Background: Teacher social support (TSS) has been identified as one of the most important factors of success and well-being for students. Yet, there is a gap in the literature regarding the impact of students' socioeconomic status (SES) on their perceptions of TSS, and whether SES may impact the strength of the relationship between teacher social…

This study evaluated differential item functioning (DIF) in achievement motivation items before and after using anchoring vignettes as a statistical tool to account for group differences in response styles across gender and ethnicity. We applied the nonparametric scoring of the vignettes to motivation items from the 2015 Programme for…

In this study, we take a critical look at the degree to which the measurement of bullying and sense of belonging at school is invariant across groups of students defined by immigrant status. Our study focuses on the invariance of these constructs as measured on a recent PISA administration and includes a discussion of two statistical methods for…

Grade retention touches upon a tension field between the need for schools to promote cohesion and the need to differentiate students based on their abilities. This tension field may induce frustration among retainees. Following the frustration-aggression hypothesis, frustration might lead retainees to scapegoat minorities and to have diminished…

The World Bank and other global actors were impressed by the fact that the relatively poor Southeast Asian country Vietnam made significant success in the PISA evaluation in 2012, placing ahead of several Western countries like the US, UK, Australia, and Sweden. In this article, recent research that focuses on educational achievement, specifically…

This comparative study investigated the associations between instructional practices and students' reading performance among 10 top performing regions that participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018. A nationally representative sample consisting of 80,016 15-year-old students from 5 Asian regions (B-S-J-Z [China],…

Background: Socioeconomic status (SES) is important in students' reading development. The mechanism of how they are linked, however, is underexplored. Aims: This research aimed to explore whether reading self-concept mediates the link between SES and reading achievement and whether teacher support moderates the direct and indirect link between SES…

Since UNESCO's Salamanca Declaration in 1994, inclusive education has progressively attracted attention in international debates around education policy. While some evidence exists on the positive impact that inclusive education reforms can have on the academic and personal outcomes of diverse students -- and in particular of students with special…

Children who are excluded from school may end up being excluded from other social institutions. Yet little research has considered whether low school belonging is a risk factor for not being in education, employment, or training after graduation. Using two longitudinal cohorts from Australia (N = 14,082; 51% Boys), we explored this relationship.…

This article deals with the effect of the Harmonic Mind Maps (HMM) in the comprehension of narrative texts of university students. To achieve this purpose, a quasi-experimental research was carried out within the quantitative approach. From a population of 1500 students belonging to the I Semester of university, a sample of 83 students was taken,…

In response to declining results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys, the then governing Swedish coalition in 2010-2014 introduced earlier grading, more extensive national testing and a new standards-based curriculum. These reforms coincided with a greater emphasis on inclusive' education understood in the 'narrow'…

This article presents the pseudo-equivalent group approach and discusses how it can enhance the quality of linking in the presence of nonequivalent groups. The pseudo-equivalent group approach allows to achieve pseudo-equivalence using propensity score reweighting techniques. We use it to perform linking to establish scale concordance between two…

Students' school belonging is critical to overall functioning. Most past studies of school belonging's antecedents focused on individual-level and proximal environmental factors, neglecting broader socioecological factors such as income inequality. Hence, this study examined whether income inequality is associated with students' school belonging.…

This study extends research on cultural reproduction theory and employs a critical quantitative lens to examine how schools contribute to differential science outcomes based on intersectional student backgrounds. Using nationally representative PISA 2015 data, structural equation modeling is utilized with intersectional student background groups…

Asian migrant students are typically considered as educational paragons in the West. They have been shown to surpass other students in standard indicators of educational success. However, viewing this success with a purely ethnic framework is inadequate and essentialising. It conflates the experiences of various groups into a homogenised 'Asian'…