(JOURNAL OF INSTRUCTION AND EVALUATION) JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES
Year:2016 | Volume:8 | Issue:32|Papers Count:8

The present research aims to investigate the effectiveness of self-regulation training on students' academic achievement. In order to conduct the research, 50 students of Tabriz technical high schools were selected through screening based on academic achievement, and were randomly assigned to two groups: the experimental and the control groups. The Motivational Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) was used out for both groups at the pretest and post-test stages. The data were analyzed by ANCOVA. The results showed that there was their significant differences between experimental and control groups in academic achievement (P<0.001) and that academic achievement of the experimental group was higher than the control group, after receiving self-regulation training. Based on the results, it was revealed that self-regulation training increases students’ academic achievements.

The present investigation aims at examining the relationship among the Intelligence beliefs, educational self-efficacy, and achievement goals as well as their role in self-regulatory learning strategies (Cognitive and Meta Cognitive Strategies) of Payame Noor University students using a causal Model framework and through Path Analysis. In order to test the hypotheses, a sample of 600 students from Payame Noor University centers through multiple cluster sampling and stratified sampling were randomly selected, who answered a self-report questionnaire consisting of subscales of the intelligence beliefs (Abd-El-Fattah & Yates, 2006), achievement goals (Middleton & Midgley, 1997) and scale of educational self-efficacy and self-regulatory learning strategies taken from the Motivated Strategies for Learning questionnaire (Pintrich & De Groot, 1990). The results indicated that the proposed causal model after revision enjoys a good fit index, and that the variables formed 34 and 30 percent of the total variance of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. In general, according to the results of this study, it was revealed that intelligence beliefs not only have a direct effect but also have an indirect impact on the students’ self-regulatory learning strategies through achievement goals and educational self-efficacy. The results indicated that students’ intelligence beliefs, especially incremental intelligence beliefs, through the mediation of achievement goals and educational self-efficacy, can be effective on the students’ self-regulatory learning strategies, and finally, on their performance. Therefore, it is essential that these beliefs be enhanced through enriching the living and learning contexts.

The present research was a comparative study of literature course syllabus at high schools in Iran and six European counteries. It was a qualitative research in which the content analysis of documents and survey was conducted. The data were collected through examining the documents related to the course syllabuse of different covnteries and semi-structured interviews. Regarding the content analysis of the documents, Beredy's proposed was used and for the survey, 15 Iranian experts in Literature were interviewed. The collected data were first summarized in tables and then analyzed. The results showed that the Literature course syllabus in our country is richer in content and approaches as compared to other countries. Moreover, it was found that the literature course syllabus in our country fosters optimal capabilities in students, among which are the ability to understand and interpret, and literary Knowledge. However, communicative skills and information processing skills, as one of the most important skills needed in today`s world, were overlooked, which need to be more emphasized. The other results of the study indicate that the literature course syllabus is challenging in terms of content and teaching method, which needs to be minimized.

The aim of the present study is to investigate the effectiveness of problem solving training on students’ math anxiety and self-regulation. The method of this study was quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test and control. The population of the study were female students of junior high schools in Sanandaj. 30 of these students, with high math anxiety and low self-regulation were randomly selected through cluster and multistage sampling, who were assigned to two groups of experimental and control. The experimental group received problem-solving training for eight sessions. The research instruments contained 2 questionnaires: math anxiety questionnaire (Kazemi, 1390) and self-regulation questionnaire (Kanel & Rian, 1987). The data were analyzed through covariance method. The results show that math anxiety of the students in the experimental group, after receiving the treatment, significantly decreased and their self-regulation significautly increased. In other words, the final conclusion of this study confirmed the effectiveness of using problem solving training in decreasing math anxiety and increasing self-regulation in students.

This study aimed to evaluate educational software used at priming level based on the first principles of Merrill education which was done using evaluative methods. For this purpose, 18 different software were selected from among the educational software at elementary level that have been produced by the ministry of education in years 1391- 1393 and evaluated using a 20 item-ersearcher made checklist. The content validity of the checklist was approved by three experts and its reliability was estimated through re-encoding 15% of the software by a second encoder, which came to be.84. The results showed that the mean of the principle of integration was at an unfavorable level; the means of the principles of problem-centered and activation were at a rather favorable level, and the mean of the principles of demonstration and application were at a favorable level. On the whole, it can be concluded that educational software are based on the first principles of Merrill education to an acceptable level except for the integration principle.

The present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of cognitive hope enhancing training on reducing academic procrastination and self-handicapping of students at Payam-e-Noor University in Bookan within the academic year 1393-1394. To this end, 50 students who had the highest scores in self-handicapping and 60 students who had the highest score in procrastination were randomly selected through multistaged sampling and administering the questionnaires of procrastination and self-handicapping. They were randomly assigned to two experimental and two control groups. Then, the two experimental groups (procrastinating and self-handicapping) were trained in eight sessions, each 60 minutes, by two trained therapist. They received hope enhancing training. The control groups did not get any intervenison. Then, all of the participants took the post-test. The collected data were analyzed through descriptive (mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics (covariance analysis). The results of the covariance analysis with p. value set lower than 0.05 revealed that, in the experimental groups, the cognitive hope enhancing training was an effective interversion to decrease the students` academic procrastination and self-handicapping.

The present study sought to investigate the relationship and difference between working memory and intelligence and their role in predicting the academic achievement of female students in monolingual and bilingual high schools of Tehran. A sample of 366 female high students were selected through multistaged sampling. To measure the students̕ working memory and intelligence, the researchers used information processing index (IPI) and Raven̕s progressive matrix respectively. The students̕ GPAs were used as the indicator of their academic achievement. In this study, using Pearson correlation coefficient and independent samples T-test, the relationship and difference between working memory and intelligence of bilingual and monolingual students were found, and the regression analysis were run in order to predict the role of working memory and intelligence in the students' academic achievement. The obtained results revealed that there was a significant relationship among the scores of working memory, intelligence, and academic achievement. However, although the scores of the bilingual students in intelligence test were higher than those of monolingual students, there was no significant difference between these two groups. Moreover, working memory and academic achievement were significantly higher among bilingual students as compared to monolinguals. Although bilingual students, due to having plenty of linguistic recourses and experiences in phonological in phonological and semantic structures, have a better performance in their working memory and academic achievement assignments as compared to their monolingual counterpart's, they cannot achieve better scores in intelligence tests due to the pivotal role of language as compared to other more effective variables in intelligence scores.

This study was an attempt to investigate Iranian EFL students' performance on reading comprehension tests with different text structures and response formats. The participants of the study included 228 students, comprising eight groups, selected based on the Preliminary English Test (PET). Four types of text structures, time sequence (T), description (D), causation (C), problem-solution (P) were selected and two types of response formats, Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQ) and Multiple-Choice Cloze tests (MCC), based on the four text structures were developed and administered to the eight groups. The results revealed that in both response formats, the students' performance on the more loosely organized text structures (T and D) was better than their performance on the more tightly organized ones (C and P). Furthermore, the students' performance on MCQ was significantly better than on MCC response format across all four text structures. The results of the study suggested that students performed better on T and D text structures compared to C and P in both response formats and that their performance on MCQ response format was better than their performance on MCC across all four text structures. The results of the study suggest that teachers and test developers can boost their students' performance on reading comprehension tests by choosing the most appropriate response formats for different text structures.