High Cost Of Low Educational Performance

This report uses recent economic modelling to relate cognitive skills – as measured by PISA and other international instruments – to economic growth, demonstrating that relatively small improvements to labour force skills can largely impact the future well-being of a nation.

Higher education is increasingly important to the labor market success of individuals and the prosperity of nations, yet, as this book shows, public funding for higher education is declining. It presents innovative approaches to increasing funding for universities through closer ties with business and through privatization of universities.

This book explains how a teaching system focused on identifying and stoking each student's strengths—rather than concentrating on deficits—can bring remarkable academic improvement and achievement. It's a familiar and seemingly logical model: to improve performance, identify weaknesses and target these problem areas. Could doing the opposite be a better way? Licensed clinical psychologist Elsie Jones-Smith argues that strengths-based systems are indeed more effective—not just in social work, where the philosophy became popular; or in the business world, where the concept is increasingly being embraced—but in the academic setting as well. Spotlighting the Strengths of Every Single Student: Why U.S. Schools Need a New, Strengths-Based Approach explains how and why a system that focuses on students' strengths enables kids to be self-confident, goal-directed, and to possess a stronger sense of self-efficacy, self-control, and academic achievement. Jones-Smith also explains how such a system spurs appreciation and advancement of multiple intelligences, which in turn gives students the ability to address weaknesses—on their own. Another plus: this approach has also been shown to generally reduce school disciplinary actions and increase class attendance time.

This third edition of the Handbook of International Research in Mathematics Education provides a comprehensive overview of the most recent theoretical and practical developments in the field of mathematics education. Authored by an array of internationally recognized scholars and edited by Lyn English and David Kirshner, this collection brings together overviews and advances in mathematics education research spanning established and emerging topics, diverse workplace and school environments, and globally representative research priorities. New perspectives are presented on a range of critical topics including embodied learning, the theory-practice divide, new developments in the early years, educating future mathematics education professors, problem solving in a 21st century curriculum, culture and mathematics learning, complex systems, critical analysis of design-based research, multimodal technologies, and e-textbooks. Comprised of 12 revised and 17 new chapters, this edition extends the Handbook’s original themes for international research in mathematics education and remains in the process a definitive resource for the field.

This comprehensive volume provides teachers, researchers and education professionals with cutting edge knowledge developed in the last decades by the educational, behavioural and neurosciences, integrating cognitive, developmental and socioeconomic approaches to deal with the problems children face in learning mathematics. The neurocognitive mechanisms and the cognitive processes underlying acquisition of arithmetic abilities and their significance for education have been the subject of intense research in the last few decades, but the most part of this research has been conducted in non-applied settings and there’s still a deep discrepancy between the level of scientific knowledge and its implementation into actual educational settings. Now it’s time to bring the results from the laboratory to the classroom. Apart from bringing the theoretical discussions to educational settings, the volume presents a wide range of methods for early detection of children with risks in mathematics learning and strategies to develop effective interventions based on innovative cognitive test instruments. It also provides insights to translate research knowledge into public policies in order to address socioeconomic issues. And it does so from an international perspective, dedicating a whole section to the cultural diversity of mathematics learning difficulties in different parts of the world. All of this makes the International Handbook of Mathematical Learning Difficulties an essential tool for those involved in the daily struggle to prepare the future generations to succeed in the global knowledge society.

Children’s Chances urges a shift from focusing on survival to targeting children’s full and healthy development. Drawing on comparative data on policies in 190 countries designed to combat poverty, discrimination, child labor, illiteracy, and child marriage, Heymann and McNeill tell what works to ensure equal opportunities for all children.

Early School Leaving in the European Union provides an analysis of early school leaving (ESL) in nine European Union countries, with a particular focus on young people who were previously enrolled in educational institutions inside and outside mainstream secondary education. The comparative approach employed by this volume adds to the existing body of knowledge on ESL and develops an understanding of how young people navigate through different educational systems. Contributors acknowledge the importance of reconstructing educational trajectories from the perspective of the individuals involved and, as a result, the book includes data collected during in-depth interviews, surveys, and insights from educational professionals, policymakers and representatives from civil society organisations. Adopting a classic tripartite approach, which acknowledges the complex nature of ESL, the book addresses individual, institutional and systemic factors. It identifies and analyses the prevention, intervention and compensation measures that can succeed in supporting young people’s attainment, and demonstrates how these can be used to reduce ESL. This unique book will be highly relevant for academics, researchers and postgraduate students, as well as educational practitioners. Drawing on the insights provided by the authors, the book formulates policy recommendations that should also be of interest for policymakers in European countries and beyond.