Large Scale Assessment

The book is organized around four sections. The first section is an introduction to the problem of defining the scope and foundations of the development of moral personality and social engagement, in particular,  the development of civic and ethical attitudes and prosocial behavior.
The second section presents a comparative analysis of education policies in Mexico, Chile and Colombia, in particular the way the curricula of civic and citizenship education is designed and implemented. The section also describes and analyzes the way this subject is taught in the classrooms of the primary, secondary and high school levels in the three countries.

The third section includes the results of research projects in Civics and Citizenship Education conducted with different theoretical and methodological models of analysis.

This last section includes some of the best practices of Civic Education that have been developed in Mexico, Colombia, and Chile.

In the last decades, most countries have adopted data-intensive policy instruments aimed at modernizing the governance of education systems, and strengthening their competitiveness. Instruments such as national large-scale assessments and test-based accountabilities have disseminated widely, to the point that they are being enacted in countries with very different administrative traditions and levels of economic development. Nonetheless, comparative research on the trajectories that governance instruments follow in different institutional and socio-economic contexts is still scarce. On the basis of a systematic literature review (n = 158), this paper enquires into the scope and modalities of educational governance change that national large-scale assessments and test-based accountability instruments have triggered in a broad range of institutional settings. The paper shows that, internationally, educational governance reforms advance through path-dependent and contingent processes of policy instrumentation that are markedly conditioned by prevailing politico-administrative regimes. The paper also reflects on the additive and evolving nature of educational governance reforms.

Enhancing parental involvement is a major concern for policymakers in education in many countries. Literature review has exposed strong connections between parental involvements in school activities and student outcomes (also achievements). For exploring the association between parental involvement in school activities and student reading achievement, we used data from the latest cycle of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS 2011) conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). The study assesses reading literacy at Grade 4 using representative samples of students in the participating education systems. PIRLS also collects extensive, internationally comparable information on the background characteristics of the students, their parents, teachers and the schools where they study. We conducted the analyses utilizing information on parental involvement in school activities (as reported by school principals), parental level of education (as reported by parents), and student reading achievement (PIRLS achievement scores). We used data from 54 of 56 education systems that included all relevant data needed for the analyses. Regarding that, this paper seeks to answer two questions. First, is there a relationship between parental involvement in school activities and student reading achievement in the education systems participating in PIRLS 2011? Given that both parental involvement and student achievement are often influenced by the family socio-economic context, the second question is whether parental involvement is associated with the level of parental education within each of the analysed education systems? This paper presents evidence demonstrating that within most of the 54 education systems we analysed, parental involvement in school activities is positively associated with student performance in PIRLS 2011. That is to say, students enrolled in schools with higher parental involvement tend to have higher reading achievement. It also shows that the level of parental involvement in school is positively associated with the level of parental education. Thus, parents with lower education levels are likely to participate less in school and vice versa. The conclusions suggest that the promotion of parental involvement may be an effective strategy for increasing reading achievement, and policies in this direction are particularly relevant for schools with students whose parents have lower levels of education.

This open-access book focuses on trends in educational inequality using twenty years of grade 8 student data collected from 13 education systems by the IEA’s Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) between 1995 and 2015. While the overall positive association between family socioeconomic status (SES) and student achievement is well documented in the literature, the magnitude of this relationship is contingent on social contexts and is expected to vary by education system. Research on how such associations differ across societies and how the strength of these relationships has changed over time is limited. This study, therefore, addresses an important research and policy question by examining changes in the inequality of educational outcomes due to SES over this 20-year period, and also examines the extent to which the performance of students from disadvantaged backgrounds has improved over time in each education system.

Education systems generally aim to narrow the achievement gap between low- and high-SES students and to improve the performance of disadvantaged students. However, the lack of quantifiable and comprehensible measures makes it difficult to assess and monitor the effect of such efforts. In this study, a novel measure of SES that is consistent across all TIMSS cycles allows students to be categorized into different socioeconomic groups. This measure of SES may also contribute to future research using TIMSS trend data.

Readers will gain new insight into how educational inequality has changed in the education systems studied and how such change may relate to the more complex picture of macroeconomic changes in those societies.

This chapter provides insights into the use of cross-national achievement surveys to monitor educational outcomes and develop and implement education policies in Italy. The full roll-out of the national assessment of students and schools has taken place only over the past 10 years in Italy, and so far weak reciprocities can be reported between data from cross-national surveys and those from the national assessment programme. Furthermore, educational policies and reforms have been informed not by the findings of international assessments, but rather by multiple uncoordinated and sometimes contradictory attempts to mitigate old deficiencies in the education system without using evidence-based research capable of empirically demonstrating correlations between structural problems and defined targets. The chapter begins by introducing the Italian education system, its governance and reforms, as well as organisational shifts in the recent past. It then highlights the main performance patterns of the Italian education system in relation to international achievement surveys. A third section outlines the main features of the monitoring processes applied to the Italian education system, their marked incorporation of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment methods and limited use of policy drivers. Finally, we highlight intended and unintended outcomes that derive from recent reforms.

International assessments, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), are being used to recommend educational policies to improve student achievement. This study shows that the cross-sectional estimates behind such recommendations may be biased. We use a unique data set from one country that applied the PISA mathematics test in 2012 in ninth grade to all students who had taken the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS) test in 2011 and collected information on students’ teachers in ninth grade. These data allowed us to more precisely estimate the effects of classroom variables on students’ PISA performance. Our
results suggest that the positive roles of teacher ‘‘quality’’ and ‘opportunity to learn’’ in improving student performance are much more modest than claimed in PISA documents

We propose a multivariate multilevel model for the analysis of the Italian sample of the TIMSS & PIRLS 2011 Combined International Database on 4th grade students. The multivariate model jointly considers educational achievement on Reading, Mathematics and Science, thus allowing us to test for differential effects of the covariates on the three scores. The multilevel approach allows us to disentangle student and contextual factors affecting achievement, also considering territorial differences in wealth. The proportion of variability at class level is relevant even after controlling for the observed factors. The residual analysis allows us to locate classes with extremely high or low effectiveness.

La Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC), en México, desarrolla su quehacer formativo bajo un esquema basado en la rendición de cuentas, debido a una alta demanda de competitividad dada su condición de institución pública y su localización transfronteriza con Estados Unidos de América. En ese marco, y con la finalidad de valorar las competencias de los egresados de la Licenciatura en Actividad Física y Deportes (LAFyD), la Facultad de Deportes se preocupó por generar un insumo de retroalimentación de la formación de sus estudiantes, ello a través de una evaluación a gran escala de las
competencias de sus egresados, ejercicio inédito en el país para este tipo de formación.

Actualmente se construye una evaluación del egreso bajo una perspectiva comprensiva con el uso de dos instrumentos. El primero de ellos enfocado en la medición de competencias de la LAFyD establecidas en el currículum, particularmente en el perfil de egreso de esta formación profesional; el segundo es un cuestionario dirigido a estudiantes para conocer las competencias intra e interpersonales que, de acuerdo con la literatura, influyen en resultados de la formación profesional.

El desarrollo del trabajo se fundamenta en la perspectiva de evaluación comprensiva (mayoritariamente utilizada en la evaluación de programas educativos), la cual resalta la participación de la comunidad en
la definición del objeto por evaluar. Esta evaluación no solo representa un ejercicio inédito en la formación en actividad física, sino que se fundamentó en la perspectiva de la comunidad académica y no
una postura centrada solo en las propiedades psicométricas de los instrumentos, características de este tipo de ejercicios.

Home shared book reading during the preschool years is a strong predictor of students’ reading achievement in primary school, and, according to Sénéchal (2012), it can benefit more children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. This study examines the association between frequency of book reading before the start of compulsory education and the reading achievement of 4th-grade students whose parents have high and low education levels in 22 European countries. Using data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS 2011), we show that the contribution of shared reading for the achievement of students from distinct SES backgrounds is different in different countries and that shared reading does not always benefit more children from low-SES backgrounds. Results are discussed in light of Sénéchal’s home literacy model, the dynamics of cultural capital, and current policy efforts to
support children’s literacy development in European ountries.