This volume of PISA examines the readiness of students to engage with learning strategies, to be motivated to learn and to be confident in their abilities and in their capacity to improve their skills and knowledge. Countries like Korea have reduced mathematics anxiety, Portugal excels in critical thinking, and more low-performing students in…

In Peru, national assessments repeatedly rank Indigenous mathematics students as the lowest performing across the entirety of Latin America and South America. Whereas lack of financial resources often predicts low measures, the history of educational practice teaches us that students' poverty need not predict their educational outcomes -- creative…

Non-cognitive characteristics of students in four Southeast Asian countries -- Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Viet Nam -- were reviewed based on the PISA 2009, 2012, and 2015 data. Overall, students in this region demonstrated similarities with respect to their non-cognitive dispositions such as learning habits, approaches to learning,…

Mathematics education has emerged to be of prime importance in the United States, as American students' performance has shown to be consistently and significantly lower than many other nations in the world (Rampey, Dion, & Donahue, 2009; National Center for Education Statistics, n.d.; OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, n.d.).…

What kind of developmental potential is present in elementary schoolchildren but hindered by the traditional type of education? Half a century ago Daniel El'konin and Vasili Davydov, the leaders of Russian Vygotskian educational psychology started answering this question. They suggested that reflection is a basic human ability and it can be…