The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) programme PISA measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills. Data from PISA 2022 allows looking at Swedish students that are top performers in Reading, Mathematics and Science. The participants consist of a nationally representative sample of Swedish students (N= 6072). Besides the tests on Reading, Mathematics and Science, PISA collects information about the students’ attitudes and experiences, as well as on the characteristics of the school environment. It is possible to investigate trends over time concerning the students’ performances comparing with results from previous rounds. PISA collect backgrounds data which allows to investigate the prevalence of academically resilient students (ARS). ARS are academically successful, despite coming from socioeconomically less advantaged backgrounds, which typically are associated with poorer educational outcomes. Individual and contextual factors associated with academic resilience have been described by Erberber et al. (2015), Cheung et al. (2024), while Jacobs & Wolbers (2018) have looked at system factors and resilience. The research questions are: Which are the percent of Swedish students that are top performers students in Reading, Math andScience (level 5 and 6 in PISA)?  Are there changes compared to previous PISA data for these variables? Which is the proportion of students that are academically resilient inSwedish PISA 2022? Which are the characteristics of the learning environments of top performers in Sweden?

The percentage of top performers in Math and Reading was lower in 2022 compared to 2009. In Science the percentage is slightly higher. The percentage of all-rounders, who are top performers in all three subject is quite stable over time. It is worth to consider the group of all-rounder students even if it is a small group. They may have the potential to excel in more than one area of knowledge. The student counselling services may also play a role for these students in helping identify strengths and making career choices based on various considerations and deeper motivation. The knowledge on this group of learners seems limited in educational research. Another consideration is about the larger percentage of students that perform below level 2 in PISA 2022, which is a minimum level of knowledge. About one fourth of students across the subjects do not reach the minimum level, which is a substantial worsening. The percentage of the academically resilient students (ARS) who are top performers in PISA 2022 and have a Medium-Low socio-economical background measured with ESCS index, ranges between 5.3 and 6.3 and it can be considered rather low, compared to previous cross-national studies. This can be interpreted as an indication that the Swedish educational system could do more in term of compensating students for their less advantaged socio-economic background and developing their potentials. The equity of the educational system lays also in efforts in closing not only the achievement gap, but also the excellence gap.

Cascading effects is when development or achievements in one area influences achievements in other areas, not always easily recognizable as linked. Gross and fine motor skills have been related to language acquisition by assuming cascading effects (Thelen, 2002; Thelen & Smith, 1994; Iverson, 2022). However, the results are inconclusive (Adolf & Franchak, 2017; Andalò et al., 2022; Moore et al., 2019; Libertus & Viloi, 2016; Butterworth & Morris, 1996). 

One potential reason behind these results could be that “motor skills” is too static a measure, even if divided into gross (like walking, crawling, jumping, etc.) and fine motor skills (such as tweezer grip, hand-eye coordination, etc.). As motor-language relationships have been found when interactional aspects are taken into account (Karasik et al., 2014), motor behavior performed in interaction might be a more dynamic measure. It would also be a measure of children’s tendency to use their motor abilities.

Touch and gesture are different kinds of movements but differ from gross and fine motor skills by both being – by definition – closely intertwined in dyadic interaction. Touch is, together with gaze, the first communicative modality in use in infant-parent interaction. The “meaning” conveyed by touch is foremost of an emotional nature, spanning from negative to positive. Touch has few known associations to First Language Acquisition, although some studies indicate that specific kinds of touch could be related to word learning (Seidl et al.2015). 

Gesture has been regarded as a gateway to the first word production (Butterworth & Morris, 1996; Choi et al., 2021; Colonnesi et al., 2010). Gesture is further a symbolic form of movement as they carry conventional meaning. They also depend on motoric abilities, which is one reason why fine-tuned gestures like iconic or deictic are not typically seen until the end of a child’s first year or the beginning of the second year. 

In between emotional touch and symbolic gesture we have all kinds of movements, such as touching with an object, driving a toy car on the floor, acting on objects, etc. The handling of tools extends the child’s manual abilities (Adolph & Robinson, 2015; Smitsman & Bongers, 2003; Lockman & Kahrs, 2014). It has also been shown that tool use in adults strengthens the linguistic performance with complex syntactic structures (Thibault et al., 2021). In a study comparing high-risk infants with and without later ASD, infants who later received a diagnosis showed lower frequency of grasp types at 24 m o a, and less functional actions at 10 m o a, than the high-risk no-delay group (Sparaci et al., 2019).

Within developmental literature – and as indicated above – a child’s activity level, curiosity, and own initiative to interaction has been highlighted as important for future development not only in the motoric area but also in relation to language (Adolf & Franchak, 2016; Andalò et al., 2022). Tamis-LeMonda and colleagues (2001) could, on the other hand, show that parental responses to child utterances and gestures were more influential than child activity for when a child reached specific milestones (such as first 50 words, combinatorial speech, past tense, etc.). Parental speaking time has in recent big data-studies also been related to vocabulary size in children (Bergelson et al., 2023). 

In the present study we investigate if children with different language skills at 4 y o a, have different frequencies of motoric behavior (measured through gesture and touch behaviour) during their first year of life. In addition, we compare the parents of the two groups in regard to amount of verbalizations/vocalizations during the first year. We further address if the child’s touch and gesture behavior at 12 m o a predict their language level at 4 y o a. 

Data consists of 22 parent-child dyads recorded at 6, 9 and 12 m o a. Child gestures (deictic, emblem, show/offer, iconic, action, handle-object), child touch (comfort, stimulate, action), parental speaking time, and context (play object, play peekaboo, play singing, play book, play non-toy, other) was annotated and related to CDI measures at 48 m o a. The children are part of the MINT-data set (N=65) and were selected based on SCDI-measures at 4 years of age: 11 with high scores and 11 with low scores. Based on the developmental literature on motor development, the hypothesis is that children who early on are motorically active and prone to interaction with the parent through touch and gesture will also have an advantage language wise. 

To explore the two groups with high/low CDI, mixed effects model has been used to test for differences in various gesture and touch characteristics over time. For multiple comparisons Bonferroni adjustment was used. To identify factors that predict the odds of having high (or low) score on SCDI at 4 years of age, logistic regression was used.

The results show that there is a difference between the high and low SCDI-groups during the first year in their use of deictic and show/offer gestures. No other behavior significantly differentiated the groups. For both groups, emblem use and activity level (handle object + action object) increased during the first year. Amount of parental vocalization/verbalization, on the other hand, decreased for both groups and was significantly lower at 12 m o a, compared to at 6 and 9 m o a.  

Investigating the predictive power of early activity, 56 children at 12 m o a were included in the linear regression, including the group of high and low SCDI children. The results showed that Deictic gesture and Handle object, and amount of Parental vocalization significantly predict the children’s scores on SCDI at 4 y o a. Further, the child’s comfort touch was a negative predictor of SCDI at 4 y o a.

The findings are discussed in relation to prior studies of cascading effects – action, mobility, and language – and argue that interactional aspects – such as a child engaging in motoric interaction rather than motoric action seems to be a more promising venture for future research.

High quality of teacher–student relationships is widely recognized as fundamental part of good education. Moreover, students’ self-efficacy beliefs, or their confidence to succeed within different domains at school, are important impact factors to achievement. Although there is support for an association between student-perceived teacher–student relationship quality and students’ self-efficacy judgements, which mediates achievement, no tool explores this association. This article suggests that two instruments, respectively measuring students’ perceptions of teacher–student relationship quality (TSR) and student’s self-efficacy (SSE), can be used in parallel for a multifaceted exploration of individual students’ perception of TSR quality, in relationship to their self-efficacy. Two well-established instruments were adopted, validated and their factor structures re-confirmed in a Swedish sample, using data from students in five schools (n=382). Factor analysis showed that models with three underlying dimensions of TSR and four underlying dimensions of SSE were the most appropriate. All sub-scales showed good-to-excellent reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.75–0.94). Findings indicated a lack of multigroup invariance across gender and school level for the TSR-model. Substantial associations were found between student-perceived teacher support, and students’ self-efficacy for self-regulated learning and global academic success. We discuss utility and limitations, need of model improvement, and future potential.   

This 2-year longitudinal study compares students’ trajectories for perceived teacher–student relationship quality and students’ selfefficacy (together discussed as students’ school trust) to previously documented teacher-perceived experiences in teacher teams’ collective learning processes. The article’s main contribution is the reflection in students’ perceptions, of their teachers’ perceived quality and attainment in collective learning processes. Comparisons between schools show that trajectories for students belonging to the only teacher team that experienced a more mature and successful learning process in an earlier study, differed significantly from the trajectories for students in compared teams. Differences demonstrated large positive effect sizes (d=0.81–1.14). Individual analysis provides deeper insights about how these students’ perceptions changed. Additionally, the full sample data confirms earlier findings of substantial cross-associations between student-perceived teacher–student relationship quality and student self-efficacy. For example, sustainable associations between supportive teacher–student relationships and students’ global academic self-efficacy and self-efficacy for self-regulative learning were found (r = 0.43–0.51).

In this article, we address the problem of simultaneous testing hypothesis about mean and covariance matrix for repeated measures data when both the mean vector and covariance matrix are patterned. In particular, tests about the mean vector under block circular and doubly exchangeable covariance structures have been considered. The null distributions are established for the corresponding likelihood ratio test statistics, and expressions for the exact or near-exact probability density and cumulative distribution functions are obtained. The application of the results is illustrated by both a simulation study and a real-life data example.

Models that capture symmetries present in the data have been widely used in different applications, with early examples from psychometric and medical research. The aim of this article is to study a random effects model focusing on the covariance structure that is block circular symmetric. Useful results are obtained for the spectra of these structured matrices.

The general unbalanced mixed linear model with two variance components is considered. Through resampling it is demonstrated how the fixed effects can be estimated explicitly. It is shown that the obtained nonlinear estimator is unbiased and its variance is also derived. A condition is given when the proposed estimator is recommended instead of the ordinary least squares estimator.

Bilinear models with three types of effects are considered: fixed effects, random effects and latent variable effects. In the literature, bilinear models with random effects and bilinear models with latent variables have been discussed but there are no results available when combining random effects and latent variables. It is shown, via appropriate vector space decompositions, how to remove the random effects so that a well-known model comprising only fixed effects and latent variables is obtained. The spaces are chosen so that the likelihood function can be factored in a convenient and interpretable way. To obtain explicit estimators, an important standardization constraint on the random effects is assumed to hold. A theorem is presented where a complete solution to the estimation problem is given.

Small area estimation techniques have got a lot of attention during the last decades due to their important applications in survey studies. Mixed linear models and reduced rank regression analysis are jointly used when considering small area estimation. Estimates of parameters are presented as well as prediction of random effects and unobserved area measurements.

Background

A curriculum was planned using modern concepts based on the “old” principles to test if such an educational intervention provided pupils with good mental health and a solid basis for good reading and writing skills, as well as generated a positive attitude to learn. These “old” principles were based on previous knowledge derived from school psychiatry (which in Sweden was a branch of child and adolescent psychiatry 1915–1970), educational psychology and the educational approach from the differentiating Swedish School system of 1946–1970 (itself based on the principles of curative education “Heilpädagogie”, which was later renamed mental health care).

Methods

All six available schools in the small Swedish city of Sävsjö participated in the study. In these six schools there were eight preschool classes that included every 6-year old child living in the city. In total there were 184 families with 186 children (including 2 pairs of twins) who belonged to these preschool classes and were invited to take part in the study. One family moved just before school-start and 8 decided not to participate, thus 177 children (84 boys and 93 girls, aged 5.6–6.6 years) entered the study. The preschool classes were randomized into an experimental group with four preschool classes and a comparison group with four preschool classes. The experimental group followed a teaching program from the start of the preschool year until the end of grade 3 that was tailored to each student’s individual capacity based on the concepts of school maturation and curative education used in the Swedish schools during the period 1946–1970. The comparison group followed today’s average Swedish school curriculum. The project was planned as an intervention study covering the preschool year and the first 3 years of elementary school, which was to form a basis for a follow-up when the pupils had left senior high, the 12th year in Swedish public school. The outcome and the achievements were measured at end of grade 3 using standardized tests on reading, writing and mathematical skills. Behavior was assessed at school start and at end of grade 3 using the Child Behavior Check List (CBCL-scales) in addition to a questionnaire on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) with criteria from DSM-IV. The children made a self-evaluation of their attitude towards learning.

Results

At the end of school year 3, the children in the experimental group had an improved reading capacity (p = 0.002, effect size(es) = 4.35) and reading comprehension (p = 0.03, es = 0.04). They evaluated their own reading (p = 0.02, es = 0.23), writing (p = 0.007, es = 0.35) and mathematical skills (p = 0.003, es = 0.48) as going “very well” when compared to comparison group. Differences regarding intelligence quotas between the groups at the start of school had disappeared by the end of grade 3. No differences referring to CBCL were found at end of grade 3. One child in the comparison group fulfilled criteria for AD/HD, according to parents and teachers.

Conclusions

The alternative curriculum covering the preschool year through the first 3 years of elementary school based on the old principles from curative education (“Heilpädagogie”), educational psychology and school psychiatry gave the children in the experimental group a better reading capacity and reading comprehension.

Trial registration The study started in 1998. The data were collected longitudinally and prospectively but have not been analyzed until now, with the children having left senior high. A retrospective registration in the ISRCTN is pending.