The COVID-19 pandemic-associated learning losses were unequal across school subjects and sociodemographic groups. This study posits that these losses are also heterogeneous based on pre-pandemic school effectiveness, that is, the value schools added above the expected students' learning based on their socioeconomic background. Using national-scale…

This study estimates the effect of between-class ability grouping on Chilean secondary students' academic achievement. We rely on a structural feature of the school system: A considerable number of students who complete primary school must change schools to start their secondary education. Cardinality matching was performed to account for…

Studies regarding school composition have been highly influential in the design of policies. However, methodological and conceptual controversies have hindered the emergence of a consensus on the existence, size, and direction of peer effects. Drawing on four cohorts of Chilean students (n = 620,044), this work analyses the extent to which the…

Lack of student motivation is a detrimental problem in foreign language education. This problem may lead to less target language production and lower proficiency. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to examine the effect of change in student motivation when a gamified intervention is implemented. This study was conducted in an English…

In statistical inference, importance of sampling is recognized as one of its key concepts, which has allowed its incorporation internationally in different curricular guidelines and specifically in the Chilean curriculum, since the first notions of sampling are introduced in 7th Grade. This paper presents an analysis of the responses to an…

Whereas most research has focused on the influence of teachers on student engagement, we postulate that peer experiences -- particularly bullying behavior as a victim or perpetrator -- impact student engagement over time. Using a sample of 525 adolescents (46% female, mean age = 13.51) nested within 31 classrooms from Chilean schools selected by…

The role of the school curriculum is in tension with two points: socializing the essential knowledge needed for life and reflecting the inequalities of society. The present study looks at the effectiveness of this socialization by comparing learner interests with the national curriculum. 442 10th grade students in Chile were divided into 4 groups…

Family socioeconomic status (SES) has a significant influence on children's academic success and is related to parents' attitudes toward education. Moreover, according to the expectancy-value theory, parental expectations are linked to their children's perceptions of school, which, in turn, influences the way their children invest themselves in…

This article focuses on Chilean students from vulnerable school contexts facing a standard national curriculum. It offers insights into students' voices, while uncovering what they want to learn and the drivers behind this decision. Semi-structured interviews revealed the power of the school socialisation process; for the majority of students,…

Introduction: Increasing evidence has shown that student mobility is negatively correlated with individual students' and schools' academic performance (Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2004; Lara, Mizala, & Repetto, 2011; Sun & Pan, 2014). However, the negative impact may be due to the switching behavior or it could be only a side effect of…

In this paper we study the effect on the math gender gap from attending a coeducational school with single-sex classrooms versus attending a school with coeducational classrooms. That is, we compare the performance of girls versus boys within schools with single-sex classrooms compared to the performance of girls versus boys within schools with…

The central goal of this research study was to characterise the different types of reasoning manifested by high school chemistry students when building initial written explanations of a natural phenomenon. In particular, our study participants were asked to explain why a mixture of water and alcohol works as an antifreeze. Data collected in the…

Understanding how chemistry teachers' interventions shape the reasoning that students express after a lesson is critical to support prospective and in-service teachers as they work with students' ideas in the classroom. In this qualitative research study, we analysed changes in the reasoning expressed by 10th grade students in a Chilean school in…

Research shows that students face a range of difficulties when using the Internet to solve information problems. Using a quasi-experimental design, we tested a strategy to improve Chilean 10th graders' skills for information problem solving using the Internet (IPS-I). The intervention was based on a workshop in which students learned IPS-I…

This article contributes to the study of the gender gap for women in STEM, by exploring the socio-emotional dimensions of gifted girls with positive attitudes toward math and science, as measured by the TOSRA and TOMRA. The variables of self-concept, self-efficacy, and gender stereotype identification were examined, using the Piers-Harris…