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For over two decades now, the application of Citizen Science to Education has been evolving, and fundamental topics, such as the drivers of motivation to participate in Citizen Science projects, are still under discussion. Some recent developments, though, like the use of Artificial Intelligence to support data collection and validation, seem to point to a clear-cut divergence from the mainstream research path. The objective of this paper is to summarise the development trajectory of research on Citizen Science in Education so far, and then shed light on its future development, to help researchers direct their efforts towards the most promising open questions in this field. We achieved these objectives by using the lens of the Affordance-Actualisation theory and the Main Path Analysis method.

Several studies have been published on disengaged test respondents, and others have analyzed disengaged survey respondents separately. For many large-scale assessments, students answer questionnaire and test items in succession. This study examines the percentage of students who continuously engage in disengaged responding behaviors across sections in a low-stakes assessment. The effects on calculated scores of filtering students, based on their responding behaviors, are also analyzed. Data of this study came from the 2015 administration of PISA. For data analysis, frequencies and percentages of engaged students in the sessions were initially calculated using students' response times. To investigate the impact of filtering disengaged respondents on parameter estimation, three groups were created, namely engaged in both measures, engaged only in the test, and engaged only in the questionnaire. Next, several validity checks were performed on each group to verify the accuracy of the classifications and the impact of filtering student groups based on their responding behavior. The results indicate that students who are disengaged in tests tend to continue this behavior when responding to the questionnaire items in PISA. Moreover, the rate of continuity of disengaged responding is non-negligible as can be seen from the effect sizes. On the other hand, removing disengaged students in both measures led to higher or nearly the same performance ratings compared to the other groups. Researchers analyzing the dataset including achievement tests and survey items are recommended to review disengaged responses and filter out students who are continuously showing disengaged responding before performing further statistical analysis.

Globalisation and policy transfer in education make it incumbent upon decision makers to prioritise among competing policy options, select policy initiatives that are appropriate for their national contexts, and understand how system-specific factors moderate the relationship between those policies and student outcomes. This study used qualitative comparative analysis and correlational analyses to explore these relationships with publicly available data on socio-economic, cultural, and education conditions, and their association with PISA 2015 results in 49 countries. Findings show that gender and income equality, human development, and individualism were outcome-enabling conditions for PISA 2015 results, and gender equality was the most consistent of these conditions. These factors significantly moderated the relationships between education policy and PISA results. Implications for the identification of meaningful peer countries for comparative educational research, policy transfer, and the future expansion of PISA are discussed.

Academic libraries, apart from their main function, which is to provide information services to academic communities, may also perform a number of social roles in the broad meaning of the term. Accordingly, they now tend to serve as the third place offering inclusion and animation activities to academic as well as local communities (including potential students) and to groups in risk of social exclusion (immigrants, persons with disabilities, senior citizens, etc.) or in need of various kinds of care and support. However, for libraries to be able to fulfil those tasks, they need properly trained staff who not only have the required competencies but also the right social attitudes. The paper presents an analysis of the social attitudes of academic librarians from twenty countries across the world as compared to the personnel of other types of libraries. The level of individual social capital, activity in social networks, aspirations in life and social and civic engagement were investigated. It was noted that the respondents tend to undervalue the importance of the work done by libraries for local communities. At the same time, the research showed that academic librarians have a somewhat lower level of individual social capital and trust than public librarians and less extensive social networks. Nonetheless, they are open to relationships with others, which enables them to engage in various social projects.

In this study, we investigated factors predictive of disconnection, or not being in education, employment, or training (NEET), among young adults with at least a 2-year college degree. We also explored the extent to which disconnection influences civic participation and well-being among NEETs with and without college degrees. The authors used 2012 and 2015 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data from the Survey of Adult Skills in the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) for 29 countries, including the United States, along with US 2012 data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Results highlight that college-educated individuals whose parents have low levels of educational attainment actually have a higher likelihood of becoming NEET relative to college-educated individuals whose parents are more highly educated. Study findings also emphasize the influence of economic and geographic differences (country-level for OECD and county-level for United States) on NEET rates, in addition to the extent to which mothers have a higher likelihood and fathers have a lower likelihood of being NEET relative to their childless peers and the influence of country-level family leave policies on the odds of being NEET across the OECD. College field of study also emerges as an important influence on disconnection across the 29 OECD countries in the study, but not in the United States separately. Finally, comparing results for college-educated NEETs and NEETs without degrees, we found that higher education appears to reduce the likelihood of community disengagement and reports of poor health among NEETs across the OECD countries. However, this is not the case within the United States where NEETs are less likely to be engaged in their communities and more likely to describe themselves as in poor health regardless of their educational attainment.

In this study, the variables having impact on the student motivation have been analyzed based on the articles, conference papers, master's theses and doctoral dissertations published in the years 2000-2017. A total of 165 research papers were selected for the research material and the data were collected through qualitative research techniques through document review and content analysis. According to the research results, the most important factors affecting student motivation are the fields of teacher, teachers' classroom management skills and their teaching methods. In this research, factors having less influence on the student motivation are parental communication, student characteristics and study fields. In addition, relational search type was used more than others, mostly students were selected as the study group and most researches were conducted in USA and Turkey.

In large-scale assessments, performance differences across different groups are regularly found. These group differences (e.g., gender differences) are often relevant for educational policy decisions and measures. However, the formation of these group differences usually remains unclear. We propose an approach for investigating this formation by considering behavioral process measures as mediating variables between group membership and performance on the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment complex-problem solving (CPS) items. We found that across all investigated countries interactive behavior can fully explain gender differences in CPS, but cannot explain differences between students with and without a migration background. However, in some countries these results differ from the cross-country results. Our results indicate that process measures derived from log data are useful for further investigating and explaining performance differences between girls and boys and students with and without migration background.

International businesses face a difficult task when trying to decide where to place or expand a business that could be located anywhere in the world. Each country is a complex system of human capabilities, technical systems, [infrastructure bases, laws, cultures and economic systems. How can a company know which country is best for it today, and even more importantly, which country will grow into an appropriate location for future business opportunities? Several studies offer insights into how to make site selection decisions (O'Farrell & Wood, 1994; Papadopoulos et al., 2002; Rothaermel et al., 2006) but the complexity of the data required makes initial analysis across many countries problematic. Most businesses, trying to predict an ideal country or sequence of countries to enter, are left to simple rules of thumb or decision models using limited criteria (Górecka & Szalucka, 2013; Alexander et al., 2011). A wide variety of country data of varying reliability and efficacy are frequently used (Rahman, 2003). Many of the largest companies have developed specialized teams with sophisticated models for site selection. However, for smaller companies finding reliable, consistently measured data they can interpret and analyze in ways that provide useful insights is a challenge. This article introduces the Social Progress Index, launched in April 2013 at the 10th annual Skoll World Forum held at the University of Oxford (The Origins, 2015). The Social Progress Index is unique because it is the most comprehensive framework developed for measuring social progress and the first to measure social progress independently of GDP or other economic variables (Porter, 2015; Keohane, 2015). Three cases have been chosen to demonstrate the usefulness of the Social Progress Index for site selection in three very different circumstances.

The primary objective of the study was to empirically test theoretical claims made about differences between Didaktik and curriculum traditions concerning teacher autonomy (TA) and teacher responsibility (TR). It tests the hypothesis that TA and TR are higher among Didaktik than curriculum countries. The second objective was to explore associations of TA and responsibility measures with students' science performance? Nationally representative data from 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), collected through a two-step random selection process were used. For TA individual items Mann-Whitney rank-sum test was employed, while a difference of proportion test was used for TR items to examine the differences. Hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) was used to examine association of TA and TR items with students' science performance in PISA 2009. Overall and contrary to the initial hypothesis, teachers in curriculum countries enjoy both more autonomy and responsibility than teachers in Didaktik countries, but differences were substantively weak. Furthermore, within-country associations of autonomy and responsibility measures with students' science performance were found in a few countries. Further research is recommended to address TA and responsibility and complexities that accompany them in current stakeholder-crowded school contexts.

The United States does not guarantee families a wide range of supportive workplace policies such as paid maternity and paternity leave or paid leave to care for sick children. Proposals to provide such benefits are invariably met with the complaint that the costs would reduce employment and undermine the international competitiveness of American businesses. In this article, Alison Earle, Zitha Mokomane, and Jody Heymann explore whether paid leave and other work-family policies that support children's development exist in countries that are economically competitive and have low unemployment rates. Their data show that the answer is yes. Using indicators of competitiveness gathered by the World Economic Forum, the authors identify fifteen countries, including the United States, that have been among the top twenty countries in competitiveness rankings for at least eight of ten years. To this group they add China and India, both rising competitors in the global economy. They find that every one of these countries, except the United States, guarantees some form of paid leave for new mothers as well as annual leave. And all but Switzerland and the United States guarantee paid leave for new fathers. The authors perform a similar exercise to identify thirteen advanced countries with consistently low unemployment rates, again including the United States. The majority of these countries provide paid leave for new mothers, paid leave for new fathers, paid leave to care for children's health care needs, breast-feeding breaks, paid vacation leave, and a weekly day of rest. Of these, the United States guarantees only breast-feeding breaks (part of the recently passed health care legislation). The authors' global examination of the most competitive economies as well as the economies with low unemployment rates makes clear that ensuring that all parents are available to care for their children's healthy development does not preclude a country from being highly competitive economically. (Contains 44 endnotes and 3 tables.)

This article examines the extent to which parental socioeconomic status (SES) affects the likelihood of a child becoming a top-performing student, offering an international perspective by reporting this relationship in 31 developed countries. The impact of 3 important educational system characteristics (differentiation in terms of early tracking, standardisation, and private schooling) on the relationship between parental SES and top performance was determined. We employed multilevel logistic regression models on data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 (N = 216,980) to reveal that children with low parental SES have a lower probability of becoming a top-performing student than those with high parental SES, although this association differs between countries. The negative relationship between a disadvantaged parental background and top performance was not affected by the educational system characteristics under investigation.

This article examines the long-run effect of higher education, measured in average years of tertiary schooling, on the level and growth rate of national per capita income. It uses an improved dataset on educational attainments which not only reduces measurement error but also overcomes data comparability issues and allows us to estimate the long-run effect of human capital through higher education on economic development. Using unique long panel data for 36 advanced and emerging economies spanning over the period 1870-2010, we find that higher education has a positive and significant effect on the level and the growth rate of national per capita income. Specifically, our empirical results indicate that a 1% increase in educational attainment at higher education level would raise the growth rate of per capita income by about 0.01% to 0.02% over a five-year period. That is, at the sample mean, an increase in average tertiary education by one year would raise output growth by about 6% to 11% in five years. We find that the returns to female education are lower than the returns to male education at tertiary schooling levels. Our results are robust to alternative specifications.

Background: Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) revealed that countries systematically differ in their respondents' literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments skills; skill levels also vary by gender, age, level of education or migration background. Similarly, systematic differences have been documented with respect to adults' participation in education, which can be considered as a means to develop and maintain skills. From a psychological perspective, motivation to learn is considered a key factor associated with both skill development and participation in (further) education. In order to account for motivation when analyzing PIAAC data, four items from the PIAAC background questionnaire were recently compiled into a motivation-to-learn scale. This scale has been found to be invariant (i.e., showing full weak and partial strong measurement invariance) across 21 countries. Methods: This paper presents further analyses using multiple-group graded response models to scrutinize the validity of the motivation-to-learn scale for group comparisons. Results: Results indicate at least partial strong measurement invariance across gender, age groups, level of education, and migration background in most countries under study (all CFI > 0.95, all RMSEA < 0.08). Thus, the scale is suitable for comparing both means and associations across these groups. Conclusions:Results are discussed in light of country characteristics, challenges of measurement invariance testing, and potential future research using PIAAC data.

This article argues that strong interrelations between methodological and theoretical advances exist. Progress in, especially comparative, methods may have important impacts on theory evaluation. By using the example of the "Varieties of Capitalism" approach and an international comparison of higher education systems, it can be shown that the use of improved data and of advanced analysis techniques changes the acceptance or rejection of the theoretical approach. As a conclusion, the article advocates data improvements, the use of advanced methods, more generally a methodologically reflexive interpretation of comparative research results as well as a closer cooperation between theory and method development.

The present study examined how access to home and school IT resources impacted student mathematics achievement. Data comprised 144,395 secondary school students from 7,308 schools in 22 developed economies who participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012. Results of hierarchical linear modelling showed that after controlling for student and school covariates, student achievement benefited from their access to home IT resources (main effect), and from the access to both home IT resources and highly educated mothers (interactive effect). Furthermore, IT resource shortages in school had a detrimental impact on student achievement (main effect), and the shortage accentuated the negative effects of school shortage in qualified teachers on achievement (interactive effect). Lastly, the results showed that students with less home academic and cultural resources were more impacted by IT resource access when compared to peers from advantaged families.

The old myth about the ability and variability of potential in children is a comforting myth, for those who are uneasy with the degree of inequality they see and would rather seek to justify it than confront it. The myth of inherent potential helps some explain to themselves why they are privileged. Extend the myth to believe in inherited ability and some can come to believe that their children will inherit part of a greater potential. These beliefs create and sustain inequality in society and allow for the creation of levels of ignorance in populations. This article uses insights from social geography and the sociology of education to examine how the myths are sustained past and present. It notes that countries with the highest degree of income inequality and the most unequal education systems have the worst outcomes for young adults, and these are the countries in which eugenic notions of inherited ability are resurfacing.

This article was written in response to concerns that have been expressed about the possible consequences of an increasing number of countries overtaking the United States in educational attainment. International statistics on educational attainment were analyzed, questions about comparability of data were discussed, and the impact of different approaches to the organization of higher education on attainment rates was examined. The author concluded that comparing the rate of attainment of subbaccalaureate credentials between the United States and other countries is problematic both because of definitional issues, and as a consequence of the major transfer function of American community colleges. The article explains how colleges that previously offered short term vocational training in many European countries have evolved into vocationally-oriented baccalaureate granting institutions that have enabled their nations to achieve rapidly rising levels of baccalaureate degree attainment. It suggests that the experience of these countries may provide useful lessons--and cautions--for policy makers and educational leaders with respect to expanding the role of community colleges in awarding baccalaureate degrees.

Educational policies and practices are influenced by cultural, political, and economic factors, and this is also true of specialized educational approaches such as gifted education. Factors such as a country's cultural tendency toward egalitarianism or meritocracy, whether the political system is centralized or decentralized, and the degree to which the economy supports basic education for all students may be reflected in the way in which a country approaches gifted education. We examined gifted and talented education policies and practices in 38 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member and partner countries and considered how those policies and practices may reflect country-specific characteristics. In this article, we discuss ways in which gifted education in OECD countries may reflect cultural, political, and economic features of countries.

This article focuses on analysing the effect of educational differentiation policies of OECD educational systems on socioeconomically disadvantaged students, based on data from PISA 2009. The analysis is conducted on the basis of a definition of two subgroups of disadvantaged students: those that achieve high scores, and those obtaining scores that are significantly below the average for their country. Educational systems are classified in four models following the classification proposed by N. Mons. Results show that the more integrated the educational system, the greater the number of disadvantaged high achievers, and the lower the number of disadvantaged low achievers.

Following Ben-Porath [1967. "The Production of Human Capital and the Life-Cycle of Earnings." "Journal of Political Economy" 75 (3): 352-365], the influence of life expectancy on education and on human capital has attracted much attention among growth theorists. Whereas existing growth models rely on an education decision made either by the child or by his parent, we revisit the Ben-Porath effect by modelling education as the outcome of bargaining between the parent and the child. We develop a three-period overlapping generations (OLG) model, where human capital increases life expectancy and shows that as a result of the unequal remaining lifetimes faced by parents and children, the form of the Ben-Porath effect depends on how bargaining power is distributed within the family, which in turn affects long-run economic dynamics. Using data on 16 OECD countries (1940-1980), we show that introducing family bargaining helps to rationalize the observed education patterns across countries.

This article focuses on evidence regarding cross-national patterns of participation in adult education and an interpretation of these patterns from an institutional and public policy perspective. The interpretation follows from the perspective that sustaining high and widely distributed levels of investment in the development and maintenance of skills over the lifespan of individuals is to a large extent interconnected with a high-level of non-market coordination via institutional arrangements and/or specific public policy measures. Such arrangements and measures are seen to alleviate coordination problems that otherwise lead to underinvestment in skills and/or inequity in the distribution of access to education and training and hence skills. Consequently, it is argued that institutional contexts and public policy measures condition participation patterns in adult education, and are thus worthwhile to understand better for the purposes of informing policy. (Contains 4 figures and 3 tables.)

This study analyzed whether research collaboration patterns differ across higher education systems based on maturity of the systems, their language, and their geographical region. This study found that collaboration patterns differ across higher education systems: academics in developed systems are more collaborative than their colleagues in developing systems; academics in English-speaking countries are no more collaborative than their colleagues in non-English speaking countries; and academics in European countries are more collaborative internationally than their colleagues in non-European countries. In addition, it was found that publication is not associated with collaboration, either domestically or internationally. This finding implies that collaboration is a different dimension from publication. Finally, the article discusses implications of the findings for evaluation systems. (Contains 4 tables.)

By examining the different methods and processes by which national data gathering agencies compile and submit their findings to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the authors (1) assess the methodological challenges of accurately reporting tertiary completion and graduation rates cross-nationally; (2) to examine the incongruence of existing internationally comparative data on tertiary completion, particularly within the OECD; and (3) to offer policy recommendations for increasing the congruence and comparability of U.S. higher education data with that of other OECD countries (and the rest of the world). (Contains 5 tables, 3 figures, and 4 footnotes.)

The PISA survey influences educational policies through an international competitive process which is not wholly rationally-oriented. Firstly, PISA league tables act normatively upon the definition of formal educational aims while the survey tests cannot evaluate the educational systems' relative strengths with regards to such aims. We argue that they measure a kind of academic potential of the students. Secondly, errors in interpreting national success or failure stem from the causal inferences developed from observing national cases. In order to give such comparisons a stronger basis, we distinguish five main educational models within the OECD countries and compare their PISA 2006 results to their population's socio-cultural levels as well as their performance recorded in an academic-programme-based survey such as TIMSS. Our conclusions contrast heavily with the usual lessons inferred from PISA, which follow OECD-promoted guidelines, and explain French students' weakening as well as Finnish students' success. (Contains 8 tables and 22 notes.)

While higher education is regarded a high priority for economic development in many countries, public budgets often fall short to support desired levels of expansion in higher education. This leads to cost-sharing: students and their families are required to contribute more to the costs of higher education. This paper explores worldwide trends to cope with this issue based on the following questions: Is it fair to ask for larger contributions from students? What are the global patterns and forms of higher private shares in the costs of higher education? And what is the impact of cost-sharing on higher education access and equity? (Contains 4 tables and 2 footnotes.)

This paper examines the extent that material, social, and cultural resources and schools account for the relationship between socioeconomic background and student achievement among 15-year-olds in 30 countries. Generally, cultural factors play a more important role in most countries although in a small minority of countries, material resources have a substantial impact. Most often, social resources have little impact. In many countries, educational differentiation--that is, school tracks and school types, and curriculum tracking within schools--mediates the relationship between socioeconomic background and student achievement. Countries with highly tracked systems tend to show stronger relationships. On average, over 60% of the effect of socioeconomic background on achievement is accounted for by these factors. These findings are independent of whether achievement in reading, mathematics, or science is examined. The implications of this study for reducing socioeconomic inequalities in education are discussed.

Although the participation rates of females in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (or STEM) education is poor in most Western countries, considerable differences across countries exist as well. This may be due to differences in the so-called gender achievement gaps, that is, delays of one sex with respect to the other. The variation in gender gaps in mathematics, science, and reading literacy, both across countries and across schools within countries, is explored in the present study using the PISA data. The results of multilevel analyses show the participation of women in tertiary STEM education to increase as the relative achievements of girls with respect to boys in secondary education improve. When the characteristics of schools and countries are examined in relation to the size of the gender achievement gaps, integrated educational systems are found to be more favourable to the achievement of girls than differentiated educational systems. (Contains 7 tables, 2 figures, and 9 endnotes.)

Examined the institutional and policy issues inhibiting or supporting participation by non-traditional and lifelong learners in higher education in Austria, Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Identified six factors: institutional differentiation of the higher education system, institutional governance and control, flexible (open) access, mode of study, financial assistance and other support, and continuing education opportunities. (EV)

The dramatic growth in health expenditures is an important health policy concern worldwide. Therefore, understanding the factors that increase health expenditures provides policy makers with evidence for decision-making. We aim to examine long-term effects of carbon dioxide emission, urbanization rate and GDP per capita on health expenditures. This study investigates the effect of carbon dioxide emission, urban population, and GDP per capita on health expenditure for 21 OECD countries over the period 1992–2018. Panel ARDL Approach and Gengenbach, Urbain and Westerlund Panel Co-integration Test have been used in the article. Test results indicate the long-run relationship among health expenditure and carbon dioxide emission, urban population, and GDP per capita. Effect of carbon dioxide emission (CO2), urban population, and GDP per capita is significant and positive on health expenditure. Rapid economic growths of OECD countries recently and environmental pollution have increased health expenditures in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]