Baring some essentials: boys' achievement, ERO and leadership.

This article identifies some popular concerns about boys' achievement, and concerns raised by researchers. The Education Review Office report on the achievement of boys is critiqued in relation to the role masculinities play in regulating boys' attitudes to learning. The paper concludes with some implications and obligations for educational leaders in addressing issues about boys' learning and achievement within a context of social justice

Signaling, Incentives and School Organization in France, The Netherlands, Britain and the United States: Lessons for Education Economics

[Excerpt] What causes differences in secondary school achievement across these four nations? The first two sections of the paper describe the achievement differences among the four countries and examine the proximate causes of the differentials. I conclude that these achievement differentials are caused by differences in the quality of teachers and of student time and effort inputs devoted to academic achievement

Academic Resilience and Achievement

This study uses narrative analysis to understand the ways in which Mexican university faculty members used their self-motivational resources to persist in an instructional technology training program within adverse work conditions. The methodology included interviews and participant observation. Findings suggest that faculty’s academic resilience was based on faculty’s self-definition as permanent learners and innovators, the perception of instruction as a field of reflection-in-action and systematization, and the caring instructional approach used by training instructors

Estimating achievement from fame

We report a method for estimating people's achievement based on their fame. Earlier we discovered (cond-mat/0310049) that fame of fighter pilot aces (measured as number of Google hits) grows exponentially with their achievement (number of victories). We hypothesize that the same functional relation between achievement and fame holds for other professions. This allows us to estimate achievement for professions where an unquestionable and universally accepted measure of achievement does not exist. We apply the method to Nobel Prize winners in Physics. For example, we obtain that Paul Dirac, who is hundred times less famous than Einstein contributed to physics only two times less. We compare our results with Landau's ranking

Pride, Achievement, and Purpose

Pride in our own actions tells a story: we faced a challenge, overcame it, and achieved something praiseworthy. In this paper, I draw on recent psychological literature to distinguish to between two varieties of pride, 'authentic' pride that focuses on particular efforts (like guilt) and 'hubristic' pride that focuses on the whole self (like shame). Achievement pride is fitting when either efforts or traits explain our success in meeting contextually relevant, authoritative, and challenging standards without excessive opportunity cost. When it is fitting, our lives are at least somewhat meaningful

More class time, better achievement?

Spanish press has widely criticized the fact that students spend almost their whole day at school, a practice rooted in the common belief that higher instruction time enhances students’ learning. However, in spite of this high amount of instruction time that Spanish students are receiving, their results do not seem to outstand in comparison with other countries with similar or lower instruction time. In this context, this research intends to accomplish two main objectives: the first one is to check if the amount of instruction time received by 15 year-old Spanish students actually affects their academic achievement. The second one intends to analyse if this potential influence of instruction time may be affecting Spanish Autonomous Communities in different ways, as each one is responsible for setting instruction time in its own region. In order to accomplish these objectives, the methodology employed let us isolate the effect of instruction time from other covariates by using students’ fixed effects by subject, using PISA 2009 and 2012 data. Results have shown that there is not any effect of instruction time on academic achievement, being this conclusion extended to every Autonomous Community in Spain. Further checks have corroborated the robustness of these results and have also highlighted that the effect of instruction time is a question of quality more than quantity, as students’ engagement and the classroom climate during lessons may be causing differences in academic achievement, rather than the amount of instruction time per se.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech