What did PISA and TIMSS ever do for us?: the potential of large scale datasets for understanding and improving educational practice

ABSTRACT

There appears to be something of an intellectual and philosophical gulf between education researchers who seek insights from statistical analyses of complex data-sets such as those provided by the OECD (PISA), and others who seek to develop rich, contextualised socio-historical understandings that can shed light upon why particular classroom practices operate and are sustained within a given milieu. This paper outlines these different perspectives, with particular reference to non-cognitive factors. Detailed analysis of the roots of high academic achievement, and associated challenges to student wellbeing, in many East Asian countries, is provided. The important influence of broad political and societal factors is highlighted by reference to cross-cultural differences across a large number of countries. The paper concludes by stating that while data from large datasets can assist in gaining greater understanding of cross-cultural differences, to be meaningful, such analyses should be incorporated within complex ecosystemic accounts.     

Problem solving in Swedish mathematics textbooks for upper secondary school

The aim of this study is to analyse how mathematical problem solving is represented in mathematical textbooks for Swedish upper secondary school. The analysis comprises dominating Swedish textbook series, and relates to uncovering (a) the quantity of tasks that are actually mathematical problems, (b) their location in the chapter, (c) their difficulty level, and (d) their context. Based on an analysis of 5,722 tasks from the area of calculus, it is concluded that the textbooks themselves contain very few tasks that can be defined as mathematical problems, and that those that are mathematical problems are found at the end of a chapter at the most difficult level, and are presented in a pure mathematical context. Implications are discussed.     

The impact of sub-skills and item content on students’ skills with regard to the control-of-variables strategy

The so-called control-of-variables strategy (CVS) incorporates the important scientific reasoning skills of designing controlled experiments and interpreting experimental outcomes. As CVS is a prominent component of science standards appropriate assessment instruments are required to measure these scientific reasoning skills and to evaluate the impact of instruction on CVS development. A detailed review of existing CVS instruments suggests that they utilize different, and only a few of the four, critical CVS sub-skills in the item development. This study presents a new CVS assessment instrument (CVS Inventory, CVSI) and investigates the validity of student measures derived from this instrument utilizing Rasch analyses. The results indicate that the CVSI produces reliable and valid student measures with regard to CVS. Furthermore, the results show that the item difficulty depends on the CVS sub-skills utilized in item development, but not on the item content. Accordingly, previous instruments that are restricted to a few CVS sub-skills tend to over- or underestimate students’ CVS skills. In addition, these results indicate that students are able to use CVS as a domain general strategy in multiple content areas. Consequences for science instruction and assessment are discussed.     

Precursors to the development of flexible expertise: Metacognitive self-evaluations as antecedences and consequences in adult learning

The current study investigates a conceptualization of flexible expertise as it relates to adult learning within the context of management and leadership training. Three research domains and their relation to metacognitive outcomes are integrated: 1) individual differences in abilities, personality, and mindsets, 2) deliberate practice and routine expertise, and 3) self-regulatory processes. The theoretical focus of the research is on the extent to which metacognitive self-evaluations around person- and management-specific concepts taught during training may act as precursors to flexible expertise. We asked 172 mid-level managers to provide evaluations of concept importance (antecedent), behavioral change (proximal consequence), and impact on job performance (distal consequence) resulting from knowledge acquired during the course of training. A series of hierarchical linear modeling analyses unveil a constellation of core personality characteristics, mindsets, and deliberative processing experiences that together interact to predict metacognitive self-evaluation of impactful training. Our results suggest support for our contention that flexible expertise is a context appropriate, balanced cluster of learning oriented, self-regulatory, and metacognitive processes that moderate and mediate the application of abilities and previously acquired knowledge to problem solution, future knowledge acquisition, and ultimately effective leadership.     

First Experiences with Reading Primary Literature by Undergraduate Life Science Students

Learning to read and understand research articles (primary literature) is an important step in the enculturation of higher education students into the scientific community. We presume, based on ideas from the field of genre analysis, that it is important for the development of reading skills to become conscious of the rhetorical structures in research articles. So, we determined how well science students are able to identify 2 important elements of this rhetorical structure: conclusions and grounds. First-year undergraduate life science students who followed a course called ‘Biomedical Research’ made assignments in which they had to identify these 2 elements. We analysed the answers of 20 students in detail and compared their answers with 2 expert readers. Furthermore, we conducted task-based interviews with 4 students to gain more insight into their reading strategies and to determine how they identify conclusions and grounds. Our results show that students and experts defined conclusions and grounds in different ways. Students and experts agreed on the most important conclusion of the articles. However, students identified a wide range of sentences which were not seen as conclusions by the experts. The grounds students mentioned mostly matched their conclusions. Students sometimes failed to mention important grounds for a particular conclusion. In conclusion, our study shows the differences between student and expert readers of primary literature. Based on our results, we formulated criteria for the design of a teaching strategy that aims to improve students' skills for reading primary literature.     

Art Auctions and Bidding Rings: Empirical Evidence from German Auction Data

This article illustrates the determinants of bidder collusion using data from German auctions. Special attention is thereby devoted to the question at whether art and antiques auctions are particularly attractive for bidding rings as the conditions for rings to succeed may be quite favorable at these auctions. Cartel stability at art auctions, for example, may be enforced by the structure of bidders or the expected surplus from collusive arrangements. Actually, the estimations of a binary choice model show that even after controlling for determinants suggested by auction theory, art and antiques auctions turn out to be particularly susceptible to bidder collusion.