Excellence gaps are differences in advanced education outcomes among student groups. This study replicates and extends an earlier study on the prevalence and magnitude of excellence gaps based on student sex and immigrant status using Grade 8 TIMSS data. Data were included for the 12 countries that have participated in each TIMSS administration…

Globally, the private school share of enrollment increased from about 14 percent in 2000 to about 18 percent in 2019. We estimate the systemic effect of private enrollment share on learning outcomes. Estimates of the systemic effect of private school enrollment capture any competitive effects as well as any differences between public and private…

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Research for Education series represents a further effort by IEA to capitalize on it's unique datasets, so as to provide powerful information for policymakers and researchers. Each report focuses on a specific topic and is produced by a dedicated team of leading…

Absenteeism and students' attitudes toward science have an impact on the exam results among eighth-grade students in Malaysia and Singapore. This study employed weighted least squares and quantile regression techniques on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 data to analyze the net effect of these two factors in…

Background: Home mathematics environment (HME) research has focused on parent--child interactions surrounding numerical activities as measured by the frequency of engaging in such activities. However, HME survey questions have been developed from limited perspectives (e.g., "Early Childhood Research Quarterly," 27, 2012, 231;…

Researchers have long postulated the existence of a big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE) in which a student's relative academic standing in class or school affects his or her academic self-concept. Few studies, however, use causal research designs to identify whether the BFLPE exists and whether it is generalizable across a wide variety of…

Bullying victimisation is a reality in most schools around the world, with thousands of students being victimised on a daily basis. Given the prevalence of bullying victimisation at school, examination of what might prompt or prevent such behaviours is required. Therefore, this study examined the relationship of a number of individual and…

The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-related fields remains a concern for educators and the scientific community. Gender differences in mathematics and science achievement play a role, in conjunction with attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs. We report results from the 2011 Trends in…

Using expert reviews and item response theory (IRT), this study evaluated the language- and culture-related construct-irrelevant variance and reliability of the 2019 TIMSS sense of school belonging scale (SSBS) for grades 4 and 8. The five items of the SSBS, which were identical for both grades, were reviewed for the language- and culture-related…

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 examines the direct and indirect relationships between key motivational constructs and science achievement using TIMSS 2019 data sets for Japan, Norway, and the United States. The sample of the study includes 4,446 and 8,698 eighth graders in Japan and the United States, with 4,575 ninth graders in Norway. The structural equation model…

The quality of education is a predictor of a country's economic performance -- which is why comparative international education surveys are important. South Africa performed poorly in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 2019. The score of 374 for mathematics and 324 for science is poor compared to the mid-point of…

This study explored the relationship between educational technology and the mathematics achievement of South African and German students. Hierarchical Linear Models (HLM) showed that the availability of computers at school and using computers in the mathematics classroom in South Africa positively associated with the mathematics achievement of…

This article presents a new perspective on measuring gender differences in the large-scale assessment study Trends in International Science Study (TIMSS). The suggested empirical model is directly based on the theoretical competence model of the domain mathematics and thus includes the interaction between content and cognitive sub-competencies.…

Purpose: Cross-cultural comparisons based on ordinal Likert-type rating scales have been threatened by response style which is systematic tendencies to respond to items regardless of the item content. So, this study aimed to investigate the effect of extreme response style and acquisance response style on TIMSS 2015 data. Method: The sample of…