A central objective of schooling processes at the international level is reading skills development. Unfortunately, many students in the European Union underperform at this, and these low performances can be more pronounced in countries with lower Human Development Index (HDI) values. This study analysed the contextual effect of school…

Background: The existence of a multiplier, compositional or social context effect is debated extensively in the literature on school effectiveness and also relates to the wider issue of equity in educational outcomes. However, comparatively little attention has been given to whether or not the association between student achievement and school…

This comparative study investigated the associations between instructional practices and students' reading performance among 10 top performing regions that participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018. A nationally representative sample consisting of 80,016 15-year-old students from 5 Asian regions (B-S-J-Z [China],…

Both formative assessment and growth mindset scholars aim to understand how to enhance achievement. While research on formative assessment focuses on external teaching practices, work on growth mindset emphasises internal psychological processes. This study examined the interplay between three formative assessment strategies (i.e. sharing learning…

Few of previous reading studies "comprehensively" examined the contributing factors of students' digital reading literacy. To fill this gap, based upon the ecological perspective, this study aims to investigate which factors from the student, home, and school context are more important in discriminating high-performing digital readers…

The advantages and disadvantages of single-sex schooling continue to be a source of policy and public debate. Previous empirical evidence is somewhat ambiguous, with some studies finding a positive impact of single-sex schooling on education achievement and others finding no differences across school types. The relationship between single-sex…

The purpose of this paper is to gain insights into the strategies employed by beginning learners of Spanish, German, Chinese and Japanese as Foreign Languages at university level in order to comprehend texts in their target languages. It also investigates possible relationships between strategic behaviour and success in reading comprehension…

Given the significant role that academic self-concept plays in students' learning, understanding the psychological processes involved in its formation continues to be an important focus of enquiry. There is strong empirical support for two major models of academic self-concept (ASC) formation: the big-fish-little-pond (BFLP) model and the…

Background: There is increasing recognition of the contribution of affective factors such as motivation to the development of reading competence. Reading activity is theorised to mediate associations between motivation and achievement, but this has been tested empirically only rarely. Method: This study employed structural equation modelling to…

In this paper, we have employed data from the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA, 2012 edition) on the EU-15 countries in order to investigate the effect of using ICT at home on achievement. By employing Propensity Score Matching, we provide robust evidence that in most countries there is a negative association between…

It is well-documented that academic achievement is associated with students' self-perceptions of their academic abilities, that is, their academic self-concepts. However, low-achieving students may apply self-protective strategies to maintain a favorable academic self-concept when evaluating their academic abilities. Consequently, the relation…

The Internet has become the primary source for obtaining information at work, at home, and for school. Because Internet reading increasingly is becoming one of the central ways students are acquiring information, in 2016, PIRLS was extended to include ePIRLS--an innovative assessment of online reading. ePIRLS is a computer-based assessment that…

This article examines the extent to which parental socioeconomic status (SES) affects the likelihood of a child becoming a top-performing student, offering an international perspective by reporting this relationship in 31 developed countries. The impact of 3 important educational system characteristics (differentiation in terms of early tracking,…

The Republic of Ireland has a history of high reading scores in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Analysis from PISA 2018 shows that although the country has many cultural similarities to the four UK nations (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), 15-year-old pupils in the Republic of Ireland achieved…

PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) is the fourth assessment in the current trend series, following PIRLS 2001, 2006, and 2011. There were 61 participants in PIRLS 2016, including 50 countries and 11 benchmarking entities (e.g., regions of countries as well as additional grades or language groups from the participating…