No abstract

No abstract

Does the mindset about fixed intelligence have an effect on inadequate reading self-concept? Recognition that students’ beliefs or perceptions about intelligence and ability affect their cognitive functioning and learning is amongst the top twenty psychological principles for teaching and learning of young people (APA, 2015). Research into these beliefs, which are named fixed versus growth mindset, suggests that a fixed mindset represents an important barrier to successful learning. In our paper, we use the PISA 2018 data to investigate the occurrence of a fixed mindset amongst Slovenian 15-year-olds, and, as a focus of the paper, the context that the mindset forms for the relationship between actual ability and self-concept. We address the question of whether there is a difference in reading self-concepts for students with similar reading literacy but different mindsets. We found that there are no gender differences in the proportion of students with fixed mindsets and, as expected, somewhat higher proportions of low-achieving students have fixed mindsets in comparisons with high-achieving students. Differences amongst reading self-concepts of boys and girls are well-known. Our analyses further revealed the within-gender differences in self-concepts between those with fixed and those with growth mindset; girls or boys with a growth mindset have, on average, higher reading literacy, higher self-concept and enjoy reading more than girls or boys with a fixed mindset. If these comparisons are further adjusted only to students with similarly low levels of reading literacy, we find that students with average-low reading literacy have a similar self-concept of reading competence regardless of their mindset, their perceptions of how many difficulties they have in reading in general and on the PISA reading test are, however, very different. While girls with average-low reading literacy and a growth mindset are perceived to have an average (within the group of average-low readers) amount of problems in both reading in general and in the PISA test, girls with average-low reading literacy and a fixed mindset are perceived to have more of such problems – despite being similarly successful on the PISA test. Boys with average-low reading literacy of both mindsets reported fewer difficulties in reading in general than girls – even though their reading achievements are similar. However, fewer problems on the PISA test were reported by boys with average-low reading literacy and a growth mindset, while those with a fixed mindset, interestingly, reported a similar amount of these problems as girls with average-low reading literacy and a growth mindset. The effects of a fixed mindset therefore seem to show in some cases in an inappropriate self-assessment of reading problems. Key words: Fixed and growth mindset, reading literacy, reading self-concept, PISA study

The article analyses the (third) Coleman Report on private and public schools. The report scrutinises the relationship between private and public schools and shows that private school students show better academic achievement. Coleman concluded that these findings provided a strong argument in favour of public financial support for private schools. However,he identified a number of school characteristics that he believed to be related to student achievement. According to his analysis, these characteristics were not limited to privateschools; public schools exhibiting the same characteristics also had good results. Coleman interpreted the available data in favour of financial aid to private schools, although this was not the only possible interpretation. An alternative conclusion would have been to encourage these characteristics in public schools. Why did Coleman disregard this possibility? Why did he deviate from his usual scientific rigour? The present article suggests that there appear to be two reasons for the narrow interpretation of the relationship between public and private schools in Coleman’s third report. The first lies in Coleman’s notion of contemporary society as a constructed system in which every individual actor holds a place in the structure and requires incentives in order to act to the benefit of society. In the case of education, the goal of the institution is to ensure the high cognitive achievement of students, and the incentive is related to choice and competition. The second reason is related to Coleman’s vision of sociology as a discipline aiding the construction of an effective society.

Predictors of perceived bullying of Slovene 15-year-olds: gender differences between 2015 and 2018 Already in PISA 2015, Slovenian 15-year-olds reported relatively high levels of experiencing different forms of bullying at school. The results from PISA 2018 confirmed this: 21% of students reported experiencing some kind of bullying act at least a few times a month, which means that the percentage of these students increased between 2015 and 2018 by 4 percentage points. Given the above, we wanted to explore the issue in more detail. The present article has two aims: to investigate the level of bullying experienced by students in Slovenia in 2015 and 2018, to investigate gender differences and the effects of a sense of belonging to school, the perceived socio-emotional support of parents and how reading achievements can reduce the odds of experiencing bullying at school. The analysis was carried out on PISA 2015 (n = 6406) and PISA 2018 (n = 6401) data, and was based on a logistic regression method. The results show that in 2015, about a quarter of girls and a third of boys reported experiencing bullying at school. In 2018 the proportion of girls remained similar (3 percentage points higher), but the proportion of boys reporting bullying at school increased significantly to 42 percent. For both girls and boys in both years, a sense of belonging to a school and the perceived emotional support from parents reduced the odds of experiencing bullying at school. A similar effect of reducing the odds was noticed for reading achievement, with the exception of boys in 2015. The results of predictors in reducing the odds of experiencing bullying at school between 2015 and 2018 changed especially for boys, in that the explanatory power of the model is much higher. Contrary to results in 2015, reading achievement had a statistically significant effect on reducing the odds of experiencing bullying at school and the effect of sense of belonging to school on reducing these odds was greater still. The authors see a challenge in preventing and dealing with violence in schools in the development of a whole-school approach prevention programme, which, in addition to raising awareness of the importance of the role of everyone in school, also include parents, the wider community and clear rules for dealing with violence in schools. Key words: PISA study, bullying, sense of belonging to school, socio-emotional support of parents, reading achievement