This study explored how specific inquiry-related learning activities were related to student enjoyment of learning science and intended choice of future STEM career. Analysis of Taiwan and Australia PISA 2015 data revealed that three activities, namely, "debating and planning experiments, drawing conclusions and doing hands-on experiments,…

The purpose of the present study was to (a) determine relationships among teacher contextual variables including support and cognitive activation, student motivational beliefs, engagement, and mathematics literacy and (b) to examine whether different types of motivational and behavioral engagement variables act as viable mediators between the…

When new PISA data are published, many researchers around the world analyse them with the aim of shedding light on all sorts of questions. One question in search of an answer: why are women under-represented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professions? Using data from the Program for International Student Assessment…

This analysis compares 15-year-old students who reported career expectations in finance in 13 education systems that participated in the financial literacy assessment of the 2015 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). In particular, it explores (a) selected demographic characteristics of students who expected to have a career in…

This brief compares 15-year-old students who reported career expectations in finance in 13 education systems that participated in the financial literacy assessment of the 2015 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). It explores selected demographic characteristics of these students and the association between students' finance career…

There are more students expecting a teaching career than there are teachers in the current population. On average across OECD countries, 4.2% of 15-year-old students expect to work as teachers--a greater proportion than the share of teachers in the adult population. An analysis of 2015 data from the Programme for International Student Assessment…

Increasing women's participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) has become a policy goal for many countries. This dissertation focuses on the origin and measurement of gender gaps in student achievement and self-perceived ability, as well as their potential role in predicting college career choices in STEM. The first…

The concept of science capital has a growing influence in science education research for understanding young people's science trajectories. Popularised in the UK, this paper aims to extend and evaluate the applicability of science capital in the context of China by drawing on PISA2015. More specifically, we make use of existing items in the…

At the special conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers (AAMT), the author was asked to speak about the challenges and opportunities in teaching mathematics as a stimulus for discussion of AAMT's "future directions". With an open invitation to be a little provocative, the author…

The policy reforms over the past 15 years have placed all the responsibility for reading achievement on teachers, with little, if any, support. What many have achieved is declining achievement in comparison with other countries. Moreover, there are increasing teacher shortages, as promising individuals choose other careers and teachers leave the…

This article gives an overview of the current state of science and technology self-concept research. Following a defined selection process, we analysed 74 peer-reviewed journal articles published from 1998 to 2017, which are indexed in the ERIC database and that deal with science and technology self-concepts (STSC) of school children and…

This study examines the degree of association between students' STEM occupational expectations and between-country differences in public attitudes toward science and technology (S&T). This study focuses on public attitudes among two different populations: students and adults. Three-level Hierarchical Generalised Linear Models are employed to…

This study examines between-country differences in the degree to which teachers' working conditions, salaries, and societal evaluations about desirable job characteristics are associated with students' teaching career expectations. Three-level hierarchical generalized linear models are employed to analyze cross-national data from the Programme for…

We provide empirical evidence of immigrants' specialization in skill acquisition well before entering the US labor market. Nationally representative datasets enable studying the academic trajectories of immigrant children, with a focus on high-school course-taking patterns and college major choice. Immigrant children accumulate skills in ways that…

Using data from 37,570 students in 23 OECD countries in PISA 2006, we examine how national contexts shape the expectation of being a teacher at age 30 among high achieving students in secondary schools. Our results show considerable between-country differences in the degree of students' expectation of a teaching job. To address sources of this…