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Highlights • We provide some guidelines for practitioners combining data from TALIS and PISA in empirical analyses. • We stress that teacherś data need to be aggregated, thus finding causal relationships is complex. • We find that students whose teachers focus on a few instructional practices obtain better results. Abstract This paper focuses on the potential uses and misuses that can be made with the so-called TALIS-PISA link created by the OECD. This is a recently developed instrument that allows for connecting data about teachers collected in TALIS with studentś data available in PISA. However, the statistical and technical aspects regarding this link between both surveys are far from straightforward. In this paper we explore the main problematic issues of the data fusion process and provide some guidelines for researchers interested in performing empirical analyses using the resulting dataset. Likewise, we illustrate some potential utilities of this dataset through the estimation of different models with the aim of exploring the relationships between teaching practices and student achievement in Spain. Our results indicate that students whose teachers concentrate on a few instructional practices obtain better results than those who have teachers using many different activities within the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The need to look more deeply into the relationships between the competences. • Competences in communication are critical between university training and market demands. • Competences in communication are key in competence training. Abstract The educational model based on competences established under the unifying framework of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), has brought new challenges and threats for educational institutions at university level, who now have to adapt, update and face up to this new educational paradigm. This paper addresses the competences from two different perspectives; the first relating to the level reached by the student through university training received; and the second concerning the level required by labour market in the profession studied. The empirical analysis was performed using nonparametric statistics on a sample of 236 individuals, following the methodology of the Tuning project. The results support the existence of differences between the two blocks of analysed competences, as well as the importance of communication competences and the relationships of competences related to communication with all other competences with highest differences. This point to a course of action based on these competences, especially communication competences, as a way for working on improving the competence results in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Textbooks have a substantial impact on mathematics achievement in primary school. • Textbooks notably differ in their effects on student achievement. • Longitudinal effects of textbooks on student achievement seem to be cumulative. • Textbooks might be a relevant covariate when analyzing intervention effects. Abstract Mathematics textbooks are ascribed an important role for classroom practice. Until now there are still open questions concerning the genuine effect of textbooks on students' learning in mathematics. This paper examines the effect of different textbooks representing the same curriculum on the student achievement by reanalyzing a longitudinal data set on primary school students' mathematics skills from Grade 1 to 3 (N = 1664). Results from multilevel regression analyses showed that mathematics teachers' textbook choice has a substantial effect on the students' mathematics achievement and that individual textbooks substantially differ in their effects. Furthermore, there are indications that the effect of textbook choice is cumulative over the school years. The findings suggest that textbooks should be considered as an important covariate in educational research and that textbook choice is a relevant factor for educational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a methodological approach to the investigation of the impacts of text formulation on students’ answers in mathematical problem solving-based assessment. After a review of the related literature in Mathematics education and a review of the methodologies used until now to investigate this research issue, we describe in depth our quantitative approach, providing motivations and examples of its statistical relevance and its potentiality in making interesting phenomena emerge, to be interpreted with further qualitative methods. We observed statistically significant evidences of different impacts of the variations on different categories of students (males/females; students with high and low performances in the whole test). The methodology and our preliminary results can inform researchers in mathematics education, teachers and experts in the agencies that are responsible for large-scale students learning assessment in several contexts (national and international). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between student performance and social development in the districts where schools are located. The empirical research, which focuses on Costa Rica, combines geolocalized data of schools from PISA 2012 with a composite index of social development that has four components: health, economy, education and electoral participation. Our results show that social development has positive, but diminishing effects, on test scores and accounts for 11.6%, 13.1% and 14.8%, respectively, of the total variance in math, reading and science. The economic and education dimensions of social development positively correlate with academic achievement. In the case of electoral participation, the estimations show a significant effect only in math. We find no significant effect of health. Educational policies should give particular emphasis to the lowest-ranked districts where the expected returns from policies that increase social development are the highest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a major impact on the various facets of higher education globally. With the migration to online teaching happening at an unprecedented rate, educators are challenged in transforming the way they create opportunities for students' learning. Specifically, in Australia, education providers have increasingly offered their courses in a dual-mode setting, making them available for both online and face-to-face students. This paper presents the design of a specific type of dual-mode teaching, referred to as mixed-mode teaching used in an introductory economics course at X University. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of the mixed-mode teaching in creating an equitable learning experience for the online and face-to-face groups of students enroled in the course. Such an approach should then translate into there being no significant difference found in the academic performance of the two cohorts. In this study, we used the non-parametric Wilcoxon test and Kruskal-Wallis test to verify if a significant difference exists in learning satisfaction. Further, we utilised regression with dummies, and four different approaches of propensity score matching estimation in excluding self-selection bias, to evaluate differences in academic performance. Our results suggest no statistically significant differences in both the learning experiences and academic performances of our two groups of students. At a time when higher education is facing ongoing challenges presented by the pandemic, these findings offer useful insights for economics educators as well as those in higher education about how to enhance students' academic performance and learning experience through more equitable, consistent course design. • Mixed-mode teaching which emphasises in creating an equitable learning experience. • Differences in learning experience and academic performance were examined. • No differences were found between on-campus and online cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper analyzes the impact of blended learning (BL) on the academic achievement of higher education students. A meta-analysis ( k = 51 effect sizes) was conducted to perform a statistical synthesis of studies contrasting student performance in BL conditions with traditional classroom instruction. We include disciplines and instructors’ end-of-course evaluation method as moderating variables. The results show that BL demonstrates a small summary effect ( g + = 0.385, p < 0.001) compared to traditional teaching methods A significantly higher mean effect size was found in STEM disciplines ( g + = 0.496) compared to that of non-STEM disciplines ( g + = 0.210). Nevertheless, the weighted mean effect sizes reveal no significant differences regarding of end-of-course assessment methods, namely one-moment and multiple-component assessment. The finding confirms that BL is significantly associated with greater learning performance of STEM-disciplined students than with traditional classroom practice. Accordingly, discussion concerning the findings and implications for future research are elaborated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the design and evaluation of a teaching development grants program that provides small grants enabling instructors to implement, and/or systematically investigate new teaching approaches, new teaching tools, or curricular processes. The program evaluation draws on multiple levels and types of evidence directly linked to our program goals. A detailed and reflective account of our ongoing evaluation process including tools and methods, preliminary findings, and challenges is provided. We also explicitly seek to connect and compare our work and findings to similar initiatives. This work provides our emerging evidence for the efficacy of grant-based initiatives, finds resonance to others’ findings, and provides a foundation from which to foster further evaluation and discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University teacher development programmes have been part of the higher education landscape for over 40 years. There is now general agreement that university teacher development programmes have a positive impact on teachers and students, yet the extent and longevity of their impact on the teachers, and the teaching and learning culture of the institutions are less well researched and evidenced. Research that has been carried out on the effectiveness of teacher development programmes has tended to be on specific initiatives and involve limited numbers of participants. Teaching and learning development centres have typically not carried out systematic and extended evaluation of the impact of their programmes. The focus of this paper is to describe the process and outcomes of a national project which resulted in the development of the Academic Professional Development Effectiveness Framework, designed as evaluation tool to facilitate the systematic collection and analysis of data related to the intended outcomes of the teacher development programmes. It is argued that teacher development programmes should be designed to build an evidence base from the initial planning stage and be continued over an extended period in order to enable practitioners, researchers and institutions to ask more complex questions on whom the programmes have an impact, and where and why they have impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate if and how students' engagement in mathematics affect their learning outcomes. Specifically, it searches for direct and/or indirect effects of instructional engagement on cognitive and affective learning outcomes in mathematics. Separate multilevel analyses were employed for each European country that participated in TIMSS 2015 cycle. Initially, the direct effect of instructional engagement on both math achievement and students' attitudes towards learning mathematics was examined. A direct effect of instructional engagement on attitudes towards learning mathematics was identified. Then, the indirect effect of instructional engagement on math achievement via the students' attitudes towards learning mathematics was investigated. In eight countries, indirect effects of instructional engagement on cognitive outcomes were identified. Implications of findings for research, policy, and practice are drawn. • Effects of instructional engagement on student learning outcomes are examined. • Instructional engagement has a direct effect on affective outcomes in mathematics. • Indirect effect of instructional engagement on cognitive outcomes is observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of how the concept of curriculum contextualization (CC) takes place in schools' external evaluations in Portugal and England. The relevance of this study lies upon two assumptions: (1) CC promotes the adequacy of a national curriculum to real-life situations; (2) the procedures used to evaluate schools influence curriculum development. The analysis is based on CC as defined through a literature review. We conclude that CC is being taken into account, in the guidelines used to evaluate schools in both countries, and that the main foci are the "student" and the "pedagogical practice". "Local" is another relevant contextualization focus. Therefore we can conclude that school work is influenced by external evaluation processes in a CC perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fairness is an essential and enduring ideal in education, but it has not been clearly defined for the dynamics of classroom assessment. This paper aims to contribute to the reconceptualization of fairness as multifaceted quality in classroom assessment where the primary purpose is to support student learning. This multi-case study elicited the phronesis (practical wisdom) of six purposefully selected teachers in Ontario, Canada. They responded to fairness issues in written vignettes, and then discussed their concerns and gave recommendations for fair assessment during interviews. The participants emphasized different aspects of fairness with the most prominent involving students' opportunities to learn and demonstrate learning, transparency, the classroom environment, critical reflection, and the tension between equal and equitable treatment in assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many teacher education institutions aim to develop and assess teacher competences during teaching practice. This research study investigates the use and effects of a competence-based e-portfolio for the development and assessment of teacher competences during teaching practice in an academic teacher education programme. Questionnaires and interviews were administered to three parties: student teachers (N = 41), teacher trainers (N = 25) and mentors (N = 46). The results show that according to teacher trainers and mentors the e-portfolio has proven to be a useful instrument for the assessment of teacher competences. Student teachers, in contrast, believe that the e-portfolio is unable to reflect and demonstrate their teaching competences sufficiently. Why that is the case, is the central focus of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We analyse data about primary school pupils participating in TIMSS 2015 and PIRLS 2016. • We provide empirical evidence from eighteen European countries. • The focus is on the role of variables that could help disadvantaged students succeed. • Skills learned before starting school are the main determinants of students' resilience. This paper analyses factors associated with resilience in an educational context. In this framework, resilient students are those able to achieve excellent academic results despite their disadvantaged socioeconomic background. Over the last decade, this topic has generated a growing interest among researchers in the field of education economics. However, most efforts to date have focused on secondary education. By contrast, this study examines the main determinants of this phenomenon in primary education by exploiting the information available in the latest two waves of the TIMSS (2015) and PIRLS (2016) databases for all participating European countries (18). The results show that the skills learned by students before starting school and the socioeconomic status of their classmates are the factors that contribute most to stimulating the academic achievement of more socioeconomically disadvantaged students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The percentage of lost credit vouchers is the most important variable for the classification. • Starting from the second semester, pre-entry attributes become irrelevant for classification. • The main pre-entry attribute related to leaving after the first semester is the time gap between high school and university. • Decision trees provide accurate and interpretable models. Factors of students' dropout can be studied either by surveys among students or by analyzing data the university collects. In the work reported in this paper, we analyzed data known about students at the time of admission as well as data about the students' study achievements collected on a semester basis. Using data about students who enrolled in the academic year 2013/14, we created several data mining models to predict who will finish their studies successfully and who will not. Our results show that the key factor is the percentage of lost credit vouchers in the most recent semester. The pre-entry attributes have only a very small impact. We also created association rules of different types to find characteristics of students who did not successfully complete the first semester of study. Here, the factor that mainly increases the probability of a failure is the time gap between secondary and tertiary education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The Institute has significant effect on participants' intended teaching strategies. • The Institute has significant effect on participants' intended course planning. • The Institute has significant effect on participants' instructional self-efficacy. Despite the importance of both research and teaching, doctoral and postdoctoral programs tend to focus on research. One approach to address the lack of teaching development for early career researchers (ECRs) is to train them on instruction. The purpose of this two-year study was to examine the effects of a Teaching Development Institute (TDI) on ECRs' intended teaching strategies, course planning, beliefs about instructors' and students' knowledge, and instructional self-efficacy. We used the Approaches to Teaching (ATI) and the College Teaching Self-Efficacy (CTSE) instruments in a one-group pretest-posttest design. The sample was 109 and 140 ECRs who participated at the Teaching Institute at Johns Hopkins University in 2018 and 2019, respectively. The results of the Wilcoxon signed-ranks test indicated that the TDI intervention was effective. The theoretical implications of the paper include (a) reinterpreting the ATI according to the interactive, constructive, active, and passive (ICAP) cognitive engagement framework, and (b) proposing the professional development to student achievement (PDSA) model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]