Hong Kong attained the top place in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2011, an international study of reading achievement, which arouses keen interest in understanding the reasons behind this remarkable achievement. Although factors associated with reading achievement in English have been widely studied, similar studies…

Educational effectiveness research has provided evidence about the importance of teacher beliefs and attitudes for teaching and learning. This study builds on the concept of academic optimism, which combines 3 aspects of a teacher's professional creed: self-efficacy, trust, and academic emphasis. The study explores the functioning of the…

Background: Numerous studies have investigated the relationships between various student, home and contextual factors and reading achievement. However, the relationship between such factors and reading attitudes has been investigated far less, despite the fact that theoretical frameworks of large-scale assessments and school effectiveness research…

The present paper aims to discuss how data from international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) can be utilized and combined, even with other existing data sources, in order to monitor educational outcomes and study the effectiveness of educational systems. We consider different purposes of linking data, namely, extending outcomes measures,…

We examined the developmental relations between knowledge of reading strategies and reading comprehension in a longitudinal study of 312 Dutch children from the beginning of fourth grade to the end of fifth grade. Measures for reading comprehension, reading strategies, reading fluency, vocabulary, and working memory were administered. A structural…

Hong Kong attained champion of the PIRLS 2011 that aroused keen interest in understanding the underlying reasons of a non-alphabetic language. The study aimed at unravelling various aspects of the student and home factors which contributed to remarkable Chinese reading performance. Totally 3,875 students from 132 primary schools completed the…

Studies investigating the effects of emotional exhaustion among teachers have primarily focused on its relations with teacher-related outcome variables but little research has been done for examining its relations with student outcomes. Therefore, this study examines the relations between teachers' emotional exhaustion and educational outcomes…

Reading strategy interventions relying upon peer tutoring are a common way to foster poor readers' comprehension skills. Those interventions are based on the assumption that tutees benefit from the (higher) reading skills of their tutors. However, this interpersonal effect has not yet been tested explicitly because the effectiveness of peer…