Socioeconomic status (SES) is a key covariate in analyses by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). In its technical documentation, PISA offers evidence for the Economic, Social, and Cultural Status instrument (ESCS) as a valid measure of SES. This dissertation, however, offers both conceptual and empirical arguments that ESCS…

My dissertation examines three current challenges of international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) associated with the transition from linear testing to an adaptive testing design. ILSAs are important for making comparisons among populations and informing countries about the quality of their educational systems. ILSA's results inform policymakers…

The Programme for International Student Assessment has become an important policy tool that has affected educational practices in many countries. Despite some remarkable results in PISA's global ranking tables from China's Eastern provinces, China's distinctive policy response has not been well documented or understood. We systematically examine…

A growing literature has documented the importance of school socio-economic status (SES) composition to children's academic performance, but the channels through which school SES affects individual achievement remain poorly understood. We investigate differences in 15-year-old children's reading performance across schools with different levels of…

Meta-analyses and international large-scale assessments (ILSA) are key sources for informing educational policy, research, and practice. While many critical research questions could be addressed by drawing evidence from both of these sources, meta-analysts seldom integrate ILSAs, and current integration practices lack methodological guidance. The…

Questionnaires in educational research assessing students' attitudes and beliefs are low-stakes for the students. As a consequence, students might not always consistently respond to a questionnaire scale but instead provide more random response patterns with no clear link to items' contents. We study inter-individual differences in students'…

Although education is arguably one of the most central institutions in contemporary European societies, only recently scholars have started to study opinions that relate to the perceived legitimacy of education among the public at large. This paper contributes to this emerging literature. Based on data from the most recent wave of the European…

Background: Integration of digital tools and resources in STEM instruction has garnered significant attention due to its high potential. Digital professional development is identified as a pivotal factor for equipping teachers with necessary digital skills to effectively orchestrate digital resources. Notably, the role of professional learning…

Background: Given that students from socio-economically disadvantaged family backgrounds are more likely to suffer from low academic performance, there is an interest in identifying features of academic resilience, which may mitigate the relationship between disadvantaged socio-economic status and academic performance. Aims: This study sought to…

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) skills are increasingly required of students to be successful in higher education and the workforce. Therefore, modeling assessment outcomes accurately, often using more types of student data to get a complete picture of student learning, is increasingly relevant. The Program for International…

In international large-scale assessments, students may not be compelled to answer every test item: a student can decide to skip a seemingly difficult item or may drop out before the end of the test is reached. The way these missing responses are treated will affect the estimation of the item difficulty and student ability, and ultimately affect…

Purpose: This study investigates the relationship between political discussions and ideological composition in the classroom. Design: The effects of class patriotism and within-class differences in it are analysed using the Russian data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study. Findings: Students in more patriotic and…

This research aims to describe students' level of algebraic reasoning based on the adversity quotient types of climber, camper, and quitter in solving PISA model mathematics problems. This research is descriptive research with a qualitative approach. The research began by administering a questionnaire to determine the student's adversity quotient…

Financial literacy is a competence that extends to many aspects of everyday life. The Great Recession has recently highlighted its relevance and the importance of financial literacy training in the school curricula. The authors use PISA 2015 data to investigate the link between financial education and young people's financial literacy across 15…

How far is the world away from ensuring that every child obtains the basic skills needed to be internationally competitive? And what would accomplishing this mean for world development? Based on the micro data of international and regional achievement tests, we map achievement onto a common (PISA) scale. We then estimate the share of children not…