Developing persuasive and consistent models of educational performance has proved elusive. Existing modelling suggests no clear relationship between resources and student performance. This mirrors observed policy outcomes. A possible explanation is that the achievement process is a complicated interactive one such that simple linear additive formulations break down. This analysis presents a sty...

Educational psychologists find that prior knowledge influences new learning. We examined whether course achievement for introductory psychology students is facilitated or impaired by their prior knowledge of psychology. We administered a pretest exam to 422 students early in the semester and gathered subsequent exam scores and other measures of student achievement. Students generally performed ...

The superior academic achievement of Asian Americans is a well-documented phenomenon that lacks a widely accepted explanation. Asian Americans' advantage in this respect has been attributed to three groups of factors: (i) socio-demographic characteristics, (ii) cognitive ability, and (iii) academic effort as measured by characteristics such as attentiveness and work ethic. We combine data from ...

In this paper I analyze the various factors that drive educational achievement across various countries using regression analysis. The causal model includes the variables which describe family background, learning resources, school characteristics, learning approaches, and class features to fully account for all of the features that contribute to educational achievement. The Programme for Inter...

The burgeoning Asian population in the U.S. makes it imperative to understand the factors influencing their educational attainment. The pan-ethnic category of “Asian American” overgeneralizes about diverse populations and has led to a monolithic view of Asians as high achieving students with little need for educational services. The model minority myth may be masking the drastic variation in ed...

The increased use of technology within the educational field gives rise to the need for developing valid instruments to measure key constructs associated with performance. We present some self-report instruments developed and/or validated in the Italian context that could be used to assess achievement emotions and correlates, within the theoretical framework of Pekrun’s control-value model. Fir...

What are the effects of chess training— especially on scholastic achievement among school-aged students? Can chess instruction facilitate the acquisition of scholastic competency? The current state of the research literature is that chess training tends not to provide educational benefits. This article provides a critical review of research on the effects of chess training on the scholastic ach...

High schools play a critical role in preparing students for careers, college, and citizenship. Thus, disparities in educational outcomes from high school may contribute to longterm disparities in educational, economic, and social outcomes throughout adulthood. At the same time, reducing these disparities may play a critical role in reducing disparities in adult outcomes and improving the lives ...

This article considers issues of educational inequality in the U.S. South from a social work/ social justice perspective. After a review of existing literature and discussion of cultural versus structural explanations for race and socioeconomic status gaps in academic achievement, findings are presented from a study examining child-, classroom-, and school-level factors that influence academic ...