Over half-a-million adolescents take part in each cycle of the Program for International
Student Assessment (PISA). Yet often, researchers and policy makers across the globe tend
to focus their attention primarily on the academic trajectories of adolescents hailing from
highly successful education systems. Hence, a vast majority of the adolescent population
who regionally and globally constitute the 'long tail of underachievement'often remain
unnoticed and underrepresented in the growing literature on adolescents' academic …