Previous studies have indicated that students' writing skills benefit from contextualized L1 grammar teaching, in which language structures are observed and analyzed in authentic texts and as embedded into teaching of reading and writing. The contextualized approach is also promoted by the current Finnish curriculum for basic education. This study…

The aim of this study was to examine what kind of school performance and behaviour profiles could be identified among students in the final grade of basic education in the Swedish speaking parts of Finland (N = 1149, grade 9), how these differed in temperament and how temperament could explain profile differences in first language (L1, Swedish)…

Tracking pupils based on their abilities or other aptitudes is a common practice in many countries. In Finland, selective classes with a special emphasis have become popular. The societal and individual effects of tracking are a topic of ongoing educational discussion. Tracking has been seen to increase educational inequality, but still it has…

Transitions from one level of education system to another and from education to work are structured by socio-economic and institutional structure factors, while at the same time they are appropriated by individuals in their biographical constructions. Patterns to career trajectories are also dependent on social class, immigrant origin and level of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore Finnish adolescents' subjective health literacy (HL) in association to school achievement, learning difficulties, educational aspirations, and family affluence. Design/methodology/approach: Nationally representative data were collected in Finland as a part of the international Health Behaviour in…

This mixed method study examines Finnish pupils' (N = 825; age groups 12-13, 15-16) views on the place of religion in the public school. Religious landscape in Finnish society has changed significantly in recent years, as the "new" diversity (Vertovec 2015) has supplemented the "old" one. The role of institutionalized religion…

In Finland, teachers' have extensive autonomy, that is freedom from control by others over their professional actions in the classroom, and it is considered a strength of Finnish education. At the same time, national assessment of learning outcomes has been constructed to examine the learner's progress and achievements in relation to the criteria…

The relationships between reasoning and school achievement were studied taking into account the multilevel nature (school- and class-levels) of the data. We gathered data from 51 classes at seven schools in metropolitan and Eastern Finland (N = 769, 395 males, 15-year-old students). To study scientific reasoning, we used a modified version of…

Research on entrepreneurship education (EE) has not discussed the comprehensive school's traditional discourse of abilities and the related aim of categorising pupils according to their "natural" talents. It has also neglected pupils' perceptions of entrepreneurial abilities; however, these perceptions are important for understanding the…

In this study, the relationship between adolescents' difficulty in mathematics and reading and the influence on academic self-concept and school grades was examined. The participants (N = 585; 299 girls, 286 boys) were one age group of ninth-graders whose mathematics and reading skills were assessed at the end of comprehensive school at age…

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…

In this longitudinal study, we investigated the role of word reading and mathematical difficulties measured in 9th grade as factors for receiving educational support for learning in upper secondary education in Grades 10 to 12 (from ages 16 to 19) and furthermore as predictors of dropout from upper secondary education within 5 years after…

We examined associations of teacher-perceived student temperament and educational competence with school achievement, and how these associations were modified by students' gender and teachers' gender and age. Participants were 1063 Finnish ninth-graders (534 boys) and their 29 Mother Language teachers (all female) and 43 Mathematics teachers (17…

The purpose of the study is to shed light on the mechanisms behind scholastic achievement in high school by testing a structural equations model based on the work by Vermunt (1998). It was presumed that self-regulation of learning would predict scholastic achievement and that learning orientations would predict self-regulation of learning. A…

The aim of this study was to describe students' perceptions of their psychosocial school environment and to examine the associations between such perceptions and students' perceived school performance. Our analyses were based on data from the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children 2006 study, involving responses by Finnish students from grades 7…