Levels and drivers of adolescent life satisfaction (LS) vary across nations. School is known to be an important aspect of life affecting adolescent LS, but there are gender differences in how schools may influence LS. However, little is known about how these gender differences vary across countries. A series of statistical analyses (bivariate…

This study aims to explore the effect of cultural capital on the perception of parental involvement policies offered by schools in various countries. Using PISA (2018) data, a multilevel model is implemented for each participant country to adopt a comparative perspective. While the results suggest a complex effect, moderated by idiosyncratic…

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…

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…

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education worldwide as educational systems made the decision to close schools to contain the spread of the virus. The duration of school closures varied greatly internationally. In this study, we use representative trend data from more than 300,000 students in 29 countries to examine whether the cross-country…

Creativity is the driving force of technological innovation and sustainable economic growth in the knowledge society. A central question, therefore, is how education helps to enhance creativity. As East Asian countries occupy the top of performance tests such as the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), it is most important…

This paper compares the learning gain over one year of schooling among 15-year-old students in Austria and Scotland (United Kingdom). Common metrics for reading, mathematics and science learning, as established by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), are used. In order to overcome the limitations of a cross-sectional,…

Rapid response behaviour, a type of test disengagement, cannot be interpreted as a true indicator of the targeted constructs and may compromise score accuracy as well as score validity for interpretation. Rapid responding may be due to multiple factors for diverse populations. In this study, using Programme for International Student Assessment…

Students in Confucian culture are typically high-achieving on international assessments such as PISA and TIMSS. To explore factors that may explain the high performance of Confucian students, the present study compared the latent subpopulations of school resources and disciplinary climate in two Confucian countries and two Anglo countries. Using…

Well-being 2030 has become the latest rationale for the OECD's education work. This vision has given rise to new assessments of student well-being beginning with PISA 2015. The OECD, recognising the problems of PISA 2015, conceptualised a wider student well-being construct in PISA 2018, and attempted to measure 'students' feelings'. However,…

The academic achievement gap between racial and ethnic majority and minority students in South Korea has received attention over the past decade, with one government-funded report and 10 peer-reviewed articles examining the performance of diverse student groups in the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Achievement. We conducted a qualitative…

Students' academic performance in Social Studies has been poor for the past years. Blame has been levelled on teacher factors, students' attitude towards the subject, and lack of learning materials. This study therefore seeks to find out if socio-cultural diversity among students is responsible for their poor performance in Social Studies. The…

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…

Drawing on data from the fifth cycle of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the authors examined the relations of reported acculturation orientations--heritage as well as host culture-orientations--and perceived cultural distance between host and heritage culture with academic performance among 399 first- and second-generation…

This review examined the relations between grit and academic achievement based on a meta-analysis of 137 studies yielding 156 dependent samples (N = 285,331). Using the robust variance estimation, we found that the correlations of overall grit level with academic achievement were generally weak to moderate (weighted r = 0.19). The correlation of…