The purpose of this study is to examine relationships among the such variables as socioeconomic status, math self-efficacy, anxiety, and mathematics achievement using structural equation modeling. A sample group of 8,806 students from England, Greece, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Turkey, and the USA participated in the PISA 2012. To show how much…

Cognitive interviewing (CI) provides a method of systematically collecting validity evidence of response processes for questionnaire items. CI involves a range of techniques for prompting individuals to verbalise their responses to items. One such technique is concurrent verbalisation, as developed in Think Aloud Protocol (TAP). This article…

Improving academic grades within the core areas of English, Science and Mathematics has had a lot of previous research interest, but research has tended to mostly focus on students who are failing, non-athletically talented students or student athletes at collegiate level. The particular needs of athletically talented secondary school students who…

High stakes summative assessment has been a significant element of educational policy in England and Wales for more than a decade. However, research evidence indicates that formative assessment is more likely to raise student achievement. Although some students are able to use summative assessment formatively, devising their own self-regulated…

This paper investigates the phenomena of overclaiming -- the propensity for individuals to claim more knowledge about an issue or topic than they really (or could possibly) do. Using Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from nine Anglophone countries and over 40,000 young people, we examine teenagers' propensity to claim…

Aim: The article explores secondary school students' perceptions of the 'value' of UK curriculum subjects; alongside what, how and why specific subject value attribution patterns are important for students, and the psychological impact of this on their wellbeing and academic self-efficacy beliefs (SEB). Method/Rationale: A mixed-methods,…

Confidence assessment (CA), in which students state alongside each of their answers a confidence level expressing how certain they are, has been employed successfully within higher education. However, it has not been widely explored with school pupils. This study examined how school mathematics pupils (N?=?345) in five different secondary schools…

The aim of this paper is three-fold. First, we review and briefly synthesise the main points of the recent debate around the concept of 'attitudes to mathematics'. We then present the measurement methodology we employed to capture 'attitudes to mathematics' in the context of a large scale U project with secondary school students, and how these…

In England teachers of secondary school mathematics and science are in short supply and it is important to understand how pre-service teachers develop and maintain networks of support during their training year and the impact these networks can have on their training outcomes. The purpose of this study is to examine how changes to the size and…

Understanding students' intentions to study science at upper-secondary school, at university, and to follow science careers continues as a central concern for international science education. Prior research has highlighted that students' science confidence has been associated with their intentions to study science further, although…

This paper explores the factors that contribute to the development of positive stress and distress in teachers within secondary schools in England. It draws on narrative interviews undertaken with 12 mathematics and science teachers in six schools and focuses on three of these teachers to explore issues in more depth. The findings demonstrate that…