Violence at schools is a well-known problem in many societies. This paper assesses the degree of school violence in 11 European countries and analyzes the determinants of being a victim and its ...effect on student performance. The study draws on the international TIMSS 2003 and the British longitudinal NCDS data. The level of school violence is high in most countries but seems not to increase over time. Besides gender, social and migration background and the appearance of students determine being bullied, hurt or stolen from by fellow students. Being a victim has a significantly negative impact on contemporary and later student performance. In addition, the level of educational attainment is affected while there is no direct link to earnings when controlling for education, non-cognitive skills and appearance.
► I assess the degree of school violence in 11 European countries. ► I analyze the determinants of being a victim and its effect on student performance. ► The level of school violence is high in most countries. ► Being a victim has a small but significantly negative impact on performance. ► Educational attainment and thereby earnings are affected by being bullied.
This study focuses on “high achievement but low motivation” phenomenon that is prevalent in East Asian countries and districts, and uses eighth graders in Taipei that participated in TIMSS 2007 as an ...example to examine the direct and indirect effects of academic motivation, positive affect, and instruction on science achievement. Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling were employed to test measurement and structural models and indicated a good fit of the models to the data. The results showed that expectancy and value in science and inquiry-based instruction are three significant and positive predictors of students’ positive affect toward science. In addition, expectancy, positive affect, and three types of instruction all significantly predicted students’ science achievement after the number of books at home and mother’s education were controlled. However, inquiry-based and practice-based instructions were negative predictors whereas traditional instruction was positive. The suppression role of the positive affect was partially supported between academic motivation and science achievement.
Class size reduction policies have been widely implemented around the world in recent years. However, findings about the effects of class size on student achievement have been mixed. This study ...examines class size effects on fourth-grade mathematics achievement in 14 European countries using data from TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) 2011. We employ quasi-experimental methodology (i.e., instrumental variables and regression discontinuity) to facilitate causal inferences of class size effects. Although we find some evidence of class size effects in Romania and the Slovak Republic, overall there are no systematic patterns of class size effects across countries. The results indicate that in most European countries class size reduction may not improve mathematics achievement in fourth grade.
Attention to the quality of human capital in different countries naturally leads to concerns about how school policies relate to student performance. The data from the Third International Mathematics ...and Science Study (TIMSS) provide a way of comparing performance in different schooling systems. The results of analyses of educational production functions within a range of developed and developing countries show general problems with the efficiency of resource usage similar to those found previously in the United States. These effects do not appear to be dictated by variations related to income level of the country or level of resources in the schools. Neither do they appear to be determined by school policies that involve compensatory application of resources. The conventional view that school resources are relatively more important in poor countries also fails to be supported. (DIPF/Orig.)
This study presents empirical findings demonstrating predictive validities of non-cognitive variables for mathematics achievement among primary and secondary school students from cross-country ...perspectives. Results based on TIMSS 2015 assessment showed that confidence was a moderately strong predictor of mathematics achievement in all TIMSS participant countries (100%). Interest, on the other hand, was a moderately strong predictor in most countries for eighth-graders (77%) but only in about a dozen countries for fourth-graders (20%), showing a stronger interest-achievement link for the secondary school students, from the cross-national perspective. The sense of belonging measure demonstrated a lack of its relevance to primary school students' achievement. Further, bullying showed predictive relevance for student achievement only in three countries (South Africa, Jordan, and Egypt). The study concludes that while confidence was a universally relevant predictor of student achievement across all countries/regions, predictive utilities of interest, sense of belonging, and bullying appeared to be heavily dependent on a grade-level and country/regional context. Author abstract
The present study examined to what extent inquiry-based investigation as an instructional approach associated with students' overall science achievement and achievement in cognitive domains, ...including knowing science facts, applying scientific principles, and reasoning with scientific concepts to solve problems. Using TIMSS 2007 science achievement data for the 8th graders in the USA and the corresponding student questionnaires, we found that students' involvement in inquiry-based scientific investigation negatively related to students' overall science achievement. As the skills involved higher cognitive abilities, from knowing to applying and reasoning, the more students were engaged in the investigation, the more their achievement scores dropped. In contrast, students' achievement significantly related to explicit instruction and as the skills involved higher cognitive abilities, the positive significant relationship got more strengthened.
The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 Video Study examined eighth-grade mathematics teaching in the United States and six higher-achieving countries. A range of teaching ...systems were found across higher-achieving countries that balanced attention to challenging content, procedural skill, and conceptual understanding in different ways. The United States displayed a unique system of teaching, not because of any particular feature but because of a constellation of features that reinforced attention to lower-level mathematics skills. The authors argue that these results are relevant for policy (mathematics) debates in the United States because they provide a current account of what actually is happening inside U.S. classrooms and because they demonstrate that current debates often pose overly simple choices. The authors suggest ways to learn from examining teaching systems that are not alien to U.S. teachers but that balance a skill emphasis with attention to challenging mathematics and conceptual development.
The paper analyzes conceptualizations in the science frameworks in three large-scale assessments, Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Programme for International Student Assessment ...(PISA), and National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The assessments have a shared history, but have developed different conceptualizations. The paper asks how and why the frameworks are different and seeks answers by studying their development. The methodology is document analysis by, first, tracing developments within each assessment, next, comparing developments and conceptualization across the assessments, and, last, relating the frameworks to trends of developments in educational theory. The outcome of the analysis provides a complex picture with the assessments following their own lines of development but with influence from trends in assessment and educational theory. Five main conceptualizations are found to have existed over time, with different definition of scientific behavior and explanations to the relationship between knowledge and behavior. The frameworks have moved toward more elaborated explanations of the science domain, providing assessors with better support for operationalizing learning objectives. Currently, the assessments are faced with a challenge of adapting to the "practice turn" in science studies and learning science and thereby accounting for scientific behavior as a community practice. The paper concludes with suggestions for how frameworks may be improved to achieve this aim.
This study is examining differences in language use within different scientific subjects by analysing all grade 8 science items from TIMSS 2011. Four meaning dimensions are identified as central for ...analysing what functions different linguistic features fulfil in scientific language. They concern the level of Personification in a text, and the levels of Packing, Precision and Presentation of information. Results show that the language use in TIMSS in some regards differs between the scientific subjects. The average physics language uses more words. The language use in biology shows higher Packing and lower Precision, whereas physics show the opposite pattern. Although items are generally low in Personification, the language of physics has higher levels of Personification, especially when compared to earth science. The language in chemistry often presents information in ways that are more complex. With the results, the study is challenging the notion that there is a single scientific language.
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