University students’ learning approaches : An adaptation of the revised two-factor study process questionnaire to Norwegian

This paper reports a Norwegian validation study of a widely used instrument to measure students’ approaches to learning, namely, Bigg’s revised two-factor study process questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F). Its cultural sensitivity and psychometry evaluations have provoked rigorous discussion among educators in different languages. A survey design was adopted involving 253 undergraduate engineering students across two universities. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to test six models hypothesized to reflect the factor structures of R-SPQ-2F and unidimensionality of its subscales. The results showed appropriate fits of a two-factor first-order model with 10 items measuring deep approach and 9 items…

Impact of a Social Constructivist Instructional Strategy on Performance in Algebra with a Focus on Secondary School Students

There have been perennial concerns on the low academic performance of students among researchers and other education stakeholders. Innovative teaching strategies have, therefore, gained prominence in the field of mathematics education. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of a social constructivist instructional strategy on students’ performance in algebra. The present study is quasi-experimental, and its type is a posttest control group involving 154 secondary school students that are randomly selected across four intact classes. The random selection of students to treatment and control controls is assumed to improve the validity of the results. Two research questions are…

Application of an innovative alignment optimisation method to a cross-cultural mean comparison of teacher self-efficacy: A cross-country study

Teacher self-efficacy is a crucial personal characteristic that is important not only for teachers’ well-being but also for the overall teaching and learning. However, the difficulty to ascertain scalar invariance in the measurement of the construct has beset previous attempts of cross-cultural comparisons. This study implements an alignment optimisation method to compare and rank mean teacher self-efficacy of over 150,000 teachers across 48 countries and economies that participated in the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) that was conducted 2018. The findings show that Columbia, Portugal, United Arab Emirates, Hungary, and South Africa have teachers with the highest mean s…

Analysis of relations between attitude towards mathematics, prior knowledge, self-efficacy, expected and actual grades in mathematics

The purpose of this study is to analyse relations between students’ attitude towards mathematics, prior knowledge, self-efficacy, expected grades, and performance in mathematics among 115 firstyear engineering students. We combine two statistical techniques to analyse the data we generated by questionnaires and two tests. First, item-level modeling, in terms of confirmatory factor analysis, which we use to compute the factor scores of construct-validated measures, and to control for measurement errors. Second, composite modeling, in terms of path analysis, which we use to test the research hypotheses. The findings show that both self-efficacy and expected grades have substantial effects on …

Exposing Empirical Links between COVID-19 Situation Report and Available Data: The Case of Nigeria

Ever since the index case of COVID-19 was announced in Nigeria, the number of confirmed cases has gradually increased to 46,140 (about 4.5% of total confirmed cases in Africa) as the time of writing this article. This seemingly low number of confirmed cases has provoked heated debates among researchers. This cross-sectional study explores the Nigerian COVID-19 report to expose some links between the number of confirmed cases, testing, and some environmental conditions. The findings reveal that there is no state in Nigeria which has up to 12 confirmed cases per 10,000 population. That means, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases is less than 0.15% of the population of people across each sta…

Effects of school climate and teacher self-efficacy on job satisfaction of mostly STEM teachers: a structural multigroup invariance approach

Abstract Background Identification and retention of effective teachers in STEM education play cardinal roles in teacher recruitment exercises worldwide. Studies on factors that characterize effective teachers have therefore gained popularity in recent times. Teacher self-efficacy, job satisfaction and school climate are among other factors that have attracted global attention. Thus, proper understanding of the relations between these factors is equally important. The purpose of this study is to validate and cross-validate a model of direct/indirect effects of school climate and teacher self-efficacy on job satisfaction. Results The data used for the current study are extracted from a public…

Study Approaches in Higher Education Mathematics : Investigating the Statistical Behaviour of an Instrument Translated into Norwegian

The revised two-factor study process questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F) has widely been considered valid and reliable in many contexts for measuring students&rsquo

Unpacking the black‐box of students' visual attention in Mathematics and English classrooms: Empirical evidence using mini‐video recording gadgets

ANID/PIA/Basal Funds for Centers of Excellence FB0003 Comision Nacional de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica (CONICYT) CONICYT FONDECYT 3170062

Academic Achievement and Delay: A Study with Italian Post-Graduate Students in Psychology

Teacher job satisfaction across 38 countries and economies: An alignment optimization approach to a cross-cultural mean comparison

Abstract The purpose of this study is to compare latent means of job satisfaction across participating countries in the 2018 Teaching and Learning International Survey. The mean comparison of this nature is sparse in the literature due to lack of cross-cultural construct validity of job satisfaction scales. We applied an alignment approach that can optimize this construct validity to compare the latent mean of 153,682 teachers across 48 countries. We found that Austria, Chile, Spain, Canada, and Argentina form the top countries with highly job-satisfied teachers while the least job-satisfied teachers are from Bulgaria, England, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, and Malta. Our findings provide potenti…

Cronbach’s alpha in mathematics education research: Its appropriateness, overuse, and alternatives in estimating scale reliability

Critiques of coefficient alpha as an estimate of scale reliability are widespread in the literature. However, the continuous overuse of this statistic in mathematics education research suggests a disconnection between theory and practice. As such, this article argues, in a non-technical way, for the limited usefulness of coefficient alpha, its overuse, and its alternatives in estimating scale reliability. Coefficient alpha gives information only about the degree of the interrelatedness of a set of items that measures a construct. Contrary to the widely circulated misconceptions in mathematics education research, a high coefficient alpha value does not mean the instrument is reliable, and it…

Self-Efficacy Between Previous and Current Mathematics Performance of Undergraduate Students: An Instrumental Variable Approach to Exposing a Causal Relationship.

PurposeSelf-efficacy has been argued theoretically and shown empirically to be an essential construct for students’ improved learning outcomes. However, there is a dearth of studies on its causal effects on performance in mathematics among university students. Meanwhile, it will be erroneous to assume that results from other fields of studies generalize to mathematics learning due to the task-specificity of the construct. As such, attempts are made in the present study to provide evidence for a causal relationship between self-efficacy and performance with a focus on engineering students following a mathematics course at a Norwegian university.MethodThe adopted research design in the presen…

Investigating Some Construct Validity Threats to TALIS 2018 Teacher Job Satisfaction Scale: Implications for Social Science Researchers and Practitioners

The credibility of findings ensuing from cross-sectional survey research depends largely on the validity and reliability of the research instruments. Critical attention to the quality of such instruments will ensure logical and valid results. The purpose of this article is to provide evidence for two methodological issues observed that are potential threats to construct validity of widely used Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018 data on teacher job satisfaction scale (TJSS). The first issue concerns reverse recoding of some items necessary to obtain a coherence covariance between these items and other items on the same subscale. The second issue concerns the addition of …

Assessing first-year engineering students' pre-university mathematics knowledge: preliminary validity results based on an item response theory model

The importance of students’ prior knowledge to their current learning outcomes cannot be overemphasised. Students with adequate prior knowledge are better prepared for the current learning materials than those without the knowledge. However, assessment of engineering students' prior mathematics knowledge has been beset with a lack of uniformity in measuring instruments and inadequate validity studies. This study attempts to provide evidence of validity and reliability of a Norwegian national test of prior mathematics knowledge using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach. This approach involves use of an item response theory model followed by cognitive interviews of some students …

Undergraduate students’ performance in mathematics : Individual and combined effects of approaches to learning, self-efficacy, and prior mathematics knowledge

Paper VII is not published yet. This dissertation concerns an exploration of factors that affect the learning outcomes of students in higher education mathematics. It is framed within a quantitative research paradigm in which the existence of personal factors such as prior knowledge, self-efficacy, and approaches to learning are assumed and that these factors may be operationalised and measured. The aim of this study is to investigate effects of prior mathematics knowledge, approaches to learning and self-efficacy on students’ performance in a first-year introductory calculus course for students on engineering programmes. Further, the interrelatedness of these factors and their combined eff…

Short form of revised two-factor study process questionnaire: Development, validation, and cross-validation in two European countries

Self-efficacy and approaches to learning mathematics among engineering students : empirical evidence for potential causal relations

Theories of self-efficacy and approaches to learning are well-established in the psychology of learning. However, studies on relationships between the primary constructs on which these theories are...

Reforming the Teaching and Learning of Foundational Mathematics Courses: An Investigation into the Status Quo of Teaching, Feedback Delivery, and Assessment in a First-Year Calculus Course

Several universities are witnessing an increase in students’ enrolment in mathematics-intensive programmes over the last decades. This increase has come with the price of high failure rates in foundational mathematics courses, which poses challenges to mathematics teaching and learning in higher education. It is therefore inevitable, for some universities, to transform the teaching and learning of mathematics to more student-centred approaches that engage the students mathematically and enhance their success rates. We approach this transformative effort by investigating students’ perception of teaching, feedback, and assessment as a first step in reforming the teaching of a firs…

Development of mathematics motivation scale: A preliminary exploratory study with a focus on secondary school students

Improving students’ mathematics self-efficacy: A systematic review of intervention studies

Self-efficacy is an integral part of personal factors that contributes substantially to students' success in mathematics. This review draws on previous intervention studies to identify, describe, and expose underlying mechanisms of interventions that foster mathematics self-efficacy. The findings show that effective mathematics self-efficacy interventions can be categorized into three categories using their underlying mechanisms: those that directly manipulate sources of self-efficacy to foster the construct, and those that either embed self-efficacy features in teaching methods or in learning strategies. Specific examples of interventions that fall in each of these three categories are des…

Global epidemiology of coronavirus disease 2019 and lessons for effective control of this and future pandemics

Barely 1 year after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) was first reported in China, the virus has infected approximately 120 million people, caused around 3 million deaths, and adversely affected the global economy Despite stringent measures to flatten the epidemiologic curve of the pandemic, there have been spikes and waves of the infection in many countries, particularly in the American, European, and Asian continents This review critically evaluated the global epidemiology of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) to provide advice on other possible ways of managing the disease as various COVID-19 vaccines are being rolled out To effectively control this …

Calculus Self-Efficacy Inventory : Its Development and Relationship with Approaches to Learning

This study was framed within a quantitative research methodology to develop a concise measure of calculus self-efficacy with high psychometric properties. A survey research design was adopted in which 234 engineering and economics students rated their confidence in solving year-one calculus tasks on a 15-item inventory. The results of a series of exploratory factor analyses using minimum rank factor analysis for factor extraction, oblique promin rotation, and parallel analysis for retaining extracted factors revealed a one-factor solution of the model. The final 13-item inventory was unidimensional with all eigenvalues greater than 0.42, an average communality of 0.74, and a 62.55% variance…