The purpose of this study was to investigate how mental rotation strategies affect the identification of chemical structural formulas. This study conducted event-related potentials (ERPs) experiments. In addition to the data collected in the ERPs, a Chemical Structure Conceptual Questionnaire and interviews were also administered for data collection. Eighteen university students majoring in chemistry were recruited. In the ERP experiments, the participants were required to identify 2D figures, 2D chemical structural formulas, 3D objects and 3D chemical structural formulas. The contours of 2D figures are similar to those of 2D chemical structural formulas, but they contain no content knowledge. Likewise, the contours of 3D objects are similar to 3D chemical structural formulas without content knowledge. The results showed that all students used similar strategies of mental rotation in identifying 2D figures, 3D objects and 3D chemical structural formulas. However, the high-achieving students used different strategies in identifying 2D figures and chemical structural formulas, while the low-achieving students tended to use similar strategies of mental rotation in identifying both 2D figures and chemical structural formulas. The results indicate that some of the difficulties in identifying 2D chemical structural formulas that students encounter are due to their inappropriate strategies of mental rotation.

The inorganic chemistry is one of the essential courses in the education of pre-service chemistry teachers. This study investigates the differences between the adopted learning approaches and achievements of Turkish pre-service chemistry teachers' who received the inorganic chemistry course from the same lecturer. The purposes of this study are to explore the relationship between the inorganic chemistry achievements and the adopted learning approaches of pre-service chemistry teachers and to examine the effect of their learning approaches on their inorganic chemistry achievements. This study was conducted with 127 pre-service chemistry teachers from the Department of Chemistry Education at one of the public university in Turkey. “The Study Process Questionnaire” and “The Inorganic Chemistry Achievement Exams” were used as the data collection tools. The descriptive statistics and chi-square test were used for the data analysis. The results of the study displayed that (1) there is a significant relationship between the pre-service chemistry teachers’ inorganic chemistry achievement and their learning approach; (2) their learning approach has 34 % effect on their inorganic chemistry achievements according to Somers'd value.

Recent science education standards emphasize the importance of the instruction of nature of science (NOS) concepts at all levels of schooling from pre-K to K-12. Delivering a proper NOS education to students is excessively dependent on their teachers with an adequate understanding of NOS concepts. The present study investigated the science conceptions of preschool and elementary teacher candidates. The data collected from a total of 506 prospective teachers were analyzed with respect to the following demographic variables: majors, genders, grade levels, high schools and GPAs of teacher candidates. “Student Understanding of Science and Scientific Inquiry (SUSSI)” developed originally by Liang et al. (2008) was the instrument used to collect data in this study. The data analyses were conducted using MANOVA and Pearson Correlation Coefficient. The corresponding mean scores of the teacher candidates in specific aspects of NOS ranged from “poor” to “informed” conceptions of science. All but one of the demographic variables yielded statistically insignificant results on the NOS conceptions of teacher candidates. The majors of the teacher candidates were detected as a significant variable influencing the conceptions of the teacher candidates. The results of the study were discussed in reference with the relevant literature.

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 aims to examine and describe the effect of the community of inquiry (CoI) learning model and learning styles on students' social skills. The sample used was a student of the faculty of education IAIM Bima Indonesian totaling 114 people, consisting of two experimental groups with 56 students and two control groups were 58 students. The community of inquiry (CoI) learning model was applied in the experimental group whereas the control group applied a cooperative learning model (comparison). This research is a quasi-experiment in which the analysis of prerequisites is applied; normality used the normality QQ plot and homogeneity of variance test used Levene’s test. Research data were analyzed by applying the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The results of show that there are significant differences in the social skills of students who use the community of inquiry (CoI) learning model with cooperative learning model, there are differences in social skills of students in terms of the dimensions of learning styles of visual, auditory and kinesthetic, there is also an interaction between community of inquiry (CoI) learning model and learning styles on students' social skills.

This study aims to identify students’ approaches toward courses lectured by visual arts teachers with elements of popular culture with a view to enabling students to attain 7th grade targeted achievements. To this end, the multiple-case design, one of the qualitative research methods, was utilized in the study. The sample of the study comprised 11 visual arts teachers working at secondary schools located in three central districts of the Bursa province of Turkey. As the data collection tools, two interview forms and document review were used. The obtained findings were evaluated through the thematic analysis technique and were compiled under the theme of ‘implications on students’. As per the research results, it was discerned that there were certain differences in the students’ approaches toward the course along with employment of elements of popular culture in the visual arts course. It may be alleged that, of these differences, the primary ones were attraction of students’ attention to the course, active participation into the course and facilitation of comprehension.

Education faces barriers all over the world, which sometimes makes it difficult to look after children’s rights and their individual development. Hence, society is clamoring for new practices, and different approaches are emerging, Montessori among them. Despite the fact that this approach was developed to attend to the poor strata, nowadays it is basically promoted by elitist sectors, though it can be perfectly applied as an education system for all children, regardless of their socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. This study analyzes the bases of Montessori pedagogy in a school from a low-to-middle-income country (LMIC), Burkina Faso, and another school in a high-income country (HIC), Spain. The study takes into account children, family, school environment and teacher training all of which contribute to children’s development.

One of the issues that hinder the students’ learning progress is the inability to construct an epistemological explanation of a scientific phenomenon. Four-tier multiple-choice (hereinafter, 4TMC) instrument and Partial-Credit Model were employed to elaborate on the diagnosis process of the aforementioned problem. This study was to develop and implement the four-tier multiple-choice instrument with Partial-Credit Model to evaluate students’ learning progress in explaining the conceptual change of state of matter. This research applied a development research referring to the test development model by Wilson. The data were obtained through development and validation techniques on 20 4TMC items tested to 427 students. On each item, the study applied diagnostic-summative assessment and certainty response index. The students’ conceptual understanding level was categorized based on the combination of their answer choices; the measurement generated Partial-Credit Model for 1 parameter logistic (IPL) data. Analysis of differences was based on the student level class using Analysis of Variants (One-way ANOVA). This study resulted in 20 valid and reliable 4TMC instruments. The result revealed that the integration of 4TMC test and Partial-Credit Model was effective to be treated as the instrument to measure students’ learning progress. One-way ANOVA test indicated the differences among the students’ competence based on the academic level. On top of that, it was discovered that low-ability students showed slow progress due to the lack of knowledge as well as a misconception in explaining the Concept of Change of State of Matter. All in all, the research regarded that the diagnostic information was necessary for teachers in prospective development of learning strategies and evaluation of science learning.

Creative thinking skills are 21st century learning needs that can be applied through the Scientific Reading Based Project (SRBP) model. The purpose of this study is to empower creative thinking skills through SRBP models in science learning in elementary school teachers’ education students. This research is mixed research with qualitative and quantitative approaches. Qualitative research is used to explore students' creative thinking abilities. Quantitative research uses a quasi-experimental approach carried out for six months on the candidates of elementary school teachers’ education. Participants in this study were the candidate of elementary school teachers’ education of 75 people who took the Basic Concept of Science subject. Data collection in this study was through observation, documentation, pre-test, and post-test with essay questions to measure creative thinking skills. The final result of the project is the final product to measure creativity. The data analysis used was an ANOVA test to measure every aspect of creative thinking skill. Qualitative analysis was used to describe the learning process and the final project of creativity. The results showed that there was an increase in creative thinking skills from aspects of flexibility, elaboration, fluency and originality. The SRBP model has a positive effect on improving the ability to think creatively.

Assessment is a topic that continues to be developed in science education research. Assessment evaluates not only students' cognitive abilities but also their thinking skills. Therefore, in this study, an assessment that could measure students' chemical literacy was developed. Chemical literacy is a thinking skill that students must develop as part of their chemistry learning. The goal of this study was to assess item' quality, as well as student’ chemical literacy on the concept of chemical rate. The Rasch model was employed to analyze the data in this study. The results of this study depict that the developed assessment had sufficient reliability and validity to be used to assess students' chemical literacy. Furthermore, the analysis of the students’ responses to the items revealed that many students did not understand or were unaware of the context presented. These findings suggest that students' chemical literacy in the material for the reaction rate is still lacking and needs to be improved. As a result, the teacher's role in assisting students in improving their chemical literacy through chemistry learning is critical.

Understanding phylogenetic trees representing evolutionary relationships of living organisms is essential in school biology. Traditional instructions based on lectures and textbooks with pictorial presentations have been proven ineffective to promote students’ understanding of the concept. This study, therefore, developed a game-based learning activity called the VERT card game to enhance students’ learning of the phylogenetic taxonomy of chordates. The VERT card game was designed to lay the foundation for different characteristics of chordate classes, as well as to allow students to construct and interpret their evolutionary relationships based on the phylogenetic tree. The effectiveness of the VERT card game was verified by a pre-test and post-test design with 109 middle school students in Thailand. The statistical result revealed that students’ mean scores increased significantly in the post-test, compared to the pre-test, indicating their improved understanding. In addition, after participating in the learning activity, the student participants were found to increase their self-efficacy to learn evolutionary biology statistically. Also, it showed positive views towards the usefulness of the developed card game as a large number of them expressed that they would like to use it for their lesson reviews and wished to have this form of learning activity in other topics in biology.

We investigate students’ misconceptions in electrostatics, direct current (DC) and magnetism which are important in electricity and magnetism. We developed and administered a multiple-choice questionnaire test to reveal students’ misconceptions related to charged bodies, lightning, electric fields, electric potential, forces, DC resistive electric circuits and magnets. This test aimed at obtaining quantitative information about misconceptions and was administered to 380 senior two students from Nine Year Basic Education (9YBE) Schools. The selected students have some experience with the new Rwandan secondary physics Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) that is currently under implementation. We find that senior two students have several common misconceptions related to these concepts. The data indicate that although students have some backgrounds on the subject matter, they still seem to believe that if the two charges are separated by a distance, a large-charged object exerts a greater force of attraction or repulsion on the small one. Considerable number of participated students held the misconception of considering current consumption in the resistor/bulb or the electrical devices in the circuits. They also believed that the battery was a continuous current source. The findings also revealed that students held a misconception that a bar magnet when broken into pieces, it is demagnetized. Moreover, a considerable number of participants hold the misconception that all metals are attracted by a magnet. Our study also revealed some of the statistically significant differences in terms of either gender or location of schools for some items.

This study was conducted to corroborate in understanding the teachers’ beliefs about assessment practices. The prior studies related to teachers’ assessment beliefs in mathematics have been done to assess teachers’ beliefs in the general context of mathematics teaching. This study developed an instrument to assess teachers’ assessment beliefs of mathematical thinking. The research aimed to develop and validate a scale of assessment beliefs of mathematical thinking by using the confirmatory factor analysis. The first draft of the scale contained 25 items. The sample of the study consisted of 537 mathematics teachers from public schools in Oman. The instrument was a questionnaire with a 5-point Likert scale. The scale was validated by asking a number of experts in mathematics educational measurement and evaluation. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was applied to test the model of assessment beliefs of mathematical thinking scale using AMOS 25.0. All constructs had acceptable reliability. The model had a good model fit for the assessment beliefs of mathematical thinking scale which obtainable from the fit indices tests. The findings revealed that all fit criteria indices were realized. The results also showed acceptable validity and construct reliability for the scale.

This research aimed to develop a historical thinking assessment for students' skills in analyzing the causality of historical events. The development process of Gall and colleagues and Rasch analysis models were used to develop an assessment instrument consisting of two processes, including the analysis of the framework of cause and consequence, the validity, reliability, and difficultness test. This research involved 150 senior high school students, with data collected using the validation sheet, tests, and scoring rubric. The results were in the form of an essay test consisting of six indicators of analyzing cause and consequence. The instruments were valid, reliable, and suitable for assessing students’ skills in analyzing the causality of historical events. The developed instruments were paired with a historical thinking skills assessment to improve the accuracy of the information about students' level of historical thinking skills in the learning history.

The article discusses the topical issue of a model of digital competencies for a future teacher. The analysis of the composition and structure of the most relevant models of digital competencies of a citizen and a modern teacher is carried out. In addition, the article reveals approaches to the formation of the content of digital competence, and provides the results of an empirical study, which consists in analyzing the results of a survey of practicing teachers and teacher-training students in order to identify the most demanded digital competencies of a future teacher. The article substantiates the authors’ content of the competence of a future teacher, a university student. The purpose of this article is to develop a theoretical model of digital competence of a future teacher, taking into account the dynamic technologisation of the modern world and the peculiarities of Russian education, based on an analysis of approaches to determining the content of its digital competencies. According to the analysis of studies, the issue of teachers’ digital competence is not sufficiently disclosed. Numerous studies on digital competencies of a person, teacher, etc. do not fully solve the problem of assessing the digital competence of future teachers.

Phonological awareness relates closely to listening and speaking skills. It also has an important role in learning to read in an alphabetic writing system. In the context of learning a new language, it is essential to figure out an appropriate strategy in accelerating the phonological awareness skill. The present study aims at investigating the effect of embedding phonological awareness training in adult English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ phonological awareness skill. It involved 63 EFL students who were divided into two groups: Experimental and control. The data were taken by using a phonological awareness test and analyzed by using independent samples t-test. The overall comparison showed that the experimental group who received an embedded phonological awareness training for 4.5 hours (45 minutes of six meetings) surpassed the control group who joined a regular vocabulary class without phonological awareness training (p = .017). Thus, phonological awareness training effectively accelerates adult EFL learners’ phonological awareness skills.

The aim of this work is to characterise the understanding that students in compulsory secondary education (14-16 years old) have of number sequences in graphical representations. The learning of numerical sequences is one of the first mathematical concepts to be developed in an infinite context. This study adopts the focus of semiotic representations as its theoretical framework. The participants consisted of 105 students and a qualitative methodology was used. The data collection instruments were a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. The results allowed for three student profiles regarding number sequences in graphical representations to be identified. These profiles may facilitate a possible progression in the learning of number sequences for students in compulsory secondary education to be considered. Therefore, the results presented in this study can provide information about the learning hypotheses of mathematical tasks related to numerical sequences and can help in the design of such tasks.

This qualitative study is part of a feasibility study conducted by State University of Malang (SUM), Indonesia, to determine stakeholder needs for a study program specializing in managing bilingual education. The study participants included one SUM lecturer who held a managerial position in the division of SUM laboratory schools and twelve teachers/leaders of bilingual schools in some cities in East Java and South Sulawesi. Data were collected using an online questionnaire and in-depth interviews with two selected participants. The results indicate issues related to teachers' English competencies, materials development, and integrating an internationally-oriented curriculum into the national curriculum. Teachers' low English competencies prevented them from conducting teaching and learning bilingually and developing instructional materials in appropriate English. In addition, the combination of national and international curricula was identified as the biggest challenge for bilingual schools. The teachers/leaders were never trained to manage the bilingual program. They learned based on their experiences, and it took years to figure out how to manage bilingual programs successfully. Therefore, the establishment of a new program of study is needed.

This research aims to describe secondary school students' functional thinking in generating patterns in learning algebra, particularly in solving mathematical word problems. In addressing this aim, a phenomenological approach was conducted to investigate the meaning of functional relationships provided by students. The data were collected from 39 ninth graders (13-14 years old) through a written test about generating patterns in linear functions. The following steps were conducting interviews with ten representative students to get detailed information about their answers to the written test. All students' responses were then analyzed using the thematic analysis software ATLAS.ti. The findings illustrate that students employed two types of approaches in solving the problem: recursive patterns and correspondence. Students favored the recursive patterns approach in identifying the pattern. They provided arithmetic computation by counting term-to-term but could not represent generalities with algebraic symbols. Meanwhile, students evidenced for correspondence managed to observe the relation between two variables and create the symbolic representation to express the generality. The study concludes that these differences exist due to their focus on identifying patterns: the recursive pattern students tend to see the changes in one variable, whereas the correspondence ones relate to the corresponding pair of variables.