If there are areas that have received significant impacts of ICTs, education is one of them as ICTs have stimulated major differences in the teaching approaches and the ways students learn (Yuen, Law, & Wong, 2003); however, World Bank unexpectedly excludes ICT from the key focus areas in their ESS 2020, a guideline that may be adopted by…

Recent research has suggested presence of a significant relationship between prevalence of online reading and reading literacy. In this study we examined the prevalence of online reading among 15-year old students in Qatar using a nationally representative sample of 8,089 students. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were conducted at the item and…

This article presents in summary a selection of the work conducted by OECD in the field of technology and education, which has been an on-going focus of OECD work since the 1980s. Recently, much of this has been under the heading of "New Millennium Learners", but it has also included the widening of student achievement surveys towards…

In support of the conclusions and recommendations in the National Education Technology Plan (NETP), this article makes explicit the connections between the economic rationale used in the plan and the educational transformations it recommends. The article reviews macroeconomic research, microeconomic research, labor market and workforce studies,…

The Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) program studies the progress of several groups of young Australians as they move from school into post-secondary education and work. Since 2003, the LSAY program has been integrated with the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted by the Organisation for Economic…

As the nation's economy continues its irrevocable shift from manufacturing toward idea-driven, creative industries, our schools--and the teaching and learning enterprise at the heart of our schools--need to undergo a transformation as well. The result of such a transformation needs to be a type of educational experience and expertise that will not…

For decades Japan has remained at or near the top of international assessments of student learning; and in the past decade, students in Japan have become more engaged in learning. However, the government aspires to improve learning outcomes even further. "Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons from PISA for…

In 2000, Australia took part in the inaugural OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Approximately 500 Australian Indigenous students were assessed in PISA, providing a representative sample of the 15-year-old Indigenous population. This report presents the analysis of…

This paper reviews Iceland's performance in skills accumulation against the backdrop of a rapidly changing economic environment and discusses directions for further improvements. Since the late 1990s, the government has considerably raised expenditure on education, which is now among the highest in the OECD relative to GDP. Nonetheless, Iceland…