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- Johansson, Stefan, 1980, et al.
(författare)
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Is there a trend towards convergence in countries mathematics achievement?
- 2015
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Ingår i: Comparative and International Education Society | 59th Annual Conference “Ubuntu! Imagining a Humanist Education Globally” March 8 –13, 2015, Washington, D.C..
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Purposes The main purpose of this paper is to explore if there has been a harmonization of countries’ performances, resulting in a “world curriculum”. If countries tend to converge with respect to their response patterns to mathematics tests, this may be an indication of harmonization of their school systems and curricula. For example, if students in different countries show more similar response patterns over time this may be taken as an evidence for a global force, which, in literature has been related to, among others, the international studies. Theoretical framework The international comparative studies have been widely debated in media the last decade. Although these studies have provided valuable information, the studies have met a fair amount of criticism, from different angles and perspectives. One line of this criticism mainly concern the policy borrowing across countries that the international studies have been argued to contribute to: countries curricula tend to converge over time into a so called ‘world curriculum’ (Baker & LeTendre, 2005). Poor performing countries may focus to specific knowledge and skills to achieve high results in the international comparisons. This might hamper other competences such as innovativeness and creativity. Such competences have been argued to decline with increasing results in international comparisons (e.g., Zhao, 2012). However, the empirical evidence in this area is quite limited. Rutkowski and Rutkowski (2009) studied country-level item responses for a range of countries participating in TIMSS 95, 99, and 03. Although they identify similarities on regional level (e.g. East European), their find not global forces. However, the time span this study covers might be too limited to capture global trend that indicate convergence. Analytical methods We use latent profile analysis on aggregated country level data to identify different achievement profiles in mathematics. Countries are included in the dataset multiple times if they participated in different mathematics studies. For each country, achievement information on four content domain subscales is available. The latent profile analysis aims to identify a set of countries (latent classes) that are defined in terms of their score profile on the four content domain subscales. In a second step, we introduce time as an explanatory variable to test the hypothesis of convergence, that is, if fewer latent classes represent more countries. In other words, we investigate if countries become more similar over time. Data sources The current study employs data from several previous IEA studies on mathematics in secondary school: SIMS 1980, and TIMSS 1995, 1999, 2003, 2007, and 2011. More than 80 educational entities (countries or regions) participated in at least one study, and the assessment material covers 744 test items. We used the mathematics assessment framework from the latest TIMSS cycles to assign each test item to one of the four content areas Numbers, Algebra, Geometry, and Data & Chance. This step is necessary because the older studies used different labels (e.g., Arithmetic instead of Numbers). In a second step, we calculated proportion correct scores for four subscales. These scores serve as a basis for the latent profile analysis. To avoid that the latent classes are rather based on the overall performance on the subscales than on qualitative differences in the patterns, we standardized the raw proportion correct statistic within each country and this was done separately for each study. We used a set of dummies for each study as a measure of time. Results and Conclusions Preliminary findings show that it is possible to identify different latent clusters of countries with similar patterns in the four mathematic subdomains. The classes differ with respect to relatively high achievement on certain subdomains of mathematic and in terms of their size, i.e. the number of countries that are best described by the respective clusters’ pattern. However, introducing time as a covariate does not predict class membership. In other words, we did not observe that certain latent classes increase consistently over time. The international studies may have large impact on the school debate and the policy discussions in different countries. The may also constitute a base for decisions and reforms. However, that unintended consequences such as convergence of curricula actually would lead to convergence of actual achievement is more difficult to prove. Even though countries strive to be equally good as the best performing, there is no evidence in this study that they conform in their response patterns over time. Educational Significance The study concerns an issue of great educational importance, which previously has been difficult to study empirically. Moreover, the methodological approach used is also of significant interest.
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- Rosén, Monica, 1962, et al.
(författare)
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"Long-term Trends in Educational Inequality: The Role of Gender and Parents’ Education"
- 2012
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Ingår i: European Conference on Educational Research 2012, Cadiz, Spain.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Educational systems may be evaluated in term of how successful they are in establishing equity. Thus, international comparative data is needed because many characteristics of educational policies are located on country level. Trend data is particularly useful to evaluate certain reforms because changes in educational policies can be related to changes in educational inequality. For that reason, the main purpose of the study is to analyze long-term trends on two major aspects in the discussion on equity: gender differences and the role of parental education. We focus on reading literacy at the end of primary school from an international comparative perspective. Therefore, we re-analyze data from five IEA studies and include 18 counties to establish a trend measure that spans over 35 years. We employ item response theory to measure reading literacy on the same scale and conduct group comparisons. Within countries gender differences as well as differences between students from different family backgrounds tend to be stable over time. There is, however, a certain degree of variance in the level of differences. The findings indicate that the causes generating such differences in reading can be located on a country level.
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- Strietholt, Rolf, 1982, et al.
(författare)
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A correction model for differences in the sample compositions: the degree of comparability as a function of age and schooling
- 2013
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Ingår i: Large-scale Assessments in Education. - 2196-0739. ; 1:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background Since the early days of international large-scale assessments, an overarching aim has been to use the world as an educational laboratory so countries can learn from one another and develop educational systems further. Cross-sectional comparisons across countries as well as trend studies derive from the assumption that there are comparable groups of students in the respective samples. But neither age-based nor grade-based sampling strategies can achieve balanced samples in terms of both age and schooling. How should such differences in the sample compositions be dealt with? Methods We discuss the comparability of the samples as a function of differences in terms of age and schooling. To improve the comparability of such samples, we developed a correction model that adjusts country scores, which we evaluate here with data from different IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) studies on reading at the end of primary school. Results Our study demonstrates that ignoring differences in age and schooling confounds league tables and hides actual trends. In other words, cross-sectional comparisons across countries as well as trends within countries are affected by differences in the sample composition. The correction model adjusts for such differences and increases the comparability across countries and studies. Conclusions Researchers who use the data from international comparative studies for secondary analyses should be aware of the limited comparability of the samples. The proposed correction model provides a simple approach to improve comparability and makes the complex information from international comparisons more accessible.
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- Strietholt, Rolf, 1982, et al.
(författare)
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Linking Large-Scale Reading Assessments: Measuring International Trends Over 40 Years
- 2016
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Ingår i: Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1536-6367 .- 1536-6359. ; 14:1, s. 1-26
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Since the start of the new millennium, international comparative large-scale studies have become one of the most well-known areas in the field of education. However, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has already been conducting international comparative studies for about half a century. The present study aims to demonstrate how to link recent and older studies onto the same scale in order to study long-term trends within and across countries. It discusses the comparability of the assessment material in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and previous IEA studies on reading at the end of primary school. Thereafter, we use a concurrent calibration of all item parameters to link the studies onto a common IRT scale extending from 1970 until the present.
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