Numeracy is one of the essential competencies that the objectives of teaching math to primary students should be towards. However, many research findings show that the problem of “innumeracy” frequently exists at primary schools. That means children still do not feel at home in the world of numbers and operations. Therefore, the paper aims to apply the realistic mathematics education (RME) approach to tackling the problem of innumeracy, in the case of teaching the multiplication of two natural numbers to primary students. We conducted a pedagogical experiment with 46 grade 2 students who have not studied the multiplication yet. The pedagogical experiment lasted in six lessons, included seven activities and nine worksheets which are designed according to fundamental principles of RME by researchers. This is mainly a qualitative study. Based on data obtained from classroom observations and students’ response on worksheets, under the perspective of RME, the article pointed out how mathematization processes took place throughout students' activities, their attitudes towards math learning, and their learning outcomes. The study results found that students were more interested in math learning and understood the concepts of multiplication of two natural numbers.

The performance in biology at the secondary level has not been as good as expected. This has been a matter of concern. Thus, there has been a continuous focus on exploring newer innovative learner-centered and friendly instructional strategies to enhance understanding and retention in biology. This study, therefore, determined the effects of Concept Mapping (CM) and Cooperative Mastery Learning (CML) on fostering retention in photosynthesis among secondary schools in Nyamagabe district, Rwanda. A pre-test and post-test non-equivalent control group quasi-experimental design was used. Data were obtained from 151 students taught with CM, 144 students taught with CML, and 154 students taught with Conventional Teaching Methods (CTM). The Photosynthesis Retention Test (KR-21= 0.82) was used for data collection. The data were mainly analyze d using mean and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). The results showed that the CM and CML treatment groups outperformed the CTM group in retention in photosynthesis. There was a statistically significant difference in favor of the CM between the two experimental groups. The male and female students taught using CM retained equally in photosynthesis while gender difference was revealed in the mean retention scores of the students exposed to the CML, with females retained significantly higher than males. The study concluded that the CM and CML strategies were more effective than CTM. It was suggested, among other things, that teachers should be encouraged to apply CM and CML strategies when teaching biology.

This study aimed to describe the creative thinking process of students with active learning styles in proposing and solving problems on geometry material. The research instruments were Honey and Mumford's Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ), problem-solving and submission test sheets, and interview guidelines. The LSQ questionnaire was distributed to students majoring in mathematics education at a university in Malang, Indonesia, with a total of 200 students. Students who have an active learning style and meet the specified criteria will be selected as research subjects. Based on research on creative thinking processes in proposing and solving problems in students with active learning styles, it was found that there were differences in behaviour between subject 1 and subject 2 at each stage of creative thinking. However, based on the researcher's observations of the behaviour of the two subjects at each stage of their thinking, there are similarities in behaviour, namely, they tend to be in a hurry to do something, prefer trial and error, and get ideas based on daily experience.

Speaking skills had always been the most challenging skill among the pupils in language learning. The flipped learning approach is an innovative teaching and learning pedagogy that creates better learning experiences in order to improve pupils’ speaking skills. Therefore, this systematic literature review focuses on flipped learning approach in improving pupils’ speaking skills. This analysis is done based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) review methodology. A total of 39 articles related to flipped learning in improving speaking skills published between 2017 to 2020 were identified from Scopus, Google Scholar and ERIC databases. Based on the results, self-regulated learning, interaction, motivation and achievement were the key themes that promotes the benefit of flipped learning to improve pupils’ speaking skills. Hence, this paper is beneficial to policy makers, educators and students in utilizing flipped learning approach to improve pupils’ speaking skills from various levels of education.

This study investigated the effectiveness of visual mind mapping as a reading strategy for improving English language learners' critical thinking skills. Students from two general English courses were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. California Critical Thinking Test was used to assess participants' critical thinking skills. The findings revealed a statistically significant difference at (p < .005) in the mean scores of the experiment and control groups in the post-test due to visual mind mapping strategy in favor of the experimental group with a positive and significant impact on participants' critical thinking skills. The findings also showed that the experimental group’s scores were significantly improved in all indicators of critical thinking. The study results showed that visual mind mapping strategy affected the increased of critical thinking skills and reading comprehension ability. The study's findings revealed that using a visual mind mapping strategy had a significant improvement impact on English language learners critical thinking skills and reading ability.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) preventive measures influenced teachers directly. The sudden shift to new teaching environment emerged unknown challenges influencing teachers’ work differently. As self-efficacy is a key factor of successful teaching, the goal of our study was to examine the relationship among teachers’ efficacy-related experiences, work satisfaction and workload during the pandemic. 769 teachers (55 men and 677 female, 32 undefined) completed the online version of the Norwegian Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale and the Relative Self-Efficacy Scale. Findings indicated significant positive correlation between job satisfaction and self-efficacy as well as job satisfaction and the sense of competency. Kruskal-Wallis Test proved higher level of self-efficacy among teachers with more experience in online teaching in the past. According to SEM analysis, job satisfaction is predicted by efficacy beliefs concerning the sense of competence, motivation, coping and conflict resolution. Our findings indicate that experience in online teaching methods can enhance self-efficacy, which contributes to higher job satisfaction.

Literacy ability is an individual's ability to reason, formulate, solve, and interpret mathematically to solve problems related to daily life. Executive function is a cognitive aspect that has a relation with mathematical literacy. One of some aspects that affects the low mathematical literacy ability is the aspect of executive function. This study aims to investigate the characteristics of mathematical literacy based on the executive function aspects of 15 years old students. A qualitative method with a descriptive approach is employed in this study. The present research applies interview guidelines, questionnaires, and students' mathematical literacy tests as the instruments. Research subjects are junior high school students in grade VIII from two different schools. The result shows that the students' executive function influences mathematical literacy ability. Students' mathematical literacy ability is not fully achieved by fulfilling all the indicators involved. Another aspect found in the research is the low critical thinking ability impacts the achievement of mathematical literacy ability indicators.

The current study explored the potential effect of using the flipped class strategy in developing grammatical concepts among fifth-grade primary school students in Irbid, Jordan during the academic year 2019/2020. The study followed the quasi-experimental design, which was applied to a sample of 52 female students, who were divided into a control and an experimental group. The control was taught traditionally and the experimental group was taught grammar through using a flipped classroom strategy respectively. The study developed a list of suitable grammatical concepts for the study sample and a test to measure the Arabic grammatical concepts: declension, case marking, case ending, representation in a sentence, and extraction. After performing the appropriate statistical analysis, the results of the study showed the presence of significant differences between the experimental and the control groups in all grammatical concepts in favor of the experimental group. The researcher recommended applying the flipped class strategy in teaching the grammatical concepts for female fifth graders.

This research intended to examine the effect of mindset, democratic parenting, democratic teaching, and school environment on global citizenship among 2,226 ninth-grade students and 80 social studies teachers from 80 classrooms in public schools. The research instruments included a student questionnaire to measure global citizenship, democratic parenting, fixed and growth mindset, and a teacher questionnaire to measure democratic teaching and school environment and to analyze the data based on multilevel structural equation modeling. The significant findings revealed that democratic parenting and school environment positively affected global citizenship, whereas democratic teaching had a negative effect on global citizenship. In addition, the outstanding students with a growth mindset tend to lead to a positive effect and act as a mediating role through global citizenship than those with outstanding fixed mindset clearly. All factors in the model collaboratively explained the variance of global citizenship accounted for 62.8% and 47.5% at student and classroom levels, respectively. Finally, the discussions and suggestions section suggested the recommendations according to the findings of the research.

This paper investigates the quantitative literacy and reasoning (QLR) of freshmen students pursuing a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)–related degree but do not necessarily have a Senior High School (SHS) STEM background. QLR is described as a multi-faceted skill focused on the application of Mathematics and Statistics rather than just a mere mastery of the content domains of these fields. This article compares the QLR performance between STEM and non-STEM SHS graduates. Further, this quantitative-correlational study involves 255 freshman students, of which 115 have non-STEM academic background from the SHS. Results reveal that students with a SHS STEM background had significantly higher QLR performance. Nevertheless, this difference does not cloud the fact that their overall QLR performance marks the lowest when compared to results of similar studies. This paper also shows whether achievement in SHS courses such as General Mathematics, and Statistics and Probability are significant predictors of QLR. Multivariate regression analysis discloses that achievement in the latter significantly relates to QLR. However, the low coefficient of determination (10.30%) suggests that achievement in these courses alone does not account to the students’ QLR. As supported by a deeper investigation of the students’ answers, it is concluded that QLR indeed involves complex processes and is more than just being proficient in Mathematics and Statistics.

Online learning during the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has awakened and affirmed the necessity of learning based on digital technology. The article was aimed to analyze the effectiveness of online learning at bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees of Islamic Religious Education as a reference to develop a learning pattern post-COVID-19 pandemic. The research employed a mixed-method design with a concurrent triangulation model. The samples were taken using stratified random and purposive sampling. Meanwhile, the data were collected through questionnaires, in-depth interviews, and forum group discussion. A descriptive analysis and one-way analysis of variance were used to analyze the quantitative data, while interpretative descriptive for the qualitative data. The research showed that online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees of Islamic Religious Education have been effective. In detail, online learning at the doctoral degree was the most effective among all. On the other hand, face-to-face learning is still necessary. Therefore, the learning pattern developed post-COVID-19 pandemic combines face-to-face and online learning (hybrid learning). The formulation is adjusted to the characteristics, educational purpose and orientation, level of ability, readiness, and learning autonomy of the students at each educational level.

Traditionally secondary studies on achievement on Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) tests point to the significant impact of socioeconomic status and cultural backgrounds of families as well as the role of parental involvement, which in some cases has had a negative impact on achievement. For this article, a model of structural regression was tested, with structural modelling software. This model included the following factors: domestic and educational assets, parental support for students, parents’ perceptions about science, and science competencies among 214 high performing Mexican students on PISA tests in 2015. This resulted in a structural regression model with a goodness of fit, where science competencies were a positive significant variable, impacted by domestic and educational assets and parental involvement. An additional restricted model with four variables manifested as mediators, revealed that science competencies were predicted positively and significantly by domestic and educational assets, and by the manifest parental emotional support variable. Variables related to ownership of educational and cultural assets and resources, as well as parental support, particularly emotional parental support, have positive and significant impact on science competencies.

The article aims to develop a machine-learning algorithm that can predict student’s graduation in the Industrial Engineering course at the Federal University of Amazonas based on their performance data. The methodology makes use of an information package of 364 students with an admission period between 2007 and 2019, considering characteristics that can affect directly or indirectly in the graduation of each one, being: type of high school, number of semesters taken, grade-point average, lockouts, dropouts and course terminations. The data treatment considered the manual removal of several characteristics that did not add value to the output of the algorithm, resulting in a package composed of 2184 instances. Thus, the logistic regression, MLP and XGBoost models developed and compared could predict a binary output of graduation or non-graduation to each student using 30% of the dataset to test and 70% to train, so that was possible to identify a relationship between the six attributes explored and achieve, with the best model, 94.15% of accuracy on its predictions.

Despite the ubiquity of professional learning communities (PLCs) among researchers, studies on PLCs have widely differed in terms of dimensions used to conceptualise them. Thus, the study aimed to validate the conceptual model consisting of PLCs practices. The study employed a quantitative method using a survey. Firstly, a pilot test was conducted in which 103 school-teachers were involved in completing a questionnaire. The Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) had determined six dimensions and 20 elements of PLCs practices. Then, the field study was conducted using the new questionnaire. The survey involved 386 school-teachers from 25 High Performing Schools (HPS). The result revealed that: I) Based on the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), multidimensional PLCs practice model is evidence in the Malaysian context. They are operationalised in six dimensions including visions, missions and values, professional leadership, collective and collaborative culture, sharing of best practices, conducive school climate, and strategic alliances among stakeholders and, ii) The level of PLCs implementation in HPS is high for all the dimensions. The practical implications from the study and future research recommendations were also discussed.

Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) has gained popularity worldwide to teach mathematics using real-world problems. This study investigates the effectiveness of elliptic topics taught to 10th graders in a Vietnamese high school and students' attitudes toward learning. The RME model was used to guide 45 students in an experimental class, while the conventional model was applied to instruct 42 students in the control class. Data collection methods included observation, pre-test, post-test, and a student opinion survey. The experimental results confirm the test results, and the experimental class's learning outcomes were significantly higher than that of the control class's students. Besides, student participation in learning activities and attitudes toward learning were significantly higher in the RME model class than in the control class. Students will construct their mathematical knowledge based on real-life situations. The organization of teaching according to RME is not only a new method of teaching but innovation in thinking about teaching mathematics.

The study objectives were (1) developing a valid and reliable Affective Self-assessment Instrument of Chemistry for High School Student and (2) discovering the chemistry affective domain ability trend of high school students based on gender. The current development study utilized 10 non-test instrument development procedures from Mardapi. The study population was all high school students in Yogyakarta Special Region. The sample size was 405 students categorized into two stages and sampling techniques, i.e., the trial stage using cluster random sampling and the measurement stage using simple random sampling. The data analysis techniques were validity test using the Aiken index and construct validity and reliability using the second-order Confirmatory Factor Analysis model. The study findings were (1) the Affective Self-assessment Instrument of Chemistry for High School Student had 15 valid and reliable items and 15 available items to be utilized by teachers to measure students’ affective in the learning process and (2) the chemistry affective domain ability trend of male high school students was dominated by the “good” category and “very good” category for female students.

Students drop out of schools for many reasons, and it has negative effects on the individual and society. This paper reports a study using data published in 2015 from the Educational Longitudinal Study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics to analyze the influence of parental involvement on low-achieving U.S. students’ graduation rates from high school. Findings indicate that both students and parents share the same perspective on the need for parental involvement in their academic progress. For low-achieving high school students, parental involvement in academic work is a positive factor influencing students’ graduation from high school.

This study aims at identifying the level of psychological and professional stress in light of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. It adopted descriptive and analytical methodologies. Two scales were prepared: one scale for psychological and professional stress and the other for coping with psychological and professional pressures. The study sample consisted of 608 female teachers at public schools in Al-Kharj province, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The results show a moderate level of psychological and professional stresses. The findings show statistically significant differences in teaching experience variable. The differences were in favour of female teachers with experience of less than 5 years. However, no statistically significant differences were found on the variable of academic qualification. It was found that female teachers had followed strategies to cope with psychological and professional stresses including resorting to faith, connecting with other teachers and students, planning different strategies, seeking help from others and managing time. The study recommends arranging training courses for female teachers to develop remote teaching skills and using various technologies and applications in this field particularly during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

In Austria, segregated German language support classes (GLSC) were introduced in the school year 2018/19 to intensively support students who had previously little or no contact with German, the official language of instruction. These classes have been widely criticised; however, a formal evaluation of their effects has yet to be published. In absence of this evaluation, this article describes the language support model as it currently exists in Austria and reviews existing evidence about its efficacy. The literature review synthesises findings from educational research undertaken in other contexts that offer insight into features of ‘good practice’ in language support models. The article then explores the extent to which GLSC comply with these features. As such, this review allows insights into ways of ensuring students’ language and socio-emotional development – all central aspects of academic success – in language support models. It therefore allows research-informed understanding of the effects of the newly implemented model of German support classes in Austria and makes recommendations for further development.

For biology students, the diversity, complexity, and abundance of content in this field yield a heavy study load. Hence, appropriate learning strategies are key in supporting learners’ academic success. In biology, the factors gender and interest hold a unique position within the natural sciences, as there is an academic imbalance to the disadvantage of male students. In the present study, we examined the influence of gender and interest as well as its interdependences on the students’ use of learning strategies for biology learning. A total of 180 seventh through tenth grade students (Mage=14.47; SD=1.35; 60% female) from four general-track secondary schools located in Germany participated in this study. Data on the students’ level of interest and the use of learning strategies in biology lessons were collected. We used multivariate analysis of covariance with the students’ age as the covariate to analyse our data. Results revealed a significant effect of gender on the students’ use of the learning strategies rehearsal, organisation, effort, and time management. With regard to elaboration and effort, the effects of interest were found to be significant. The gender gap regarding learning strategy use was narrower for students with high levels of interest. These findings might have implications for beneficial teacher behaviour in biology.