Policy experimentation - Udir.no
Download
Report
Transcript Policy experimentation - Udir.no
Northern Lights TIMSS –PIRLS 2011
Sten Ludvigsen,
University of Oslo
Ludvigsen-utvalget
Fremtidens skole
1
Northern Lights …
•
Structure for the summary
•
•
•
•
Mandate
Premises and concepts
Findings – policy
Configuration of findings
Ludvigsen-utvalget
2
Northern Lights ….
•
Mandat
• Part 1
• the historical development in the subjects within
the primary and secondary school
• the subjects of the primary and secondary school
in relation to naturally comparable countries
• reports and recommendations from national and
international stakeholders being relevant for the
primary and secondary school connected to
future requests for competence (21-century skills,
key competences…).
Ludvigsen-utvalget
3
Northern Lights …..
Mandate
• Part 2
• to what extent the contents of the subjects covers
the competences and the basic skills needed in a
future society and working life
• what changes to be made if these competences
and skills to a larger extent should characterize
the contents of the training,
• if today`s structure of subjects should continue to
form the basis, or if the contents in the training
should be structured in other manners and, …
Ludvigsen-utvalget
4
Northern Lights ….
•
Assumption – and challenge
• The analysis that takes a system view will lack necessary details,
while detailed studies of learning and teaching will lack a clear
connection to the overall system.
• The educational system is constituted by components that are
loosely coupled. The implication is that we need to choose a set
of analytic premises for how to integrate different lines of
research.
• Questions: How do we build evidence for policy? What kind of
configuration of results are most effective to improve the
performance of the system? How can we redesign subjects?
Ludvigsen-utvalget
5
Evidence of what?
Where to start?
Policy – or normative foundations
Units of analysis
Levels of specification
Empirical foundation – different types of
evidence
Units of analysis
Levels of specification
Replication, trends, longitudinal studies
The future of schooling..
• Empirical – statistical orientation
• Analytic approach to the curriculum
• In-depth learning and learning progression as
concepts
• Variation between subjects and countries' – level
of specification
• Education psychology within domains
Learning outcomes - status
8
TIMSS, PIRLS, PISA, ICCE
• Performance= cognition and culture
• Measures: descriptive
• Individual cognition (generic and domain specific
knowledge
• Variation between students
• Variation between local cultures
• Knowledge and cultures become activated in interaction
• Expectation and motivation (internal/external): played out
in local cultures
9
Northern Lights…..
• Early Predictors of High School Mathematics Achievement: Robert S.
Siegler et al. Psychological Science, 23, 691-697
• In the present study, we examine sources of continuity in
mathematical knowledge from fifth grade through high
school. We were particularly interested in testing the
hypothesis that early knowledge of fractions is uniquely
predictive of later knowledge of algebra and overall
mathematics achievement.
Northern Lights…
• Analyses of large, nationally-representative,
longitudinal data sets from the U.S. and the UK
revealed that elementary school students’
knowledge of fractions and division uniquely
predict those students’ knowledge of algebra and
overall mathematics achievement in high school,
five or six years later, even after statistically
controlling for other types of mathematical
knowledge, general intellectual ability, working
memory, and family income and education.
Siegler, R. S. et al (2012). Early predictors of high school
.
mathematics achievement.
• The unique predictive value of early fractions and division
knowledge seems to be due to the combination of many
students not mastering fractions and division and to those
operations being essential for more advanced mathematics,
rather than to the relatively great difficulty of fractions and
division alone.
Aggregation – relevance for….
• School performance differences and policy variations in Finland,
Norway and Sweden: Kajsa Yang Hansen, Jan-Eric Gustafsson and
Monica Rosén
• The results show a clear pattern of school-level differences in
performance between the three Nordic countries.
– In Finland, there are no school differences, neither in Grade 4 nor in
Grade 8.
– In Sweden, in contrast, the school differences in level of performance
are quite substantial, and this is also the case for Norway.
– In Norway around 10 percent of the student differences in
performance are accounted for by school differences for both Grade 4
and Grade 8. In Sweden, the school differences for Grade 8 are of the
same size, but they are larger for Grade 4 (15 – 19 percent).
Northern Lights
• Perhaps the most striking empirical result of the present study is
the very substantial amount of classroom variation in Finland,
amounting to 12–13 percent for Grade 4 and at least twice as much
for Grade 8.
• The estimates are highly similar across rural and urban schools. This
was an unexpected finding, and our study includes few variables
that could help us understand this result. In urban schools, a part
of the between-class variance (around 20–25 percent) is due to SES,
and for rural Grade 8 schools, SES accounts for about 13 percent.
• Thus, a part of the classroom variance may be due to the sorting of
students into different classrooms on the basis of level of
performance.
– The autonomi of the teacher – evidence here is weaker?
Northern lights …
• Highlight:
• These results show substantial differences
between the countries in terms of whether
there are performance differences at the
classroom- or the school-level.
• What to do – implications for policy?
Northern Lights …..
• Characteristics of low and top performers in reading
and mathematics. Exploratory analysis of 4th grade
PIRLS and TIMSS data in the Nordic countries. Sari
Sulkunen, Kari Nissinen and Pekka Kupari
– prior knowledge as predictor for low and high
performance
Northern Lights
• The individualised approach provides a solid framework for
learning for students with a weak start and disadvantages at
school for one reason or another.
• However, this approach makes teaching a very demanding
task. This puts a lot of pressure on teachers’ education and
continuous professional development in topics such as
teaching materials and methods, assessment and diagnosing
learning problems.
– Is it empirically possible to do this without reorganizing the classroom/students
Northern Lights ….
• Teacher attitudes and practices in international studies and their
relationships to PISA performance: Nordic countries in an international
context. Ragnar F. Ólafsson and Júlíus K. Björnsson.
• Andrews (2010) points out that “teachers are proxies for
an educational system’s values and there is growing
evidence that mathematics teachers in one country
behave in ways that identify them more closely with
teachers in their own country than teachers elsewhere”
(Andrews, 2010, p. 21).
Northern lights…
• Stigler and Hiebert (2004) profess the virtues of a practice much in
line with the one described by the main dimensions used in the
TALIS study (Ólafsson et al. 2012) and consistent with the one
identified in the analysis presented here.
• They claim that teaching can only change to the better “by using
methods known to change culture. Primary among these methods
is the analysis of practice, which brings cultural routines to
awareness so that teachers can consciously evaluate and improve
them” (Stigler and Hiebert, 2004, p. 17).
• The Nordic countries reveal themselves to be at the same extremity
of the engagement dimension as many other Western European
countries, and they are characterised be comparatively less
engagement in their teaching and interactions with students, as
the term is defined here: by the correlations of the individual
variables with the dimension identified by the MDS.
Change in curriculum
Northern Lights
• Mathematics in the Nordic countries – Trends
and challenges in students’ achievement in
Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark
• Liv Sissel Grønmo and Arne Hole
Figure 6 Students’ performance in different domains in mathematics (numbers, algebra,
geometry and statistics) for Grade 8 in TIMSS 2011 for Norway, Sweden and Finland in lower
secondary school.
600
580
560
540
520
500
480
460
440
420
400
Numbers
Algebra
Finland
Geometry
Norway
Sweden
Statistics
Figure 10 The teachers’ reports in the Nordic countries and the international
mean in TIMSS 2011 on the TIMSS’ mathematics content domains, presented
as percentages of the total number of topics in each domain for Grade 8.
Northern Lights …
• A Nordic comparison of national objectives for
reading instruction and teachers’ responses
about actual reading practice. Louise Rønberg
and Jan Mejding
Northern Lights …
• Swedish and Norwegian teachers have the most
varied used of both literary and informational
text types during a week, whereas Finnish
teachers give informational texts a higher priority
than literary texts – and the opposite is apparent
for Danish teachers.
• The Finnish and Norwegian teachers prioritise
activities that enhance students’ oral reading
fluency, which is important for reading
comprehension development, to a greater extent
than teachers in Denmark and Sweden do.
Northern Lights ….
• The specificity and transparency vary greatly
in the objectives, from broad outlines in
Norway to more specific and functional goals
in Finland.
• It appears that the Finnish descriptions are
more aligned with current empirical research
on reading comprehension.
Northern Lights …
• Even though we do not in all cases find that the
objectives stated in the national guidelines are
reflected in the teachers’ actual practices, they do
play a role in shaping teacher behaviour and
activities in the classroom.
• It is therefore very important, when revising the
official objectives for reading, that an effort is
made to give clear and adequate descriptions
based on scientific knowledge about the teaching
of reading that can easily be transformed by the
teachers into daily practices.
Northern Lights
• What kind of results/evidence is interesting
for
• National agencies
• Municipalities
• Schools
• Teachers in subject
• Aggregation and decomposing results
• What kind of results can be used for improving
practices?
Test
Data
From
grad 5
and 8
cognitive
Findings
from the
evaluation
of the KP Survey
Dicourse
analysis
Classrooms
etc
TIMSS
PIRLS
PISA
ICCE
Cognitive +
attitudes
Teaching and
learning in
school
Data from school
practice
National data from the
quality assurance
system
Northern Lights
• The studies provide important measures of trends in students’
learning outcomes,
– strong
• and through surveys the countries also receive rich background
information on students, their learning environment
– medium
• and the organisation of the schools
– weak
Reconfiguring research strands
• Learning outcomes – Individual/System
• Test, international studies
• Drop out rate – I/S
• School environment – meso
• Background variable I/S
• School as institution – the black box
• Implementation studies
• School change studies
• School effectiveness
School-systems as loosely coupled systems
and different cultures
Ministry of
Education
Development
Schools and
classrooms
Students
and
parents
Policy formation
Implementation
of policy
Systemic change
Change agents
Muncipali
-ties
The
Directorate
for
education
Learning
goal and
oucomes
Teachers
competence
National
results
Teachers
Schools as loosely coupled systems and
different cultures
Headmaster
Leader of
development
Development
groups
Domain/
themes
Development
groups
Teachers
Leader
group
The
class
Teachers
Students
Groups
of
students
Teacher
groups
Northern Lights …..
•
Global drivers for change (in Norway)
Subjects need to be redesigned
Scientific knowledge expanding
Changes in the population
Changes in patterns of immigration
Technologies
Advanced competences in HE and work life
(social, cognitive and emotional)
• Globalization and individualization
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ludvigsen-utvalget
34