This chapter discusses three main topics: (1) volunteer as a form of civic engagement, (2) Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), and (3) basic skills including literacy, numeracy and digital problem-solving skills. Volunteering, STEM background, and basic skills are important social and economic indicators of societies. Yet,…

Children's early skills are strong predictors of later learning outcomes. Research aiming to disentangle the causal effects of early skills from unmeasured, stable characteristics related to learning throughout development demonstrates that unmeasured confounders explain a large portion of the effects of early skills previously identified. To…

Children in Liberia receive 2.2 learning-adjusted years of schooling, one of the lowest levels of educational attainment in the world. We study one approach to address low enrollment and low rates of learning: a 10-month accelerated learning program run by the Luminos Fund to help out-of-school children catch up to grade level. We conducted a…

The Skills Imperative 2035 is a five-year strategic research programme, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, which is investigating future skills needs, skills supply and skill development, with a particular focus on the 'Essential Employment Skills' (EES) that are projected to be most vital across the labour market in 2035. The focus in this stage…

In recent decades, educational attainment has risen significantly in OECD countries, with a declining share of young people leaving school without qualifications, the near universalisation of upper secondary education and the rapid expansion of tertiary education. This progress has been accompanied by better integration of young adults into the…

Issues within college algebra are well-documented. Over the past two decades, reform has brought about significant modifications in the course, yet to date there has been no synthesis of the efficacy of these efforts. This paper situates college algebra within a historical context, and synthesizes research on reform. I argue that, notwithstanding…

Post-truthism entered mainstream consciousness after being named "Oxford Dictionary's" word of the year in 2016, denoting a turn in the Western relationship with truth as a certain and indisputable object. Simultaneously, and paradoxically, rising distrust around teachers' professional judgement and a desire for certainty in practice saw…

While focusing on numeracy is essential in preschool classrooms with deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children, it is also important that concepts of numeracy be taught in a way that incorporates executive functions, introduces computational thinking, and prepares students for life in a 21st-century world. Technology-enhanced teaching resources…

This article explores cross-country patterns in how conditions relating to family background, education, and the labor market are related to literacy and numeracy skills. It seeks to assess whether these patterns are in agreement with models of skills formation as identified in the political economy literature. The novelty of this article resides…

Purpose: The paper aims to critically examine overconfidence in numeracy among higher education (HE) graduates and its impact on their employability. The paper discusses the extent to which graduates, because of higher qualifications, overstate their numerical abilities. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is a review of the academic literature…

This study examines how school-level and student-level factors influence primary school dropout in Burkina Faso. School-level factors were found to have a moderate effect in grade three and a small effect in grade five, while student performance on end-of-term class tests significantly affected students' decisions to drop out in both grades. Other…

This study advances the analysis of cognitive skill use at work by considering another crucial factor: the motivation-to-learn (MtL). Previous research has indicated that MtL forms cognitive skills in the school setting. However, the role of MtL in the work setting is much less understood. The present study analyses the association between MtL and…

This study investigated the effects of a number sense intervention in 5-year-old Italian children (n = 96) from different socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. We investigated whether a short-term intervention could enable low SES children to reach the same level of their middle-upper SES peers in number sense; in addition, we compared the…

The development of numerical and arithmetic abilities constitutes a crucial cornerstone in our modern and educated societies. Difficulties to acquire these central skills can lead to severe consequences for an individual's well-being and nation's economy. In the present review, we describe our current broad understanding of the functional and…

Previous research is mixed regarding whether laypeople are sensitive to sample size. Here the author argues that this is in part because sample size sensitivity follows a curvilinear function with decreasing sensitivity as sample size become larger. This functional form reconciles apparent discrepancies in the literature, accounting for results…