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This paper explores teachers' habits (1) in terms of setting homework for their students and (2) in terms of building on homework in the classroom. Based on data collected in UNESCO's Second Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (SERCE), the sample size of this analysis is about 200,000 Primary Grade 3 and 6 students in 16 Latin American countries. SERCE applied standardised achievement tests and context questionnaires to these students, their families, teachers and principals of the schools involved. Choosing four aspects (student, classroom, school and country) for their multilevel study and focusing on two subjects (Mathematics and Language), the authors of this paper investigated the relationship between homework and students' academic achievement. The results of their analysis show that the majority of Latin American teachers set homework in all or almost all classes. Ninety per cent of the teachers estimated that it took their students between 15 and 30 minutes to complete their homework. Follow-up figures in terms of checking and correcting homework were somewhat lower, as was the number of teachers who actually built on homework in teaching sessions. This study highlights the importance of following up on the contents covered in homework in the classroom to maximise effective learning.

Students may experience considerable fear and stress in school settings, and based on Dweck's (2006) notion of "mindset" we hypothesized that fear introduces qualitative changes in students' self-concepts. Hypotheses were tested on 3847 third-grade students from nine Iberoamerican countries (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Spain, and Venezuela), who completed Murillo's (2007) adaptation of Marsh' (1988) SDQ-I. Rasch scaling indicated that the information-content of High-Fear students' ratings was more localized across the latent dimension than was that of Low-Fear students, and their ratings also showed less cognitive variety. The resulting measurement distortions could be captured via logistic regression over the ratings' residuals. Also, using training and validation samples (with respectively 60 and 40% of all cases), it proved possible to predict students' fear levels and their gender. We see the present findings as a first step towards implementing an online warning and detection system for signs of bullying among students.