During times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the evaluation of educational programs becomes crucial for making evidence-based decisions. This study aims to validate and pilot an assessment instrument tailored to evaluate an innovative national reading program in Chile, particularly during the critical phase of post-pandemic educational…

Background: Cognitive and linguistic factors have been incorporated into models to explain reading comprehension beyond classical models of reading. This study explores the contribution of executive functions, mainly domain-general and reading-specific cognitive flexibility, in reading comprehension of science texts in monolingual Spanish speaking…

Recent research has proven the importance of non-cognitive determinants, such as motivation and resilience, in improving reading achievement. This study provides insights on how these two determinants are displayed by students living in contexts of high social vulnerability. A mixed methodology was used to conduct the study in six schools across…

Standardised International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) have gained prominence in global and national educational discussions. ILSAs claim to offer valuable insights for improving education systems, but their impact on educational policy varies and has become a contested arena. This article analyses how these assessments fed educational…

This study determines (a) which factors of the parenting context, the child and their mothers are associated with environments that differ in their home literacy environment in a Chilean low-SES sample of 53-month-old children, and (b) whether reading comprehension at second and fourth grade is predicted by the socialization in the literacy…

The development of novel educational assessment models founded on item response theory (IRT), as well as software tools designed to implement these models, has contributed to the surge in computerized adaptive tests (CATs). The distinguishing characteristic of CATs is that the sequence of items on a test progressively adapts to the performance…

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…

As hours per day are inherently a limited resource, increasing daily instruction time reduces the amount of time pupils can dedicate to other activities outside school. We study how the effect of longer school days on achievement varies across students and schools. We exploit a large-scale reform of school schedules that substantially increased…

Using data from the international Teacher Education and Development Study: Learning to Teach Mathematics (TEDS-M), the measurement equivalence of teachers' beliefs across countries is investigated for the case of "mathematics-as-a fixed-ability". Measurement equivalence is a crucial topic in all international large-scale assessments and…

The validity of TOEIC Bridge™ scores as a measure of English language skill was examined from the standpoint of a unified concept of test validity. In this study, more than 6,000 test takers in 3 Latin American countries (Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador) took 1 form of the TOEIC Bridge test, and their scores were compared to additional information…