In this article we examine the European Semester as an innovative form of policy coordination, with distinct effects on education and skills policies for Member States. We analyse the Semester's framing of education policy, and examine its manifestations in Spain and Sweden, two countries considered to be different in their approach to education.…

Identifying illicit behavior in survey research is inherently problematic, since self-reports are untrustworthy. We argue that fraudulent interviewers can, however, be identified through statistical deviance of the distributional parameters of their interviews. We document that a high proportion of the variation in the data is due to the…

This article interprets how five left-leaning parties in Sweden and Spain intend to politically socialise their members through the use of educational activities. By applying a framing perspective on interviews with leading party representatives from the five parties, the analysis theoretically illuminates how educational activities can be a tool…

This cross-national study examined students' evaluation of strategies for solving linear equations, as well as the extent to which their evaluation criteria were related to their use of strategies and/or aligned with experts' views about which strategy is the best. A total of 792 middle school and high school students from Sweden, Finland, and…

Listening to academic lectures in a second language (L2) can be a daunting task, as the listener faces various challenges related to processing the speech stream, prioritizing the importance of information, and deciding when, where and how to take notes. A host of factors can contribute to student comfort in and ability to take "good"…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between professional development and teacher self-efficacy, exploring the extent to which various types, either job-embedded or traditional professional development activities, predict teachers' perceived self-efficacy while controlling for several teacher characteristics and school…

This article contributes to the development of systematic knowledge relating to equity policies during a pandemic. Based on Didier Fassin's conception of biopolitics as a theoretical framework, the study makes use of critical discourse analysis to examine the school closure policies of two EU countries (Sweden and Spain) and one non-EU country…

Background: Game-based science learning (GBSL) provide an alternative route for learning genetics, but its effects on students' conceptual learning is contested. In this paper we assess the utility, in primary teacher education, of Recal - a game designed to promote participants' learning of key genetic concepts through acting as detectives…

Introduction: The prevalence rates of bullying vary significantly across countries and continents. Specifically, UNESCO estimates that the prevalence rates vary from 22.8% (CentralAmerica) to 48.2% (Sub-Saharan Africa). Recently these differences among countries andregions have been attributed to culture- and country-level variables. Thus, the…

The use of social media such as Twitter has gained popularity in education during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study included 22 high-quality peer-reviewed journal articles for the meta-analysis. The authors reveal that there are no significant differences in teaching effectiveness between the Twitter and non-Twitter-assisted learning approaches.…

The aim of this report is threefold. Its first section provides an overall sketch of the situation across Europe and the underlying mechanisms for the differences in European countries. The second section focuses on the heterogeneities within each country. It examines the disparities among students in order to understand which of those correlate…

This study explores the cultural construction of "difficult" temperament in the first 2 years of life, as well as the logistical and thematic continuity across infancy and childhood in what mothers perceive as difficult. It extends earlier work regarding older children in six cultural sites: Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden,…

The goal of the present study is to examine mainly the associations of contextual variables with stress and teachers' psychological well-being across organizational cultures. The responses (N= 51,782) of a population of primary school teachers from 15 different educational cultures were analyzed. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was implemented…

This volume is based on an ERASMUS+ project that ran from 2017 to 2020. It aimed at empowering both prospective teachers and teacher educators to actively become agents of their own continuing professional development. It further intended to cooperatively establish a culture of self-reflection, as well as an intercultural network of professionals…

The seven papers in this issue address a variety of challenges that parents in several different cultural places encounter as they do their best to ensure their children's safe, happy, and successful development from infancy through middle childhood: infant sleep, developmental agendas, temperament, preschools, academic success, and learning to be…