The effects of school starting age and relative age effects (RAEs) have generated much interest from parents, teachers, policymakers, and educational researchers. Our 10-year longitudinal study is based on a nationally representative (N = 4,983) prospective sample from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. The primary outcomes are results…

Competitiveness and cooperativeness are important predictors of social and learning outcomes at school. Drawing on evidence suggesting that contexts with high income inequality foster an ethos of competitiveness and inhibit cooperativeness in the economic environment, we examine whether income inequality is also associated with more…

Positive psychosocial adjustment is considered critical to adaptive student development and academic growth. Theories of positive youth development argue that psychosocial adjustment is a form of thriving and can be understood via multiple academic indicators, including achievement. To better understand the factors that support students'…

International Large-Scale Assessments (LSA) allow comparisons of education systems' effectiveness in promoting student learning in specific domains, such as reading, mathematics, and science. However, it has been argued that students' scores in International LSAs mostly reflect general cognitive ability (g). This study examines the extent to which…

We conducted three preregistered studies using the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data to provide a worldwide estimation of the standardized test gap between students from lower and higher social classes. We investigated: (a) the degree to which academic anxiety…

Students' academic achievement is a key predictor of various life outcomes and is commonly used for selection as well as for educational monitoring and accountability. With regard to achievement indicators, a differentiation has traditionally been drawn between grades and standardized tests. There is initial, albeit inconclusive, evidence that…

This study investigated developmental trajectories of reading and math using latent-growth-curve analyses across multiple academic skills, measures, and multiple time periods within a single sample. Reading-related growth was marked by significant individual differences during the early elementary-school period and nonsignificant individual…

Students' school belonging is critical to overall functioning. Most past studies of school belonging's antecedents focused on individual-level and proximal environmental factors, neglecting broader socioecological factors such as income inequality. Hence, this study examined whether income inequality is associated with students' school belonging.…

The present integrative data analysis examined gender differences in achievement, achievement profiles, and achievement motivation in mathematics, reading, and science among 113,864 top-performing adolescent math students (top 5% in their respective countries). To do this, we applied the same analysis protocol to representative individual…

Set for variability (SfV) is an oral language task that requires an individual to disambiguate the mismatch between the decoded form of an irregular word and its actual lexical pronunciation. For example, in the task, the word wasp is pronounced to rhyme with clasp (i.e. /waesp/), and the individual must recognize the actual pronunciation of the…

In large-scale assessments, performance differences across different groups are regularly found. These group differences (e.g., gender differences) are often relevant for educational policy decisions and measures. However, the formation of these group differences usually remains unclear. We propose an approach for investigating this formation by…

Effective collaborative problem solving comprises cognitive dimensions, in which men tend to outperform women, and social dimensions in which women tend to outperform men. We extend research on between-country differences in gender gaps by considering collaborative problem solving and its association with two indicators of societal-level gender…

Teacher-assigned grades provide important information that is used by universities and colleges to make admission decisions and by employers to make hiring decisions. Besides grades, the results of standardized achievement tests are frequently used for student selection and allocation. However, correlations between the two achievement measures are…

Relevance interventions have shown a great potential to foster motivation and achievement (Lazowski & Hulleman, 2016). Yet, further research is warranted to test how such interventions can be successfully implemented in practice. We conducted a cluster-randomized trial in ninth-grade math classrooms to test the effectiveness of a relevance…

The proliferation of information and divergent viewpoints in the 21st century requires an educated citizenry with the ability to critically evaluate information and make informed decisions. To meet this demand, adaptive epistemic understandings and beliefs about the nature of knowledge are needed, such as believing that scientific knowledge is…