This study inquires how students of Arab heritage in an urban setting in Denmark interpret Islamic literacy artefacts available in their homes, and how these interpretations reflect broader faith literacy practices in the students' diaspora community. Through a linguistic ethnographic study design students have been invited to photograph literacy…

Many institutions around the world use the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) to assess test-takers' proficiency in English, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where a given Band score (or its equivalent) is required for direct entry to majors taught in English. However, despite the test's importance and despite being one…

The United States and Canada, two countries known to have large immigrant populations, have long since reflected a dichotomy, where Canada is generally perceived to be a country with language policies that demonstrate its receptiveness to embrace multiculturalism in schools and classrooms. In contrast, the United States has consistently espoused…

Reading self-concept plays a significant role in academic achievement. Considering increasing numbers of English learners (ELs) in the United States, there is an urgent need to investigate self-perceptions of ELs in comparison to those of native English speakers (NES). We applied Elastic Net analysis (ENET), a machine learning approach, to PISA…

Grounded in ecological theory, this study investigated relative contributions of perceived classroom and school climate variables to mathematics self-concept and achievement of English-at-home and English learner (EL) students using PISA 2012 data for American middle-grade students. For both outcomes, results of 3-step hierarchical linear…

Social psychologists have suggested that language-based ideologies related to "stereotype threat" (i.e. variations in performance-based on ability perceptions of language groups) may affect students' academic achievement regardless of school language support. However, it is unclear whether efforts to support students' first language…

While much of the work in language testing is concerned with constructing quality tests in order to measure language knowledge in reliable and valid ways, there has been a significant movement in language testing research that examines tests in the context of their use in education and society. This line of research exits from the notion that…

Recent efforts to identify non-cognitive predictors of academic achievement and school success have largely focused on self-constructs such as self-efficacy, self-concept and anxiety that are measured with respect to a specific domain (e.g. mathematics). We extend the measurement of the non-cognitive realm in education to incorporate both social…

Interreligious dialogue is a central objective in European and UNESCO policy and research documents, in which educational institutions are seen as central places for dialogue. In this article, we discuss this type of dialogue under the conditions of asymmetry and categorisation in two Finnish schools. Finnish education has often been lauded for…

The present study examines the accuracy of teachers' judgements about students' motivation and emotions in English learning with two different rating methods. A sample of 480 sixth-grade Chinese students reported their academic self-concept, learning effort, enjoyment, and test anxiety via a questionnaire and were rated on these dimensions by…