In this article we examine the profiling of human rights and children's rights in religious education (RE) and its secular alternative in Finland. We use the term 'worldview education' to describe the combination of these subjects. We analyse what kinds of human rights and ethical issues are raised in Finnish worldview education. One specific…

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…

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…

Mathematics related affect turn from positive to negative during comprehensive school years worldwide. There is a clear need to find solutions to the problem. However, some gaps and problems appear in the methodologies and the common approaches used in the field. This article discusses five studies addressing affective development, challenges some…

Fifty countries from around the world participated in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2016 international assessment of reading comprehension at the fourth grade, and in every country there was a wide range of reading achievement from basic skills to advanced comprehension. This report presents international findings…

Early childhood education and school readiness is essential to preparing children to succeed in an increasingly competitive global economy. Compared to other countries, however, the United States lags far behind on preschool, trailing a number of other countries in enrollment, investment, and quality. In February 2013, however, President Barack…

As the 21st century unfolds, the United States faces historic challenges, including a struggling economy, an aging infrastructure and global terrorism. Solutions will have to come from educated, skilled citizens who understand and believe in our democratic system and are civically engaged. This incisive new report examines these fault lines and…

The purpose of the present article is to examine the knowledge-practice based approach to technology-enhanced learning. Toward that end, the article reports the efforts of an elementary-school teacher and researchers in promoting genuine inquiry at the 4th and 5th grade of a Finnish elementary school. We will describe implementation and social…

The study aims were, first, to examine the associations between the type and intensity of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and peer and parent relationships. Second, the study explored gender- and age-specific ICT usage and their associations with peer and parent relationships. The participants were 478 Finnish 10- and 13-year-old…

A latent variable structural model was constructed to test the relations among mothers' and fathers' parenting self-efficacy (PSE), their loneliness, and their child's peer-evaluated social competence, self-evaluated loneliness, teacher-evaluated motivational orientation, and academic skills. In order to do this, first the Self-Efficacy for…

This study explored girls' and boys' (aged 10-11) attitudes towards reading and writing. Girls enjoyed reading significantly more than boys. Boys liked mostly comics and humorous books; adventure books were girls' favourites. Poetry did not appeal to pupils. Many boys did not enjoy typical school texts. Most pupils, especially boys, did not like…

The purpose of this case study was to examine a teacher's guidance of an inquiry learning project in an ordinary elementary-school classroom. The participants in the study were 21 Finnish, grade 4 students (10 years old), from which four students were selected for intensive observation. The technical infrastructure of the study was Computer…