Background: Comparative educational research has studied inequality in educational outcomes through large-scale assessments like PISA and TIMSS, by identifying achievement gaps within social groups (e.g., gender, parental education, and immigrant gaps) to inform investment in intervention programs and educational policies. However, the focus of…

Research shows that motivation is a critical precursor to students' science achievement. However, research on the topic yields ambiguous results in different cultural contexts. While the positive association between motivation and science achievement has been evidenced universally, the relatively predictive effect and strength of different…

In this study, we investigated the relationships between three pivotal factors that influence student performance, including opportunity-to-learn (OTL) factors, which included proximal indicators that represent science-specific learning opportunities, student motivation (propensity factor), and crucial student and teacher antecedent factors by…

This study was to examine the big-fish-little-pond effects (BFLPE) on mathematics achievement by the students' positive attitude toward mathematics (PATM) of Taiwanese eighth-grade students in the Trends of International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The SLM (students like learning mathematics), SVM (students value mathematics), and SCM…