The OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) enables participating countries to monitor 15-year old students' progress in reading, mathematics, and science literacy. The present study investigates persistent factors that contribute to science performance of Turkish students in PISA 2006 and PISA 2009. Additionally, the study…

In this study, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2007 data were used to build mathematics achievement models of fourth graders in two East Asian school systems: Hong Kong and Singapore. In each school system, eight variables at student level and nine variables at school/class level were incorporated to build an achievement…

This study investigates whether a common set of student attitudes and behavioral tendencies can account for academic achievement across different, especially high-performing, countries via analysis of the PISA 2009 international data set. The 13 countries examined are 5 of the top-performing Eastern countries/systems, namely Shanghai China, South…

This study investigated whether top-down or bottom-up cognitive processing was more important in listening comprehension in large-scale English-as-a-Second-Language tests administered to secondary school students in Hong Kong over a period of seven years. Results suggest that bottom-up processing was more important than top-down processing in…