This article focuses on the validity of the students' attitudes toward mathematics scale based on data from TIMSS 2019. The scale has been reported as having a three-factor structure for decades, but this study assumes the validity can appear differently depending on the country or culture. Thus, the scale should first be checked for invariance…

A common belief underlying the dimensional comparison theory is that reading self-concept has a positive relation to reading achievement but a negative relation to math achievement. However, this belief is incomplete and potentially misleading as supporting evidence is usually derived from studies without simultaneously considering the mediated…

Background: While highlighting is one of the most common strategies to enhance reading comprehension, little is known about how highlighting behavior and its relationship with performance varies across cultures. Our purpose was to examine whether the use and the success of highlighting prevalence, quantity, and task relevance vary internationally.…

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has instigated educational changes and reforms globally, in particular, introducing and intensifying neoliberal logic and governance in test-taking countries and beyond. PISA outcome impacted upon the educational governance of South Korea as well, however, the changes deviated from what…

The OECD's PISA program assesses 15-year-old students globally in key competencies every 3 years, providing influential data on education quality and spurring policy debates. In the latest cycle, the innovation domain focused on creative thinking, assessing over 140,000 students across 60+ countries, in the largest study of adolescent creativity…

The study examined the relationship between teacher support and reading performance via the multiple mediation effects of reading engagement (emotional engagement and cognitive engagement). Data were extracted from Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) 2018, with a sample of 171,429 adolescents from 5,692 schools across 22…

The aim of the study is to examine the effect of polytomous item ratio on ability estimation in different conditions in multistage tests (MST) using mixed tests. The study is simulation-based research. In the PISA 2018 application, the ability parameters of the individuals and the item pool were created by using the item parameters estimated from…

Part-time work is a form of career development that can be expected to provide students with resources of value to their transitions into work. International research shows that teenagers who work part-time alongside their full-time studies can expect to do better when they entered the labour force as young adults. Studies suggest strongly that…

In the PISA 2022 creative thinking test, students provide a response to a prompt, which is then coded by human raters as no credit, partial credit, or full credit. Like many large-scale educational testing frameworks, PISA uses the generalized partial credit model (GPCM) as a response model for these ordinal ratings. In this paper, we show that…

While creativity has traditionally been linked to arts education, the importance of developing the ability to think creatively across the school curriculum has grown in prominence (James et al. 2019), reflected by its inclusion in OECD PISA 2022 for the first time (OECD, 2024). Creativity enables learners to thrive in a rapidly evolving workplace,…

This paper informs users of data collected in international large-scale assessments (ILSA), by presenting argumentsunderlining the importance of considering two design features employed in these studies. We examine a commonmisconception stating that the uncertainty arising from the assessment design is negligible compared with that arisingfrom the…

This study investigated how income inequality shapes the role of economic and cultural capital in students' academic performance. By analyzing a multilevel dataset of 72 countries (economies), we found that (1) the associations between economic capital and academic achievements are stronger in unequal societies than in equal ones, whereas the…

This paper considers the inclusion of creative thinking as an innovative domain within the OECD's PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) and offers a series of reflections on the opportunities and limitations that follow from this. Although this recognition of the importance of creative thinking represents a step forward, the current…

Background: Metacognitive reading strategies, such as monitoring and regulating one's reading processes, are critical for enhancing reading comprehension and achievement. However, their effectiveness can vary across different educational contexts and student populations, necessitating flexible instructional approaches. This study examines the…

This issue of Snapshots explores how student effort may vary depending on the perceived stakes of the assessment. We revisit the self-reported levels of effort that students invested in the PISA test and compare them with the effort they indicated they would have made if the results counted towards their school marks. Australia's results are…