This study examines the relationship between cultural capital and students' higher education (HE) expectations among six major origins of international students in U.S. HE institutions, using PISA 2018 data--the only cycle that measured global competence and related indicators of cultural capital. Through logistic regression analysis, it explores…

Children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds tend to have more negative self-perceptions. More negative self-perceptions are often related to lower academic achievement. Linking these findings, we asked: Do children's self-perceptions help explain socioeconomic disparities in academic achievement around the world? We addressed this…

The article explores the importance of early reading proficiency and its long-term impact on academic and life outcomes, particularly in Romania. Analyzing PISA data, the article highlights significant literacy gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students, as well as urban and rural learners. These disparities perpetuate intergenerational…

Families are active agents in school systems and apply different strategies of educational advantage to help their children succeed at school. These strategies are planned and enacted by families with their children in mind, but they are always a response to the broader education system design. This article explores how through their strategies…

This paper provides new evidence on educational inequality and reviews the literature on the causes and consequences of unequal education. We document large achievement gaps between children from different socio-economic backgrounds, show how patterns of educational inequality vary across countries, time, and generations, and establish a link…

Concerns about the breadth of the U.S. income distribution and limited intergenerational mobility have led to a focus on educational achievement gaps by socio-economic status (SES). Using intertemporally linked assessments from NAEP, TIMSS, and PISA, we trace the achievement of U.S. student cohorts born between 1954 and 2001. Achievement gaps…

In times of growing economic inequality, improving equity in education becomes more urgent. While some countries and economies that participate in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have managed to build education systems where socio-economic status makes less of a difference to students' learning and well-being, every…

Equity is a fundamental value and guiding principle of education policy and practice, but it is not necessarily actualised in schools and education systems around the world. There are large variations across PISA-participating countries and economies in the magnitude of the difference that socio-economic status makes in students' learning,…

Modern education systems evolve in a context of growing teacher shortages, frequent turnover and a low attractiveness of the profession. In such a context where these challenges interrelate, there is an urgent need to better understand the well-being of teachers and its implications on the teaching and learning nexus. This working paper proposes a…

Singapore has been assigned the role of a "model" nation state primarily for two reasons: its rapid rate of economic growth and its outstanding performance on cross-national tests of educational achievement, such as PISA. This has resulted in advocates of reform citing it as illustrating "best practices", especially in the…

Using PISA 2009 data for Croatia, this paper addresses the relationship between socio-economic background, cultural capital and educational attainment. Following Bourdieu, we emphasized the importance of interpreting cultural capital effects as effects of family habitus. The results indicated that the material and the relational dimension of…

This article reports on the growing influence of informal and not democratically legitimised authority within the educational field in Europe. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Bologna Process and the European Qualifications Framework are discussed as instances of neoliberal strategies of modernisation that change the…

A strong relationship between article background and educational outcomes fuels a negative inequality cycle. This paper explores the interplay between student socioeconomic status and educational outcomes, and the mediating role of Opportunity-to-Learn (OTL) in high- and middle-income countries. Using data from PISA 2012, we find that the…

Widening access to higher education is clearly part of the European policy agenda. Higher education ministers in the Bologna countries, as well as the European Commission, have all expressed a wish to make higher education more representative of national populations. This policy objective has been echoed at national level. One approach to widening…

Socioeconomic status at the individual- and school-level are positively related to literacy achievement in all English-speaking countries. The components of socioeconomic status -- income, parent education and parent occupation -- are each statistically significant predictors of school literacy achievement but they are primarily a proxy for more…