Data from international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) of schooled populations indicate that boys have considerably poorer literacy skills than girls. New evidence from a household-based ILSA--Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC)--indicates that the gender gap in literacy is negligible, even though…

The present integrative data analysis examined gender differences in achievement, achievement profiles, and achievement motivation in mathematics, reading, and science among 113,864 top-performing adolescent math students (top 5% in their respective countries). To do this, we applied the same analysis protocol to representative individual…

In large-scale assessments, performance differences across different groups are regularly found. These group differences (e.g., gender differences) are often relevant for educational policy decisions and measures. However, the formation of these group differences usually remains unclear. We propose an approach for investigating this formation by…

Effective collaborative problem solving comprises cognitive dimensions, in which men tend to outperform women, and social dimensions in which women tend to outperform men. We extend research on between-country differences in gender gaps by considering collaborative problem solving and its association with two indicators of societal-level gender…

We examine the relevance of task exposure specificity in the development of self-efficacy evaluations among 15-year-old students in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. We use data from the 2012 edition of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to assess if students' self-efficacy evaluations…

Although female students' overall performance in mathematics is on a par with the performance of male students, female students tend to report lower levels of mathematics self-concept (MSC) than their male schoolmates. With the present study, we examined for the first time whether occupational gender diversity (i.e., a balanced gender ratio) in…

In this article, a science interest network model (SINM) is introduced and a first empirical test of the model is presented. The SINM models interest as a dynamic relational construct, in which different interest components, that is, affective, behavioral, and cognitive components and related motivational components mutually reinforce one another…

This review examined the relations between grit and academic achievement based on a meta-analysis of 137 studies yielding 156 dependent samples (N = 285,331). Using the robust variance estimation, we found that the correlations of overall grit level with academic achievement were generally weak to moderate (weighted r = 0.19). The correlation of…

The present study investigates problem-solving skill alongside more widely recognized settlement and sociodemographic factors in first-generation (1G) and second-generation (2G) immigrant students' science and mathematics achievement. A total of 113,767 students (ages 15-16 years) from 17 countries were drawn from the 2003 Programme for…

Reciprocal determinism is a central premise of Bandura's (1986) social cognitive theory. Studies of the relationship between self-beliefs and performance tend to draw on this or related theories and usually endorse the notion of reciprocal determinism at a substantive-theoretical level. However, attempts to model this postulated mutual influence…