Education Research International

Through classroom interactions, teachers provide their students with different opportunities to learn. Some kinds of interactions elicit more learning activities than others. With differential treatment of students, teachers may exacerbate or reduce achievement differences in their classroom. In addition, differential interactions may contribute to teacher expectation effects, with teachers treating their high-expectation students more favourably. This study investigated how differential teacher-student interactions are related to students’ mathematics achievement and teachers’ expectations. In eight fourth-grade classrooms in the Netherlands, interactions between teachers and students (N = 152) were observed in maths lessons. Data regarding teachers’ expectations about their students and mathematics achievement tests scores were collected. Analyses indicated that there were relations between teacher expectations and teachers’ classroom interactions. Teachers gave more direct turns and more directive feedback to their low-expectation students, who were also the students who performed low in maths. After controlling for actual achievement, it appeared that students for whom the expectations were lower than could be expected based on their performance received more direct turns and directive task-related feedback. These results point to the existence of teacher expectation effects.

Objective. The aim of this work was to validate the statistical significance and unidimensionality of the construct formed by the variables of the revised and short version of the Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS-SV), adapted into Spanish, when applied to Mexican university students. Method. The questionnaires were administered to 244 students of Bachelor’s Degree in Administration of the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Mexico; 174 women and 70 men, aged 17 to 30 years, between August and December 2018. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed, and the parameters of the variables were checked by maximum likelihood and also by Bayesian analysis. The reliability of the instrument was verified through Cronbach’s alpha. As a final analysis, estimates of nonstandardized weights for the maximum likelihood method were compared against Bayesian a posteriori distribution estimates. Results. As a result, the model was found to adequately describe the sample data, presenting very small standard error estimates, and it was validated with Cronbach’s alpha of 0.885. In both Bayesian and maximum likelihood analysis, it is consistently evident that the construct is unidimensional. However, for the sample studied, it was observed that 3 of the variables did not reach a significant weight for the model. Conclusion. It concludes that the variables that measure smartphone addiction on the SAS-SV scale adapted to Spanish, indeed, form a unidimensional construct when applied to Mexican university students, which is consistent with results from previous studies. However, it is identified necessary to conduct further studies, in order to explain the low significance obtained for 3 variables of the model.

This study explored how teachers' peer support climate (PSC) and supervisory support climate (SSC) were related to teacher self-efficacy (TSE), teacher job satisfaction (TJS), teacher emotional exhaustion (TEE), and motivation to quit the teaching profession (MQTP) among teachers in the Philippines. Participants were 457 teachers in the Central Visayas Region. Structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that MQTP varies as to self-efficacy, emotional exhaustion, and job satisfaction. Responses among all constructs do not vary among novice and experienced teachers except on TJS. The findings of the research advocate the proposed model. The model can guide future researchers in developing countries like the Philippines to explain teachers’ attrition caused by social support, efficacy factors, burnout, and job satisfaction.

This paper draws on data from a quantitative study of upper secondary students’ general mathematical self-efficacy, anxiety towards mathematics, and their relationship to achievement in mathematics. The main objective of this article is to discuss the type of information that may be lost if potential problems of validity and extreme multicollinearity in exploratory factor analysis would be solved by only removing variables without doing a profound analysis. We also describe a method that treats Likert items in the questionnaire as ordinal variables that may represent the underlying continuous variable. Our study shows, for example, that removal of problematic variables without a profound analysis leads to a loss of significant information about test anxiety. Our qualitative analysis of problematic variables also led to an unexpected finding regarding the relationship between general mathematical self-efficacy and motivational values in mathematics.

Background and Objectives. The career decision-making self-efficacy (CDSE) in medical, pharmacy, and dental students is more important than other disciplines due to professional sensitivity, direct involvement in decision-making for the treatment process, and the significant clinical involvement. It is also expected that learning styles can have a significant impact on the academic success, and the CDSE also affects the quality of clinical care. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the relationship between the learning styles and the career decision-making self-efficacy among medicine and dentistry students. Materials and Methods. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 235 medical interns and fifth- and sixth-year dental students of Ardabil University of Medical Sciences, Iran. The data were collected using Kolb Learning Style Inventory and Betz and Luzzo career decision-making self-efficacy questionnaire. Statistical tests such as Kolmogorov–Smirnov, Spearman correlation coefficient, Chi-square, one-way ANOVA were used to analyze the data. Results. The mean age of participants was 25.9 ± 1.30; a majority of them were dental students (134 persons, 59.3%), and 92 were medical students (40.7%). The predominant learning styles in dental and medical students were assimilating (40.3%) and converging (47.8%), respectively. There was no significant relationship between students’ learning styles and career decision-making self-efficacy and none of its subscales (). The Chi-square test results showed that a significant difference was observed between the field of study and learning styles of the participants (). Conclusion. This study showed that there was no significant relationship between learning style and career decision-making self-efficacy of the participants.

The aim of this study is to determine the representation of the areas of educational objectives (cognitive, psychomotor, and emotional) measured by the science, chemistry, physics, and biology (2018-2019) examination questions in the State of Kuwait (objective, categorical) and the availability of science operations. Content analysis was used as a method to analyze the final examinations in the lens of the three educational objectives domains. The results of the study showed that the number of questions of the science subjects (chemistry, physics, and biology) for the second semester of the academic year 2018-2019 was 136 questions as 46, 48, and 42and that the average of all questions focused on questions related to lower cognitive levels. The study concluded with a set of recommendations to develop the process of final examinations for secondary schools and to rethink about the process of evaluating students with science concepts rather than limiting the subjects to sets of information from textbooks.