This study uses PISA 2018 data to analyze, from a multinational perspective, whether interest in environmental issues is a determining factor of science literacy. A relational survey model is used as a quantitative research design to analyze secondary data obtained from the PISA 2018 evaluation data of 98,306 students at the age of 15 in 15…

This study aims to identify the literacy skills of individuals whose highest level of education was in the field 'teacher training and educational sciences'. The study sample comprised 10,618 individuals in the field of teacher training and educational sciences, selected from 31 countries (participating in the International Adult Skills Assessment…

Students' academic achievement is a key predictor of various life outcomes and is commonly used for selection as well as for educational monitoring and accountability. With regard to achievement indicators, a differentiation has traditionally been drawn between grades and standardized tests. There is initial, albeit inconclusive, evidence that…

In this study, we investigated developmental aspects of eye movements during reading of three languages (English, German, and Finnish) that vary widely in their orthographic complexity and predictability. Grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules are rather complex in English and German but relatively simple in Finnish. Despite their differences in…

The authors introduce a test of economic competence for German-speaking secondary school students and provide evidence from a large-scale assessment with 6,230 students from grades 7 to 10. They present the development and psychometric properties of the scale, along with an investigation of predictors of economic competence. They find evidence of…

At a time when the national conversation is focused on lagging upward mobility, it is no surprise that many educators point to poverty as the explanation for mediocre test scores among U.S. students compared to those of students in other countries. If American teachers in struggling U.S. schools taught in Finland, says Finnish educator Pasi…

Our newly proposed integrated academic self-concept model integrates 3 major theories of academic self-concept formation and developmental perspectives into a unified conceptual and methodological framework. Relations among math self-concept (MSC), school grades, test scores, and school-level contextual effects over 6 years, from the end of…

Based on a one-year longitudinal experimental study with 3,782 kindergarten school children across 15 countries, this article examines the association between prayer and happiness. Results show that the post-test scores on the faces scale were higher for the participant group who had taken the prayer lessons vis-à-vis the comparison group.…

Placement and screening tests serve important functions, not only with regard to placing learners at appropriate levels of language courses but also with a view to maximizing the effectiveness of administering test batteries. We examined two widely reported formats suitable for these purposes, the discrete decontextualized Yes/No vocabulary test…

Complex problem solving (CPS) as a cross-curricular competence has recently attracted more attention in educational psychology as indicated by its implementation in international educational large-scale assessments such as the Programme for International Student Assessment. However, research on the development of CPS is scarce, and the few…

According to expectancy-value theory, the gender stereotypes of significant others such as parents, peers, or teachers affect students' competence beliefs, values, and achievement-related behavior. Stereotypically, gender beliefs about reading favor girls. The aim of this study was to investigate whether teachers' gender stereotypes in relation to…

The present study examined the extent to which the relationships between student self-reported math grades and different types of student variables (standardized math test scores, interest and effort in math, parental education) are predicted by classroom composition and teachers' classroom management. Based on a representative sample of 31,038…

Conceptual change requires learners to restructure parts of their conceptual knowledge base. Prior research has identified the fragmentation and the integration of knowledge as 2 important component processes of knowledge restructuring but remains unclear as to their relative importance and the time of their occurrence during development. Previous…

The current study aimed at applying a broad model of cognitive functions to predict performance in science and language courses at school as well as performance in a science course at university. We hypothesized that performance in science courses was predominantly related to the cognitive function known as relational integration, whereas…

This paper explores the PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment] achievement of twenty countries in light of some of their demographic differences. SES [student socioeconomic status], nuclear family, gender, home language, and native status were predictive of achievement for every country. Demographics accounted for as little as 8…