A strong mathematics background is essential for job opportunities and advancement in a developing country like Malaysia. It gives students the confidence and ability to solve problems and become rational as well as critical in their thinking. However, Malaysian students’ mathematics achievement is relatively low as compared to other school subjects. This difference is more pronounced in rural schools. Previous studies have highlighted the relationship between students’ attitude and achievement in mathematics. Hence, it is important to investigate the contributing factors that affect students’ attitudes towards mathematics. This book is adapted and modified from a PhD thesis entitled: “Factors affecting students’ attitude towards mathematics in Sabah, Malaysia” of the first author. In this book, the relationships among perceived parental influences, teacher affective support, classroom instruction, gender, SES, students’ previous achievement and students’ attitude towards mathematics are portrayed using Structural Equation Modeling approach. Findings from the study can be utilised to understand the complex interplay of relationships that form students’ attitude towards mathematics, including factors that can be addressed by the classroom mathematics teacher. This book will be useful for secondary school mathematics teachers, researchers, school administrators, students, and policymakers.

The best education system provides the best education to all children, irrespective of their ethnic group or socio-economic background. Malaysian education system aims to ensure that all children, irrespective of who their parents are and where they are schooling, will be equipped with the basic needs to succeed in their future educational endeavours and eventually in daily life and the workforce. Malaysian education system strives to narrow the socio-economic gap, between rural and urban as well as gender in student achievement by 2020. Reducing socioeconomic disparities between rural and urban are likely to have an impact on the achievement gap among students. The education system in Malaysia will actively support social mobility by providing additional supports to those who are less fortunate, and thus ensure socio-economic background of students is no longer a determinant factor of their success in life. However, in the effort to realize equity in education to all children in Malaysia, we are confronted with all sorts of problems and challenges. Empirical studies with scientific explanations will provide insights into how education for underprivileged primary and secondary students in Malaysia can be further improved to ensure equal accessibility to quality education. This book attempts to bring together prominent researchers and educators in the field of rural education to share their findings, experiences, reflection, and vision on the emerging trends in rural education in the country. The book will be of special interest to academics and researchers in the field of rural education, curriculum designers, policy makers, educators, teacher educators, trainee teachers, school principals, school inspectorates, undergraduate and postgraduate students in universities and colleges in the country.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Social Sciences, ICONESS 2021, held in Purwokerto, Indonesia, in July 2021. The 60 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 100 submissions. The papers reflect the conference sessions as follows: Education (Curriculum and Instruction, Education and Development, Educational Psychology, Mathematic Education, Science Education, Social Science Education, Measurement and Evaluation, Primary Education, and Higher Education); Religion (Islamic Education, Fiqh, Science and Technology, Halal Science, Islamic Civilization, Shariah Economic), and Literation (Teaching English as a Second Language/TESL, Language and Communication, Literacy).

This volume of proceedings offers readers a valuable opportunity to explore a curated collection of refereed abstracts and invited talks that were delivered during iCRI'23, providing insights into the cutting-edge research presented at the conference. After a rigorous two-tier peer review process, a total of 94 abstracts have been chosen for inclusion in this proceeding out of the 193 submissions received. The overwhelming response to the conference was evident by the participation of researchers from various countries such as the Philippines, USA, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, China, Thailand, Japan, and more, who submitted and presented their papers.

This edited book provides a global view on evolution education. It describes the state of evolution education in different countries that are representative of geographical regions around the globe such as Eastern Europe, Western Europe, North Africa, South Africa, North America, South America,Middle East, Far East, South East Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.Studies in evolution education literature can be divided into three main categories: (a) understanding the interrelationships among cognitive, affective, epistemological, and religious factors that are related to peoples’ views about evolution, (b) designing, implementing, evaluating evolution education curriculum that reflects contemporary evolution understanding, and (c) reducing antievolutionary attitudes. This volume systematically summarizes the evolution education literature across these three categories for each country or geographical region. The individual chapters thus include common elements that facilitate a cross-cultural meta-analysis. Written for a primarily academic audience, this book provides a much-needed common background for future evolution education research across the globe.