Search

This study contributes to the research on ethnic educational inequality, by deepening the current understanding of education initiatives organised by the ethnic‐cultural minoritised communities most affected by these inequalities. A univariate analysis was performed on data from an original survey conducted in Flanders, in which 816 teachers and 3037 pupils from 60 primary schools were asked about, among other things, their experience with and their perceptions of these educational initiatives. The results of this analysis show that these community‐based education initiatives are widely attended by ethnic minority youth, but also that teachers in mainstream schools are rarely informed or even aware of the existence of these initiatives, or the important role they play in their pupils' lives. The broader social and scientific implications are discussed in this paper, as little to no similar larger‐scale research exists that maps the relationship between these community‐based education initiatives and mainstream educational institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study shows that science journalism does not move beyond its traditional borders; however, the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) countries emphasize science and technological development enough. Therefore, bibliometric analysis has been adopted to examine science journalism research gaps in the GCC countries. The result indicates a substantial keyword issue and a gap in science journalism research in North global countries and GCC countries. This research paper is a must-read in the typical scarcity of science journalism research in GCC countries. Furthermore, this paper can be a reference document for policymakers and course developers in the science communication field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chelwa, Maboshe, and Hamilton's paper explores the racial wealth gap in the United States and South Africa, highlighting the racialized dimensions of economic inequality that emerged from chattel slavery and apartheid. The authors argue that orthodox economic explanations for the racial wealth gap are inadequate and that education does not reduce inequality but rather reflects existing inequality. They critique methodological individualism and emphasize the role of structural constraints and white supremacy in perpetuating wealth inequality. The paper calls for structural interventions that address the role of social differences and identities in generating inequality. [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores the role of family trajectories during childhood in explaining inequalities by maternal education in children's math and reading skills using harmonized, longitudinal, and nationally representative surveys, which follow children over the course of primary and lower secondary school in four high‐income countries (England, France, Germany, and the United States). As single parenthood and family transitions are more likely among less educated parents and are associated with fewer resources for children, we explore whether growing up outside a stable two‐parent family mediates educational inequalities in math and reading scores. Results show a strong educational gradient in family trajectories in the four countries, but this varies by child age and by country. Children who experience a family transition record lower test scores, although the magnitude differs by the type of postseparation arrangements. Overall, family trajectories are strongly associated with children's math and reading scores but, because of the importance of selectivity in family trajectories, they play only a modest role in explaining the skills gaps by maternal education, considerably less than determinants such as income. The penalties associated with not living within a stable two‐parent family are always larger in the United States and England than in France and Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociolinguistic context in Azerbaijan today is one in which massive second language learning is taking place. More than a hundred thousand students in Azerbaijan study in Russian immersion schools. The motivation for this research originates from the desire to understand if those students benefit from Russian language education and how challenging it is for Azerbaijani speaking students to learn academic content in the second language. With this study, we attempt to compare the academic achievement of Azerbaijani speaking and Russian speaking students immersed in the Russian language. The aim of surveying students of Russian-medium instruction was to understand if there was an achievement gap between students whose home language was Russian and those whose home language was Azerbaijani. A self-administered survey was conducted among the Russian-taught 7th and 10th grade students across schools in Baku. The results are presented in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Closing the achievement gap for minority students in higher education requires addressing the lack of belonging these students experience. This paper introduces a psychological intervention that strategically targets key elements within the learning environment to foster the success of minority students. The intervention sought to enhance Palestinian minority student's sense of belonging by increasing the presence of their native language. We tested the effectiveness of the intervention in two field experiments in Israel (n > 20,000), at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when all classes were held via Zoom. Lecturers in the experimental condition added a transcript of their names in Arabic to their default display (English/Hebrew only). Our findings revealed a substantial and positive impact on Palestinian student's sense of belonging, class participation, and overall grades. In experiment 1, Palestinian student's average grade increased by 10 points. In experiment 2, there was an average increase of 4 points among Palestinian students' semester grade. Our intervention demonstrates that small institutional changes when carefully crafted can have a significant impact on minority populations. These results have significant implications for addressing educational disparities and fostering inclusive learning environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically analyzes gap discourses in student learning, starting from the achievement gap, education debt, and opportunity gaps, applying the lens of coloniality, racial-capitalism, and modernity (CRCM). Gap discourses are the prevalent rationale behind educational policies and school reforms globally. Specifically in the United States, achievement gap discourses contribute substantially to the educational framework that minoritized students (students of color) are inherently – intellectually and academically – behind White students. This paper will show the pervasive power of achievement gap discourses and their influence on school policy, practices, and norms. Additionally, we highlight how some of the most formidable achievement gap critiques fail to grasp the power of gap discourses. In some cases, these critiques end up reifying White supremacy ideologies. We propose a decoloniality framework or a layered and multi-disciplinary response to help re-think the entire gap discourses informed by White supremacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the popular and academic literature on the problems of the so-called attention economy, the cost of attention grabbing, sustaining, and immersing digital medias has been addressed as if it touched all people equally. In this paper I ask whether everyone has the same resources to respond to the recent changes in their stimulus environments caused by the attention economy. I argue that there are not only differences but disparities between people in their responses to the recent, significant increase in the degree and persuasiveness of digital distraction. I point toward individual variance in an agent’s top-down and bottom-up attention regulation, and to further inequality-exacerbating variance in active participation on the internet and in regulating reward-seeking behaviors on the internet. Individual differences in these areas amount to disparities because they have been found to be connected to socioeconomic background factors. I argue that disparities in responding to digital distraction threaten fair equality of opportunity when it comes to digital distraction in the classroom and that they may lead to an unequal contribution of achievements that require complex cognition by people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cacao swollen shoot disease (CSSD) caused by complexes of cacao swollen shoot badnaviruses (family Caulimoviridae, genus Badnavirus) remains highly prevalent and devastating in West Africa. The disease continues to impact substantially on cacao yield loss, cacao tree mortality, and decline in foreign exchange income from cacao bean sales. Currently, the disease is estimated to have a prevalence rate of over 30% in Ghana, as assessed in the ongoing third country-wide surveillance program. Although achievements from past research interventions have greatly elucidated the etiology, biology, epidemiology, diagnostics, and management of the disease, there are some outstanding knowledge gaps. The role of these information gaps and their effect on CSSD epidemiology and prevalence remain unanswered. This paper summarizes existing scientific knowledge from past research achievements that have provided elucidation on CSSD epidemiology, management options, and guided future research. The discussion highlights the need for multidisciplinary research with modern tools and institutional collaborators to holistically bring clarity on knowledge gaps on pathogen biology, virus–host-–vector interactions, role of environmental and soil nutrient effects on CSSD severity, evolution pattern, role of alternative hosts on virus species diversity, vector population dynamics, and their overall impact on CSSD prevalence and integrated management in cacao plantations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a period for reexamination of how the world schools its children. Policy makers are considering how to address myriad challenges during this tenuous post-COVID era in primary and secondary education. This paper discusses potential school calendar change in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Modifying the traditional school calendar to a balanced approach has been attempted and scrutinized for decades providing varying results on academic achievement. The question is whether a year-round or extended school calendar could counteract COVID-19 learning loss, in addition to addressing achievement gaps, reducing viral transmission, and supporting vulnerable student populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines performance differences among demographic groups on the ETS Major Field Test in Business. The study employs the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique to analyze the test score differentials by gender and racial minority status. This technique decomposes the difference into two parts: an endowment effect (or explained portion) and a returns effect (or unexplained portion). The results demonstrate that the endowment effect fully explains the gap between white and racial minority students but virtually none of the gender gap. This large unexplained gap between male and female test performance suggests the need for further study of potential gender bias of the exam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is key to the structural integration of immigrants and their children. While research indicates that educational inequalities by migration background are a serious issue, relatively little is known about when, how and why they develop. The current paper adds to the literature by investigating to what extent achievement gaps by migration background develop during the primary school period. Drawing on data from a national longitudinal study of children in Ireland (N = 7577) and using structural equation modelling, it presents a path model of host language achievement. The results indicate that a large part of the disadvantages in English language achievement by migration background during primary school could be attributed to achievement gaps that already existed before school. Moreover, given earlier achievement, the effect of having a migration background was often insignificant or even positive, suggesting that disparities remain relatively stable or even decrease during the period of formal schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over a century, since Aboriginal children were permitted to access mainstream Australian schools, there has been a significant gap in academic achievement between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students. Community engagement by schools is recognised as a key factor in Aboriginal student success, but school approaches to community engagement remain inconsistent and driven by deficit thinking. As part of the Aboriginal Voices Project, this paper explores community engagement at six New South Wales (NSW) public school sites and applies Decolonising Race Theory (DRT) as a critical Indigenous lens to interpret and understand the challenges that students, families, and schools face within their relationships. While we find evidence of school–community partnerships that prioritise Indigenous healing, for the schools in this paper, there is a complexity within relationships with community that reflects the interaction between assimilationist positioning of Aboriginal students that often contains positive and negative elements simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the potential effects of the lack of diversity in children's books on young readers, with an emphasis on the Latine/o/a/x community. Utilizing personal experience, market statistics, case studies, and educational research, this paper provides a holistic understanding of the sociological and psychological damage that can be caused when children do not see themselves positively represented in the media they consume. Whether through a complete lack of representation, negative stereotypes, or issues of authenticity, this paper explores why and how these issues directly impact a child's self-esteem. In an effort to combat this issue and create substantive change, potential solutions are suggested and encouraged to readers from all walks of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systemic disruptions from COVID-19 have transformed the assessment landscape in Canada and across the world. Alongside repeated shifts to emergency remote teaching, large-scale assessments and summative evaluations were cancelled in many jurisdictions, and repeated concerns were raised about ensuring equity and access to quality education. This paper investigates the rapid – and in many cases innovative – responses teachers offered to these challenges at the height of the pandemic. Drawing on prolonged semi-structured interviews with 17 secondary school teachers in Ontario, Canada, the paper provides a detailed account of Ontario's approach to assessment during COVID-19, exemplified by participants' lived experiences. Results highlight the notion of emergency remote assessment, the vital role of assessment in stemming widening equity and well-being gaps, and emerging consequences from this period. These data offer critical insights into the future of our forever-changed education landscape, and position classroom assessment as a priority player in this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Mediation analysis is used to identify both the direct and indirect effects of skills acquired by early adulthood on homeownership later in life. • The AFQT score, a measure of cognitive skills, has large indirect effects through the mediator variables—education and income. • Through both direct and indirect channels, AFQT scores in early adulthood are shown to explain one-quarter to one-third of the homeownership gaps between White, Black, and Hispanic households. • Reducing disparities in educational outcomes would meaningfully contribute to reducing gaps in minority homeownership. This paper shows that skills acquired by early adulthood affect homeownership levels achieved later in life in important ways. The paper examines three sets of skills—cognitive skills, as measured by the Armed Forces Qualifying Test (AFQT) score; non-cognitive skills (specifically, the degree to which people believe that they have control over the outcome of events in their lives), measured by the Rotter score; and social skills, using a Social score based on Deming (2017). Mediation analysis is used to identify both the direct and indirect effects of these skills, as captured by the three different types of scores, on homeownership. We show that the AFQT score measuring cognitive skills not only captures direct effects on the homeownership rate, but even larger indirect effects through the mediator variables—education and income. AFQT scores in early adulthood are shown to be highly predictive of homeownership outcomes, explaining roughly one-quarter to one-third of the disparate outcomes between White, Black, and Hispanic households. We also examine the degree to which the AFQT, Rotter, and Social scores explain variation in homeownership rates over an individual's life cycle. The findings suggest that reducing disparities in educational outcomes would meaningfully contribute to reducing minority homeownership gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing literature mainly examines the impact of academic self‐efficacy on academic achievement in educational psychology. Much less is known about the relationship between outcome expectations and adolescent academic achievement. This article applies the random intercept model to investigate the association between Chinese adolescent perceived value of effort as outcome expectations and academic achievement and employs the Karlson, Holm, and Breen (KHB) method to examine the underlying mechanisms. Additionally, this paper uses the random coefficient model to explore the heterogeneous association between the perceived value of effort and adolescent academic achievement across families and schools. Based on the Programme for International Students Assessment 2018 (N = 11751; 48.07% females), we found that the adolescent perceived value of effort was significantly and positively correlated with academic achievement. Adolescent educational expectations and academic engagement partially mediated the relationship between the perceived value of effort and academic achievement. Adolescents from disadvantaged families and schools benefited more from the perceived value of effort. These findings enhance existing literature by revealing how the adolescent outcome expectations contribute to academic achievement and provide a scientific basis for bridging the gap in academic achievement between families and schools to promote equity in education. Practitioner points: Adolescent perceived value of effort is positively associated with academic achievement.Adolescent educational expectations and academic engagement partially mediate the relationship between the perceived value of effort and academic achievement.Adolescents from disadvantaged families and schools benefit more from the perceived value of effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to better understand the importance of a long-erased border between two empires that once partitioned Poland and its ongoing effect on regional educational achievement. Previous research has indicated that inherited norms towards education may explain the observed gap in the achievement of students in the former Austrian and Russian partitions of Poland. Findings suggest that although a gap in favour of the former Austrian partition does indeed exist in four school subjects, there is no convincing evidence of the causal effect of historically rooted norms on the achievements of today's students. If such an effect exists, it is probably indirect and works through the accumulated educational attainments of adult generations and quality of instruction rather than by directly influencing the attitudes of today's students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the results of surveys and interviews from over 1800 students in five large STEM classes at a research university when classes abruptly moved online for spring quarter 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine how students' expectations compared to their realities at the end of the quarter; what factors impacted their spring 2020 quarter; and students' academic sense of belonging, self-efficacy, cost of engagement, and effort regulation in spring 2020. We contextualize students' experiences of emergency distance learning (EDL) through quantitative comparisons to previous quarters, open survey responses, and interviews. We also examine heterogeneity with respect to race/ethnicity, gender, first-generation college students, and students from low-income families. We find that there are reasons to expect increased achievement gaps post-EDL, but we also find examples of resiliency and improved self-regulated learning that will be life-long assets for students. Our goal in this paper is to use exploratory findings from one particular context to help identify potential ways to disrupt the reproduction and deepening of educational inequality exacerbated by the crisis, and educational opportunities in these unconventional times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools have the potential to provide a place of education and sanctuary for children and young people of all backgrounds. The rise in mental health problems in children and young people in the wake of the COVID‐19 pandemic, particularly in relation to growing inequities, means that identifying ways in which schools can help respond to this growing mental health crisis demands urgent attention. This paper reports on case studies carried out in two London comprehensive schools, exploring how aspects of school culture impact (both positively and negatively) on student mental health. Methods comprised in‐depth interviews with school staff and parents, focus groups with students and documentary analysis of relevant materials. Fieldwork was conducted during spring 2021 as schools were returning to face‐to‐face learning following national periods of lockdown. Our study shows how schools might attempt to drive positive mental health outcomes through aspects of school culture and uses a system framework to explore complexities around cause and effect in this area. Key findings include the considerable differences in school mental health provision, challenges in the identification of student mental health needs and the importance of recognising how the mental health of teachers must be considered alongside that of students. Overall, we highlight particular dilemmas of the post‐lockdown era that our findings indicate for the education sector, and suggest there may be value in reframing the apparent conflict between 'attainment gaps' and personal development, moving towards an educational approach with greater complementarity of these aims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian children from regional, rural and remote (RRR) areas exhibit lower educational outcomes than their peers in metropolitan areas. The mechanisms driving the comparatively poorer educational outcomes of children in RRR areas, however, are not well understood. This paper proposes and tests two sets of factors that may be responsible for these disparities: population socio-demographic composition and school climate. Using rich survey and linked administrative data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (n = 9,248 observations), we estimate the relative contribution of these sets of factors to RRR children's disadvantage in NAPLAN numeracy test scores. Our results indicate that both socio-demographic and school climate factors account for part of the educational disparities between children in RRR and metropolitan areas. These findings suggest that hybrid policy approaches that tackle both the social determinants of educational success and use schools as an intervention site are required to close the achievement gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite extensive research on attainment grouping, the impact of attainment grouping on pupil attainment remains poorly understood and contested. This paper presents evidence from a study conducted with 2944 12–13 year olds, from 76 schools in England, who were allocated to between‐class attainment groups ('setting') in English and mathematics over the first 2 years of secondary schooling. After controlling for prior attainment, pupils in the top set performed significantly better than pupils in the middle and bottom sets in both English and mathematics. The findings indicate a widening gap in attainment, especially in the case of English. Findings, especially in the case of mathematics, provide more evidence of a relative benefit for pupils placed in top sets than a relative detriment for those in bottom sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competition for educational resources between local citizens and new arrivals in receiving cities can lead to severe school segregation, thereby generating great educational inequality. In this paper, we focus on a special form of segregation in urban China that is based on the holding of a local hukou, which is a crucial criterion for school enrollment. Using data from a nationally representative school-based student panel survey, we find that migrants are disproportionally sorted into low-quality schools, which contributes to a sizeable achievement gap between migrants and locals. We further adopt school and individual fixed effect models to disentangle the influence of peer exposure from that of school quality and find no adverse impact of migrant concentration per se on student outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of State policy to combat educational disadvantage with two iterations of DEIS supports has had a positive influence the patterns of achievement among all social groups with some notable improvements across a range of indicators for students in DEIS schools. Notwithstanding these improvements, research and evaluations continue to identify a persistent achievement gap for large numbers of working-class students compared to their more middle-class peers. Research evidences the inextricable links between class, economic circumstances, and student outcomes. In producing these more system-oriented data, the dynamism of underlying processes that produces these outcomes can be often masked. Student-teacher characteristics and classroom interactions become variables or aggregated performance datasets, rather than signifiers to unpack the mechanisms of how students and teachers construct their classroom world. Pedagogic communication, so central to classroom teaching and learning, is largely unexplored from the perspective of its construction, transmission, acquisition, context and how these are framed by structures of social relationships. This paper intends to explicate a core component of the student/school relational domain by examining specifically the patterns of pedagogic communication that frame teaching and learning in one case study school located in a very marginalised and challenging community in Ireland. The findings are stark. Different linguistic strategies for engaging in pedagogic communication are detailed in the data but in all cases, they fail to lead to rich learning experiences and positive student outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family structures are associated with achievement outcomes, but the percentage of children residing in different family structures has changed over time. In this paper, we revisit data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to determine whether previous findings have also changed over time. Drawing on PISA 2012, we employ multilevel modelling to examine whether school and country compositional factors are still salient a decade later. The final analytical sample included 172,452 students in 7,391 schools from 24 countries. The results indicate, like previous research, an educational disadvantage for students that attend schools with a large concentration of children from single-parent homes. However, this disadvantage is largely due to the lower socioeconomic composition of these schools. At the country level, there is little support for the hypothesis that the achievement gap between students from two- versus one-parent households is greater in countries with higher percentages of single-parent families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to college for students from low-income families is disproportionately low because of many factors. A targeted intervention that addresses social psychological factors is introduced in the present paper. It is hypothesized that the steps needed to go to college—applying for college and applying for financial aid—can be blocked by both psychological and behavioral friction. The psychological friction arises from the threats to self-integrity that low-income students experience when considering attending college. Behavioral friction takes the form of institutional and bureaucratic barriers that students must overcome to apply to college and for financial aid. Two interventions are tested separately and in combination to address these dual barriers. A self-affirmation intervention in which students wrote about important values aimed to alleviate threats to self-integrity; and a behavioral ladder intervention that provided a series of timely reminders or "nudges" and accompanying strategies to students through a mobile application (app) at key decision points along the college admissions process addressed behavioral friction. Students who received the behavioral ladder made further progress along the college admission pipeline based on official records, an effect that was apparent only in the affirmation condition. These results illustrate the efficacy of combining "wise" interventions to address discrete barriers, the importance of tailoring and timing intervention content to key points of friction, and the potential of mobile technology to facilitate both objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial achievement gap, with culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students falling behind native-English-speaking White peers, has been widely documented in research as well as government reports. However, a corresponding discipline gap has not been evident due to the various labels and methods used for identifying specifically English learners (ELs) or Emergent bilingual (EB) students, variation in their proficiency levels of English, and the difficulty in determining who may or may not have a disability. Considerable work remains on how to raise the overall academic and behavior outcomes of EB students. This paper outlines best practices in a multi-tiered system of support and promotes an asset-based approach, which provides the foundation for educators to create equitable education opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of COVID-19 on schools is unprecedented, where 190 countries were enforced to suspend in-person education for most students, accounting for around 1.5 billion students worldwide. Most teachers and students switched to online emergency teaching and later to online learning. Due to weeks of schools’ closure or the low quality of online learning, students did not learn the required knowledge and skills, which is widley characterized as learning loss. This loss is usually presented by standard deviation (SD), but researchers tend to simplify it using three main approaches; months of learning (widely used), percentile rank and percentage of achievement gap. Learning loss is estimated by comparing the difference between what students learnt during the pandemic and what their peers learnt in previous years, based on an analysis of accumulated data stored on platforms assessing reading and mathematics. Research findings concluded that learning loss is more apparent in early grades, greater in mathematics than reading, more sever in disadvantaged students. Estimated learning loss in reading account for 2 to 6 months, whereas in mathematics no less than 2 months and could reach up to 8 months. Expectedly, there are social, health and economic consequences of learning loss. Economic loss is predicted of trillions of dollars, unless learning loss is mitigated. Countries practices suggest that catch-up will take few years, so they adopted a set of policies, discussed learning loss at higher levels, allocated funds and hired experts to lead a national plan to develop evidence-based strategies. Most prominent strategies are reopening schools for in-person or hybrid education, prioritizing curriculum content, administering diagnostic assessment, and tutoring. This paper recommends developing multi-years’ catch-up plan, maintaining a continuous investment in digital solutions, implementing intensive teachers professional development, and developing system intelligence to collect and analyze learning data [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an article published in an open-access journal, (Pennebaker et al. PLoS One, 8(11), e79774, 2013) reported that an innovative computer-based system that included daily online testing resulted in better student performance in other concurrent courses and a reduction in achievement gaps between lower and upper middle-class students. This article has had high impact, not only in terms of citations, but it also launched a multimillion-dollar university project and numerous synchronous massive online courses (SMOCs). In this study, I present a closer look at the data used in the Pennebaker et al. study. As in many cases of false claims, threats to internal validity were not adequately addressed. Student performance increases in other courses can be explained entirely by selection bias, whereas achievement gap reductions may be explained by differential attrition. It is hoped that the findings reported in this paper will inform future decisions regarding SMOC courses. More importantly, our field needs watchdogs who expose such unsupported extravagant claims—especially those appearing in pay-to-publish journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neglected in policy and the public consciousness, Alternative Provision is the expanding putty of the education sector, working within the gaps left by other agencies to re-engage children. Yet to engage children, Alternative Provision must first engage families and home visits are crucial to this process. Often triggered by absences or safeguarding concerns, homes visits are inherently risky both to the safety of practitioners but also to the fragile trust that is built with families. Rather than being purely objective practices, home visits are deeply embodied, sensuous experiences: from the apprehension and neighbour-scrutiny of the doorstep to inside homes that are sometimes sealed, sometimes permeable, practitioners engage in 'way-finding' through room and histories, spaces of affective atmospheres made and unmade, crafted and destroyed through the interaction of people, artefacts and light. And here, improvising, practitioners craft their jobs as equally as they craft engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since student achievement is related to educational attainment and to adult earnings, there is considerable interest in within-country achievement gaps between different social class groups, how they change over time, and the possible sources of those changes. In this paper, we analyze academic achievement gaps over a ten year period in Brazil. Our results suggest that social class inequality in public school student achievement on the Prova Brasil national test increased significantly among Brazilian 5th graders in the period 2007–2017, and that all of this increase was before 2013--indeed, mostly between 2011 and 2013. To the contrary, social class achievement inequality among 9th graders barely increased in 2007–2017, and that small increase appears to have occurred mainly in earlier years. We find that this increased achievement inequality among 5th graders was partly the result of increased inequality between schools with students of higher and lower average school class, and among municipalities with higher and lower income per capita and differing educational policies. Yet, a significant part of the increase is also related to changes in the within-school achievement gaps. • Describes trends in achievement for low and high socioeconomic pupils in Brazil in (5th and 9th grade). • Explains trends by changes in student factors such as race and gender, and returns to those characteristics over time. • Explains trends by changes in social stratification among schools and municipal variation. • Analyzes trends in achievement gaps by Brazilian state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This study investigated socioeconomic inequalities in outcomes and opportunities. • Global social inequalities in mathematics and science outcomes. • Inequality of opportunity notably concentrated in economically advanced countries. • Little evidence inequality in achievement perpetuated through varied provision. Entrenched socioeconomic inequalities in achievement have been observed in international assessments for decades, with previous research suggesting that these inequalities may be exacerbated by differentiation in the opportunities provided to various social groups. Much previous research in this field has been US-based or subject to measurement issues. This study investigated socioeconomic inequalities in outcomes and opportunities using four cycles of international assessment data across 78 countries. Further, the paper questions whether inequalities in opportunities are related to inequalities in outcomes. The findings indicate global social inequalities in mathematics and science outcomes, while inequality of opportunity was particularly concentrated in economically advanced countries. Little evidence of the perpetuation of socioeconomic inequality in achievement through differentiated educational provision was found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]