Background: Bullying is widely acknowledged as one of the most harmful events in a child's life, leading to negative life experiences and outcomes. However, 'school effects of bullying' are rarely studied from an international perspective, especially with international large-scale data. Purpose: In this study, we aim to look at bullying through an…

This study investigates the student- and school-level predictors of reading performance across five top-performing countries in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2021. Utilising a multilevel analysis, the research examines the influence of cognitive development, socio-cultural contexts and educational environments on…

This article explores the link between the OECD TALIS 2013 survey's framework for defining the ideal teacher and national educational goals by focusing on the teacher self-efficacy items, using cross-country comparisons. Surprisingly, cross-country analysis of the TALIS 2013 data combined with World Value Survey data about Desired Child Qualities…

We investigated the predictive power of cognitive skills and background variables of 769 first and second grade children learning to read two orthographically different languages Finnish and German in three countries Finland, Germany and Italy. Main results from stepwise regression models showed that in all countries word reading at first grade…

There is an urgent need to understand how often teachers use information and communication technologies (ICT) in mathematics instruction. This information can provide vital links that can help stakeholders make connections about ICT use in mathematics instruction and student learning experiences with ICT. Scholars in the field have reported on the…

In this study, international research collaboration (IRC) and international research orientation (IRO) have been studied at the micro-level of individual academics from the university sector (N = 8,466, 11 European systems). Both were studied cross-nationally, cross-disciplinarily, and cross-generationally. This study differs from most existing…

At a time when the national conversation is focused on lagging upward mobility, it is no surprise that many educators point to poverty as the explanation for mediocre test scores among U.S. students compared to those of students in other countries. If American teachers in struggling U.S. schools taught in Finland, says Finnish educator Pasi…

This study aims to understand the predictive role of attitudes towards problem solving, such as perseverance and openness for problem solving, as well as of gender and country for Canadian and Finnish students' academic achievement in mathematics and science. We examined the data of students from Canada (n = 21,544) and Finland (n = 8,829) who…

While test anxiety has been studied extensively, little consideration has been given to the cultural impacts of children's experiences and expressions of test anxiety. The aim of this work was to examine whether variance in test anxiety scores can be predicted based on gender and cultural setting. Three hundred and ninety-eight pupils in Grade 3…

The aim of the current study was to determine Finnish and Dutch three-year-old preschool children's physical activity (PA) levels and how levels vary across gender, location, time of day and social contexts in both countries. A modified version of the Observational System for Recording Physical Activity in Children-Preschool (OSRAC-P) was used to…

Background: The present study investigates what factors related to the school context influence student achievement on TIMSS mathematics tests across countries. A systematic review of the literature on PIRLS, TIMSS, and ICCS was conducted upstream to identify those school, teacher, and classroom factors shown to be useful predictors of student…

This article presents results on how students became engaged and motivated when using digital storytelling in knowledge creation in Finland, Greece and California. The theoretical framework is based on sociocultural theories. Learning is seen as a result of dialogical interactions between people, substances and artefacts. This approach has been…

This article focuses on analysing the effect of educational differentiation policies of OECD educational systems on socioeconomically disadvantaged students, based on data from PISA 2009. The analysis is conducted on the basis of a definition of two subgroups of disadvantaged students: those that achieve high scores, and those obtaining scores…

This article examines cross-country variations in adult skills inequality and asks why skills in Anglophone countries are so unequal. Drawing on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's recent Survey of Adult Skills and other surveys, it investigates the differences across countries and country groups in inequality in both…

The aim of the study was to explain the difference between the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 reading results for Finland and Estonia using characteristics of teaching and learning, and characteristics of the overall development of these countries. PISA data were collected via a reading test and student questionnaires…