Autonomy is often discussed as a necessary condition for professionalism in any field, including the teaching profession. In the educational context, autonomy is seen to be critical for teachers to be able to synthesize their knowledge and skills and translate them into effective classroom practices in the best interest of their students. In…

Previous research has shown that parental involvement at home seems to be socio-economically stratified. To study this stratification, recent research has drawn a distinction between early and late parental literacy activities at home. Early parental literacy activities at home happen before primary school, whereas late parental literacy…

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, causing one of the largest disruptions to schooling in history. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced unprecedented challenges for education research and large-scale assessments of student populations. Both schools and researchers were forced to modify…

This article reports on research conducted to investigate student confidence in reading by collecting data from 135 primary schools in rural China. In the survey, we adopted the PIRLS scales of confidence in reading and reading skills test items. Our analysis shows that compared to the other countries and regions, rural China ranks last with…

To test emerging narratives of principals' direct effect on student outcomes on a large scale, this study investigates whether school principals' time use for interacting with individual students is associated with academic achievement and student safety at school. Built on recent research on principals' time use, this study explores whether…

This study used mixed methods to investigate the relationships between parental leave policy components and academic achievement measured by TIMSS and PIRLS. Qualitative document analysis was used to analyze the policy documents and available literature on all the parental leave policies that had been implemented early enough to potentially affect…

Purpose: We investigated the roles of leisure reading and word reading ability in vocabulary and reading comprehension development in 598 adolescents at ages 10, 11, and 12 (285 girls, 313 boys). Method: Structural equation modeling was used to test whether word reading was associated with vocabulary and reading comprehension: a) directly; b)…

This article examines the question of teacher quality and its effects on the skills acquisition of primary school students in Spain. We use an education production function in which we incorporate teachers' fixed effects, estimated by means of a multiple regression model. Specifically, we examine the acquisition of reading skills by drawing on…

This study investigates the relationship between teacher specialization and the reading achievement of fourth-grade students in Sweden. The empirical base is data from PIRLS 2011. The main method of analysis is a two-level regression. Results revealed a positive relationship between reading achievement and teacher education relevant for subject…

Highschool homework as an integral part of the study skills benefits students' learning outcomes significantly. Consistency of completing homework contributes to rising scores in any given assignment such as quizzes, regular tests, standardized tests, etc. The purpose of homework aims at different targets and it is designed for specific groups and…

It is well-documented that academic achievement is associated with students' self-perceptions of their academic abilities, that is, their academic self-concepts. However, low-achieving students may apply self-protective strategies to maintain a favorable academic self-concept when evaluating their academic abilities. Consequently, the relation…

Being proficient in independently reading and writing complex informational text has become a need for college and career success. While there is a great deal of agreement on the importance of the reading of informational text in early grades and teachers are encouraged to increase amount of the reading of informational text in early grades, few…

This study investigated the associations among reading strategy instruction, student motivational factors (i.e., attitudes toward reading, reading self-concept, and motivation to read), gender, and reading achievement. The analyses were conducted using the Hong Kong sample (students at Level 1, n = 3,875 and teachers at Level 2, n = 133) from the…

This study investigates how reading achievement relates to student and school characteristics in countries with different reading scores at the fourth grade level. Data comes from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2011 for Denmark, Sweden, and France and the multilevel analysis includes two levels: student/home and…

Finnish students have been among the world's strongest performers on standardized assessments throughout the past decade. Consequently, educators and scholars are interested in how to explain such results. A common explanation, as seen on social media, is that Finnish educators do not regularly assess their students. This study explores educators'…