Measures of variability are successfully used in predictive modeling in research areas outside of education. This study examined how standard deviations can be used to address research questions not easily addressed using traditional measures such as group means based on index variables. Student survey data were obtained from the Organisation for…

Research Findings: The purpose of the present study was to examine the extent to which the quality of teacher-child interactions and teachers' self-reported curriculum emphases are related to children's reading skill development during their 1st school year. To accomplish this, we assessed the reading skills of 1,029 Finnish children (M…

Finland and Shanghai are strong performers in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The current study explored the similarities and differences in educational effectiveness between these 2 strong performers. To this end, 14 predictors representing student background and school process characteristics were selected from the PISA…

This study investigates whether a common set of student attitudes and behavioral tendencies can account for academic achievement across different, especially high-performing, countries via analysis of the PISA 2009 international data set. The 13 countries examined are 5 of the top-performing Eastern countries/systems, namely Shanghai China, South…