Learning in high schools has used a lot of smartphone assistance to make it easier for students to understand the material explained by the teacher. However, with the many uses of smartphones in learning, of course, it must provide positive benefits to the ability of students, especially the science literacy ability. In this study, the objectives to be achieved are to examine how much the smartphone's usability in physics learning, examine students' science literacy and examine the effect of the smartphone’s usability on students' science literacy in physics learning. The method used in this study is a quantitative method with a research design used is a one-shot case study. The data on smartphone usability is obtained using a questionnaire, and science literacy of students is obtained through on physics science literacy test. The results of this study indicate that the smartphones usability and students' science literacy in physics learning are respectively in the high and medium categories with a respective percentage of 57.20% and 36.36%. The students' science literacy is influenced by the smartphone's usability in physics learning by 34.30%. These results indicate that smartphone usability by most students is very high, but has not been able to contribute optimally to students' science literacy. Therefore, special treatment is needed in utilizing the use of smartphones in physics learning so that students' science literacy can be optimized.

Citizenship education has been recognised as a desirable attribute of students both by the educational system and Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. The aims of citizenship education will be difficult to achieve unless teacher educators incorporate citizenship education as a main outcome of their courses. Yet, that mainly depends on their understanding of the meaning of citizenship and what the component is that they ought to develop. The current article aims to analyse the perceptions of teacher educators about citizenship and their related teaching practices. Study adopted a qualitative method to collect the data by interviewing five teacher educators from college of education, Sultan Qaboos University. The findings showed that those educators associated citizenship with patriotism and a personally responsible vision of citizenship. In addition, they reported limited practices pertinent to citizenship education and clearly expressed their need for professional development in citizenship education.  

The equal symbol has been used in diverse mathematical frameworks, such as arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, set theory, and so on. In mathematical terms, the equal sign has been used in fixed command of standings. The study reports on the students meaning and interpretations of the equal sign. The study involved Grade 6, 7, and 8 students in a secondary school in Alain, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Much of the earlier research done on the equal sign has focused on the primary school level, but this one focuses on middle school students. The study shows that the maximum foremost understanding of the equal sign amongst Grade 6, 7, and 8 students is a do-something, unidirectional symbol. Students realize the equal sign as an instrument for marking the response moderately than as an interpersonal symbol to associate extents.

The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak in the Indonesians nowadays, the public education department established the policy of the online education system to all education levels. Most educators employ an online flipped learning method to support the policy. Research aimed to measure the effect of online based-flipped classroom learning between using Microsoft Team and WhatsApp and student engagement on reading comprehension skills. The research approach was a quasi-experimental model with a 2 x 3 factorial pre-test-post-test non-equivalent control group design. The sample of this investigation was early period undergraduates of the management economics study program. Data analysis employed a two-way ANOVA test. The result confirmed that the online flipped learning scheme using Microsoft Team was better than WhatsApp in improving student engagement and reading comprehension skills. We advise English lecturers to apply better online media services, pay attention to the completeness of the learning features and train their competence in implementing distance learning to use compatible synchronous flipped classroom teaching based on internet technologies.

This study aims to measure the effectiveness of “multiplex teaching method” in mastering vocabulary for deaf students. Multiplex teaching method consists of picture language, sign language, printed-word language, written language, and spoken language. The research was designed as a single subject research (SSR) with baseline, intervention, and maintenance phase (A-B-A’ design). The research subjects consisted of two deaf students in special school of SLB Bhakti Luhur Malang, Indonesia. In addition, a special education teacher and an observer were involved in this study. The intervention instrument comprised five lesson plans (LP), each containing a vocabulary of four words. The data were analyzed using intra-condition and inter-condition graphical inspection with a focus on data stability, trends, and score changes. The effectiveness was determined by the Percentage of Non-Overlapping data (PND). The change of score from A'/A achieved by Subject-1 was 7.86 points, while Subject-2 obtained 7.68 points. Subject-1 obtained an average PND B/A of 100% and average PND A'/B of 82.5%. Subject-2 achieved an average PND B/A of 99% and PND A’/B of 90%. Thus, multiplex teaching method is very effective in helping deaf students master vocabulary.

The research aims to develop an instructional tool based on Discovery Learning (DL) combined with a Metacognitive Knowledge Strategy (MKS) to enhance students’ Critical Thinking Skills (CTSs). In doing so, the study employed a Research and Development (R&D) method to develop such a tool. The developed instructional tool was tested for its validity by experts and practitioners’ evaluation. Further, the empirical data were collected from the results of implementation in learning and the student's responses, while the data of tools effectiveness were acquired from the critical thinking tests given to students (analyzed by related t-test). The developed instructional tools were implemented in a limited-scale trial of 32 students and a large-scale trial of 59 students. The results show that: firstly, the DL and MKS-integrated instructional tools are stated as valid in terms of the lesson plan, student worksheet, and critical thinking test. Secondly, the practicality criteria have been successfully met; the learning implementation, students’ activity, and students' responses were regarded as in accordance with the feasibility standard. Thirdly, the instructional tool was deemed effective in enhancing students’ CTSs (p = 0.05).

Teacher professional development (TPD) is an important component of enhancing student learning and school education quality. Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training is reforming education, including curricula, teaching methods, and textbooks. Many requirements have to been done to effectively implement the reform, and TPD is considered a significant contribution. Using data from an in-depth interview with the principal, teacher questionnaires, and school policy-related documents, this qualitative case-study research in a selected high school for gifted students in Central Vietnam aimed to find out how TPD had been implemented in response to education reforms in Vietnamese high schools. TPD was widely perceived and respected by the principal and teachers in this case study, and these positive perspectives were transferred into practice with numerous effectively employed TPD strategies at this high school for students’ enhanced learning and achievements.

Several concerted movements toward mathematical modeling have been seen in the last decade, reflecting the growing global relationship between the role of mathematics in the context of modern science, technology and real life. The literature has mainly covered the theoretical basis of research questions in mathematical modeling and the use of effective research methods in the studies. Driven by the Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) theory and empirical evidence on metacognition and modeling competency, this research aimed at exploring the interrelationships between metacognition and mathematical modeling and academic year level as a moderator via the SEM approach. This study involved 538 students as participants. From this sample, 133 students (24.7%) were from the first academic year, 223 (41.4%) were from the second and 182 (33.8%) were from the third. A correlational research design was employed to answer the research question. Cluster random sampling was used to gather the sample. We employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypothesized moderation employing IBM SPSS Amos version 18. Our findings confirmed the direct correlation between metacognition and mathematical modeling was statistically significant. Academic year level as a partial moderator significantly moderates the interrelationships between the metacognitive strategies and mathematical modeling competency. The effect of metacognition on mathematical modeling competency was more pronounced in the year two group compared to the year one and three groups.

The purpose of the study was to identify how the instructional model that converges professional training and foreign language learning can influence the students’ professional mobility and students’ readiness to build their careers. The study used the methods of a quantitative kind for the evaluation study and descriptive research. The variables for the study were as follows: levels of student professional mobility skills proficiency that included students’ competence in their professional field, foreign language proficiency, students’ networking skills, personality qualities, and sampled students’ satisfaction with the reshaped course. The field phase of the study found that the Erasmus and Work-and-Travel programmes contributed to the former students’ adaptability and flexibility, the experience of work abroad, and practical specialism-related experience gained during study. The students developed their abilities to project a positive social image, ability to build and maintain relationships, foreign language proficiency, proficiency in presenting and negotiating, and theoretical knowledge. The English Language-delivered Professional Mobility course brought shifts in the levels of students’ professional mobility skills. The experimental group students reported that they improved their competence in their professional field, foreign language proficiency, networking skills, and personality qualities. The experimental group students’ judgements concerning the quality of the course were complimentary.

This study discusses students’ responses and perceptions on the e-book of Local History of West Java (Indonesia) developed by the researchers. It uses a Research and Development approach and experimental method. Data collection techniques used in this study are observation, interviews, and focus group discussions with interactive model data analysis. The research subjects were students and teachers of high schools in West Java. They were taken as the subjects as they can represent the region. The History E-book is, however, published on ebooksejarah.id page while the system was developed by using SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) Waterfall model. The results of the study indicate that the components of the e-book on the aspects of the materials, presentation, and completeness are overall suitable to be used by students. The materials are considered to be still inapplicable and not contextual. Further, they are still lack of latest issues as well as photos/illustrations. The study of student responses on the e-book reinforces that the zoomers (those belong to Generation Z) prefer to digital learning media because their social life belongs to the online world. Local history e-books should better adapt to the learning style of Generation Z, who prefer visuals and hands-on experiences to reading texts. Thus, e-book development needs to be equipped with various learning media in short audios and video explainers, animations, and infographics.

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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to explore if the learning of biographical writing contributes to the positive views and attitudes towards others of different groups. The paper used the Research and Development approach by designing and implementing a learning model of biographical writing. The subjects of this study were 200 seventh-grade students having different ethnic and religious backgrounds from nine junior high schools. The data-collecting method was pretest-posttest. The results of the study demonstrated that the average scores of the aspects of student empathy, student positive attitudes towards ethnic differences, and student positive attitudes towards religious differences increased in all the schools investigated. The increase of average score in the aspect of student empathy, positive attitudes towards ethnic differences, and positive attitudes towards religious differences could be classified into three categories: high, medium, and low. Most of the schools under study experienced medium and low increases of average score in all aspects.

Cognitive processes are procedures for using existing knowledge to combine it with new knowledge and make decisions based on that knowledge. This study aims to identify the cognitive structure of students during information processing based on the level of algebraic reasoning ability. This type of research is qualitative with exploratory methods. The data collection technique used began by providing a valid and reliable test instrument for algebraic reasoning abilities for six mathematics education student programs at the Islamic University of Sultan Agung Indonesia. Subjects were selected based on the level of upper, middle, and lower algebraic reasoning abilities. The results showed that (1) students with the highest level of algebraic reasoning ability meet the logical structure of Logical Reasoning which shows that students at the upper level can find patterns and can generalize; (2) Students at the intermediate level understand the cognitive structure of Symbolic Representations, where students can make connections between knowledge and experience and look for patterns and relationships but have difficulty making rules and generalizations; (3) students at lower levels understand the cognitive structure of Comparative Thinking, where students are only able to make connections between prior knowledge and experience.

Many researchers have separately developed instruments to measure environmental characteristics such as attitudes, values, and knowledge. However, there is no instrument used to measure all these aspects in one comprehensive instrument. This study is meant to develop and validate a green character instrument which reveals student behavior and awareness of the environment. The instrument consists of 40 statement items consisting of 5 aspects, namely private pro-environmental behavior, public pro-environmental behavior, environmental knowledge, environmental values, and environmental attitudes. It was implemented on 1,398 students from 15 universities in Indonesia. The instrument content validation was analyzed by three experts using content validity index (CVI). The construct validity was analyzed using exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and RASCH analysis. The content validity results obtained CVI scores ranging between 0.8 and 0.9 with a good category, while item reliability was in a fairly good category with a high level of separation index. Construct validation resulted in 34 items (4 items were eliminated after Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis, and 2 items were eliminated after RASCH analysis) spread over five constructs, namely environmental behavior, environmental knowledge, environmental values, environmental attitudes, and environmental habits. The resulting instrument has a good level of item difficulty, with a well understood response set which can be understood easily by respondents, and without bias. Therefore, it can be used to measure the students’ green character on both male and female.

This paper is a quasi-experimental investigation into the effectiveness of using analogy in teaching new and unfamiliar physics concepts to students enrolled in a British curriculum school in the United Arab Emirates. The students (N = 34) were randomly assigned to one of two groups: the control group (N = 17) following the traditional teaching method, and the experimental group (N = 17) using the student-centered analogical method. The students relied on previous class knowledge to construct models, which in turn helped them explore new ideas and derive new knowledge. Pre-tests and post-tests were given to the two groups, where the post-test (test 6) results confirmed that the experimental group showed a more consistent outcome of high grades, no failure, and good homogeneity of results. On the other hand, the control group kept fluctuating around the same level in the all-study’s tests (pre-test and repeated measures (tests 2,3,4 and 5). The effect size of the intervention was very large and practically important, at Cohen’s d = 2.35. As a result, analogy-based pedagogies have demonstrated impact on students' learning performance and perceptions. Consequently, the result is capable of providing significant insights for educational policy and curriculum development.

Regardless of varied lingua-cultural ideologies enriching the theories of communicative competence (CC), the four CC dimensions (e.g., linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse, and communication strategies (CSs)) still become the main cores of English speaking (ES) classrooms. Of the four dimensions, CSs seem to be the most technical which deserve to be persistently studied. Hence, this study aimed to probe into ES lecturers’ performances of CSs, their efforts to improve students’ CC, and the impacts of their efforts on students’ learning according to students’ perspectives. Two ES lecturers and 10 students at a university in Indonesia were purposively selected to be the participants. They were observed and interviewed according to the study’s purposes. This study uncovered various CSs performed by ES lecturers according to several contexts, such as to understand spoken texts, to understand spoken recorded texts, and to overcome temporary communication difficulties. Various ES lecturers’ efforts were also revealed according to their functions to improve each dimension of CC. Most students perceived the lecturers’ efforts positively due to the impacts on their motivation, self-efficacy, collaborative skills, and metacognition. However, few students echoed negative perceptions about a lecturer’s native-speakerism-endorsed effort due to lingua-cultural issues. Implication, limitation, and recommendation are discussed.

Evolution is one of the most difficult and controversial topics. Scientific knowledge of evolution should belong to general knowledge of people, it should be the part of their natural science knowledge or biological education because it is the basis for accepting or refusing of other important topics such as genetical modification, global climatic change and others. Our aim was to analyse the inclusion of evolution in the teaching process in Slovakia in the subjects of history and biology and the associated potential threats to the formation of misconceptions. We measured the level of knowledge and understanding of evolution and evolutionary processes among high school graduates (N = 200). In doing so, we hypothesized that graduating high school students who have received evolutionary education achieve higher levels of both knowledge and understanding of evolutionary processes compared to those who have not received such education. We hypothesized that interest in science and acceptance of evolution would also positively influence levels of knowledge about evolutionary phenomena and understanding of evolutionary processes. Having used research, we claimed the impact of interest in natural science. We suggest to include the evolution as a main topic of biology into education through exploration- oriented teaching.

This study investigates the contribution of teachers’ willingness to their professional competence in adapting to digital learning transformation during the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and its relationship to instructional leadership and self-efficacy. Data were collected by distributing online questionnaires consisting of 4 constructs, namely instructional leadership, self-efficacy, teacher’s willingness to change, and professional competence, and distributed to 221 Indonesian High School teachers. Structural Equation Model (SEM) was used for analysis using Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS) version 23.0 to examine the hypotheses. The results showed that instructional leadership significantly influences teachers’ willingness to change with a positive impact on their professional competence. Furthermore, there is a significant effect on teachers’ willingness to change their professional competence, insignificant on self-efficacy with substantial impacts on their willingness to change. The analysis results through the Sobel test showed that the teachers’ willingness to change is an excellent mediating variable for self-efficacy in influencing professional competence. Conversely, it is not an excellent mediating variable for instructional leadership towards professional competence. The importance of teachers’ willingness to improve their professional competence is a new finding that significantly contributes to their professional development.