The capacity to interrogate data with critical thinking is a strong predictor of statistical literacy (SL). This data interrogation, from the data consumers' perspective, incorporates four complex response skills: "interpreting," "communicating," "evaluating," and "decision-making," and those skills are…

Acquiring mathematical literacy requires students to apply mathematics in various real-world contexts. However, mathematics classes often provide brief, content-focused descriptions of reality-based tasks and tasks that describe the situation as more complex, closer to reality, are still lacking. Students with different sociodemographic…

Students' prior achievements in school have significant correlations with their later achievements. Specifically, students' prior numeracy achievement is the most important predictor of later numeracy success. However, the assessment of this predictor across gender and its trend across students' year levels is often overlooked or not adequately…

This paper is the second in a series of Analytical Insights papers, which provide accessible, up-to-date analysis of educational datasets. It is the first in a series that uses the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO)'s new Longitudinal Literacy and Numeracy in Australia (LLANIA) dataset to explore educational questions. The paper…

Australian children from regional, rural and remote (RRR) areas exhibit lower educational outcomes than their peers in metropolitan areas. The mechanisms driving the comparatively poorer educational outcomes of children in RRR areas, however, are not well understood. This paper proposes and tests two sets of factors that may be responsible for…

The dual-factor model of mental health proposes that high wellbeing and low distress are necessary to define mental health. This study used latent profile analysis to identify mental health profiles in a sample of 3,587 Australian grade 6 students and explored the association between mental health profiles and school outcomes measured in grades 7…

Mathematical literacy (ML) is considered central to the application of mathematical knowledge in everyday life and thus is found in many comparative international educational standards. However, there exists barely any evidence about predictors and outcomes of ML having a lasting effect on achievement in nonmathematical domains. We drew on a large…

This study examined developmental profiles of reading fluency and reading comprehension in Grades 1 to 9 (ages 7 to 15) in a large Finnish sample (N = 2,518). In addition, early predictors of the profiles were analyzed with respect to kindergarten cognitive skills (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, rapid automized naming [RAN], number…

The present study investigates the empirical separability of mathematical (a) content domains, (b) cognitive domains, and (c) content-specific cognitive domains. There were 122 items representing two content domains (linear equations vs. theorem of Pythagoras) combined with two cognitive domains (modeling competence vs. technical competence)…

Extensive research indicates that there are more boys than girls who are struggling readers, although considerable variation in gender ratios has been reported as a result of a lack of consensus in defining and measuring poor reading. The purpose of this study was to establish stable and consistent gender ratios for poor reading using a single…