Nuno Crato - Böcker

In the light of better and more detailed administrative databases, this open access book provides statistical tools for evaluating the effects of public policies advocated by governments and public institutions.

This open access book compares and contrasts the results of international student assessments in ten countries. The book starts out with a summary of PISA’s evolution and PISA results, and an explanation of the major factors that play a role in changes in countries’ results.

This open access book compares and analyses the results in twelve countries of the two latest international student assessments: Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2021 (PIRLS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment 2022 (PISA) and tries to disentangle the effects of the pandemic from the long term trends in education.It is one of the first, or maybe the first, published volumes to provide a global assessment of the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student learning as measured by independent international comparative surveys.The 12 countries discussed in this volume represent a wide variety of educational systems – including Chile, Ecuador, England, Estonia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, and the United States. It compiles diverse scenarios including countries that are high performers; countries that perform at the OECD mean; and countries that are struggling to attain the OECD average. Each country has its history that reflects efforts to cope with pandemic school closures and to improve educational achievement.A major topic discussed in this edited volume is related to understanding the diverse circumstances for the variations in results within different countries: Why did learning loss in specific locations? How much learning was lost? Why is a country continuously declining? Why is another country constantly improving? Why is there higher or less levels of inequality? How is a country regularly improving with an outdated curriculum? Which policies have worked, and which ones have not? What can we do now? This book is a valuable contribution to answer these concerns based on a diverse sample of countries and research questions.

This open access book discusses why the seemingly straightforward strategy of teaching children how to think deeply does not work and offers an alternative way forward for the curriculum to achieve these objectives.

In the light of better and more detailed administrative databases, this open access book provides statistical tools for evaluating the effects of public policies advocated by governments and public institutions.

This is a book of mathematical stories — funny and puzzling mathematical stories. They tell of villains who try to steal secrets, heroes who encode their messages, and mathematicians who spend years on end searching for the best way to pile oranges.There are also stories about highway confusions occurring when the rules of Cartesian geometry are ignored, small-change errors due to ignorance of ancient paradoxes, and mistakes in calendars arising from poor numerical approximations.This book is about the power and beauty of mathematics. It shows mathematics in action, explained in a way that everybody can understand. It is a book for enticing youngsters and inspiring teachers.Nuno Crato is a leading science writer and mathematician, whose entertaining essays have won a number of international awards.

This collective book aims to encourage and inspire actions directed towards raising public awareness of the importance of mathematical sciences for our contemporary society in a cultural and historical perspective.