduces novel sensitivity-analysis procedures for investigating and reducing the bias that mischievous responders (i.e., youths who provide extreme, and potentially untruthful, responses to multiple questions) often introduce in adolescent disparity estimates based on data from self-administered questionnaires (SAQs). Mischievous…

Inquiry learning is a widely recognized method for fostering inquiry competence in science education. Nevertheless, there is discussion about how to best support students while working on inquiry tasks (in this case: experiments on causal relationships). To identify the kind of support students need in order to design experiments in upper grades,…

The purpose of this project was to investigate the effects of virtual versus physical manipulation using a simulation-based laboratory activity (SBL) and a microcomputer-based laboratory activity (MBL). Both the SBL and the MBL used computers to collect, graph, and analyze data. A major difference was that the MBL allowed the students to…

The purpose of this study was to understand how students utilized multiple representations to learn and explain science concepts, in this case the human breathing mechanism. The study was conducted with Grade 11 students in a human biology class. Semistructured interviews and a two-tier diagnostic test were administered to evaluate students'…

Violent writing is a real, yet rarely understood phenomenon in the secondary and post-secondary classroom. The 2007 Virginia Tech shooting tragedy sensationalized violent writing as a marker of disturbed and violent persons. However, violent writing comes in multiple forms and is composed for multiple reasons. As secondary schools wrestle with…

This article explores the ways "gamification" can play a role in adolescents' development of vocabulary. Gamification involves the application of game-design thinking and play elements to non-game activities, such as routine homework or classroom lessons. Drawing upon data from in-school and after-school settings, the authors…

The aim of this study was to investigate the development of metacognitive strategy knowledge (MSK) during schooling at the upper secondary education level and to examine its relation with individual student characteristics. This longitudinal study with two measurement points analyzed a sample of students in grades 10 and 11 from 19 schools…

Students tend to learn genetics by rote and may not realise the interrelationships in daily life. Because reasoning abilities are necessary to construct relationships between concepts and rote learning impedes the students' sound understanding, it was predicted that having high level of formal reasoning and adopting meaningful learning…