The Best Practice in Mathematics Education project was funded by the Australian Office of the Chief Scientist, to examine promotion of students' learning, engagement and aspirations in this core learning domain. We draw upon cross-sectional survey data from 551 students in grades three to nine to examine how students' mathematics engagement relates to key dimensions of their learning climate (mastery or performance focused classrooms), teacher enthusiasm, and school caring. Engagement is known to be associated with positive school outcomes and influenced by environmental factors. Less known is whether, and the extent to which, students have different profiles of engagement across component dimensions (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004); and, how profiles may differ according to experienced environment dimensions. We first develop profiles of adolescents' behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement using multilevel latent class analysis, educing three profiles of 'engaged', 'compliant', and 'disengaged' students, who systematically differed on experienced environmental factors. Mastery focused classrooms, enthusiastic teachers and caring school environment were experienced most by engaged, and least by disengaged students; performance focused

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The following paper describes the development of an instrument designed to assess middle school students' interest in statistical literacy. The paper commences with a review of the literature as it relates to interest in this context and then proposes a theoretical model upon which the proposed instrument is based. The Rasch Rating Scale model is then applied to student responses to items in the instrument and fit statistics are analysed in order to assess the extent to which these responses conform to the requirements of the measurement model. The paper then presents evidence, including interview data, to support the validity of interpretations that can be made from the proposed instrument. The findings suggest that the proposed instrument provides a theoretically sound measure of middle school students' interest for statistical literacy that will be useful for the evaluation of interventions aimed at developing these students' statistical literacy.