International Student Achievement Comparisons and US STEM Workforce Development

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Comparisons of US student achievement to other countries, conducted since the 1960s, have received extensive media coverage in the USA. Policy studies...     

经济学视角下的国际学生学业差距分析

在国际范围内,最有影响力的学业成就测试项目主要由IEA和OECD两大组织举办,截至2007年共有96个国家参加过该类测试,在世界范围内产生了广泛影响.利用此类数据进行跨国比较研究成为教育经济学的最新热点,以汉纳谢克为代表的学者对此进行了持续探索.国际数据分析表明,与资源投入、学校制度等因素相比,教师质量对学生学业成就的影响更加重要.不仅如此,学业成就对于一国宏观经济增长具有巨大的促进,如果正确而适时地推动教育改革,一国经济将呈现稳定的增长态势.因此,对于中国来说,促进基础教育优质均衡发展是整个社会平稳发展的重要保障.     

Using Educational Indicators for Policy: School Life Expectancy

This is the first in a series of articles that address the use of educational indicators to inform policy. The aim of the series is to provide an in-depth discussion of a single indicator or set of educational indicators from a data-user perspective. Each article will present the most recent cross-national comparisons and provide practical examples of interpreting an indicator for benchmarking systems, assessing policies and for measuring progress towards international development goals. They will also address the specific advantages of a particular measure, its limitations and its links to other indicators. This series focuses primarily on the interpretation and use of indicators rather than providing technical documentation about how indicators are calculated. This first article looks at a measure of the volume of educational outputs: the school life-expectancy indicator.     

Narrowing in on Educational Resources That Do Affect Student Achievement

In an era dominated by issues of school finance adequacy, it seems particularly important to provide evidence that, despite a number of claims to the contrary, educational resources are indeed positively related to improved student achievement. One of the hypotheses of this article is that expenditures per pupil must be disaggregated into more meaningful categories to discern the relationship between resources and student achievement. To explore this question, this article uses data from the Washoe County School District in Reno, Nevada, which reports its school expenditures using a program called InSite. This program disaggregates expenditures into 4 categories: instruction, instructional support, leadership, and operations and maintenance. This school-level variable is the primary explanatory variable in this covariate adjustment model using a 3-level hierarchical linear modeling analysis of students (approximately 7,000) nested in classrooms (approximately 420) nested in schools (approximately 55). This model also includes a number of contextual and school compositional factors that research tells us affect student achievement, including student demographic characteristics and pretest score; teacher experience, education, and a measure of his or her instructional practice; and school size, school-level poverty, and expenditures broken out into 4 categories: instruction, instructional support, leadership, and operations and maintenance. The results show that expenditures for instruction and instructional support were positively related and statistically significant for the reading achievement of 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th graders in the 2002-03 school year.     

教育指标的国际比较与教育强国政策框架的昭示

普惠、公平与效益是形成教育强国政策框架的三条主线。通过对教育指标的国际比较和对教育强国政策框架的分析可以看出,教育强国政策框架包括四类增长模块——高中阶段毛入学率、高等教育毛入学率、新型教育经费资助政策及每万人口拥有的科学家和工程师数。这四类增长模块是我国迈向教育强国和人力资源强国所不可或缺的基础支撑和发展驱动力。     

Problems and Issues in Translating International Educational Achievement Tests

The article reviews research and findings on problems and issues faced when translating international academic achievement tests. The purpose is to draw attention to the problems, to help to develop the procedures followed when translating the tests, and to provide suggestions for further research. The problems concentrate on the following: the unique and demanding purpose of the translation task, the partly contradictory task specifications and translation instructions, the indecision as to whether to produce one or two target versions, the indecision as to whether to use one or two source versions, inadequate revision and verification, deficient translator competences, and a lack of time. To solve the problems, the article suggests the following: ensuring that the translation guidelines provide a right, unequivocal, and balanced picture of the purpose of the translation task; ensuring the equivalence of the two source versions; putting more emphasis on revision, and ensuring that the verification is sufficiently thorough; using only qualified translators, providing them with training in test translation, and including also subject matter and testing specialists in the translation teams; and allotting sufficient time to the translation work. However, the main lesson from the review is that more research in the field is badly needed.     

Assessing Student Achievement in Large-Scale Educational Programs Using Hierarchical Propensity Scores

Many researchers assessing the efficacy of educational programs face challenges due to issues with non-randomization and the likelihood of dependence between nested subjects. The purpose of the study was to demonstrate a rigorous research methodology using a hierarchical propensity score matching method that can be utilized in contexts where randomization is not feasible and dependence between subjects is a concern. Although propensity score matching is not new in helping to create quasi-experimental models, many studies limit propensity score matching to student-level variables. To address this limitation in educational research, this study extends propensity score matching to the next level so that hierarchical modeling techniques can be used to help minimize error due to the likelihood of dependence between nested students. A large-scale educational program that targets first-semester freshmen was used to illustrate the utility and value of the methodology. This type of program is typical in higher education where student self-selection creates difficulty in assessing its true effects on student achievement; however, by using a rigorous methodology, administrators can have higher confidence when making programmatic and budgetary decisions.     

International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement Science Assessment in Developing Countries

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has been active now for more than 30 years. In that time the IEA has planned and co-ordinated several international surveys of pupil performance, particularly in mathematics, science and language. Pupil test data have in every case been supplemented with information regarding pupil, school, curriculum and system features, gathered through questionnaire enquiries and other means. Despite the relatively high costs of participation, and the complex logistics associated with pupil testing on the scale required, a number of developing countries have collaborated in one or other of the surveys, most particularly in those in mathematics and science. Some of the motivations for survey participation are equally relevant for both developed and developing countries, principal among them the desire to evaluate national educational system effectiveness through international comparison. A particular motivation driving some developing countries into this form of international collaboration is the opportunity it offers for skills transfer in the general areas of curriculum development and test construction. The paper overviews the IEA's three international science surveys, notes levels of developing country involvement in these, highlights some selected survey findings, and reflects on the potential value of survey participation to developing countries in particular.     

Student Achievement in an Educational Technology Course As Enhanced By Cooperative Learning

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of cooperative learning on students' achievement in an Educational Technology course in an Initial Teacher Training Program. A cooperative learning strategy was compared with the traditional whole class direct instruction approach. Ninety-five first year full-time students at a College of Education constituted the sample. The students' achievement included: academic achievement in the course, quantity measurement in the use of instructional media, and quality rating of utilization of instructional media during their teaching practice. Their attitude change was also assessed by an Attitude Inventory. The results indicated that cooperative learning strategy had a positive effect on academic achievement and quantity measurement in the use of instructional media (F(l,91) = 7.06, p < 0.01; F(l,91) = 4.59, p < 0.05). Cooperative learning strategy also had a positive influence on students' attitudes towards instructional media and their learning condition (F(l,93) = 5.07, p < 0.05; F(l,93) = 6.20, p < 0.05).     

Leading Change for Student Achievement

This article argues that in order to meet the heightened expectations now placed on schools in a knowledge society, avoid cultural resistance to positive change by those in schools and achieve improved student outcomes (attitudinal, behavioural and academic), we need to not only engage multiple forms of leadership but also have a more complex understanding of relationships between these leaderships and a range of other school and contextual variables. Evidence employed from recent research funded by the Australian Research Council supported by a range of reviews of mainly North American literature on the effects of leadership on student outcomes helps with an identification of these variables and their relationships. Three major, sequential and aligned elements are identified for successful school reform with the leadership emphasis changing with each element. The first element relates to how people are communicated with and treated. Success is more likely where people act rather than are always reacting, are empowered, involved in decision-making through a transparent, facilitative and supportive structure, and are trusted, respected, encouraged, and valued. The second element concerns a professional community. A professional community involves shared norms and values including valuing differences and diversity, a focus on implementation and continuous enhancement of learning for all students, de-privatisation of practice, collaboration, and critical reflective dialogue, especially that based on performance data. The final element relates to the presence of a capacity for change, learning and innovation, or professional learning community. Each element and each transition between them is facilitated by an appropriate ongoing, optimistic, caring, nurturing professional development program.     

Educational Flagships as Brokers in International Policy Transfer: Learning from the Experience of Kazakhstan

In this article we analyze a recent development in educational reform in Kazakhstan, which presents interest to researchers of policy transfer/borrowing. We argue not only that international policy transfer has become the main approach to educational reform, but also that the approach has been institutionalized by the establishment of a specialized organizational structure, represented by a system of flagship institutions at different levels of education, which were assigned the role of identifying, adapting, testing, and disseminating the best international practices. Reconsidering policy transfer at the organizational level as knowledge transfer, we use ideas from interorganizational learning theory to interpret the narrative data from interviews with the employees of the flagships and of the educational organizations, to which they disseminate best practices. In doing so, we attempt to explore the factors which may influence the success of institutionalized policy transfer from brokers to downstream adopters of innovation.     

Using a Facebook Group As an Educational Tool: Effects on Student Achievement

This study examined the effectiveness of using a Facebook group to increase pre-service teachers’ knowledge of core technology topics. Further, it examined their use of Facebook, their use of a course-related Facebook group, their participation habits in the group, and their perceptions of using Facebook for educational purposes. Results revealed a significant gain in achievement as measured by scores on pre- and posttests. Additionally, Facebook was most frequently used to maintain existing relationships, to share photographs, and to communicate. The Facebook group was used to lurk/read, post comments, “like” comments, and post additional information. The pre-service teachers indicated that the Facebook group was beneficial in improving readiness for course assessments, was convenient, provided a good means of communication, and enhanced learning.     

Higher Education as a Range of Educational Activities for Student Teachers

Summary Taking German experience as her point of departure, the author pleads for a practice‐based reform of secondary teacher education in universities by counter‐balancing the traditional overaccentuation of theory and abstract cognitive learning. A broader concept of practice and the suggestion of a ’partial isomorphism’ of universities and schools lead to the definition of higher education courses as practice and as fields of educational activities. In training seminars, student teachers have particular opportunities of profession‐oriented experiences and insights. If they learn, from the very beginning of their studies, to interpret the seminar sessions as learning situations and to organise them deliberately in cooperation with the seminar leaders, they can build the first elements of professional competence. The article reports how this conception of teacher education as field of, and preparation for, practice has been realised in an introductory seminar for freshmen at the Ruhruniversitat Bochum.     

从学生资助政策看我国高等教育公平

随着中国高等教育规模扩张,以及高等教育入学收费制度的实施,越来越多的学生因经济拮据而失去入学机会或难以继续学业,有失教育公平。学生资助政策的实施,一方面有效缓解了这一矛盾,在很大程度上实现了人们对教育公平的追求;另一方面,由于资助政策本身和实施过程中存在着诸多问题,又在一定程度上加剧了这种不公平的现状。完善和落实学生资助政策、多渠道筹措资助资金并扩大资助范围、加强学生资助的管理和监督,是完善资助政策的应有举措,是促进我国高等教育公平的关键所在。     

Performance Trajectories and Performance Gaps as Achievement Effect-Size Benchmarks for Educational Interventions

Abstract

Two complementary approaches to developing empirical benchmarks for achievement effect sizes in educational interventions are explored. The first approach characterizes the natural developmental progress in achievement made by students from one year to the next as effect sizes. Data for seven nationally standardized achievement tests show large annual gains in the early elementary grades followed by gradually declining gains in later grades. A given intervention effect will therefore look quite different when compared to the annual progress for different grade levels. The second approach explores achievement gaps for policy-relevant subgroups of students or schools. Data from national- and district-level achievement tests show that, when represented as effect sizes, student gaps are relatively small for gender and much larger for economic disadvantage and race/ethnicity. For schools, the differences between weak schools and average schools are surprisingly modest when expressed as student-level effect sizes. A given intervention effect viewed in terms of its potential for closing one of these performance gaps will therefore look very different depending on which gap is considered.     

教育支出占GDP的比重:国际比较与政策建议

本文研究、分析了国外教育支出占GDP的比重、教育支出占财政支出的比重、教育经费中私费负担与政府拨款所占的比例。文中整理的主要是2004年、2005年的资料,数据主要来源于OECD网站。同时,本文结合我国实际,对如何提高教育经费占GDP的比重,提出了五项政策建议。     

A Brief History of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (TEA)

The origins and development of the IEA are traced from its origins with a group of assessment professionals to its status as a major international organisation carrying out large‐scale educational surveys. The paper describes the people and the projects in its short history and looks at its future prospects.