Declining interests in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) related careers are concerning at a time when the society is becoming more reliant on complex technologies and science. Our study examined the predictors of students' STEM career interests within cohort data (N = 601) collected from Finnish general upper secondary…

The purpose of this study is to examine the predictive effects of epistemological beliefs about science and informal reading of scientific texts on students' future-oriented optimism on the issue of climate change. Future-oriented climate change optimism is defined as encompassing "hope" and "anticipation" about the climate…

This study examines longitudinal associations among reading skills, math skills and emotional well-being in a Finnish sample (n = 586) followed from the end of comprehensive school (Grade 9, age 15-16) to age 20. In particular, we determine whether the associations between skills and well-being are mediated by self-concept beliefs. In Grade 9, the…

The long-term negative consequences of learning difficulties have been acknowledged. Nonetheless, research is still scarce regarding the prediction of adolescent difficulties in reading and arithmetic skills. The present study examines at which age phase and with what kind of constellation of parent- and child-related factors can adolescent…

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 analyzes how students' reported teaching practices of their teachers and their attitudes towards science are related to the science achievements of four high-performing countries/economies in PISA 2015: Hong Kong, China, Canada, and Finland. A study of these regions can shed light on the commonalities of and differences between the…

Interest research offers different hypotheses about the association between interest and learning outcomes. The standard hypothesis proposes that interest predicts learning outcomes: people acquire new knowledge about a topic they find interesting. The affective by-product hypothesis assumes that learning predicts interest: by learning something,…

This study examined the role of support and schoolwork difficulties in the development of school burnout in general upper secondary education students. Students participated the study twice, in the spring of the first year of general upper secondary education (N = 464) and in the spring of the second year (N = 326). Participants completed…

This article addresses 824 Finnish vocational upper secondary level students' self-assessments related to their basic ICT skills and their views regarding the importance of ICT skills for their future career. A questionnaire was distributed to students representing seven vocational fields who were starting their studies leading to a vocational…

One of the aims for compulsory education is to diminish or alleviate differences in children's skills existing prior to school entry. However, a growing gender gap in reading development has increasingly been documented. Regrettably, there is scant evidence on whether differences between genders (favouring girls) have their roots in pre-reading…

The present study was aimed to investigate whether Finnish and Danish students' math achievement differed and which student-level factors, if any, explained the achievement gaps and whether teacher participation in decision making and teacher morale, among the school-level factors, explained the achievement gaps in Finland and Denmark. To this…

This study investigated upper secondary school students' skills in evaluating the credibility and argumentative content of a blog text and a YouTube video. Both sources concerned child vaccination, the blog text opposing and the YouTube video supporting it. Students rated each source as credible, fairly credible or non-credible, justified their…

Finland and Singapore are both top-performing countries in international assessments such as PISA. Finland has been consistently one of the high-achievers regarding not only students' literacy levels but also educational equity. Similarly, Singapore has continuously shown outstanding performance in PISA. It outperformed all the other participants…

The aim or the present study was to examine the relative importance of financial education in school and families and dispositional factors (competitiveness, work mastery, meta-cognition) in predicting financial literacy among Finnish adolescents. The data on the 4328 Finnish 15-year-olds was drawn from the PISA 2018 assessment. Financial literacy…

The present study examined gender gap in Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) Reading and mediators of the gender gap in a Finnish sample (n = 1,309). We examined whether the gender gap in PISA Reading performance can be understood via the effects of reading fluency, achievement behaviour (mastery orientation and task-avoidant…