This open access book compares and contrasts the results of international student assessments in ten countries. The OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) released the results ...of its 2018 assessment in December 2019. This book reflects the debates that typically follow the release of these results and focuses on the causes of differences between countries. Such causes include continuous decline in one country, improvement combined with increasing internal inequalities in another country, or rapid improvement in spite of an outdated curriculum in yet another.In addition, the book discusses a number of general questions: Is knowledge outdated? Are computers taking over and replacing teachers? Are schools killing creativity? Are we adequately preparing the next generation? Are schools failing to educate our kids? The book starts out with a summary of PISA's evolution and PISA results, and an explanation of the major factors that play a role in changes in countries' results. The next ten chapters are devoted to ten specific countries, offering a summary of data and an explanation of the major drives for changes in education results for each one. Each chapter includes a short description of the country's educational system as well as the impact of PISA and other ILSA studies on the country's educational policies. The chapters also include a timeline of policy measures and main hallmarks of the country's educational evolution, discussing the impact of these measures on its PISA results. A final reference chapter explains what PISA is, what it measures and how. While highlighting the 2018 results, the book also takes into consideration previous results, as well as long-term initiatives.This book gathers the contribution of well-known and respected experts in the field. Specialists such as Eric Hanushek, for the US, Tim Oates, for England, Montse Gomendio, for Spain, Gunda Tire, for Estonia, and all other contributors draw on their vast experience and statistical analysis expertise to draw a set of rich country lessons and recommendations that are invaluable for all of those who care about improving a country's education system.
A recente pandemia tornou evidentes para quase todos nós as grandes vantagens do ensino presencial e as grandes limitações do ensino remoto. Mas vale a pena revisitar um pouco as ilusões que estavam ...por detrás de alguma encomiástica defesa do ensino remoto, pois esse debate, que hoje encontra suporte em dados científicos, pode levar-nos a melhorar tanto o ensino presencial como a minorar inconvenientes do ensino remoto. Essa melhoria é tanto mais importante quanto a pandemia nos trouxe atrasos ou mesmo retrocessos no esforço educativo. Com base em investigação científica muito recente, defende-se neste artigo que a resposta aos inconvenientes da pandemia não pode ser apenas manter os estudantes ocupados e em contacto com a escola e a aprendizagem. A resposta deve ser acelerar o ritmo e a qualidade da educação. Para o fazer, é ainda mais importante prosseguir um currículo exigente e ambicioso e proceder a uma avaliação de resultados frequente e rigorosa. Os meios remotos podem ser um complemento valioso do ensino presencial.
Abstract
The pandemic made visible both the great advantages of face-to-face teaching and the great disadvantages of remote learning. It is nevertheless interesting to revisit a few illusions behind some hagiographic defence of remote learning. Today, this debate can be supported by scientific evidence and it can lead to improvements both in the face-to-face and in the remote teaching. These improvements are more than necessary at this moment, as the pandemic brought about serious delays in the learning processes. With support on recent scientific research, this paper sustains that the answer to the pandemic cannot be to just keep students in contact with school activities. The answer ought to be to accelerate the educational pace and to improve the educational quality. For this purpose, we need an ambitious and rigorous curriculum and frequent and reliable student evaluations. Remote learning should not be separated from the general learning process but integrated in it and seen as a complement to face-to-face schooling.
Keywords
Blended learning, digital remote teaching, digital romanticism, pandemic
In the light of better and more detailed administrative databases, this open access book provides statistical tools for evaluating the effects of public policies advocated by governments and public ...institutions. Experts from academia, national statistics offices and various research centers present modern econometric methods for an efficient data-driven policy evaluation and monitoring, assess the causal effects of policy measures and report on best practices of successful data management and usage. Topics include data confidentiality, data linkage, and national practices in policy areas such as public health, education and employment. It offers scholars as well as practitioners from public administrations, consultancy firms and nongovernmental organizations insights into counterfactual impact evaluation methods and the potential of data-based policy and program evaluation. ; Open Access Demonstrates the potential of data-based policy evaluation Introduces counterfactual impact evaluation methods Includes case studies on policy areas such as public health, education and employment
This open access book compares and contrasts the results of international student assessments in ten countries. The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) released the results ...of its 2018 assessment in December 2019. This book reflects the debates that typically follow the release of these results and focuses on the causes of differences between countries. Such causes include continuous decline in one country, improvement combined with increasing internal inequalities in another country, or rapid improvement in spite of an outdated curriculum in yet another. In addition, the book discusses a number of general questions: Is knowledge outdated? Are computers taking over and replacing teachers? Are schools killing creativity? Are we adequately preparing the next generation? Are schools failing to educate our kids? The book starts out with a summary of PISA’s evolution and PISA results, and an explanation of the major factors that play a role in changes in countries’ results. The next ten chapters are devoted to ten specific countries, offering a summary of data and an explanation of the major drives for changes in education results for each one. Each chapter includes a short description of the country’s educational system as well as the impact of PISA and other ILSA studies on the country’s educational policies. The chapters also include a timeline of policy measures and main hallmarks of the country’s educational evolution, discussing the impact of these measures on its PISA results. A final reference chapter explains what PISA is, what it measures and how. While highlighting the 2018 results, the book also takes into consideration previous results, as well as long-term initiatives. This book gathers the contribution of well-known and respected experts in the field. Specialists such as Eric Hanushek, for the US, Tim Oates, for England, Montse Gomendio, for Spain, Gunda Tire, for Estonia, and all other contributors draw on their vast experience and statistical analysis expertise to draw a set of rich country lessons and recommendations that are invaluable for all of those who care about improving a country’s education system.
Durante los últimos años del siglo XX y las dos primeras décadas del siglo XXI, la educación en Portugal sufrió varios cambios. Como resultado, su situación fue mejorando casi continuamente hasta el ...2015. Siendo ese año en el que Portugal obtuvo los mejores resultados de su historia en las comparaciones internacionales PISA y TIMSS. Luego, sufrió algunos retrocesos a partir de 2016, como revelan los resultados de PISA 2018 y TIMSS 2019. En este artículo se analizan los principales factores de esta evolución, destacando la capacitación de los profesores para el buen desempeño de sus tareas.
Entre os anos finais do século XX e as duas primeiras décadas do século XXI, a educação em Portugal sofreu várias mudanças. Como resultado, a situação melhorou quase continuamente até 2015. Foi nesse ...ano que Portugal obteve os seus melhores resultados de sempre nas comparações internacionais PISA e TIMSS. Sofreu alguns reveses a partir de 2016, conforme revelaram os resultados PISA de 2018 e TIMSS de 2019. Este artigo analisa os principais fatores dessa evolução, destacando a capacitação dos professores para o bom desempenho das suas tarefas.
We propose a new time series representation of persistence in conditional variance called a long memory stochastic volatility (LMSV) model. The LMSV model is constructed by incorporating an ARFIMA ...process in a standard stochastic volatility scheme. Strongly consistent estimators of the parameters of the model are obtained by maximizing the spectral approximation to the Gaussian likelihood. The finite sample properties of the spectral likelihood estimator are analyzed by means of a Monte Carlo study. An empirical example with a long time series of stock prices demonstrates the superiority of the LMSV model over existing (short-memory) volatility models.
This is a book of mathematical stories - funny and puzzling mathematical stories. They tell of villains who try to steal secrets, heroes who encode their messages, and mathematicians who spend years ...on end searching for the best way to pile oranges. There are also stories about highway confusions occurring when the rules of Cartesian geometry are ignored, small-change errors due to ignorance of ancient paradoxes, and mistakes in calendars arising from poor numerical approximations. This book is about the power and beauty of mathematics. It shows mathematics in action, explained in a way that everybody can understand. It is a book for enticing youngsters and inspiring teachers. Nuno Crato is a leading science writer and mathematician, whose entertaining essays have won a number of international awards.
We propose and study a new frequency-domain procedure for characterizing and comparing large sets of long time series. Instead of using all the information available from data, which would be ...computationally very expensive, we propose some regularization rules in order to select and summarize the most relevant information for clustering purposes. Essentially, we suggest to use a fragmented periodogram computed around the driving cyclical components of interest and to compare the various estimates. This procedure is computationally simple, but able to condense relevant information of the time series. A simulation exercise shows that the smoothed fragmented periodogram works in general better than the non-smoothed one and not worse than the complete periodogram for medium to large sample sizes. We illustrate this procedure in a study of the evolution of several stock markets indices. We further show the effect of recent financial crises over these indices behaviour.
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