This article examines how maltreatment experienced by adolescents is related to school engagement. Maltreatment includes physical, mental, and sexual violence along with sexual harassment, neglect, and witnessing domestic violence. School engagement refers to the students' relationship to all activities in the school. It describes students'…

The article explores developmental tensions in Finnish adolescents' accounts of their different worlds. By understanding tensions experienced by students, educators can develop their pedagogical practices to address those tensions. Building on cultural-historical activity theory, we analysed 12 interviews of 8th graders, focusing on their…

The aim of the present study was to examine the kinds of developmental profiles of arithmetic fluency skills that can be identified across Grades 1-9 (ages 7-16) in a large Finnish sample (n = 2,518). The study also examined whether membership in the developmental profiles could be predicted using a comprehensive set of kindergarten-age factors,…

This qualitative study examined factors that gifted Finnish upper secondary school physics students (N = 24) identified as helping or hindering their talent development in physics. In-depth interviews captured students' descriptions of critical incidents regarding their physics talent development at home, school, and in leisure time. The results…

A rich home literacy environment (HLE) fosters students' academic achievement. However, the link between HLE and children's reading comprehension is unclear. This study examined the effects of HLE factors on children's reading comprehension through a meta-analysis of 59 studies conducted between 1998 and 2018. Results of the meta-analysis…

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…

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has been researching the impact of information and communications technologies (ICT) on educational processes, and factors supporting or impeding the pedagogical use of ICT, since the late-1980s. More recently it has turned its attention to investigating ICT-related…

The purpose of this article is to review "Mathematics and Science Olympiad Studies." The studies undertook the task of evaluating the effectiveness of chemistry, math, and physics Olympiad programs by tracking down their participants from the inception of these programs. The main research questions were: Do these competitions generate…

Over time international large-scale assessments have grown in terms of number of studies, cycles, and participating countries, many of which are a heterogeneous mix of economies, languages, cultures, and geography. This heterogeneity has meaningful consequences for comparably measuring both achievement and non-achievement constructs, such as…

Over the past century, technological development and better access to services has resulted in significant improvements to quality of life. Despite this, however, levels of stress, anxiety and depression are rising. Education can play a role in supporting well-being during and beyond schooling. Schools are increasingly concerned not only with…

This article examines what constitutes students' disruptive and good behaviour, as described and defined by teachers. Teachers are viewed as professional experts who produce official information regarding their students. The present study analysed the overarching features of behaviour descriptions provided by teachers in official statements…

In this paper, we develop a multi-level comparative approach to analyse Trends in International Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS) and Programme of International Student Achievement (PISA) mathematics results for a country, Russia, where the two tests provide contradictory information about students' relative performance. Russian students do…

This study examines whether parental smoking and single parenting were related to adolescents' school achievement and anti-smoking parental practices as well as how these factors predicted later smoking. The sample comprised 1163 Finnish students in Grades 7 through 9. Results show that at the beginning of the seventh grade, parental smoking and…

This article examines religiousness among Finnish 8th and 9th graders. It is explored using the RJT, an instrument developed on the basis of religious judgment theory. The frame of reference processes teenage religiousness and Oser's theory. The research data are based on a survey in which 617 adolescents from four different localities…

Introduction: This prospective longitudinal study examined several selected family- and school-related factors simultaneously in order to investigate the importance of well known and less examined predictors of educational attainment. Method: The participants were 844 (486 girls) nine-, 12-, and 15-years old comprehensive school students. Family-…