Beyond Gross National Product: An Exploratory Study of the Relationship between Program for International Student Assessment Scores and Well-being Indices

Traditionally, the Norwegian education system has been built on equality and democracy as core values, but the disappointing results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) introduced the perception of a “crisis in education” and increased the occurrence of national reform initiatives. New assessment policies with an emphasis on performance measurement and emerging accountability practices have characterized the transition processes over the last decade. With increasing focus on monitoring based on performance indicators, there is a risk that the purpose of promoting democracy in schools will be downplayed by instrumental and managerial regulations. However, the Norwegian school reform of curriculum renewal in 2020 also highlights democracy and participation as separate interdisciplinary themes and includes a concrete elaboration of this topic, which strongly emphasizes that schools should promote democratic values and attitudes as a counterweight to prejudice and discrimination. To obtain more knowledge about how school professionals deal with possible tensions and dilemmas in their work with the contemporary reform, it is important to unpack the interplay between managerial accountability based on performance indicators and identify how educators legitimize their work on promoting democracy in schools. To capture the dynamic nature of educational leadership and the daily subtle negotiation, a micropolitical perspective and theory on democratic agency were used to analyze theoretical and empirical material from two larger studies focusing on certain aspects of school reforms in Norwegian lower secondary schools. The findings suggest that educational professionals respond to the policy of inclusion through negotiating and translating tensions between equalizing students’ life chances and being subjected to collective monitoring and control. The findings also illuminate stories characterized by a predominantly individualistic interpretation of the democratic purpose of education and the challenges and opportunities involved in balancing academic achievement with students’ well-being.

Download Full-text

Policy as Assemblage

European Educational Research Journal ◽

10.2304/eerj.2011.10.4.611 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 10 (4) ◽

pp. 611-622 ◽

Cited By ~ 28

Author(s):

Radhika Gorur

Keyword(s):

International Student ◽

Research Question ◽

Student Assessment ◽

Research Work ◽

National Policy ◽

International Student Assessment ◽

Documentary Analysis ◽

Policy Work ◽

The Relationship ◽

Research World

In this article, the author tells the story of her search for appropriate tools to conceptualise policy work. She had set out to explore the relationship between the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Australia's education policy, but early interview data forced her to reconsider her research question. The plethora of available models of policy did not satisfactorily accommodate her growing understanding of the messiness and complexity of policy work. On the basis of interviews with 18 policy actors, including former OECD officials, PISA analysts and bureaucrats, as well as documentary analysis of government reports and ministerial media releases, she suggests that the concept of ‘assemblage’ provides the tools to better understand the messy processes of policy work. The relationship between PISA and national policy is of interest to many scholars in Europe, making this study widely relevant. An article that argues for the unsettling of tidy accounts of knowledge making in policy can hardly afford to obscure the untidiness of its own assemblage. Accordingly, this article is somewhat unconventional in its presentation, and attempts to take the reader into the messiness of the research world as well as the policy world. Implicit in this presentation is the suggestion that both policy work and research work are ongoing attempts to find order and coherence through the cobbling together of a variety of resources.

Download Full-text

Studying the relationship between anxiety and school achievement: evidence from PISA data

Statistical Methods & Applications ◽

10.1007/s10260-021-00563-9 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Antonella D’Agostino ◽

Francesco Schirripa Spagnolo ◽

Nicola Salvati

Keyword(s):

Test Anxiety ◽

School Performance ◽

International Student ◽

School Achievement ◽

Student Assessment ◽

Emotional Reactions ◽

Sampling Weights ◽

International Student Assessment ◽

Pisa Data ◽

The Relationship

AbstractUsing the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 data for Italy, this paper offers a complete overview of the relationship between test anxiety and school performance by studying how anxiety affects the performance of students along the overall conditional distribution of mathematics, literature and science scores. We aim to indirectly measure whether higher goals increase test anxiety, starting from the hypothesis that high-skilled students generally set themselves high goals. We use an M-quantile regression approach that allows us to take into account the hierarchical structure and sampling weights of the PISA data. There is evidence of a negative and statistically significant relationship between test anxiety and school performance. The size of the estimated association is greater at the upper tail of the distribution of each score than at the lower tail. Therefore, our results suggest that high-performing students are more affected than low-performing students by emotional reactions to tests and school-work anxiety.

Download Full-text

Assessment of the European Union’s Educational Efficiency

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13063116 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (6) ◽

pp. 3116

Author(s):

Marius Sorin Dincă ◽

Gheorghiţa Dincă ◽

Maria Letiţia Andronic ◽

Anna Maria Pasztori

Keyword(s):

International Student ◽

Student Assessment ◽

Value Added ◽

Data Envelopment ◽

Public And Private ◽

Assessment Scores ◽

International Student Assessment ◽

Recording Efficiency ◽

Educational Efficiency ◽

Education Levels

This paper assesses education sector’s efficiency by comparing 28 European Union states at different levels of education using the mathematic approach of data envelopment analysis. We conducted the study from both the allocative and technical perspectives by considering all education levels separately and then as a whole, every three years, starting with 2006. The input and output variables were adapted to each particular level of education. In this way, we offered a complete image of the education system, creating a ranking for the countries, based on efficiency scores. Efficiency appears to be achieved when education results, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment scores, attainment level or other value-added outcomes, are reached with rather low levels of financial resources. The performance in education lacks sustainability in many countries, mostly belonging to Mediterranean and south-eastern European groups, with old member states recording efficiency scores closer to 1 compared to the new ones. Inefficiency derived from different causes and interactions between these causes (the mixture between public and private resources, the different population composition, gross domestic product per capita or levels of education attainment) and most often imply particular solutions from country to country.

Download Full-text

Does curricular tracking explain global SES gaps? an international comparison of the SES achievement gaps from 2000 to 2015

10.31235/osf.io/3mvxa ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Jorge Cimentada

Keyword(s):

Achievement Gap ◽

Cognitive Abilities ◽

International Student ◽

Student Assessment ◽

Similar Rate ◽

Achievement Gaps ◽

International Student Assessment ◽

The Relationship ◽

Income Achievement Gap ◽

The U.S

The literature on achievement inequality has recently started to focus on the dynamics of the socio-economic achievement gap in cognitive abilities. The main findings come from research in the U.S. revealing that the 90th/10th income achievement gap has widened by about 50% in the last 30 years. This chapter aims to investigate whether there are discernible patterns in the evolution of the achievement gap from a comparative perspective. Using over 15 years of data and 32 countries from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), I find that there is considerable variation in the way in which the gap is evolving, with the U.S. and Germany closing at about 50% and 30% in the last 15 years while France is widening at a similar rate. I find that curricular tracking and vocational enrollment explain 40% of the variance in the achievement gap between countries and show that the relationship is conditioned by a strong interaction. Low curricular tracking is associated with a small achievement gap, whereas high levels of curricular tracking is associated with wide achievement gaps. However, once tracking is coupled with high vocational enrollment this can remedy the potential adverse effects and reduce the gap by over 1 standard deviation. I use simulations to show that switching to less curricular tracking can help decrease a country’s SES gap by about 11% while switching to more tracking would increase the achievement gap by about 51% percent.

Download Full-text

THE ROLE OF ICT TO RAISE STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN ITALIAN TECHNICAL AND PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS

Problems of Education in the 21st Century ◽

10.33225/pec/12.49.15 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 49 (1) ◽

pp. 15-26

Author(s):

Michela Freddano ◽

Paolo Diana

Keyword(s):

International Student ◽

Student Assessment ◽

Professional School ◽

Reading Literacy ◽

Professional Schools ◽

Positive Effects ◽

International Student Assessment ◽

Digital Skills ◽

The Relationship

The research examines the role of using ICT to raise students’ achievement in Italian technical and professional schools. The hypothesis developed in this research is that students who obtain better learning results are those students who use ICT more than those students who are low performers. Data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) have been analyzed. The relationship between using ICT at school and students’ digital skills and attitudes has been analyzed by comparing the lowest performers and strong performers in reading literacy in Italian technical and professional schools. Results show that in Italian technical and professional schools, strong performers in reading literacy in PISA 2009 are more capable to do tasks at computer than low performers; however reading online and using ICT have greater positive effects towards achievement among low performers. Key words: ICT, PISA, professional school, reading literacy, technical school.

Download Full-text

Parental resources and child well-being in East Asia: An overview

Chinese Journal of Sociology ◽

10.1177/2057150x20908093 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 197-218

Author(s):

James M Raymo ◽

Hao Dong

Keyword(s):

East Asia ◽

International Student ◽

Parental Education ◽

Child Outcomes ◽

Student Assessment ◽

Well Being ◽

International Student Assessment ◽

Poor Families ◽

Parental Resources

The papers in this special issue use newly available panel data and data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) to examine linkages between parental resources and children’s outcomes in China, Japan, and Korea. Specific foci of the papers include regional differences, non-monetary resources, shadow education, gender differences, and the proximity of grandparents. Results demonstrate that, as in western societies, parental education and income are positively associated with child well-being and development in East Asia, but distinctive contextual features contribute to variation in these relationships. It is also clear from the findings that relationships between parental resources and child outcomes are more complicated than suggested by simple emphases on economic inequality and the relative success of children from rich and poor families. Together, these papers contribute a much needed geographic extension to the large cross-national literature on parental resources and children’s well-being. The findings provide a valuable empirical basis for assessing the role of context and understanding similarities and differences within East Asia and between the East and West.

Download Full-text

Latin American education failings weigh on progress

Emerald Expert Briefings ◽

10.1108/oxan-db249649 ◽

2020 ◽

Keyword(s):

Latin American ◽

International Student ◽

Student Assessment ◽

Well Being ◽

Economic Life ◽

American Education ◽

Education Systems ◽

Content Type ◽

National Education ◽

International Student Assessment

Subject Latin American education. Significance The OECD published the results of its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 on December 3. The study assesses to what extent 15-year-old pupils have acquired the necessary knowledge and skills to participate in social and economic life. Covering 79 national education systems, the assessment measures students’ performance in three subjects: reading, maths and science. The 2018 report also included computer familiarity and well-being questionnaires. Students in the ten Latin American countries that participated in the study performed below average and were significantly behind the top performers. Impacts Education systems in Latin America are failing to provide the right skills for the workforce in the current labour market. Poor security conditions in some areas will adversely affect access to education, with crime preventing pupils from attending school. Without long-term strategies stretching beyond governmental terms, the region will struggle to boost enrolment and completion rates.

Download Full-text

THE RELEVANCE OF EVOCATION AND REFLECTION CARDS IN THE LEARNING PROCESS

Problems of Education in the 21st Century ◽

10.33225/pec/12.41.61 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 41 (1) ◽

pp. 61-74

Author(s):

Sirje Piht ◽

Piret Lehiste ◽

Rea Raus ◽

Mariliis Lazarev

Keyword(s):

Goal Setting ◽

Learning Process ◽

Study Skills ◽

International Student ◽

Personality Development ◽

Student Assessment ◽

Well Being ◽

The European Union ◽

Subject Knowledge ◽

International Student Assessment

When starting school, most students have a desire to learn and are motivated to participate actively in the learning process. Lack of interest is what undermines learning. Research on children's well-being in the European Union (EU), conducted at York University in 2006, indicated that Estonia stands out among 25 EU countries with the lowest level of students who enjoy school and have a feeling of well-being. However, the results of 2006 and 2009 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) research indicate that Estonian students do have good subject knowledge and study skills. The Estonian Human Development Report 2009 states that 70% of Estonian students consider their study load too heavy, 67% feel fatigue and 33% do not want to go to school at all. The report indicates that schools do not pay enough attention to personality development, analysis and discussion (Eesti Koostöö Kogu, 2010). Based on the results of the above-mentioned research, it can be said that Estonian students have good subject knowledge, but learning offers them neither pleasure nor interest (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2007; Puksand, Lepmann & Henno, 2010). The key question for this research was how learner-centered goal setting and reflection support the learners´ skills to set their own goals for the learning process and to analyze it. Learners are interested in the learning process in case they understand the goals, are actively involved, and take responsibility for their actions. Learners should experience success and get immediate feedback on their activities. Ninety-six different evocation and reflection cards were tested by 24 Estonian teachers in the spring of 2011. The purpose of testing was to clarify how effective the usage of evocation and reflection cards is in supporting students in setting goals and analysing their activities. The quantitative research method (in the form of a questionnaire) was used in order to discover teachers` personal opinions, attitudes and approach to the cards and make conclusions about the relevance of the cards in supporting students` involvement in the evocation and reflection phase of learning. The research results showed that giving and receiving feedback develop students´ self-image, motivate them to participate in the learning process and develop their study skills. The relevance of evocation and reflection cards depends greatly on a teacher's opinion and will to use them. If a teacher does not possess enough knowledge about how to involve students in goal setting and analysis of the lesson, the efficiency of these cards is not evident. Key words: evocation, learning motivation, reflection.

Download Full-text

A global decline in adolescents’ subjective well-being: a comparative study exploring patterns of change in the life satisfaction of 15-year-old students in 46 countries

10.31235/osf.io/58rxz ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Jose Marquez ◽

Emily Long

Keyword(s):

Life Satisfaction ◽

Young People ◽

International Student ◽

Mental Health Problems ◽

Immigrant Students ◽

Student Assessment ◽

Well Being ◽

Subjective Well Being ◽

Linear Regression Models ◽

International Student Assessment

There is a growing body of research that demonstrates declines in subjective well-being and increases in mental health problems among children and young people in recent decades. However, there is little comparative research examining changes in adolescents’ life satisfaction (LS) across a large number of countries, and critically, how this differs across sociodemographic groups. This study addresses this question by investigating changes in the LS of 15-year-old students between 2015 and 2018, with particular attention given to differences by gender, socio-economic status, immigrant background and urbanity. Data for this study come from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Due to the skewed nature of LS scale variables, the current study includes both mean levels of LS in a 0 to 10 scale, and the proportion of students reporting low LS (5 points or less). Linear regression models were used. Results demonstrate a global decline in mean levels of LS in 39 out of the 46 countries. In most countries, mean LS declined more among girls than among boys. Mean LS declined more, and the proportion of students reporting low LS increased more, among non-immigrant students and those of higher SES in the majority of countries. Findings regarding rural or urban communities were mixed. We advise that heterogeneity across all sociodemographic groups needs to be accounted for in public policy efforts to increase LS among young people.

Download Full-text