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…

Skilled adult readers are those who read fluently, but multilingual learners do not always exhibit the same reading proficiency in the different languages they know. Among the variables that influence learners' silent reading fluency, a research trend points to musical aptitude as an individual ability that affects language learners' reading…

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…

While some research has highlighted how teachers prepare their course materials, little is known about how future teachers design support for their students, and thus plan and anticipate what can and will happen in the classroom. We have therefore sought to investigate whether identifiable learner profiles emerge when regular primary school…

Background: Reading and reading comprehension are crucial skills, yet many students in grade 4 struggle with them. To address this, several instructional practices have gained popularity. For one, explicit reading strategy instruction (ERSI) is deemed useful, given the finding that successful readers tend to employ reading strategies. As a second…

In French-speaking Belgium, one of the new tasks of the teacher will be to develop the informational skills of learners. Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to identify the variables that affect the performance of online information retrieval so that teachers can plan appropriate teaching activities. The statistical Classification and…

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a study of 15-year-old students' performance in reading, mathematics, and science literacy conducted every 3 years. The PISA 2018 results provide a global view of U.S. students' performance compared to their peers in nearly 80 countries and education systems. By design, PISA aims to…

Background: Educational qualifications and literacy skills are highly related. This is not surprising as it is one aim of educational systems to equip individuals with competencies necessary to take part in society. Because of this relationship educational qualifications are often used as a proxy for "human capital". However, from a…

It is well-known that there are large disparities in academic achievement between children of different socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. This study examines the evolution of disparities in literacy skills between adults of different SES backgrounds. It compares countries' patterns in the evolution of disparities in literacy by SES…

Numeracy and literacy skills have become increasingly important in modern labour markets. The large gender differences that several studies have identified have therefore sparked considerable attention among researchers and policy makers. Little is known about the moment in which such gaps emerge, how they evolve and if their evolution differs…

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…

In the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment, the Flemish community of Belgium outscored its French community in reading, with low achievers accounting for a large proportion of the score gaps. In this study, between-community comparisons based on the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method showed that the Flemish community benefits…

For the growing group of adult migrants, flexible solutions for second language (L2) acquisition are increasingly important, while concerns about the efficacy of online language learning abound. This study on the L2 situation in Flanders has 4 key aims: analyzing adult learner profiles in fully online Dutch beginners' courses; comparing learner…

The analyses presented in this report indicate that in several Member States (MS) 15-year-old students in vocational-oriented programmes (VET) perform better in digital reading than in print reading in PISA 2012. When differentiated by programme of study--VET versus general education programmes--VET students perform better in digital than in print…