This paper identifies and analyses the legitimation strategies used by the OECD as it expanded its role in global educational governance. Whilst the literature recognises the mainly discursive sources of legitimacy which the OECD derives from its testing regime, especially PISA, what remains unexplored is how exactly it has created the legitimacy…

The importance of self-concept and the feeling of belonging to a school have been highlighted in numerous studies as predictors of school success. However, there are hardly any studies that link the relationship between self-concept and the feeling of belonging to the school. Thus, the aim of this study is to analyze the influence of personal and…

Having a low sense of belonging in secondary education is associated with feelings of social alienation, lower school performance, and dropping out early. Based on person-environment fit theory, we expect retained students to experience a misfit with their academic environment. This experience could intensify when there are fewer other retained…

In school settings, students' mindset about intelligence (i.e., fixed versus growth mindset) and their sense of belonging to school (SBS) have both been shown to predict academic attainment. However, these constructs have rarely been examined together although both were found to be impacted by students' socioeconomic status (SES). Across the…

Teacher empathy has become an essential topic in educational research for enhancing students' learning achievement. However, most existing studies focused on the direct relationship between teacher empathy and students' learning achievement. They ignored the mediation of student factors (e.g., students' sense of school belonging) between teacher…

Positive psychosocial adjustment is considered critical to adaptive student development and academic growth. Theories of positive youth development argue that psychosocial adjustment is a form of thriving and can be understood via multiple academic indicators, including achievement. To better understand the factors that support students'…

In response to declining results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys, the then governing Swedish coalition in 2010-2014 introduced earlier grading, more extensive national testing and a new standards-based curriculum. These reforms coincided with a greater emphasis on inclusive' education understood in the 'narrow'…

This study investigated the factors that are directly and indirectly related to collaborative problem-solving skills of students in Türkiye with multiple and multilevel mediation models, according to PISA 2015 results. The PISA 2015 Türkiye sample consisted of 5895 students. After missing data assignment and outlier analysis, the analyses were…

While scholars and educators have increasingly recognized the importance of mathematics learning, many students suffer from anxiety. Therefore, educators and students demand more knowledge to reduce math anxiety's negative impacts effectively. This study explores the underlying mechanisms by which math anxiety affects students' learning efforts,…

Given the common occurrence of school bullying incidents and high prevalence rates of victimization in China, this study aims to explore the association between multiple school-related predictors and Chinese adolescents' overall experiences with bullying victimization. Guided by the social-ecological framework for violence prevention, this study…

With an aim to inform school-based antibullying interventions, this study examined mediating roles of school belonging, self-efficacy, and meaning in life between bullying victimization and subjective well-being. Using US student data from the 2018 round of the Program for International Student Assessment, results of structural equation modeling…

There is a persistent stereotype that gifted students feel ostracized and have less sense of belonging than their normative peers. To explore this stereotype, data from 9251 15-year-old students in the U.S. were used to explore differences in the sense of belonging across achievement levels in various domains (i.e., mathematics, science, and…

According to the findings of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 Well-being Study, Taiwan's school learning environment, in terms of teen bullying, is more harmonious than that of Macao's. This study seeks to identify pertinent risk and protective factors discriminating between the low-achieving students who are…

Comparative analyses of the Programme for International Student Assessment between immigrant and native students place immigrant students in an unfavourable position in schools, with disadvantageous indicators regarding socioeconomic and professional paths. However, the Programme for International Student Assessment assesses a series of dimensions…

This research evaluates the role of school administrative measures (including creating a greater school belonging and paying attention to student attendance) as independent variables and their resulting core competencies through the mediator of students' experience with school bullying. This study adopted a multi-level mediation model to…