Students with special educational needs within PISA

Abstract

Since 2003, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has included students with special educational needs (SEN), identified as those with functional disabilities, those with cognitive/behavioural/emotional disabilities and those with limited test language proficiency. While the number of countries and included students has increased with each test administration, the percentage of students with SEN remains extremely low. The inclusion of these students is not an intentional PISA design parameter but rather a response to the interaction between the need to maintain strict sampling criteria and country-level educational mandates to include SEN students in standardised testing. Based on the analysis of student participation and performance across four cycles of PISA (2003–2012), this paper examines the challenges that exist in current PISA procedures related to: student sampling, eligibility and identification; assessment methodology; and reporting results. PISA practices, their limitations for scientific inferences and recommendations for design improvements are given.     

Influence of improved teaching practices on student satisfaction ratings for two undergraduate units at an Australian university

To track the quality of instruction delivered at the University of Western Australia, the university surveys all units using its Students’ Unit Reflective Feedback (SURF) metrics, and faculties use these metrics to benchmark student satisfaction. Consequently, teaching staff are actively encouraged to adopt teaching practices that will increase the average levels of these metrics. Using a ‘before-after’ approach, we compared these metrics before and after the implementation of improved teaching practices that addressed specific weaknesses identified through student responses for two undergraduate units. Despite the implementation of improved teaching practices, SURF scores did not increase significantly for the two units assessed, due possibly to the components of the academic programme covered by the SURF questions, the field-based nature of the units, and the difficulty in measuring an increase in the SURF scores of units which already score highly. This poor sensitivity of the SURF metrics to the implementation of improved teaching practices could have implications for their use for performance assessment by the university.     

Conversion of CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> to useful substances with composite iron,nickel, and copper catalysts

Composite materials of Fe/Al₂O₃, which consist of small particles of iron supported by thermally stable alumina even at 500–700 °C, have been widely used in the water-gas shift reaction for natural gas reforming. Therefore, Fe/Al₂O₃ is one of the promising candidates for re-transformation of exhausted CO₂ into fuels such as alcohols and hydrocarbons. The development of a CO₂ reforming system using the composite materials of Fe/Al₂O₃ through CO₂ reduction to CO, dissociation of water into hydrogen, and methanol synthesis has been investigated. It was found that dry and steam (i.e. wet) reforming of CO₂ produced almost the same amount of CO. At a temperature above 500 °C, maximal and saturated yields of CO and H₂ from CO₂ and water were obtained. However, this CO₂ reforming system requires higher-pressure conditions from several tens to hundreds standard atmospheric pressure in order to achieve high yield and selectivity for methanol production. In this study we developed the modified CO₂ reforming system by the utilization of Ni and/or Cu instead of Fe in order to obtain other types of useful products such as CO, CH₄, and carbon, more efficiently and selectively under atmospheric pressure. When Ni or Cu was used, conversion of CO₂ was reduced to 76%, while 9% of methane was detected in the case of Ni. On the other hand, though the CO₂ conversion reduced half of the Fe, the selectivity of CO from CO₂ increased to 95% in the case of Cu.     

Equality and excellence. Hegemonic discourses of economisation within the German education system

Looking to conflicting constitutions of education systems through the terms equality and excellence, this paper examines the discursive formation of two political rationalities in the contemporary German education system. While early childhood and primary education discourses are dominated by a terminology of equality, tertiary education institutions such as universities are described using a terminology of excellence that has become a reference point for political interventions and institutional reform processes. Drawing from hegemony theory, governmentality studies and systems theory, this paper analyses the rules of justification referred to by such hegemonic discourses. It presents a policy discourse analysis of strategic, conceptional and institutional texts produced between 2003 and 2010. Through this analysis, the paper suggests that ‘mobilising’ and ‘optimising’ represent the common principles of equality and excellence as economic rationalities.