In common understanding, resilience enables students to withstand adverse conditions. Resilient students achieve moderate to good educational outcomes in spite of high risks. To foster academic resilience, a deep understanding of risk and resources, their interplay and moderating effects is essential. We aim to achieve this goal by using hidden…

Over the last few years, Norway's lower secondary education has increasingly integrated one device for each student, reflecting broader technological trends in the Western world. To plan for learning and assessment in one-to-one classrooms, this article advocates for an ecological approach by elaborating on the term "educational…

Background: Proficient reading skills are crucial for Foundation Phase learners to develop critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. The 2021 PIRLS assessment highlighted alarmingly low reading proficiency among ten-year-olds. Effective reading instruction, and a positive reading environment are essential for developing confident, skilled…

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…

Many students require special education and programming to succeed in the classroom. This study analyzed international and national assessment teacher survey data regarding inclusive education to better characterize student classroom needs and teacher preparedness to support them. Most teachers indicated that they relied on teacher-based…

Academic resilience is difficult to define in an international setting, since economic levels and achievement standards vary across countries and over time. In studies of academic resilience, the concept is typically operationalized using pre-defined cut-offs of achievement and social background. The main objective of the current study is to apply…

In "Progress in International Reading Literacy Study" (PIRLS) educational inequalities are measured, amongst others, through the relationship between students' reading achievements and the home resource for learning (HRL) scale. By applying the partial credit model and using the WLE estimates for the person parameters it is accepted that…

Introduction: This study examines the impact of the availability of reading resources in the school, the classroom, the home and the social environment on the reading proficiency of Grade Four primary school students in Hong Kong. Method: Data about the reading performance of Hong Kong students in the 2011 Progress in International Reading…

South Africa participated in the electronic version of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (ePIRLS) in 2016 but faced many challenges during implementation. Accurate databases on information and communication technologies (ICT) capacity of schools were not available for sampling in Gauteng, many schools had old and/or…

Few developing countries participate in external educational evaluations. Information gaps on education quality make it imperative to expand such evaluations. Furthermore, international comparability across different evaluations should be improved. In addition, data from evaluations must be combined with data on access or coverage. Finally,…

Classmates can influence a student's academic achievement through immediate interactions (e.g., academic help, positive attitudes toward reading) or by sharing tangible or intangible family resources (books, stories of foreign travel). Multilevel analysis of 141,019 fourth-grade students' reading achievements in 33 countries showed that…

This country review offers an independent analysis of major issues facing the use of school resources in Portugal from an international perspective. It provides a description of national policies, an analysis of strengths and challenges and options for possible future approaches. The analysis focuses on the process of decentralisation of school…

This report summarises Year 6 pupils' attainment in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) survey of 2016 in Northern Ireland and explores the context of that attainment. PIRLS is an international comparison study of reading at ages 9-10. PIRLS has a five-yearly cycle. Northern Ireland took part in PIRLS for the second time…

This summary accompanies the national report for Northern Ireland (Sizmur et al., 2017). It outlines the attainment of Year 6 pupils in Northern Ireland in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2016 survey and explores the context of that attainment. PIRLS is a study of reading at ages 9-10 and has a five-yearly cycle.…

The aim of the present study, based on data from 20 countries, is to identify the pattern of variables (at country, school and student levels), which are typical of students performing below the low international benchmark compared to students performing at the advanced performance benchmark, in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study…