This study aims to understand the predictive role of attitudes towards problem solving, such as perseverance and openness for problem solving, as well as of gender and country for Canadian and Finnish students' academic achievement in mathematics and science. We examined the data of students from Canada (n = 21,544) and Finland (n = 8,829) who…

This study investigated effective teaching factors and student reading strategies as predictors of student reading achievement in the United States and China. Participants were 10,348 students in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, 5115 from China and 5233 from the United States. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA)…

Learning strategies, such as memorization and elaboration strategies, have received both support and repudiation. The 2009 international PISA reading, science, and mathematics achievement test and survey of 15 year-olds in 65 countries was used. The findings indicated that self-reported use of learning strategies, which involve compensatory…

Using an international educational database, PISA 2009, this study investigates and analyzes 15-year-old students' attitudes toward school in 11 Asia-Pacific units (country, city, or area). For each unit, the study demonstrates four types of students' attitudes toward school, compares male and female students, and examines the relationships of the…

The aim of this study is to examine whether the expansion of higher education across countries is associated with the growth of shadow education as a function of families' efforts to ensure attainment of educational opportunities. To address this research objective, this study samples approximately 163,000 students, nested in 21 Organization for…

Background: Low-stakes assessments do not have consequences for the test-takers. Currently, motivational research indicates that a lack of test-taking motivation can decrease students' performance in low-stakes assessments. However, little research has explored the domain-specific and situation-specific aspects of motivation simultaneously.…

This paper explores the PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment] achievement of twenty countries in light of some of their demographic differences. SES [student socioeconomic status], nuclear family, gender, home language, and native status were predictive of achievement for every country. Demographics accounted for as little as 8…

In recent decades, a dramatic shift has occurred in higher education throughout much of the industrialized world. For the first time in history, women are completing more education than men. Through the 1970s, women lagged behind men in the number of tertiary degrees completed in most nations. Since the 1980s, women have begun to reach parity with…

This paper aims to analyze the effects of certain characteristics of the educational systems on the social composition of schools. After accounting for significant effects of schools' social composition on student outcomes (this is confirmed on the basis of a multilevel analysis), we explore the impacts of distinct components of what we name…