How is reading literacy taught in Nordic classrooms, and how is this influenced by the curricula? How can we improve mathematics teaching in Nordic classrooms? What is the relationship between school performance and policy variations? How do teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and practices influence pupils’ learning outcomes? What characterizes the top performing pupils, and how can we stimulate more pupils to perform at the highest levels? These are some of the questions that are discussed in this collection of articles that are based on the results of the IEA studies TIMSS and PIRLS 2011. The articles aim to provide input for policy discussions and further policy development within the Nordic countries. Therefore, the main target groups are educational ministers and policymakers at all levels. These analyses will also provide input to the joint Nordic initiatives on educational development.

• Is PISA 2012 relevant to mathematics education in Norway and Sweden? • In what ways are the different leadership styles among principals in the Nordic countries related to teachers’ attitudes and behaviours and students achievements? • What are the associations between professional development, job satisfaction and self-efficacy? • Can collegial work and school leader feedback improve teachers’ self-efficacy in Nordic classrooms? • What characterizes high-performing students in mathematics within the Nordic countries? • Are international large-scale educational assessments elephants arriving at the gates of our national educational system? These are some of the questions that are discussed in this collection of articles. The issues are based on the results of the OECD studies PISA and TALIS. The articles aim to provide input for policy discussions and to further policy development within the Nordic countries. Therefore, the main target groups are educational ministers and policymakers at all levels. These analyses will also provide input to the joint Nordic initiatives on educational development.

Presents a comprehensive treatment of issues related to the inception, design, implementation and reporting of large-scale education assessments. In recent years many countries have decided to become involved in international educational assessments to allow them to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of their student populations. Assessments such as the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the IEA's Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy (PIRLS) have provided opportunities for comparison between students of different countries on a common international scale. This book is designed to give researchers, policy makers and practitioners a well-grounded knowledge in the design, implementation, analysis and reporting of international assessments. Readers will be able to gain a more detailed insight into the scientific principles employed in such studies allowing them to make better use of the results. The book will also give readers an understanding of the resources needed to undertake and improve the design of educational assessments in their own countries and regions. Implementation of Large-Scale Education Assessments: Brings together the editors’ extensive experience in creating, designing, implementing, analysing and reporting results on a wide range of assessments. Emphasizes methods for implementing international studies of student achievement and obtaining highquality data from cognitive tests and contextual questionnaires. Discusses the methods of sampling, weighting, and variance estimation that are commonly encountered in international large-scale assessments. Provides direction and stimulus for improving global educational assessment and student learning Is written by experts in the field, with an international perspective. Survey researchers, market researchers and practitioners engaged in comparative projects will all benefit from the unparalleled breadth of knowledge and experience in large-scale educational assessments gathered in this one volume.

The Fourth International Conference on the History of Mathematics Education was hosted by Academy of Sciences and University of Turin (Italy). About 50 senior and junior researchers from 16 countries met for four days to talk about one topic: the history of mathematics education. In total 44 contributions were presented. The themes were Ideas, people and movements, Transmission of ideas, Teacher education, Geometry and textbooks, Textbooks – changes and origins, Curriculum and reform, Teaching in special institutions, and Teaching of geometry. In this volume you find 28 of the papers, all of them peer-reviewed. Since the first international conference on the history of mathematics education, the aim has been to develop this area of research, to attract more researchers and provide new insights that stimulate further “digging”. It is therefore very pleasing that so many new young researchers joined the conference, presenting results from ongoing or recently finished PhD projects. This makes us confident about a prosperous future of this research area as we look forward to the Fifth International Conference on the History of Mathematics Education, to be held in Utrecht, the Netherlands, in September 2017. Previous international conferences on the history of mathematics education: 2009 in Garðabær (Iceland) 2011 in Lisbon (Portugal) 2013 in Uppsala (Sweden)

International literacy assessments have provided ample data for ranking nations, charting growth, and casting blame. Summarizing the findings of these assessments, which afford a useful vantage from which to view world literacy as it evolves, this book examines literate behavior worldwide, in terms of both the ability of populations from a wide variety of nations to read and the practice of literate behavior in those nations. Drawing on The World’s Most Literate Nations, author Jack Miller’s internationally released study, emerging trends in world literacy and their relationships to political, economic, and social factors are explored. Literacy, and in particular the practice of literate behaviors, is used as a lens through which to view countries’ economic development, gender equality, resource utilization, and ethnic discrimination. Above all, this book is about trajectories. It begins with historical contexts, described in terms of support for literate cultures. Based on a variety of data sources, these trends are traced to the present and then projected ahead. The literate futures of nations are discussed and how these relate to their economic and sociocultural development. This book is unique in providing a broader perspective on an intractable problem, a vantage point that offers useful insights to inform policy, and in bringing together an array of relevant data sources not typically associated with literacy status.

This is the first book regarding the issues of PISA that has been published with respect to the Southeast Asian region. It is hoped that the content of this book can benefit and provide greater understanding for readers of several important aspects: (a) country performance in PISA 2012 for each participating Southeast Asian country, (b) the need for international comparative studies from the perspective at all levels of the teaching and learning process, (c) equity and quality of education, (d) how PISA impacts on policy making, and (e) the initiatives and future directions, and challenges to improve PISA performance in the future cycles of the PISA Studies. The major issues raised in this book warrant investigation and reporting to all countries of the World, including not only those countries that were engaged in PISA 2012, but also to the approximately 200 countries that are currently in the United Nations Organisation. In these regards, the readership of this book could be extended to the educators, officers from the ministries of education, researchers, policy makers, practising teachers, lecturers in universities and teacher training institutions, postgraduate students, as well as both primary and secondary school principals and teachers.

This edited book is a unique comprehensive discussion of 21st century skills in education in a comparative perspective. It presents investigation on how eight very different countries (China, Canada, England, Finland, Poland, South Korea, the USA and Russia) have attempted to integrate key competences and new literacies into their curricula and balance them with the acquisition of disciplinary knowledge. Bringing together psychological, sociological, pedagogical approaches, the book also explores theoretical underpinnings of 21st century skills and offers a scalable solution to align multiple competency and literacy frameworks. The book provides a conceptual framework for curriculum reform and transformation of school practice designed to ensure that every school graduate thrives in our technologically and culturally changing world. By providing eight empirical portraits of competence-driven curriculum reform, this book is great resource to educational researchers and policy makers.

This volume offers insights from modeling relations between teacher quality, instructional quality and student outcomes in mathematics across countries. The relations explored take the educational context, such as school climate, into account. The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is the only international large-scale study possessing a design framework that enables investigation of relations between teachers, their teaching, and student outcomes in mathematics. TIMSS provides both student achievement data and contextual background data from schools, teachers, students and parents, for over 60 countries. This book makes a major contribution to the field of educational effectiveness, especially teaching effectiveness, where cross-cultural comparisons are scarce. For readers interested in teacher quality, instructional quality, and student achievement and motivation in mathematics, the comparisons across cultures, grades, and time are insightful and thought-provoking. For readers interested in methodology, the advanced analytical methods, combined with application of methods new to educational research, illustrate interesting novel directions in methodology and the secondary analysis of international large-scale assessment (ILSA).