This study was conducted to analyze (a) the suitability of National Examination (UN) and national-based school examination (USBN) implementation, which has been running on the current guidelines and efforts to improve students’ achievements, (b) the final examination system that is relevant in measuring student competency achievement based on graduate competence standard. It employed descriptive quantitative evaluation by using CIPP (context, input, process of implementation and product) evaluation model. Participants included the head of the Education and Culture Department, Ministry of Religion, Principals / Madrasas, teachers, and students. To collect the data, questionnaires, interviews, focus group discussions, and documentaries were undertaken. Additionally, the data analysis technique used quantitative and qualitative descriptive statistics. The findings indicate that (1) implementation of the UN and USBN, which has been ongoing, is in accordance with the standard operating procedure (SOP) that has been established by the board of national education standard (BNSP), (2) implementation of UN and USBN can be used to improve performance (3) the final examination system that is able to measure achievement of graduates' competency on certain subjects nationally by referring to the Graduate Competency Standard is computer-based national examination (UNBK). The concluding remarks are an attempt to contribute to the growth of future research in the field of UN and USBN implementation in Indonesia.

This study was aimed at investigating whether or not there is an interaction between learning approach and social intelligence towards response fluency. A number of 126 eighth grade students (M = 13.9; SD = 0.5 years) in Bojonegoro, Indonesia were randomly selected to participate in this study. This research used 2x3 factorial quasi-experiment with the matching static comparison design. The statistical Analysis Of Covariance (ANCOVA) ware implemented for analysis of data in the study. The results show that: there is a significant difference in response to fluency between students who learn with a scientific approach and direct learning approach; there are significant differences in response to fluency between students who have high, medium, and low social intelligence, both in scientific and direct learning approaches, the students with high social intelligence levels have better response to fluency than those with moderate social intelligence or low, and the students with moderate social intelligence have better response to fluency than those with low social intelligence, in all levels of social intelligence, the students who were taught by using scientific approach have better response to fluency than those who were taught by using direct learning approach.

This study considers the interaction between an e-learning system, the Blackboard system, and the students who use it in Saudi Arabia. While previous work exists, there is limited consideration of the assessment of the preferences of e-learning system usability variables based on students’ perspectives, especially in developing countries such as Saudi Arabia. This paper attempts to fill the gap by investigating the relative importance of the design criteria developed for e-learning system usability evaluation from the students’ perspective in Saudi tertiary education. Based on reviewed literature, a set of usability principles was developed that have had an influence in the students’ learning process and use of the e-learning system. The list includes system navigation, system learnability, visual design, information quality, instructional assessment and system interactivity. An exploratory study was carried out to identify the most important usability design characteristics from a student’s perspective and then evaluate the overall usability of the current e-learning system, based on this subset. A quantitative approach was adopted to weigh usability design characteristics, based on 181 learners’ perceptions. The sample consists of undergraduates who are users of a web-based e-learning system in a university in Saudi Arabia. The research instrument was tested for construct validity and reliability. The analysed results have shown that information quality is the most important dimension followed by the navigation of the e-learning system. The study has also revealed that the system learnability and visual design came third and fourth in order of importance of e-learning system usability assessment. Finally, the least important design categories that influenced the e-learning system usability assessment were instructional assessment and system interactivity. The empirical results of this study may help to provide insights for designers and evaluators leading to a more effective approach to improve the usability and uptake of the e-learning system.

In almost all European countries, many schools offer a form of bilingual education provision according to which content subjects are taught either through two different languages or through one foreign language. This approach is known as Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). The main problem addressed in this research article is the need to examine and describe the contribution of CLIL methodology to the development of bilingual language competence of students of a secondary vocational school. In addition, the study looks at the teaching and learning within a bilingual Slovak-English study program of the school, specifically at the implementation of CLIL methodology in content subjects taught within the program. Specifically, the extent, approaches, materials used in the study program to enhance bilingualism at school in general and the bilingual language competence of the students through CLIL methodology in particular, as well as opinions and perceptions of teachers and students were investigated. Three data collection tools were used – interviews with teachers and students, classroom observations and document review. The results of the study indicate that various factors inside and outside the classroom and school enhance students’ bilingual language competence with CLIL methodology playing an important but not a decisive role.

This paper presents how the process of flipped teaching with Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) works in teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing in the Indonesian context. As well, it also elaborates how the teaching model affects learner autonomy. This flipped teaching with CALL was experienced by some lecturers of private universities in East Java, Indonesia. This study used a multi-site case study research design. The data were yielded from in-class observation, lesson plan analysis, focus group interviews, and questionnaires. The total of 5 EFL writing teachers and 150 students from 5 private universities in East Java, Indonesia had participated in this study. Experimenting with flipped teaching with CALL in teaching EFL writing enabled the teachers, as course developers, to get an idea of their students’ response to the challenges of new ways, methods, and techniques of their study. The flip-class environment fostered better communication amongst learners and learner autonomy as well. The flip-class atmosphere also had a beneficial impact on the motivation of learners. The qualitative results from interviews of the learners showed that the learners had inspired themselves to engage in in-class learning activities and self-regulated teaching environments. The findings gave reflection to the teachers on several vitally necessary conditions enabling a course in a flipped teaching with CALL format to contribute to developing students’ professional competencies.

It is aimed, in this study, to compare the achievement level of the students taught with the fifth grade intensive English language curriculum (IELC) and the ones taught with the fifth grade English language curriculum (ELC) in terms of their speaking skills. With this aim, it is also intended to find out the failure behind the students’ speaking skills. Sequential explanatory strategy, which is one of the mixed-methods research designs, was used for this study as the aim was to further explain the quantitative findings. There were two groups of participants in this study. The first group included 64 fifth grade students selected from two different schools though simple random sampling, while the second group consisted of the five teachers teaching the fifth grade IELC. Two instruments developed by the researcher were utilized to collect data. The first instrument was an achievement test developed to measure students’ success in speaking skills, while the second instrument was a semi-structured interview schedule developed to collect data from the teachers implementing the fifth grade IELC. The quantitative data collected through the achievement test were analyzed with descriptive statistics including means and standard deviations and inferential statistics through independent samples t-test which was used to compare the two groups of students’ achievement levels, while the qualitative data gathered through the semi-structured interviews were analyzed with content analysis. The findings indicated that only one objective was attained by the students, the results of independent samples t-test indicated that there was not a significant difference in the achievement levels of the students taught with the fifth grade IELC and the ones taught with the fifth grade ELC. The reasons behind this failure was found to be resulting from teacher-related, student-related, and Ministry of National Education (MoNE)-related factors referring to implementation problems rather than curriculum design.

Environmental learning in the 21st century requires students to have Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). The purpose of this study was to measure HOTS students using Higher Order Thinking Skills Assessment based on Environmental Problem (HOTS-AEP). The research method used in this study was descriptive method with a total sample of 248 students consisting of Elementary School (ES), Junior High School (JHS), Bachelor Program (BP), and Master Program (MP). The results showed that students overall have a very low HOTS category. HOTS scores scale of 0-100 on ES (22.3) are still higher than JHS (20.2). Whereas at the university level, BP scores (19.9) are lower than MP (21.4). This showed that learning must be oriented towards increasing HOTS through various media development learning, learning materials, learning models, and strategies. This study concludes that the HOTS score of students was still very low and needs to be improved.

This study has been carried out with the families who migrated from Turkey and settled in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, which has an intense cultural and educational diversity. Finding the answer to the question “According to whom; who is who?” constitutes the fundamental ground of this research. However, this research has also been carried out in order to comprehend the points of view that have changed or have not changed between the past and the present and to scrutinize the reasons for such points of view. Moreover, another main objective is to form a comparative opinion about the situations that the settled migrant families in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and their children have encountered regarding the “other” concept, based on cases in their experiences, with regard to the adaptation concept. Content analysis, which is a qualitative research technique, was used during the research, whereas relevant persons have been contacted by means of the snowball sampling technique. In accordance with the obtained opinions and with the results derived from sample experiences, there surely exist differences in experiences in terms of adaptation and the marginalization-othering concept between those who migrated in the past and those migrating in the present day. Those sample experiences are discussed directly and the comments have been made by considering negative and positive concepts together.

Preschool education is fundamental to shape children’s aptitudes and skills in early life. Ecuador is following a global education trend for starting-up mathematical thinking at earlier development ages, but this is only reflected in vehement curricular changes that are not supported properly. As a result, the safeguarding of a good children’s education appears to be lessened. This work aimed to evaluate the mathematics thinking practices in preschools of Pasaje city, Ecuador. The investigation employed a descriptive approach, hence data were collected from 65 teachers and 810 parents from public and private preschools by means of interviews and questionnaire in an attempt define some causes (teacher’s education, children’s socio-economical and family circumstances) that impair the initiation of the numerical, spatial and metric and geometric aptitudes in children. The results showed that not only preschool practices but also the home environment linked to socio-economic status appear to have positive or unfavorable influences on their children’s education.

The structure sense is a part that must be learned in order to help understand and construct connection in abstract algebra. This study aimed at building the pattern of a structure sense as a profile of the structure sense in group property. Using a qualitative study, the structure sense of group property was explored through lecturing activity of abstract algebra course from two individual assignments given to the students. The students who could provide the best answers from the first and second individual assignments were chosen to be the respondents. The data from the second assignment, then, was analyzed through presentation, interpretation, coding, making a pattern, leveling and continued with clarification through an interview. The results of the study show that there were six patterns of structure sense answers and five levels of structure senses made by the students as the profile of structure sense. The conclusion is the inability to recognize the structure of the set elements, operation notations, and binary operation properties is one of the causes of the constraints in structuring the proof construction of the group. Thus, a thinking of mathematics connection is needed in structure understanding as a connection between symbol in learning and the symbol of abstract.

If the challenges of today's world are to be met, then there is a need to give more prominence to emotion in education, i.e.  indulging the personal, emotional and spiritual aspects of teaching, and promoting the teachers’ social-emotional competencies along with the schooling influence. In this respect, structuring the contents of in-service programs has gained vital importance in all fields of education including English Language Teaching (ELT). This action research study involved 17 EFL instructors to enhance their emotional literacy regarding learning in self and in others and consequently develop behaviors that would be caused by finding out about emotional intelligence. Relatedly, it was aimed to set up a framework of a teacher development program that the instructors at a foreign language school at a state university in Turkey improve their emotional literacy skills and create opportunities to impart these skills to their students as well as to people in their personal lives. The article reports on the participants’ and the researcher’s views regarding the maturation of an emotional literacy improvement program for in-service professional development purposes in ELT context.

A sample of 327 engineering bachelor students from a public university in Mexico took part in an information integration study to explore systematic thinking underlying propensity for cheating during a course exam. All study participants were provided with written descriptions of 12 scenarios pertaining to the academic evaluation criteria and were asked to rate the likelihood that they would cheat under such circumstances. The 12 scenarios reflected the experimental manipulation of three orthogonal factors: teacher’s teaching style, type of exam, and modality of assessment. Analysis results revealed four distinct attitudes toward cheating among students, two of which were independent of context (low and high desire to cheat) while the remaining two were context-dependent (low and moderate desire to cheat). All groups showed systematic thinking underlying their possible desire to cheat that was typified by the use of a summative cognitive rule for integrating information related to academic cheating. However, evaluation of factor relevance varied across the groups.

The current study aimed to adopt and assess the psychometric properties and measurement invariance of Grit-S among Omani and American students (N = 487) using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The scale’s construct validity was estimated by investigating its associations with achievement goal orientations (AGOs). EFA results suggested that a two-factor solution (i.e., perseverance of effort [G_PE] and consistency of interest [G_CI]) was the best factorial structure, explaining 47.74% and 51.02% of the variance in the Omani and American samples, respectively. The factors had good reliability coefficients in the two samples. Related to the intercultural differences, G_PE explained more variance among Omanis (31.02%) relative to American sample, whereas G_CI explained a larger proportion of variance among Americans (36.86%) compared with Omani sample. The first level of measurement invariance, configural invariance, was not supported, necessitating the investigation of the other levels of measurement invariance using a new sample. Grit correlated positively with mastery and performance-approach goals (r = .29 and .12, respectively) and negatively with avoidance goals (r = -.25), supporting the scale’s construct validity. These findings showed that Grit-S scale can be used as valid and reliable assessment tool to assess student interest and perseverance in the academic context in Arabic/Omani and American cultures.

This study investigates the emotional responses of EFL student teachers to various affective situations during practicum and their coping strategies to enhance positive emotions and reduce negative emotions. Seventy female EFL student teachers participated in this study. To collect quantitative and qualitative data, two instruments were used: an emotional reflective diary and semi-structured interviews. The results of the study revealed that the practicum is an emotionally positive experience. The frequency of occurrence of pleasant affective situations was more than that of unpleasant ones. In the decreasing order of frequency, the most frequent emotional responses were happy, angry, and stressed and the least frequent ones were lost, influential, and shamed. Furthermore, the results indicated that student teachers adopted many regulation strategies to manage their emotions. The study recommends that teacher education programmes increase the focus on teachers’ emotions and training student teachers to manage their emotions to build future professional identities.

The industrial revolution era 4.0 has now become a major topic in every country. Various sectors respond quickly to this problem, including education. In response to this, there are several aspects of skills that students must master. One of them is problem-solving skills. One of the aspects that influence the students’ problem-solving skills is the context and problem-based learning model. The purpose of this study is to describe the effect of the model on students' skills to solve physics problems. The research method used is a quasi-experimental research design with non-equivalent control group design. The data analysis technique used Independent Sample T-Test by PASW 18 with a significance 5%. Based on the results of the Independent Sample T-Test can be concluded that there is an effect on the model that was applied with a significant gain of 0,00. The results showed that the context and problem-based learning (C-PBL) model affected the physics problem-solving skills. The C-PBL model is able to improve the students’ physics problem-solving skills, communication skills, the students’ confidence in learning, as well as improving students’ understanding of physics lessons conceptually.

Since the 2008/2009 school year, every primary school in Slovenia has had to prepare its own “school moral education plan” and undertake its moral education activities on the basis of this plan. Although the basic content areas of the moral education plan are prescribed by law, the openness of the legal provisions allows schools to exercise professional autonomy. After a decade of the implementation of moral education plans we conducted an empirical quantitative-qualitative study aimed at analysing them in terms of content. The objective was to determine the extent to which the plans include and how they define the prescribed content areas, as well as the extent to which they include and how they define additional content areas that are not prescribed by law but could be included by schools depending on their individual particularities and the specific challenges of their environment. Data were collected through publications on the websites of a representative sample of randomly selected schools and analysed with a specially prepared instrument. The research shows that upgrading moral education activities through the school moral education plan would require (1) reconsideration and upgrading of the concept, (2) continuous state support for the self-evaluation of schools specifically in this area, and (3) support for schools to gain a deeper professional understanding of current moral education challenges and of forming moral education strategies that differ with regard to the content differences in the reasons for individual moral education challenges.

The aim of this study, in which one of the qualitative research approaches, the case study design, was used, was to remedy reading problems and develop reading skills in a fourth grade primary school student with sound, syllable and word recognition exercises. The study covers 38 lesson periods in the autumn term of the 2018-2019 academic year. For developing reading skills, the strategies of “prior listening to the paragraph”, “repetitive reading” and “word repetition” were used. For determining reading errors, the “Error Analysis Inventory” was used. Data were obtained by means of observation and document examination. In the study related to determining reading status, it was established that the student had made errors such as repetition, syllabication, omission, addition and failure to notice punctuation marks. Based on the data obtained, first of all, sound, syllable and word recognition exercises were conducted with the student, and then reading exercises were carried out with texts selected to suit the level of the student’s Turkish course books and story books. Analyses were performed by taking audio and video recordings of all exercises. As a result of the intervention, the student’s desire to read increased, he began to read out loud, he began to identify sounds that he previously did not recognise or confused, and improvements in his reading skill were observed.

Initial teacher education (ITE) programmes have been critiqued widely for failing to connect educational theory with everyday practices in schools. More meaningful collaborations between schools and teacher education providers have featured prominently among key recommendations addressing the traditional theory-practice divide. This paper traces and critically analyses one ‘simplex’ story of initiating and leading a large-scale school-university partnership (SUP) network in the Republic of Ireland. Using a narrative approach, the protagonists and researchers of this SUP story bring their ‘simplex’ journey of doing and shaping SUP to life. Analysis of the Irish case study emphasizes the authentic transformation of teacher educators’ institutional identities as a powerful enabler of meaningful collaboration while also highlighting ethical dilemmas that arose for university tutors in the context of deeper relational engagement in the school-university cross-boundary space. Constrained in their ITE praxis by power relations and a disequilibrium of responsibilities, tutors’ doubts, discomfort and, at times, disillusionment led them to readjust their expectations with regard to SUP while also refocusing their energy and hopes in student teachers as collaborative future change agents.

Methods of education in schools should promote students' activeness, self-awareness, initiative and creativity; be suitable with the characteristics of each class and subject; foster self-study methods, ability to work in groups, practice skills to apply knowledge into practice, and impact emotions to bring joy as well as excitement to students. Experiential education is a method of teaching and meets the above requirements. In fact, experiential activities are closely related to teaching and educational activities in schools, in order to create an environment for learners, associate theory with practice, and unify awareness with action and learners, and have the opportunity to experience their own behavior. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of activities through experience in solving problems about the equation of a circle and investigate students' attitudes as well as beliefs in such activities. The experimental class included 30 10th grade students and was taught by experiential learning model, while the control class also had 30 students and was taught in a conventional way of teacher’s guidance. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyze and evaluate the collected data. The results showed that the experimental class achieved better mathematical results than the control class as well as had a positive learning attitude, showing interest in the learning topic.

Studies have acknowledged computational thinking (CT) as an efficient approach for problem-solving particularly required in digital workplaces. This research aims to identify indicators for a holistic CT assessment instrument for undergraduate students. A three-round fuzzy Delphi study has been conducted to gain comprehensive opinions and consensus from undergraduate lecturers of computer science disciplines and experts from the information technology industry. In round 1, the experts judged a set of predefined indicators describing CT skills and attitudes identified from the literature, while rounds 2 and 3 focused on variables selection. The consensus was achieved on holistic CT, and the indicators are teamwork, communication, spiritual intelligence, generalization, problem-solving, algorithmic thinking, evaluation, abstraction, decomposition, and debugging. Results demonstrate the importance of attitudes in the process of solving a problem and suggest higher education institutions to consider holistic CT in preparing qualified future graduates. Many CT studies focused only on the skills of CT. This study outlines the assessment indicators that consider both CT skills and attitudes, particularly at the undergraduate level.