Vocational High School Readiness in Anticipating 21st Century Environmental Turbulence

This research aims to measure the readiness of VHS in Indonesia in facing 21st Century environmental turbulence by comparing the status and accreditation of schools. A total of 884 VHSs distributed in 34 provinces in Indonesia were involved as research respondents. As a result, VHS readiness in dealing with the phenomenon of turbulence is in the quite prepared category. From a school status perspective, public VHS is better prepared than private, and A-accredited VHS is better prepared than non-A accreditation. This research is useful to provide information to vocational education principals in Indonesia to anticipate environmental turbulence in organisation.

First-year Academic Performance of Pharmacy Students Based on High School Status and Major

The purpose of the research is provides a descriptive first-year academic performance of pharmacy students based on high school status and major. This research is a descriptive research with cross-sectional method using all pharmacy students as sample. The results of this research are percentage of pharmacy students from public high schools is 33% and 67% from private high schools. The percentage of specialization majors in high school is 6% pharmacy, 85% science and 9% non-science. The academic performance of students from private high schools is better than that of public high schools. Pharmacy majors in high school produce the highest academic performance, meanwhile, non-science majors show the lowest academic performance, the principal results. Conclusions in this research is first-year academic performance for pharmacy students from private high schools is better than public high schools, as well as pharmacy major in high school showing the highest GPA and non-science major showing the lowest GPA

Parents’ Involvement in Education Activities and Learners’ Academic Performance in 12YBE Schools in Rwanda

The participation of parents in the performance of their children’ schooling activities play a significant role in the promotion of their school status and performance. The purpose of this paper therefore, was to establish the relationship between parents’ involvement in education activities and learners academic performance in 12Year Basic Education (YBE) schools in Nyarugenge district in Rwanda. The study adopted correlation research design while questionnaire, interview guide and document analysis review were used as data collection instruments. The target population was 1343. The study used simple random and stratified sampling techniques to get the sample size of 308 respondents. The study findings revealed there is a high significant positive relationship between parents’ participation in education activities at school and high score grades with 0.852. The correlation between parents’ participation in education activities was 0.873 and the correlation between parent’s participation in education activities at school and marks in discipline was .949 thus P = 0.000< 0.05. The study recommended that government should consider developing and implementing policies that support parents’ involvement in education activities. Parents should assist their children in doing their homework and set within their families an adequate environment by stimulating instructional activities and also time related to their students to revise their lessons as they also need to be cared for regarding their special needs. School principals have to cooperate with teaching staff and parents to enhance academic performance in their schools. Keywords: Parental involvement to education, learners’ academic performance and 12 years basic education

Parents’ Involvement in Education Activities and Learners’ Academic Performance in 12YBE Schools in Rwanda

The participation of parents in the performance of their children’ schooling activities play a significant role in the promotion of their school status and performance. The purpose of this paper therefore, was to establish the relationship between parents’ involvement in education activities and learners academic performance in 12Year Basic Education (YBE) schools in Nyarugenge district in Rwanda. The study adopted correlation research design while questionnaire, interview guide and document analysis review were used as data collection instruments. The target population was 1343. The study used simple random and stratified sampling techniques to get the sample size of 308 respondents. The study findings revealed there is a high significant positive relationship between parents’ participation in education activities at school and high score grades with 0.852. The correlation between parents’ participation in education activities was 0.873 and the correlation between parent’s participation in education activities at school and marks in discipline was .949 thus P = 0.000< 0.05. The study recommended that government should consider developing and implementing policies that support parents’ involvement in education activities. Parents should assist their children in doing their homework and set within their families an adequate environment by stimulating instructional activities and also time related to their students to revise their lessons as they also need to be cared for regarding their special needs. School principals have to cooperate with teaching staff and parents to enhance academic performance in their schools. Keywords: Parental involvement to education, learners’ academic performance and 12 years basic education

Relationship Between the Self-Concept of Children and Their Ability to Recognize Emotions in Others

The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between the self-concept of children and their ability to recognize emotions in others from facial expressions. It is hypothesized that children use their self-representations to interpret depictions of emotion in others and that higher self-concepts might be associated with earlier development of emotion recognition skills. A total of 54 children aged between 5 and 11 years participated in this study. Self-concept was assessed in all children using the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale for Children (Piers-Harris 2). To assess emotion recognition, a computerized instrument, the Penn Emotion Recognition Task (PERT), was applied. Despite the small sample of children, results show clear statistical effects. It is shown that emotion recognition ability is directly correlated with self-concept for intellectual/school status. The ability to correctly identify emotions from facial expressions is affected by general self-concept, intellectual/school status, and stimulus features of gender, intensity, and emotion. Further analysis shows that the general self-concept of children particularly affects the ability to identify happy faces. Children with a higher intellectual status score recognize happiness and neutral faces more easily. We concluded that the self-concept in children relates to the ability to recognize emotions in others, particularly positive emotions. These findings provide some support to the simulation theory of social cognition, where children use their own self-representations to interpret mental states in others. The effect of the self-concept for intellectual status on emotion recognition might also indicate that intellectual abilities act as a mediator between self-concept and emotion recognition, but further studies are needed.

Pengukuran Prestasi Belajar Matematika Siswa dengan Menggunakan Tes Model Testlet ditinjau dari Status Sekolah dan Gender

This study aims to determine the differences in students' mathematics learning achievement as measured using the testlet model test in terms of school status and gender in class VII SMP/MTs students. This study uses a quantitative approach in the form of ex post facto research. This study took samples from 2 public schools and two private schools with a total sample of 109 students. The sampling technique used is purposive sampling. Data collection techniques using test techniques and instruments using a testlet model test based on local wisdom. The instrument's validity uses content validity with the Aiken formula, while the reliability, level of difficulty of distinguishing power, and the effectiveness of distractors are analyzed by the ITEMAN 3.0 application. The data analysis technique used was two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Based on the results of the data analysis conducted, it can be seen that there is no difference in students' mathematics learning achievement as measured by using the testlet model test when viewed from school status or in terms of gender. The analysis results also show that school status and gender are not related to improving students' mathematics learning achievement when measured using the testlet model test.

Classification and Prediction of Students’ GPA Using K-Means Clustering Algorithm to Assist Student Admission Process

Background: Student admission at universities aims to select the best candidates who will excel and finish their studies on time. There are many factors to be considered in student admission. To assist the process, an intelligent model is needed to spot the potentially high achieving students, as well as to identify potentially struggling students as early as possible.Objective: This research uses K-means clustering to predict students’ grade point average (GPA) based on students’ profile, such as high school status and location, university entrance test score and English language competence.Methods: Students’ data from class of 2008 to 2017 are used to create two clusters using K-means clustering algorithm. Two centroids from the clusters are used to classify all the data into two groups: high GPA and low GPA. We use the data from class of 2018 as test data. The performance of the prediction is measured using accuracy, precision and recall.Results: Based on the analysis, the K-means clustering method is 78.59% accurate among the merit-based-admission students and 94.627% among the regular-admission students.Conclusion: The prediction involving merit-based-admission students has lower predictive accuracy values than that of involving regular-admission students because the clustering model for the merit-based-admission data is K = 3, but for the prediction, the assumption is K = 2.

General Intelligence and Socioeconomic Status as Strong Predictors of Student Performance in Latin American Schools: Evidence From PISA Items

Numerous technical—scientific reports have demonstrated that student performance variability is linked to several factors, especially socioeconomic factors. For a century, differential psychology has shown that students’ socioeconomic level has little or no relevance in the explanation of student performance variation when the intellectual factor is considered. Here we present a study on a student samples (N = 1264) aged 13 to 16 yrs, enrolled in 32 schools from five Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru). A short version of the PISA test (composed by 16 items) and five cognitive measures were administered, in addition to a socioeconomic questionnaire. Multilevel analysis (marginal models) indicated that general intelligence (g-factor) and socioeconomic school status were robust predictors, and the students’ socioeconomic status very little accounted for the variation in the PISA test. This study concludes that education policy must incorporate individual differences in intelligence, beyond socioeconomic variables, as an important predictor variable in student performance studies.