This paper provides an analysis of how Swedish 15-year-olds perform on the high-stakes national assessments in geography. It explicitly addresses which item characteristics produce differential item functioning (DIF) in favor of boys and girls respectively. The findings show that DIF occurs in favor of girls in items with constructed response and…

The study aimed to investigate students' psychological, cognitive, and social well-being in 6th Grade and the relations to academic achievement in compulsory school, as measured by grades in 9th Grade. Due to reports from Swedish authorities and research, students' self-reported well-being has decreased during the last decade. Data from the…

In Sweden, compulsory school grades determine admission to upper-secondary school. The article maps grading outcomes in compulsory school for 1990-2017, when three different grading scales were used, in terms of students' distribution across grading steps. Statistics of grades for all Swedish grade 9 students (all school subjects) are used.…

The aim of this study was to explore whether the classroom implementation of the International Child Development Programme (ICDP) for secondary school students (grade 9) was linked to better school achievement. The goal of the ICDP is to increase school achievement by promoting positive teacher-student relationships. The study, performed in…

In the study presented in this article, the aim is to further the understanding regarding the differences between pupils (aged 15-16) from schools with low or high socio-economic status (SES), regarding the amount and diversity of content knowledge in history that they have acquired by the end of compulsory schooling. Following a definition of…

Research indicates that beliefs on the locus of the primary source of learning can have negative effects on learning behaviors in school (Mercer & Ryan, 2011). To an increasing extent, young people in Sweden acquire English outside school through different cultural practices (Sundqvist & Sylvén, 2012). At the same time, students lack…

Based on the wide-ranging liberal reforms introduced in the early 1990s, Sweden has become one of the most prominent realizations of Milton Friedman's proposal for market-based schooling. From 1991 to 2012, the percentage of Swedish ninth-grade students attending independent, voucher-financed, private schools increased from 2.8% to 14.2%. A recent…

Research on social aspects of academic motivation is scarce. Based on two nationally representative cohorts within the Swedish longitudinal ETF-project, the study examined (a) relationships between academic mastery/performance, social and future achievement goal orientations in the Swedish grade 9 compulsory school (2008/2014); (b) their…

The study investigated student experiences of teaching practices in grade 9 at 2003, 2008 and 2014 after the Swedish education reforms of the 1990s. Teaching practices in both municipal and independent schools were related to student achievement and family background. Data from three nationally representative cohorts within the ongoing Swedish…

It is often assumed that students' personal achievement goals are most beneficial when they match the goal structures of the classroom, but interaction between achievement goals and goal structures is not well researched. In this study, we aim at providing a nuanced picture of the direct, interaction, and nonlinear effects of achievement goals and…

The current article examined educational achievement at lower-secondary level in Sweden (Grade 9), using grades and national test results (NTR) as the dependent variables. Linear regressions and bivariate correlations indicated that the proportion of highly-educated individuals in each municipality was positively associated with grades and NTR and…

The present article examines the general debate on curriculum differentiation and individualisation. Based on a policy ethnographic case study of class 9a at Forest School, it critically analyses how curriculum differentiation and individualisation are enacted in and interfere with classroom practice. The results show how Forest School's…

National goals and performance standards were introduced in Sweden during the 1990s as part of a curriculum reform. The intention was to detect shortcomings among students and provide support to those students who did not reach the passing grade in one (or several) subject/s. Despite this reform, approximately one-fourth of the students do not…

This study, using a longitudinal design with a Swedish cohort of young readers, investigates if children's early word decoding ability in second grade can predict later academic performance. In an effort to estimate the unique effect of early word decoding (grade 2) with academic performance (grade 9), gender and non-verbal cognitive ability were…

The aim of this study was to examine the association between students' TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) science achievement, and students' school achievements, in terms of national tests and grades from school years 6 and 9. Further to examine the association with TIMSS science achievement and different subgroups of students based…