Steering the National: Exploring the Education Policy Uses of PISA in Spain

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Engel, Laura C.

2015-01-01

This article presents findings from a recent study of the education policy uses and impact of international large-scale assessments, namely the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The paper focuses on two overlapping dimensions of PISA's education policy use in the context of Spain. These include political dimensions, such as…

Explaining the Difference between PISA 2009 Reading Scores in Finland and Estonia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mikk, Jaan

2015-01-01

The aim of the study was to explain the difference between the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 reading results for Finland and Estonia using characteristics of teaching and learning, and characteristics of the overall development of these countries. PISA data were collected via a reading test and student questionnaires…

The Relevance and Consequences of PISA Science in a Danish Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dolin, Jens; Krogh, Lars Brian

2010-01-01

This article reports a case study that described and analyzed the changes in the Danish school culture induced and encouraged by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results. The educational policy and reforms that were temporally connected with the publication of the PISA 2000 results are outlined and the related…

The Danger of Inadequate Conceptualisation in PISA for Education Policy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gaber, Slavko; Cankar, Gregor; Umek, Ljubica Marjanovic; Tasner, Veronika

2012-01-01

Due to the broad acceptance of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and other comparative studies as instruments of policymaking, its accuracy is essential. This article attempts to demonstrate omissions in the conceptualisation, and consequently in calculation and interpretation, of one of the central points of PISA 2006 and…

PISA for Schools: Topological Rationality and New Spaces of the OECD's Global Educational

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewis, Steven; Sellar, Sam; Lingard, Bob

2016-01-01

This article examines the OECD's new PISA-based Test for Schools ("PISA for Schools") program. PISA for Schools is part of the expanding education work of the OECD, building upon main PISA to enable school-to-schooling system comparisons. We examine the development of PISA for Schools, the nature of the instrument, and some initial…

Placing PISA and PISA for Schools in Two Federalisms, Australia and the USA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lingard, Bob; Lewis, Steven

2017-01-01

This paper accepts that the OECD's PISA has become influential in policy terms globally, but analyses the ways that the main PISA and PISA for Schools tests are positioned differently in Australia and the USA because of contrasting educational federalisms in the two nations. Our argument is that while PISA is undoubtedly influential, its effects…

K-12 Education in Germany: Curriculum and PISA 2015

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Atmacasoy, Abdullah

2017-01-01

Against the backdrop of PISA 2015 results, the aim of this study is to review basic structures of German education system by exploring curriculum development process, key features of each educational level and teacher education in order to grasp how Germany has amended her poor performance after PISA 2000 and persistently improved the quality of…

What PISA Knows and Can Do: Studying the Role of National Actors in the Making of PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grek, Sotiria

2012-01-01

This article builds on previous research which has emphasised the role of comparisons of educational performance in creating visibility and borderlessness, and moves the argument a point further. The article claims that apart from increased visibility, what the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has brought to education systems…

The influence of educational context on science learning: a cross-national analysis of PISA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Coll, Richard K.; Dahsah, Chanyah; Faikhamta, Chatree

2010-04-01

The literature is replete with studies about the importance of context in relation to teaching and learning. Major international studies such as PISA, among others, attempt to develop an understanding of achievement in science learning in a variety of educational contexts. Here we explore the influence of educational context itself on science learning as measured by PISA. Comparison is made between two countries: one developed or 'western' nation, New Zealand, and one non-western developing nation from southeast Asia, Thailand. In this work the authors seek to establish links between the nature of the educational context (based on Lave's notion of situated cognition) and achievement in the PISA science evaluation exercise.

Fifteen Years Looking at the Mirror: On the Presence of PISA in Education Policy Processes (Portugal, 2000-2016)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carvalho, Luís Miguel; Costa, Estela; Gonçalves, Catarina

2017-01-01

This article describes and discusses what happens when knowledge for policy generated within PISA is received by its target audience: what have the Portuguese policy actors been doing with PISA data and analysis when they consider, express and justify their choices? Drawing on previous and current studies, using interview materials and formal and…

Revisiting the Relationship between International Assessment Outcomes and Educational Production: Evidence From a Longitudinal PISA-TIMSS Sample

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carnoy, Martin; Khavenson, Tatiana; Loyalka, Prashant; Schmidt, William H.; Zakharov, Andrey

2016-01-01

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…

German and Japanese Education in the Shadow--Do Out-of-School Lessons Really Contribute to Class Reproduction?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Entrich, Steve R.

2014-01-01

Considering the great impact the first PISA-results caused in Germany and Japan, this study seeks to provide an explanation for the continuous higher achievement rates of students in the PISA-winner country Japan compared to their German peers. Another great difference between the two participants that was detected in PISA is the correlation…

PISA 2009 at a Glance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing (NJ3), 2011

2011-01-01

"PISA 2009 at a Glance" is a companion publication to "PISA 2009 Results", the six-volume report on the 2009 survey conducted by the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA assesses the extent to which students near the end of compulsory education have acquired some of the knowledge and skills that…

Are Affective Factors a Good Predictor of Science Achievement? Examining the Role of Affective Factors Based on PISA 2006

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ozel, Murat; Caglak, Serdar; Erdogan, Mehmet

2013-01-01

This study investigated how affective factors like attitude and motivation contribute to science achievement in PISA 2006 using linear structural modeling. The data set of PISA 2006 collected from 4942 fifteen-year-old Turkish students (2290 females, 2652 males) was used for the statistical analyses. A total of 42 selected items on a four point…

Policy and Practice Implications of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2000. Report of the International Reading Association PISA Task Force.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Topping, Keith; Valtin, Renate; Roller, Cathy; Brozo, William; Dionisio, M. Lourdes

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a study of comparisons. Subjects, 15-year-old students from 32 participating countries, were compared in their abilities to "use literacy knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges," as assessed on a two-hour, paper-and-pencil test. Students also responded to a…

Going beyond the "PISA Shock" Discourse: An Analysis of the Cognitive Reception of PISA in Six European Countries, 2001-2008

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pons, Xavier

2012-01-01

The aim of this article is to open discussion by analysing the cognitive reception of PISA in six European countries which were studied in the European collective research project KNOWandPOL (Knowledge and Policy in Education and Health Sectors). Reception does not mean here a simple vertical transmission of messages from the international level…

PISA for Development and the Sustainable Development Goals. PISA for Development Brief 17

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2017

2017-01-01

The PISA for Development brief series is a set of concise monthly education policy-oriented notes published by the OECD which are designed to describe a specific PISA for Development topic. In this brief, PISA's role in monitoring the fourth United Nations Sustainable Development Goal--to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and…

PISA for Development System-Level Data. PISA for Development Brief 18

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2017

2017-01-01

The PISA for Development brief series is a set of concise monthly education policy-oriented notes published by the OECD which are designed to describe a specific PISA for Development topic. In this brief, the role of PISA-D to assesses students' skills and knowledge in three cognitive domains--reading, mathematics and science--and collection of…

On the Supranational Spell of PISA in Policy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baird, Jo-Anne; Johnson, Sandra; Hopfenbeck, Therese N.; Isaacs, Talia; Sprague, Terra; Stobart, Gordon; Yu, Guoxing

2016-01-01

Background: PISA results appear to have a large impact upon government policy. The phenomenon is growing, with more countries taking part in PISA testing and politicians pointing to PISA results as reasons for their reforms. Purpose: The aims of this research were to depict the policy reactions to PISA across a number of jurisdictions, to see…

Building Capacity for Assessment in PISA for Development Countries. PISA for Development Brief 14

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2017

2017-01-01

This article explains how the Program for International Student Initiative for Development (PISA-D) initiative aims to make PISA more accessible to middle- and low-income countries. A key component of PISA-D is building capacity in the participating countries for managing large-scale student learning assessments and using the results to support…

Why Do Boys and Girls Perform Differently on PISA Reading in Finland? The Effects of Reading Fluency, Achievement Behaviour, Leisure Reading and Homework Activity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Torppa, Minna; Eklund, Kenneth; Sulkunen, Sari; Niemi, Pekka; Ahonen, Timo

2018-01-01

The present study examined gender gap in Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) Reading and mediators of the gender gap in a Finnish sample (n = 1,309). We examined whether the gender gap in PISA Reading performance can be understood via the effects of reading fluency, achievement behaviour (mastery orientation and task-avoidant…

PISA and TIMSS Science Score, Which Clock Is More Accurate to Indicate National Science and Technology Competitiveness?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shi, Wei-Zhao; He, Xiqin; Wang, Yan; Fan, Zeng-Guang; Guo, Liangdong

2016-01-01

In 2015, PISA and TIMSS are coming up to us together. In this study, the data from PISA and TIMSS are used to investigate that which one is a better indicator of national science and technology (S&T) competitiveness? Number of S & T journal articles (per million people) is used as a measure to represent the national S&T…

International note: what factors are associated with reading, mathematics, and science literacy of Indian adolescents? A multilevel examination.

PubMed

Areepattamannil, Shaljan

2014-06-01

A sample of 15-year-olds in India took part in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) for the first time in 2010. The PISA reading, mathematics, and science literacy scores of Indian adolescents were considerably lower than their counterparts in most PISA participating countries. In order to explore potential reasons for this, the present study, therefore, drawing on data from the fourth cycle of PISA and employing multilevel modeling, examined the relations of student- and school-level factors to reading, mathematics, and science literacy among 4826 15-year-old students from 213 schools in India. Gender, metacognitive learning strategies, students' positive attitudes toward school, and students' positive perceptions of classroom climate were found to be significantly associated with Indian adolescents' performance on the PISA assessment. Copyright © 2014 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Findings from the PISA for Development Field Trial of the School-Based Assessment. PISA for Development Brief 16

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2017

2017-01-01

The PISA for Development (PISA-D) project aims to make PISA more accessible and relevant to middle- and low-income countries by introducing new features to the assessment, including tests that are specially designed to measure lower levels of performance, contextual questionnaires that better reflect the situations of 15-year-olds across a diverse…

Competitive Comparison and PISA Bragging Rights: Sub-National Uses of the OECD's PISA in Canada and the USA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Engel, Laura C.; Frizzell, Matthew O.

2015-01-01

Participation in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) has continuously expanded: from 43 systems in 2000 to 65 systems in the 2012 cycle, with 71 signed up for PISA 2015. There also has been a growth in sub-national participation, expanding PISA's reach beyond the…

The Big Improvement in PISA 2009 Reading Achievements in Serbia: Improvement of the Quality of Education or Something Else?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pavlovic Babic, Dragica; Baucal, Aleksandar

2011-01-01

The PISA 2009 results in Serbia show a big improvement in reading literacy compared to 2006 -- the average score is 41 points higher, which is equal to the effect of a whole year of schooling in OECD countries and represents the second highest improvement ever recorded in a PISA study. In the present paper, we discuss potential reasons for such a…

The students' ability in the mathematical literacy for uncertainty problems on the PISA adaptation test

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Julie, Hongki; Sanjaya, Febi; Anggoro, Ant. Yudhi

2017-08-01

One of purposes of this study was to describe the solution profile of the junior high school students for the PISA adaptation test. The procedures conducted by researchers to achieve this objective were (1) adapting the PISA test, (2) validating the adapting PISA test, (3) asking junior high school students to do the adapting PISA test, and (4) making the students' solution profile. The PISA problems for mathematics could be classified into four areas, namely quantity, space and shape, change and relationship, and uncertainty. The research results that would be presented in this paper were the result test for uncertainty problems. In the adapting PISA test, there were fifteen questions. Subjects in this study were 18 students from 11 junior high schools in Yogyakarta, Central Java, and Banten. The type of research that used by the researchers was a qualitative research. For the first uncertainty problem in the adapting test, 66.67% of students reached level 3. For the second uncertainty problem in the adapting test, 44.44% of students achieved level 4, and 33.33% of students reached level 3. For the third uncertainty problem in the adapting test n, 38.89% of students achieved level 5, 11.11% of students reached level 4, and 5.56% of students achieved level 3. For the part a of the fourth uncertainty problem in the adapting test, 72.22% of students reached level 4 and for the part b of the fourth uncertainty problem in the adapting test, 83.33% students achieved level 4.

The students’ ability in mathematical literacy for the quantity, and the change and relationship problems on the PISA adaptation test

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Julie, Hongki; Sanjaya, Febi; Yudhi Anggoro, Ant.

2017-09-01

One of purposes of this study was to describe the solution profile of the junior high school students for the PISA adaptation test. The procedures conducted by researchers to achieve this objective were (1) adapting the PISA test, (2) validating the adapting PISA test, (3) asking junior high school students to do the adapting PISA test, and (4) making the students’ solution profile. The PISA problems for mathematics could be classified into four areas, namely quantity, space and shape, change and relationship, and uncertainty. The research results that would be presented in this paper were the result test for quantity, and change and relationship problems. In the adapting PISA test, there were fifteen questions that consist of two questions for the quantity group, six questions for space and shape group, three questions for the change and relationship group, and four questions for uncertainty. Subjects in this study were 18 students from 11 junior high schools in Yogyakarta, Central Java, and Banten. The type of research that used by the researchers was a qualitative research. For the first quantity problem, there were 38.89 % students who achieved level 3. For the second quantity problem, there were 88.89 % students who achieved level 2. For part a of the first change and relationship problem, there were 55.56 % students who achieved level 5. For part b of the first change and relationship problem, there were 77.78 % students who achieved level 2. For the second change and relationship problem, there were 38.89 % students who achieved level 2.

PISA Functional Literacy as Represented in Taiwanese Mathematics Textbooks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Suiv

2013-01-01

PISA is a large international educational assessment activity coordinated by the "Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development" (OECD). PISA's "Functional Literacy" emphasizes the theoretical concept of mathematics as a human activity. From this pedagogical point of view, PISA's "mathematization cycle"…

In Vitro Validation of Real-Time Three-Dimensional Color Doppler Echocardiography for Direct Measurement of Proximal Isovelocity Surface Area in Mitral Regurgitation

PubMed Central

Little, Stephen H.; Igo, Stephen R.; Pirat, Bahar; McCulloch, Marti; Hartley, Craig J.; Nosé, Yukihiko; Zoghbi, William A.

2012-01-01

The 2-dimensional (2D) color Doppler (2D-CD) proximal isovelocity surface area (PISA) method assumes a hemispheric flow convergence zone to estimate transvalvular flow. Recently developed 3-dimensional (3D)-CD can directly visualize PISA shape and surface area without geometric assumptions. To validate a novel method to directly measure PISA using real-time 3D-CD echocardiography, a circulatory loop with an ultrasound imaging chamber was created to model mitral regurgitation (MR). Thirty-two different regurgitant flow conditions were tested using symmetric and asymmetric flow orifices. Three-dimensional–PISA was reconstructed from a hand-held real-time 3D-CD data set. Regurgitant volume was derived using both 2D-CD and 3D-CD PISA methods, and each was compared against a flowmeter standard. The circulatory loop achieved regurgitant volume within the clinical range of MR (11 to 84 ml). Three-dimensional–PISA geometry reflected the 2D geometry of the regurgitant orifice. Correlation between the 2D-PISA method regurgitant volume and actual regurgitant volume was significant (r2 = 0.47, p <0.001). Mean 2D-PISA regurgitant volume underestimate was 19.1 ± 25 ml (2 SDs). For the 3D-PISA method, correlation with actual regurgitant volume was significant (r2 = 0.92, p <0.001), with a mean regurgitant volume underestimate of 2.7 ± 10 ml (2 SDs). The 3D-PISA method showed less regurgitant volume underestimation for all orifice shapes and regurgitant volumes tested. In conclusion, in an in vitro model of MR, 3D-CD was used to directly measure PISA without geometric assumption. Compared with conventional 2D-PISA, regurgitant volume was more accurate when derived from 3D-PISA across symmetric and asymmetric orifices within a broad range of hemodynamic flow conditions. PMID:17493476

GENDER EQUALITY AND THE GENDER GAP IN MATHEMATICS.

PubMed

Tao, Hung-Lin; Michalopoulos, Christos

2018-03-01

A gender gap has been found in mathematics (boys outperform girls) that has prevailed across countries for many decades. Whether this gap results from nature or nurture has been hotly debated. Using the evidence of PISA 2003 and the gender equality index of 2003, some researchers have argued that an improvement in gender equality reduces the gender gap in mathematics. This study used five waves of country-level PISA data and, controlling for country fixed effects, found no evidence to support this argument. Furthermore, individual data for PISA 2012 and the multilevel data model were used. The conclusion drawn also does not support the argument. In fact, the relationship between gender equality and the gender gap in mathematics vanished after PISA 2003.

Comparison of photo- and thermally initiated polymerization-induced self-assembly: a lack of end group fidelity drives the formation of higher order morphologies† †Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Additional NMR spectra, SEC, TEM and DLS data as well as histograms for the PEG113–PHPMA400 formulations and MALDI-ToF data for the oligomer study. See DOI: 10.1039/c7py00407a

PubMed Central

Blackman, Lewis D.; Doncom, Kay E. B.

2017-01-01

Polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) is an emerging industrially relevant technology, which allows the preparation of defined and predictable polymer self-assemblies with a wide range of morphologies. In recent years, interest has turned to photoinitiated PISA processes, which show markedly accelerated reaction kinetics and milder conditions, thereby making it an attractive alternative to thermally initiated PISA. Herein, we attempt to elucidate the differences between these two initiation methods using isothermally derived phase diagrams of a well-documented poly(ethylene glycol)-b-(2-hydroxypropyl methacrylate) (PEG-b-HPMA) PISA system. By studying the influence of the intensity of the light source used, as well as an investigation into the thermodynamically favorable morphologies, the factors dictating differences in the obtained morphologies when comparing photo- and thermally initiated PISA were explored. Our findings indicate that differences in a combination of both reaction kinetics and end group fidelity led to the observed discrepencies between the two techniques. We find that the loss of the end group in photoinitiated PISA drives the formation of higher order structures and that a morphological transition from worms to unilamellar vesicles could be induced by extended periods of light and heat irradiation. Our findings demonstrate that PISA of identical block copolymers by the two different initiation methods can lead to structures that are both chemically and morphologically distinct. PMID:29225706

Seeing Like PISA: A Cautionary Tale about the Performativity of International Assessments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gorur, Radhika

2016-01-01

PISA is an extremely influential large-scale assessment, and its "policy lessons" are being incorporated in a range of nations all over the world. In this paper I argue that not only is PISA influencing policies and practices, but also that "seeing like PISA" is becoming a widespread phenomenon. Globally, education…

Searching for Authentic Context in Designing PISA-like Mathematics Problem: From Indoor to Outdoor Field Experience

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Siswono, T. Y. E.; Kohar, A. W.; Rosyidi, A. H.; Hartono, S.; Masriyah

2018-01-01

Designing problem like in PISA is known as a challenging activity for teachers particularly as the use of authentic context within that type of problem. This paper aims to describe the experiences of secondary mathematics teachers in designing PISA-like problems within an innovative training program focusing on building teachers’ understanding on the concept of mathematical literacy. The teachers were engaged in a set of problem-solving and problem-posing activities using PISA-based problem within indoor and outdoor field experiences. Within indoor field experience, the teachers worked collaboratively in groups on designing PISA-like problems with a given context through problem generation and reformulation techniques. Within outdoor field experience, they worked on designing PISA-like problems with self-chosen context from the place where the outdoor field experience took place. Our analysis indicates that there were improvements on the PISA-like problems designed by teachers based on its level use of context from indoor to outdoor experience. Also, the teachers were relatively successful with creating appropriate and motivating contexts by harnessing a variety of context consisting of personal, occupational, societal, and scientific contexts. However, they still experienced difficulties in turning these contexts into an appropriate problem satisfying PISA framework such as regarding authenticity of context use, language structure, and PISA task profile.

Understanding the Relationships among PISA Scores, Economic Growth and Employment in Different Sectors: A Cross-Country Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheung, Hoi Yan; Chan, Alex W. H.

2008-01-01

This study investigates the relationship between Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores in mathematics, science and reading and the employment rates in the following four economic activities: research and development, agriculture, industry, and service industries. Thirty-three countries were included in the study, and most…

Direct measurement of proximal isovelocity surface area by real-time three-dimensional color Doppler for quantitation of aortic regurgitant volume: an in vitro validation.

PubMed

Pirat, Bahar; Little, Stephen H; Igo, Stephen R; McCulloch, Marti; Nosé, Yukihiko; Hartley, Craig J; Zoghbi, William A

2009-03-01

The proximal isovelocity surface area (PISA) method is useful in the quantitation of aortic regurgitation (AR). We hypothesized that actual measurement of PISA provided with real-time 3-dimensional (3D) color Doppler yields more accurate regurgitant volumes than those estimated by 2-dimensional (2D) color Doppler PISA. We developed a pulsatile flow model for AR with an imaging chamber in which interchangeable regurgitant orifices with defined shapes and areas were incorporated. An ultrasonic flow meter was used to calculate the reference regurgitant volumes. A total of 29 different flow conditions for 5 orifices with different shapes were tested at a rate of 72 beats/min. 2D PISA was calculated as 2pi r(2), and 3D PISA was measured from 8 equidistant radial planes of the 3D PISA. Regurgitant volume was derived as PISA x aliasing velocity x time velocity integral of AR/peak AR velocity. Regurgitant volumes by flow meter ranged between 12.6 and 30.6 mL/beat (mean 21.4 +/- 5.5 mL/beat). Regurgitant volumes estimated by 2D PISA correlated well with volumes measured by flow meter (r = 0.69); however, a significant underestimation was observed (y = 0.5x + 0.6). Correlation with flow meter volumes was stronger for 3D PISA-derived regurgitant volumes (r = 0.83); significantly less underestimation of regurgitant volumes was seen, with a regression line close to identity (y = 0.9x + 3.9). Direct measurement of PISA is feasible, without geometric assumptions, using real-time 3D color Doppler. Calculation of aortic regurgitant volumes with 3D color Doppler using this methodology is more accurate than conventional 2D method with hemispheric PISA assumption.

Validating the Interpretations of PISA and TIMSS Tasks: A Rating Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rindermann, Heiner; Baumeister, Antonia E. E.

2015-01-01

Scholastic tests regard cognitive abilities to be domain-specific competences. However, high correlations between competences indicate either high task similarity or a dependence on common factors. The present rating study examined the validity of 12 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Third or Trends in International…

The Leaning (Toppling?) Tower of PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bracey, Gerald W.

2008-01-01

One can not help but notice that the education community's professional fear-mongers focus heavily on PISA (Program of International Student Assessment) and rarely mention TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) or PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Study) in their discussion of the state of education in the United…

Making Education Count for Development: Data Collection and Availability in Six PISA for Development Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2016

2016-01-01

This report reviews the collection, availability and quality of system-level data and metadata on education from countries participating in the PISA for Development project: Cambodia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Senegal and Zambia. PISA for Development aims to increase low income countries' use of PISA assessments for monitoring progress towards…

How Does PISA Assess Science Literacy? PISA in Focus. No. 66

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2016

2016-01-01

The most recent round of the assessment, PISA 2015, focused on 15-year-olds' science literacy, defined as "the ability to engage with science-related issues, and with the ideas of science, as a reflective citizen". To succeed on the PISA science test, students had to display their mastery of three skills: explaining phenomena…

PISA: Multiple 'Truths' and Mediatised Global Governance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grey, Sue; Morris, Paul

2018-01-01

The OECD's PISA programme has been portrayed as central to the emergence of a regime of global educational governance and the subsequent convergence of policies towards a standardised model. Whilst there is an extensive literature describing PISA's impact on education policies, there is a paucity of analysis of how PISA data is presented to the…

Financial Literacy of 15-Year-Olds: Results from PISA 2012. Data Point. NCES 2014-102

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gonzales, Patrick; Kelly, Dana

2014-01-01

This Data Point uses data from the 2012 administration of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) financial literacy assessment. PISA is an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy and, in 2012, general problem solving and financial literacy. PISA is coordinated by the…

The Experience of Middle-Income Countries Participating in PISA 2000. PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lockheed, Marlaine E.

2015-01-01

This report provides a systematic review and empirical evidence related to the experiences of middle-income countries and economies participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 2000 to 2015. PISA is a triennial survey that aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old…

A systems theory approach to career development: Exploring factors that affect science as a career choice

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liskey, Brian K.

This research project was designed to examine the factors that affect students' choice in a career. Specifically, the factors of (a) achievement, (b) interest, (c) self-efficacy, (d) perceived preparation for a career, and (e) being informed about a career will be under investigation. Of key importance to the study is how these factors can affect a student's perception about choosing a science career. A quantitative analysis of secondary data from the 2006 and 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) international assessment and attitudinal questionnaire provided data on student perceptions and aptitude in science. The sample from PISA included over 400,000 15 year-old students from 57 countries. From the 57 countries, 30 countries, comprised by Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD), were isolated for analysis. Within this group of 30, 11 were selected for comparison based on their questionnaire response to expectations for a career in science at age 30. The Institute for Educational Science's, International Data Explorer was utilized to acquire and analyze data from the 2006 and 2009 PISA international tests and questionnaires to determine significance between scaled scores and PISA indices. Variables were chosen as factors affecting student's perception on various systems outlined by the Systems Theory of Career Development (Patton & McMahon, 1997) and the Systems Theory of Career Development Framework (Patton & McMahon, 1999). Four country groups were established based on student responses to question 30a from the 2006 PISA attitudinal questionnaire, which asks what career students expected to have at age 30. The results from comparing country groups showed that countries in Group A, which showed the highest values for students expecting a career in science, also had the highest average values for achievement on the PISA science literacy assessment. Likewise, countries that had the lowest values for expecting a career in science (Group B) also had the lowest average values for achievement in science as assessed by science literacy score according to PISA. The United States (Group C) and the International Average (Group D) were both intermediate in each of the two categories. The analysis also showed an identical country group sequence from highest responses to lowest responses for the "systems" or variables of a) self-efficacy, b) preparation for a science career, and c) information about a career in science. The group sequence from high to low values was Group C, Group B, Group D, Group A. When comparing this country group sequence there appears to be a weak negative association between students in countries that expect a career in science and the values for self-efficacy, being prepared for, and informed about a career in science. The findings from this study indicate that the greatest factor affecting students' perception for expecting a career in science is high achievement in science. These results provide key insight on the Systems Theory of Career Development missing from the existing body of literature. Leaders in the fields of education and educational policy can use this information to guide practices and promote programs that will aid in higher achievement in science and engineering. This research can also be used by leaders in career counseling to advise students on appropriate career paths and prepare students for future careers in science and technology. Finally, leadership within state and federal institutions can utilize results from this study to guide future research and funding that encourages students on career pathways in the fields of Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

Excellence through Special Education? Lessons from the Finnish School Reform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kivirauma, Joel; Ruoho, Kari

2007-05-01

The present article focuses on connections between part-time special education and the good results of Finnish students in PISA studies. After a brief summary of the comprehensive school system and special education in Finland, PISA results are analysed. The analysis shows that the relative amount of special education targeted at language problems is highest in Finland among those countries from which comparative statistics are available. The writers argue that this preventive language-oriented part-time special education is an important factor behind the good PISA results.

Feasibility Study for the PISA ICT Literacy Assessment: Report to Network A

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lennon, Marylou; Kirsch, Irwin; Von Davier, Matthias; Wagner, Michael; Yamamoto, Kentaro

2003-01-01

This report presents the findings of a study conducted to explore the feasibility of developing and delivering an assessment of information and communication technology (ICT) literacy for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The study was conducted at the request of an expert panel convened by Network A and was funded in…

PISA and Global Educational Governance--A Critique of the Project, Its Uses and Implications

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sjøberg, Svein

2015-01-01

The PISA project has steadily increased its influence on the educational discourse and educational policies in the now 70 participating countries. The educational debate has become global, and the race to improve PISA-rankings has become high priority in many countries. For governments the PISA-test is a high-stake test. Governments are blamed for…

Pisa testing. A global educational race?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sjøberg, Svein

2017-10-01

The OECD's PISA project is not an educational project. It is a political project and has to be understood as an instrument of power. PISA is normative, it tells what young people should learn, regardless of the nations' culture, nature, traditions and values. The battle to improve PISA rankings may conflict with our work to make science relevant, contextualized, interesting and motivating for young learners.

Science Literacy: How do High School Students Solve PISA Test Items?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wati, F.; Sinaga, P.; Priyandoko, D.

2017-09-01

The Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) does assess students’ science literacy in a real-life contexts and wide variety of situation. Therefore, the results do not provide adequate information for the teacher to excavate students’ science literacy because the range of materials taught at schools depends on the curriculum used. This study aims to investigate the way how junior high school students in Indonesia solve PISA test items. Data was collected by using PISA test items in greenhouse unit employed to 36 students of 9th grade. Students’ answer was analyzed qualitatively for each item based on competence tested in the problem. The way how students answer the problem exhibits their ability in particular competence which is influenced by a number of factors. Those are students’ unfamiliarity with test construction, low performance on reading, low in connecting available information and question, and limitation on expressing their ideas effectively and easy-read. As the effort, selected PISA test items can be used in accordance teaching topic taught to familiarize students with science literacy.

Scientific Literacy and Student Attitudes: Perspectives from PISA 2006 science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bybee, Rodger; McCrae, Barry

2011-01-01

International assessments provide important knowledge about science education and help inform decisions about policies, programmes, and practices in participating countries. In 2006, science was the primary domain for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), supported by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and conducted by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). Compared to the school curriculum orientation of Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS), PISA provides a perspective that emphasises the application of knowledge to science and technology-related life situations. The orientation of PISA includes both knowledge and attitudes as these contribute to students' competencies that are central to scientific literacy. In addition to students' knowledge and competencies, the 2006 PISA survey gathered data on students' interest in science, support for scientific enquiry, and responsibility towards resources and environments. The survey used both a non-contextualised student questionnaire and contextualised questions. The latter is an innovative approach which embedded attitudinal questions at the conclusion of about two-thirds of the test units. The results presented in this article make connections between students' attitudes and interests in science and scientific literacy.

Commentary on the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment 2012

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Froese-Germain, Bernie

2013-01-01

Every three years the focus of the international education community shifts to the release of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). No other international study of education commands as much attention as PISA. In an age of intense global…

Improving Students' PISA Scientific Competencies through Online Argumentation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsai, Chun-Yen

2015-01-01

The scientific competencies advocated by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) focus on the abilities needed in students' adult lives. This study investigated how such scientific competencies could be improved by using online argumentation. One hundred and thirty-eight 8th grade high school students took part in the study, with…

The Field of Knowledge and the Policy Field in Education: PISA and the Production of Knowledge for Policy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mangez, Eric; Hilgers, Mathieu

2012-01-01

This article is about the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and its actors. It analyses the development and role of PISA as a "cultural product" from the perspective of Bourdieu's field theory. The authors attempt to answer the following questions: Of which field is PISA the product? In which field and by whom is PISA…

Policy Options for Turkey: A Critique of the Interpretation and Utilization of PISA Results in Turkey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gur, Bekir S.; Celik, Zafer; Ozoglu, Murat

2012-01-01

In this article we provide a critique of the interpretation and utilization of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results by the National Education Authorities in Turkey. First, we define and explain what OECD's PISA is. Second, we make an overview of the media coverage in Turkey of the PISA 2003 and 2006 results. Third, we…

PISA for Development Technical Strand A: Enhancement of PISA Cognitive Instruments. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 126

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Adams, Ray; Cresswell, John

2016-01-01

The OECD is planning to enhance existing PISA assessment instruments in reading, mathematics and science so that they will be more suitable to the context of developing countries. The main purpose of this paper is to identify the main technical issues associated with this aim. The paper reports detailed analysis of the existing PISA item pool and…

Direct Measurement of Proximal Isovelocity Surface Area by Real-Time Three-Dimensional Color Doppler for Quantitation of Aortic Regurgitant Volume: An In Vitro Validation

PubMed Central

Pirat, Bahar; Little, Stephen H.; Igo, Stephen R.; McCulloch, Marti; Nosé, Yukihiko; Hartley, Craig J.; Zoghbi, William A.

2012-01-01

Objective The proximal isovelocity surface area (PISA) method is useful in the quantitation of aortic regurgitation (AR). We hypothesized that actual measurement of PISA provided with real-time 3-dimensional (3D) color Doppler yields more accurate regurgitant volumes than those estimated by 2-dimensional (2D) color Doppler PISA. Methods We developed a pulsatile flow model for AR with an imaging chamber in which interchangeable regurgitant orifices with defined shapes and areas were incorporated. An ultrasonic flow meter was used to calculate the reference regurgitant volumes. A total of 29 different flow conditions for 5 orifices with different shapes were tested at a rate of 72 beats/min. 2D PISA was calculated as 2π r2, and 3D PISA was measured from 8 equidistant radial planes of the 3D PISA. Regurgitant volume was derived as PISA × aliasing velocity × time velocity integral of AR/peak AR velocity. Results Regurgitant volumes by flow meter ranged between 12.6 and 30.6 mL/beat (mean 21.4 ± 5.5 mL/beat). Regurgitant volumes estimated by 2D PISA correlated well with volumes measured by flow meter (r = 0.69); however, a significant underestimation was observed (y = 0.5x + 0.6). Correlation with flow meter volumes was stronger for 3D PISA-derived regurgitant volumes (r = 0.83); significantly less underestimation of regurgitant volumes was seen, with a regression line close to identity (y = 0.9x + 3.9). Conclusion Direct measurement of PISA is feasible, without geometric assumptions, using real-time 3D color Doppler. Calculation of aortic regurgitant volumes with 3D color Doppler using this methodology is more accurate than conventional 2D method with hemispheric PISA assumption. PMID:19168322

Invariance levels across language versions of the PISA 2009 reading comprehension tests in Spain.

PubMed

Elosua Oliden, Paula; Mujika Lizaso, Josu

2013-01-01

The PISA project provides the basis for studying curriculum design and for comparing factors associated with school effectiveness. These studies are only valid if the different language versions are equivalent to each other. In Spain, the application of PISA in autonomous regions with their own languages means that equivalency must also be extended to the Spanish, Galician, Catalan and Basque versions of the test. The aim of this work was to analyse the equivalence among the four language versions of the Reading Comprehension Test (PISA 2009). After defining the testlet as the unit of analysis, equivalence among the language versions was analysed using two invariance testing procedures: multiple-group mean and covariance structure analyses for ordinal data and ordinal logistic regression. The procedures yielded concordant results supporting metric equivalence across all four language versions: Spanish, Basque, Galician and Catalan. The equivalence supports the estimated reading literacy score comparability among the language versions used in Spain.

An Investigation of International Science Achievement Using the OECD's PISA 2006 Data Set

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Milford, Todd

School Effectiveness Research (SER) is concerned with efforts to better understand the effectiveness enhancing relationship between student and school variables and how these variables primarily influence academic achievement (Scheerens, 2004). However, one identified methodological shortcoming in SER is the absence of cross-cultural perspectives (Kyriakides, 2006). This is a concern as what may prove effective in one nation does not necessarily mean that it can be easily and seamlessly imported into another with the same results. This study looked at the relationships between science self-beliefs and academic achievement in science across all nations who participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2006. It further explored the variance accounted for by cultural, social and economic capital (the elements of the PISA socioeconomic status variable) for each country in PISA 2006 when predicting scientific literacy. Lastly, it used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to analyze data from PISA 2006 for nations experiencing high rates of immigration (i.e., Germany, Spain, Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand). The outcome measures used for these countries were achievement scores in science, mathematics and reading. The variables examined at the student level were science self-efficacy, science self-concept, immigrant status and socioeconomic status. The variables examined at the school level were student level aggregates of school proportion of immigrants and school socioeconomic status. In the correlation analysis between science literacy and either science self-concept of science self-efficacy, findings suggest that at the student level, students with both higher science self-concept and higher science self-efficacy tend to achieve higher academically. However, at the country level the relationship was negative between self-concept and academic achievement in science (i.e., countries with higher science self-concept tend to achieve lower on scientific literacy). When the variables that comprised each of the cultural, social, and economic components of SES were regressed on scientific literacy for the PISA sample, cultural capital accounted for 16% of the variance in scientific literacy scores compared to 14% for social capital, 13% for the composite Economic Social and Cultural Status (ESCS), and 12% for economic capital. In the HLM null models, the intraclass correlations for the all countries except for Germany ranged from .16 to .29 (Germany's was between .57 and .68). In the final models, at level-1 country, immigrant status tended to negatively influence achievement (i.e., non-native students are predicted to have lower performance), while science self-efficacy and science self-concept positively influenced achievement The student level ESCS variable also impacted achievement positively. At the school level, level-2, school mean ESCS or school proportion of immigrants were found to significantly influence the level-1 predictors; however, a good deal of variability across nations was observed. The findings from this study demonstrate that there are some distinct national differences in the relationships between science self-beliefs, immigrant status and academic achievement.

The Policy Impact of PISA: An Exploration of the Normative Effects of International Benchmarking in School System Performance. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 71

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Breakspear, Simon

2012-01-01

Little research has been done into how the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) affect national educational reform and policy-making. This paper examines the normative impact of PISA by investigating how, and the extent to which , national policy actors use PISA in policies and practices, to evaluate and improve…

The Use of Large-Scale Assessment (PISA): Insights for Policy and Practice in the Case of Hong Kong

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sui Chu Ho, Esther

2016-01-01

This paper examines to what extent and how the data and results of PISA have been used for various education stakeholders and to what extent PISA affect educational policy and practices in Hong Kong. From the point of view of the government, PISA has played an important role in supporting and legitimising government educational reform since 2000.…

Sampling and Survey Operations for the PISA for Development Out-of-School Assessment Field Trial. PISA for Development Brief 15

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2017

2017-01-01

Across many of the middle- and low-income countries that have participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) or are potential new participants, significant proportions of 15-year-olds are not enrolled in school or are in school but in grades below PISA's target sample (Grade 7 and above) and thus not eligible to sit for…

Measuring ICT Use and Learning Outcomes: Evidence from Recent Econometric Studies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Biagi, Federico; Loi, Massimo

2013-01-01

Based on PISA 2009 data, this article studies the relationship between students' computer use and their achievement in reading, mathematics and science in 23 countries. After having categorised computer use into a set of different activities according to the skills they involve, we correlate students' PISA test-scores with an index capturing the…

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Usage and Achievement of Turkish Students in Pisa 2006

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aypay, Ahmet

2010-01-01

The purpose of this study is to examine the ICT usage and academic achievement of Turkish students in PISA 2006 data. The sample of the study included 4942 students from 160 schools. Frequencies, independent samples t-tests, ANOVAs, pearson correlation coefficients, exploratory factor analysis, and regression analysis were used. A high percentage…

The Position of Turkey among OECD Member and Candidate Countries According to PISA 2009 Results

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Acar, Tulin

2012-01-01

The aim of the study is to determine the status of Turkey among OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) members and candidate countries through cluster and discriminant analyses according to PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2009 results. The study includes 475460 fifteen year-old students from 65…

Relationship between ICT Variables and Mathematics Achievement Based on PISA 2006 Database: International Evidence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Guzeller, Cem Oktay; Akin, Ayca

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study is to determine the predicting power of mathematics achievement from ICT variables including the Internet/entertainment use (IEU), program/software use (PRGUSE), confidence in internet tasks (INTCONF) and confidence in ICT high level tasks (HIGHCONF) based on PISA 2006 data. This study indicates that the ICT variables…

Latent Class Analysis of Students' Mathematics Learning Strategies and the Relationship between Learning Strategy and Mathematical Literacy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Su-Wei; Tai, Wen-Chun

2015-01-01

This study investigated how various mathematics learning strategies affect the mathematical literacy of students. The data for this study were obtained from the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data of Taiwan. The PISA learning strategy survey contains three types of learning strategies: elaboration, control, and…

Problem Solving in the PISA and TIMSS 2003 Assessments. Technical Report. NCES 2007-049

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dossey, John A.; McCrone, Sharon S.; O'Sullivan, Christine

2006-01-01

In 2003, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) included a special focus on problem-solving. This report reviews the problem-solving aspects of each study in order to compare and contrast the nature of problem solving in each assessment. The report's authors develop…

Finnish Mathematics Teaching from a Reform Perspective: A Video-Based Case-Study Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Andrews, Paul

2013-01-01

This article offers a qualitative analysis of videotaped mathematics lessons taught by four teachers in a provincial university city in Finland. My study is framed not only by Finnish success on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) but also by the objectives of current mathematics education reform, which are consistent with PISA's…

The Relationship between Studying Music and Mathematics Performance on the New Jersey High School Proficiency Assessment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Prokop, Kristie L.

2011-01-01

On assessments such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999) and Program for International Assessment (PISA) ("PISA 2006 Science Competencies for Tomorrow's World", 2007) students in the United States have not been performing as well in mathematics as students in other countries. In…

A Regression Model with a New Tool: IDB Analyzer for Identifying Factors Predicting Mathematics Performance Using PISA 2012 Indices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arikan, Serkan

2014-01-01

There are many studies that focus on factors affecting achievement. However, there is limited research that used student characteristics indices reported by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Therefore, this study investigated the predictive effects of student characteristics on mathematics performance of Turkish students.…

Design of Chemical Literacy Assessment by Using Model of Educational Reconstruction (MER) on Solubility Topic

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yusmaita, E.; Nasra, Edi

2018-04-01

This research aims to produce instrument for measuring chemical literacy assessment in basic chemistry courses with solubility topic. The construction of this measuring instrument is adapted to the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) problem’s characteristics and the Syllaby of Basic Chemistry in KKNI-IndonesianNational Qualification Framework. The PISA is a cross-country study conducted periodically to monitor the outcomes of learners' achievement in each participating country. So far, studies conducted by PISA include reading literacy, mathematic literacy and scientific literacy. Refered to the scientific competence of the PISA study on science literacy, an assessment designed to measure the chemical literacy of the chemistry department’s students in UNP. The research model used is MER (Model of Educational Reconstruction). The validity and reliability values of discourse questions is measured using the software ANATES. Based on the acquisition of these values is obtained a valid and reliable chemical literacy questions.There are seven question items limited response on the topic of solubility with valid category, the acquisition value of test reliability is 0,86, and has a difficulty index and distinguishing good

The Rasch Model for Evaluating Italian Student Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Camminatiello, Ida; Gallo, Michele; Menini, Tullio

2010-01-01

In 1997 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for collecting information about 15-year-old students in participating countries. Our study analyses the PISA 2006 cognitive test for evaluating the Italian student performance in mathematics, reading…

How Do Students Evaluate Computer Use for Learning?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lu, Jiamei; Li, Daqi; Stevens, Carla; Ye, Renmin

2016-01-01

Using Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012, an international education database, this study analyzed the evaluations of computer use for academic learning by 15-year-old students from seven Edu-systems (unit in PISA) in Eastern Asia. Six variables were identified in association with students' evaluations of computer use…

Unpacking the Inequality among Turkish Schools: Findings from PISA 2006

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alacaci, Cengiz; Erbas, Ayhan Kursat

2010-01-01

The study investigates the effects of certain school characteristics on students' mathematics performances in Turkey in the PISA 2006 while controlling for family background and demographic characteristics. Three models of Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) are constructed. The results reveal that 55% of the variance is attributable to…

The Shadows of Reading: Reasons for the Bad Results of Bulgarians in PISA Studies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsvetkova, Milena I.

2016-01-01

The subject of this article are the factors and reasons for the bad results in reading of the Bulgarian 15-year-old students in PISA's international studies. The reference points of the analysis are the critical results from the last four studies--2000, 2006, 2009 and 2012. The aim of this analysis is to bring up for discussion unformulated topics…

Sources of difficulty in assessment: example of PISA science items

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Le Hebel, Florence; Montpied, Pascale; Tiberghien, Andrée; Fontanieu, Valérie

2017-03-01

The understanding of what makes a question difficult is a crucial concern in assessment. To study the difficulty of test questions, we focus on the case of PISA, which assesses to what degree 15-year-old students have acquired knowledge and skills essential for full participation in society. Our research question is to identify PISA science item characteristics that could influence the item's proficiency level. It is based on an a-priori item analysis and a statistical analysis. Results show that only the cognitive complexity and the format out of the different characteristics of PISA science items determined in our a-priori analysis have an explanatory power on an item's proficiency levels. The proficiency level cannot be explained by the dependence/independence of the information provided in the unit and/or item introduction and the competence. We conclude that in PISA, it appears possible to anticipate a high proficiency level, that is, students' low scores for items displaying a high cognitive complexity. In the case of a middle or low cognitive complexity level item, the cognitive complexity level is not sufficient to predict item difficulty. Other characteristics play a crucial role in item difficulty. We discuss anticipating the difficulties in assessment in a broader perspective.

Physics Is All around Us

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Greenslade, Thomas B., Jr.

2010-01-01

The finale of the weekly physics department seminar series at my college is my annual demonstration lecture. Normally, the front of the room is filled with apparatus, but in May 2008 I had only a giant kaleidoscope and a leaning tower of Pisa (Fig. 1) on display. Instead, there was a pile of overhead projector transparencies that showed examples…

Social Disparity of Family Involvement in Hong Kong: Effect of Family Resources and Family Network

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ho, Esther Sui-Chu

2006-01-01

Using data from Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), this study examines the social disparity of family involvement. A total of 4,405 students from 140 Hong Kong secondary schools participated in the first cycle of PISA study identifying four types of…

Voluntary Self-Control: Education Reform as a Governmental Strategy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pongratz, Ludwig A.

2006-01-01

This paper takes the vigorous political debate unleashed in Germany by the results of the PISA study as a stimulus to take a closer look at the strategic aims and effects of the current education reforms, of which the PISA study is only one example. It shows that the reform measures underpin a powerful process of normalisation. In this context,…

Developing Teaching Materials PISA-Based for Mathematics and Science of Junior High School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Somakim; Suharman, Andi; Madang, Kodri; Taufiq

2016-01-01

This research aims to develop valid and practical teaching materials for mathematics and science lesson PISA-based for junior high school students and to determine potential effects on students in scientific activity. Subjects of this study were students of Junior High School 9 Palembang (SMP Negeri 9 Palembang). The method used in this study is…

Comparing the Similarities and Differences of PISA 2003 and TIMSS. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 32

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Margaret

2010-01-01

This paper makes an in-depth comparison of the PISA (OECD) and TIMSS (IEA) mathematics assessments conducted in 2003. First, a comparison of survey methodologies is presented, followed by an examination of the mathematics frameworks in the two studies. The methodologies and the frameworks in the two studies form the basis for providing…

Threats to Validity When Using Open-Ended Items in International Achievement Studies: Coding Responses to the PISA 2012 Problem-Solving Test in Finland

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arffman, Inga

2016-01-01

Open-ended (OE) items are widely used to gather data on student performance in international achievement studies. However, several factors may threaten validity when using such items. This study examined Finnish coders' opinions about threats to validity when coding responses to OE items in the PISA 2012 problem-solving test. A total of 6…

PISA and Scientific Literacy: Similarities and Differences between the Nordic Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kjaernsli, Marit; Lie, Svein

2004-01-01

In this paper we have set out to search for similarities and differences between the Nordic countries concerning patterns of competencies defined as scientific literacy in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. The first part focuses on gender differences concerning the two types of competencies, understanding of…

National IQs Predict Educational Attainment in Math, Reading and Science across 56 Nations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lynn, Richard; Mikk, Jaan

2009-01-01

The results of the 2006 PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) study of reading comprehension, mathematical ability, and science understanding administered to 15 year olds in 56 countries [OECD (2007). PISA 2006: Science Competencies for Tomorrow's World. Paris: OECD.] are examined to assess the predictive validity of the national IQs…

Using TIMSS and PISA Results to Inform Educational Policy: A Study of Russia and Its Neighbours

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carnoy, Martin; Khavenson, Tatiana; Ivanova, Alina

2015-01-01

In this paper, we develop a multi-level comparative approach to analyse Trends in International Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS) and Programme of International Student Achievement (PISA) mathematics results for a country, Russia, where the two tests provide contradictory information about students' relative performance. Russian students do…

The OECD PISA Study as a Soft Power in Education? Lessons from Switzerland and the US

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bieber, Tonia; Martens, Kerstin

2011-01-01

Although originally created for economic purposes, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) has increasingly gained weight in education policy in recent years and is now regarded as an international authority in the field, particularly through its "Programme for International Student Assessment" (PISA), which was…

The Contribution of PISA to the Convergence of Education Policies in Europe

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Michel, Alain

2017-01-01

The international comparative studies on students' outcomes have initiated analyses that have had a growing influence on national and sub-national education policies in industrialised and developing countries. It is particularly the case of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which started in 2000 and has organised…

TIMSS and PISA Impact--The Case of Jordan

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ababneh, Emad; Al-Tweissi, Ahmad; Abulibdeh, Khattab

2016-01-01

Jordan has participated in international large-scale assessments (LSAs) since 1991 and in most of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS) as well as the Programme for International Student Assessments (PISA). After a short description of education system and policy-making context in the country, this article provides an…

Student Engagement and Academic Performance in Mexico: Evidence and Puzzles from PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Weiss, Christopher C.; García, Emma

2015-01-01

This paper investigates the relationship between student engagement--with teachers and schools--and academic performance in Mexico. It uses hierarchical linear models and data from the OECD 2003 PISA study to examine the relative importance of engagement in comparison to other educational inputs--school and family characteristics--as predictors of…

A New Global Policy Regime Founded on Invalid Statistics? Hanushek, Woessmann, PISA, and Economic Growth

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Komatsu, Hikaru; Rappleye, Jeremy

2017-01-01

Several recent, highly influential comparative studies have made strong statistical claims that improvements on global learning assessments such as PISA will lead to higher GDP growth rates. These claims have provided the primary source of legitimation for policy reforms championed by leading international organisations, most notably the World…

Intergenerational Transfers of Preferences for Science Careers in Comparative Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sikora, Joanna; Pokropek, Artur

2012-01-01

Using data from 24 countries, which participated in the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), we examine the relationship between parental science employment and students' career expectations. In contrast to prior PISA-based studies, we find that the link between parental employment and adolescent plans to work in science is…

Feasibility of Percutaneous Intrahepatic Split by Microwave Ablation (PISA) After Portal Vein Embolization for Hypertrophy of Future Liver Remnant: The Radiological Stage-1 ALPPS.

PubMed

Lunardi, Alessandro; Cervelli, Rosa; Volterrani, Duccio; Vitali, Saverio; Lombardo, Carlo; Lorenzoni, Giulia; Crocetti, Laura; Bargellini, Irene; Campani, Daniela; Pollina, Luca Emanuele; Cioni, Roberto; Caramella, Davide; Boggi, Ugo

2018-05-01

To assess the feasibility of radiological stage-1 ALPPS, associating liver partition and portal vein ligation for staged hepatectomy, by combining portal vein embolization (PVE) with percutaneous intrahepatic split by ablation (PISA). Three patients (mean age 65.0 ± 7.3 years) underwent PVE and PISA. PISA was performed 21 days after PVE by microwave ablation to create a continuous intrahepatic cutting plane. Abdominal CT examinations were performed before and after PVE and PISA. The future liver remnant (FLR) volume was calculated by semiautomatic segmentation, and increase was reported as a percentage of the pre-procedural volume. The FLR/body weight (FLR/BW) ratio was calculated; a ratio greater than 0.8% was considered sufficient for guaranteeing adequate liver function after surgery. The liver function before and after PISA was also evaluated by 99mTc-mebrofenin hepatobiliary scintigraphy. Patients' laboratory tests, performance status, ability to walk were assessed before and after PVE and PISA procedures. No procedure-related complications were recorded. The FLR volume increase in each patient was 42.0, 33.1 and 30.4% within 21 days of PVE and 109.3, 68.1 and 71.7% within 10 days after PISA. The FLR/BW ratios were 0.76, 0.66, 0.63% and 1.13, 0.83, 0.83% after PVE and PISA procedures, respectively. Two patients underwent successful right hepatectomy; in one patient, despite 1.13% FLR/BW, surgery was not performed because of the absolute rejection of blood transfusion due to the patient's religious convictions. Radiological stage-1 ALPPS is a feasible, minimally invasive option to be further investigated to become an effective alternative to surgical stage-1 ALPPS.

Hong Kong Student Achievement in OECD-PISA Study: Gender Differences in Science Content, Literacy Skills, and Test Item Formats

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yip, Din Yan; Chiu, Ming Ming; Ho, Esther Sui Chu

2004-01-01

This study examined gender differences in students' scientific literacy as measured by OECD-PISA. In particular, we focused on the 2437 students from 140 Hong Kong schools. Hong Kong boys' and girls' science scores did not differ overall. However, boys scored higher than girls at the higher percentiles (75th and above). Moreover, specific test…

A Comparison of Mother-Tongue Curricula of Successful Countries in PISA and Turkey by Higher-Order Thinking Processes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cer, Erkan

2018-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of the current study is to reveal general qualities of the objectives in the mother-tongue curricula of Hong Kong and Shanghai-China, South Korea, Singapore, and Turkey in terms of higher-order thinking processes specified by PISA tests. Research Methods: In this study, the researcher used a qualitative research design.…

Mathematics Low Achievement in Greece: A Multilevel Analysis of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Karakolidis, Anastasios; Pitsia, Vasiliki; Emvalotis, Anastassios

2016-01-01

The main aim of the present study was to carry out an in-depth examination of mathematics underperformance in Greece. By applying a binary multilevel model to the PISA 2012 data, this study investigated the factors which were linked to low achievement in mathematics. The multilevel analysis revealed that students' gender, immigration status,…

Effective Teaching Factors and Student Reading Strategies as Predictors of Student Achievement in PISA 2009: The Case of China and the United States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Meng, Lingqi; Muñoz, Marco; King Hess, Kristin; Liu, Shujie

2017-01-01

This study investigated effective teaching factors and student reading strategies as predictors of student reading achievement in the United States and China. Participants were 10,348 students in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, 5115 from China and 5233 from the United States. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA)…

Reversible Pisa Syndrome Induced by Rivastigmine in a Patient With Early-Onset Alzheimer Disease.

PubMed

Hsu, Chih-Wei; Lee, Yu; Lee, Chun-Yi; Lin, Pao-Yen

Pisa syndrome (PS) is a state of dystonic muscle contraction with a marked truncal deviation to one side. It is an uncommon adverse effect of antipsychotic drugs, but is rarely reported in patients receiving acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, especially rivastigmine. We present a 57-year-old female patient with Alzheimer disease who began to develop symptoms of dementia at the age of 51 years. She was observed to have symptoms of PS after continuous use of rivastigmine (9 mg/d) for nearly 2 years. The PS symptoms improved after the dose of rivastigmine was reduced but recurred when the dose was added back to 9 mg/d. Finally, after we decreased the dose to 4.5 mg/d, her PS symptoms were remitted. This report reminds us that clinicians need to be cautious about the risk of PS when prescribing rivastigmine in a patient with early-onset Alzheimer disease.

Photoinitiated Polymerization-Induced Self-Assembly of Glycidyl Methacrylate for the Synthesis of Epoxy-Functionalized Block Copolymer Nano-Objects.

PubMed

Tan, Jianbo; Liu, Dongdong; Huang, Chundong; Li, Xueliang; He, Jun; Xu, Qin; Zhang, Li

2017-08-01

Herein, a novel photoinitiated polymerization-induced self-assembly formulation via photoinitiated reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer dispersion polymerization of glycidyl methacrylate (PGMA) in ethanol-water at room temperature is reported. It is demonstrated that conducting polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) at low temperatures is crucial for obtaining colloidal stable PGMA-based diblock copolymer nano-objects. Good control is maintained during the photo-PISA process with a high rate of polymerization. The polymerization can be switched between "ON" and "OFF" in response to visible light. A phase diagram is constructed by varying monomer concentration and degree of polymerization. The PGMA-based diblock copolymer nano-objects can be further cross-linked by using a bifunctional primary amine reagent. Finally, silver nanoparticles are loaded within cross-linked vesicles via in situ reduction, exhibiting good catalytic properties. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

PISA 2006 Technical Report

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing (NJ1), 2009

2009-01-01

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys, which take place every three years, have been designed to collect information about 15-year-old students in participating countries. PISA examines how well students are prepared to meet the challenges of the future,…

PISA 2012 Technical Report

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2014

2014-01-01

The "PISA 2012 Technical Report" describes the methodology underlying the PISA 2012 survey, which tested 15-year-olds' competencies in mathematics, reading and science and, in some countries, problem solving and financial literacy. It examines the design and implementation of the project at a level of detail that allows researchers to…

ANT on the PISA Trail: Following the Statistical Pursuit of Certainty

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gorur, Radhika

2011-01-01

The OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is increasingly depended upon by education policy makers to provide reliable measures of their country's education system against international benchmarks. PISA attempts to provide efficient, scientific and technical means to develop educational policies which achieve optimal…

An Analysis of Turkey's PISA 2015 Results Using Two-Level Hierarchical Linear Modelling

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Atas, Dogu; Karadag, Özge

2017-01-01

In the field of education, most of the data collected are multi-level structured. Cities, city based schools, school based classes and finally students in the classrooms constitute a hierarchical structure. Hierarchical linear models give more accurate results compared to standard models when the data set has a structure going far as individuals,…

Conclusions from PISA and TIMSS Testing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tienken, Christopher H.

2013-01-01

Secretary of Education Duncan (2010) lamented the state of U.S. education in 2010 after the release of the results from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). He wrote: "Unfortunately, the 2009 PISA results show that American students are poorly prepared to compete in today's knowledge economy. President Obama has…

PISA 2009 Technical Report

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing (NJ1), 2012

2012-01-01

The "PISA 2009 Technical Report" describes the methodology underlying the PISA 2009 survey. It examines additional features related to the implementation of the project at a level of detail that allows researchers to understand and replicate its analyses. The reader will find a wealth of information on the test and sample design,…

Comparing OECD Educational Models through the Prism of PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bulle, Nathalie

2011-01-01

The PISA survey influences educational policies through an international competitive process which is not wholly rationally-oriented. Firstly, PISA league tables act normatively upon the definition of formal educational aims while the survey tests cannot evaluate the educational systems' relative strengths with regards to such aims. We argue that…

Governing Schooling through "What Works": The OECD's PISA for Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewis, Steven

2017-01-01

This paper explores Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Schools, a local variant of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD's) influential PISA that not only assesses an individual school's performance in reading, mathematics and science against international schooling systems, but also promotes 17…

Waveform Diversity and Design for Interoperating Radar Systems

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-01-01

University Di Pisa Department Di Ingegneria Dell Informazione Elettronica, Informatica , Telecomunicazioni Via Girolamo Caruso 16 Pisa, Italy 56122...NUMBER 7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) University Di Pisa Department Di Ingegneria Dell Informazione Elettronica, Informatica ...DIPARTIMENTO DI INGEGNERIA DELL’INFORMAZIONE ELETTRONICA, INFORMATICA , TELECOMUNICAZIONI WAVEFORM DIVERSITY AND DESIGN FOR INTEROPERATING

PISA 2009 Assessment Framework: Key Competencies in Reading, Mathematics and Science

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schleicher, Andreas; Zimmer, Karin; Evans, Juliet; Clements, Niccolina

2009-01-01

In response to the need for cross-nationally comparable evidence on student performance, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 1997. PISA represents a commitment by governments to monitor the outcomes of education systems through measuring…

PISA Problems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tienken, Christopher

2014-01-01

Pundits and bureaucrats use the results from international tests, particularly the PISA, to make claims about the quality of the public education system in the United States and make policy recommendations. In this article I argue, with evidence, that the scores and rankings from PISA are not important and that they cannot give policy makers or…

"Bildungskrise"--PISA and the German Educational Crisis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Odendahl, Wolfgang

2017-01-01

After consistently bad results in every PISA test (Programme for International Student Assessment) and an accompanying prediction of lack of skills in its future workforce, Germany might be on track for losing out in international competition. Because of PISA's overwhelming marketing presence, its results are a major political influence. The OECD…

Cross-Group Equivalence of Interest and Motivation Items in PISA 2012 Turkey Sample

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ardic, Elif Ozlem; Gelbal, Selahattin

2017-01-01

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine measurement invariance of the interest and motivation related items contained in the PISA 2012 student survey with regard to gender school type and statistical regions and to identify the items that show differential item functioning (DIF) across groups. Research Methods: Multiple-group confirmatory…

Item Calibration Samples and the Stability of Achievement Estimates and System Rankings: Another Look at the PISA Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rutkowski, Leslie; Rutkowski, David; Zhou, Yan

2016-01-01

Using an empirically-based simulation study, we show that typically used methods of choosing an item calibration sample have significant impacts on achievement bias and system rankings. We examine whether recent PISA accommodations, especially for lower performing participants, can mitigate some of this bias. Our findings indicate that standard…

School Climate in American Secondary Schools: A Psychometric Examination of PISA 2009 School Climate Scale

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sun, Letao; Royal, Kenneth

2017-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the quality of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 school climate survey instrument and evaluate perceptions of secondary school principals' located in the United States about school climate using an Item Response Theory (IRT) methodological approach. In particular, this study…

Instructional Practices and Science Performance of 10 Top-Performing Regions in PISA 2015

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lau, Kwok-chi; Lam, Terence Yuk-ping

2017-01-01

This study analysed 10 top-performing regions in PISA 2015 on their science performances and instructional practices. The regions include Singapore, Japan, Estonia, Taipei, Finland, Macao, Canada, Hong Kong, China and Korea. The science performances of the 10 regions and their teaching practices are described and compared. The construct of…

Using PISA 2003, Examining the Factors Affecting Students' Mathematics Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Demir, Ibrahim; Kilic, Serpil

2010-01-01

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of learning strategies on mathematics achievement. The sample was compiled from students who participated in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in Turkey. The data consisted of 4493 15 years old Turkish students in 158 schools, and analyzed by two levels Bernoulli model as a…

Examining Factors Affecting Science Achievement of Hong Kong in PISA 2006 Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lam, Terence Yuk Ping; Lau, Kwok Chi

2014-01-01

This study uses hierarchical linear modeling to examine the influence of a range of factors on the science performances of Hong Kong students in PISA 2006. Hong Kong has been consistently ranked highly in international science assessments, such as Programme for International Student Assessment and Trends in International Mathematics and Science…

What Is the Predict Level of Which Computer Using Skills Measured in PISA for Achievement in Mathematics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ziya, Engin; Dogan, Nuri; Kelecioglu, Hulya

2010-01-01

This study aims at determining the extent to which computer using skills specified in Project for International Students Evaluation (PISA) 2006 predict Turkish students' achievement in mathematics. Apart from questions on mathematics, science and reading competencies, a student questionnaire, a school questionnaire and a parent questionnaire were…

Collaborative Problem Solving Skills of 15-Year-Olds: Results from PISA 2015. Data Point. NCES 2017-249

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Center for Education Statistics, 2017

2017-01-01

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a global education study of 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy and, in 2015, two optional components: financial literacy and collaborative problem solving. Fifty-one education systems administered the collaborative problem solving assessment, including 32 of…

Context of Teaching and Learning School Science in Finland: Reflections on PISA 2006 Results

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lavonen, Jari; Laaksonen, Seppo

2009-01-01

Finnish students' opinions about the frequency of learning activities and communication in the Finnish science classroom, their interest in science and science studies and careers, their sense of self-efficacy, and their beliefs about their own competence as well as their performance in science are analyzed based on PISA 2006 Scientific Literacy…

Statistical Techniques Utilized in Analyzing PISA and TIMSS Data in Science Education from 1996 to 2013: A Methodological Review

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liou, Pey-Yan; Hung, Yi-Chen

2015-01-01

We conducted a methodological review of articles using the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) or Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) data published by the SSCI-indexed science education journals, such as the "International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education," the "International…

Examining Evidence for the Validity of PISA Learning Strategy Scales Based on Student Response Processes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hopfenbeck, Therese N.; Maul, Andrew

2011-01-01

The aim of this study was to investigate response-process based evidence for the validity of the Programme for International Student Assessment's (PISA) self-report questionnaire scales as measures of specific psychological constructs, with a focus on scales meant to measure inclination toward specific learning strategies. Cognitive interviews (N…

PISA 2012: How Do Results for the Paper and Computer Tests Compare?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jerrim, John

2016-01-01

The Programme for International Assessment (PISA) is an important cross-national study of 15-year olds academic achievement. Although it has traditionally been conducted using paper-and-pencil tests, the vast majority of countries will use computer-based assessment from 2015. In this paper, we consider how cross-country comparisons of children's…

Immigrant Status and Home Language Background: Implications for Australian Student Performance in PISA 2000

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cresswell, John

2004-01-01

The primary focus of this report is to examine the effect that immigrant status and home language background may have on the performance of Australian students who participated in the OECD/Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2000). Approximately 5,477 students from 231 schools across Australia participated in the study. In this…

Analysis mathematical literacy skills in terms of the students’ metacognition on PISA-CPS model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ovan; Waluya, S. B.; Nugroho, S. E.

2018-03-01

This research was aimed to know the effectiveness of PISA-CPS model and desceibe the mathematical literacy skills (KLM) in terms of the students’ metacognition. This study used Mixed Methods approaches with the concurrent embedded desaign. The technique of data analysis on quantitative research done analysis of lesson plan, prerequisite test, test hypotesis 1 and hypotesis test. While qualitative research done data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclution and data verification. The subject of this study was the students of Grade Eight (VIII) of SMP Islam Sultan Agung 4 Semarang, Central Java. The writer analyzed the data with quantitative and qualitative approaches based on the metacognition of the students in low, medium and high groups. Subsequently, taken the mathematical literacy skills (KLM) from students’ metacognition in low, medium, and high . The results of the study showed that the PISA-CPS model was complete and the students’ mathematical literacy skills in terms of the students’ metacognition taught by the PISA-CPS model was higher than the expository learning. metacognitions’ students classified low hadmathematical literacy skills (KLM) less good, metacognitions’ students classified medium had mathematical literacy skills (KLM) good enough, metacognitions’ students classified high had mathematical literacy skills (KLM) very good. Based onresult analysis got conclusion that the PISA-CPS model was effective toward the students’ mathematical literacy skills (KLM). To increase the students’ mathematical literacy skills (KLM), the teachers need to provide reinforcements in the form of the exercises so that the student’s mathematical literacy was achieved at level 5 and level 6.

Three-dimensional proximal flow convergence automatic calculation for determining mitral valve area in rheumatic mitral stenosis.

PubMed

Sampaio, Francisco; Ladeiras-Lopes, Ricardo; Almeida, João; Fonseca, Paulo; Fontes-Carvalho, Ricardo; Ribeiro, José; Gama, Vasco

2017-07-01

Management of patients with mitral stenosis (MS) depends heavily on the accurate quantification of mitral valve area (MVA) using echocardiography. All currently used two-dimensional (2D) methods have limitations. Estimation of MVA using the proximal isovelocity surface area (PISA) method with real time three-dimensional (3D) echocardiography may circumvent those limitations. We aimed to evaluate the accuracy of 3D direct measurement of PISA in the estimation of MVA. Twenty-seven consecutive patients (median age of 63 years; 77.8% females) with rheumatic MS were prospectively studied. Transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiography with 2D and 3D acquisitions were performed on the same day. The reference method for MVA quantification was valve planimetry after 3D-volume multiplanar reconstruction. A semi-automated software was used to calculate the 3D flow convergence volume. Compared to MVA estimation using 3D planimetry, 3D PISA showed the best correlation (rho=0.78, P<.0001), followed by pressure half-time (PHT: rho=0.66, P<.001), continuity equation (CE: rho=0.61, P=.003), and 2D PISA (rho=0.26, P=.203). Bland-Altman analysis revealed a good agreement for MVA estimation with 3D PISA (mean difference -0.03 cm 2 ; limits of agreement (LOA) -0.40-0.35), in contrast to wider LOA for 2D methods: CE (mean difference 0.02 cm 2 , LOA -0.56-0.60); PHT (mean difference 0.31 cm 2 , LOA -0.32-0.95); 2D PISA (mean difference -0.03 cm 2 , LOA -0.92-0.86). MVA estimation using 3D PISA was feasible and more accurate than 2D methods. Its introduction in daily clinical practice seems possible and may overcome technical limitations of 2D methods. © 2017, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Effects of Learning Strategies on Mathematical Literacy: A Comparison between Lower and Higher Achieving Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Magen-Nagar, Noga

2016-01-01

The purpose of the current study is to explore the effects of learning strategies on Mathematical Literacy (ML) of students in higher and lower achieving countries. To address this issue, the study utilizes PISA2002 data to conduct a multi-level analysis (HLM) of Hong Kong and Israel students. In PISA2002, Israel was rated 31st in Mathematics,…

When Technology Does Not Add Up: ICT Use Negatively Predicts Mathematics and Science Achievement for Finnish and Turkish Students in PISA 2012

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bulut, Okan; Cutumisu, Maria

2018-01-01

This study examines the data of students from Finland (n = 8,829) and Turkey (n = 4,848) who participated in the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The purpose of this study is to discern whether the use and availability of information and communication technologies (ICT) at home and at school have a differential impact on…

78 FR 32242 - Notice of Proposed Collection Requests; Comment Request; Program for International Student...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-05-29

... International Student Assessment (PISA 2015) Recruitment and Field Test AGENCY: Department of Education. ACTION..., page 22530) for the Program for International Student Assessments (PISA 2015) Recruitment and Field Test, 1850-0755. Since that time, the PISA has been amended. It reflects a change in the field test...

A Call for a More Measured Approach to Reporting and Interpreting PISA Results

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rutkowski, Leslie; Rutkowski, David

2016-01-01

In the current article, we consider the influential position of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and discuss several methodological areas that demonstrate the need for caution when using and interpreting PISA results. We motivate our argument by briefly describing the program's increased influence in educational policy…

How to Mess with PISA: Learning from Japanese "Kokugo" Curriculum Experts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Takayama, Keita

2018-01-01

To remove cultural bias is critical for the legitimacy of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) as an internationally reliable academic assessment. Since its inception, PISA has made extensive effort to address this issue by putting in place a range of methodological and procedural measures to ensure its test fairness. This study…

"Representing Your Country": Scotland, PISA and New Spatialities of Educational Governance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lingard, Bob; Sellar, Sam

2014-01-01

This paper focuses on the rescaling and re-spatialization of policy and governance in education, including the constitution of a global education policy field. It deals with the changing education policy work of the OECD, particularly the influential Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We argue that PISA has become the most…

The Many Facets of PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berliner, David C.

2015-01-01

Trying to understand PISA is analogous to the parable of the blind men and the elephant. There are many facets of the PISA program, and thus many ways to both applaud and critique this ambitious international program of assessment that has gained enormous importance in the crafting of contemporary educational policy. One of the facets discussed in…

Seeing Education through the Prism of PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schleicher, Andreas

2017-01-01

International comparisons are never easy and they are not perfect. But PISA shows what is possible in education and it helps countries to see themselves in the mirror of student performance and educational possibilities in other countries. This article summarises key policy insights from PISA. It highlights how excellence and improving equity need…

Seeing Education with One's Own Eyes and through PISA Lenses: Considerations of the Reception of PISA in European Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carvalho, Luís Miguel; Costa, Estela

2015-01-01

The paper addresses the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's "Program for International Student Assessment" (PISA) as a public policy instrument, whose worldwide circulation is mediated by processes of reinterpretation, negotiation, and re-contextualization, where national, local, and international agencies intertwine.…

PISA 2015 Results: Students' Well-Being. Volume III

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2017

2017-01-01

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examines not just what students know in science, reading and mathematics, but what they can do with what they know. This report is the product of a collaborative effort between the countries participating in PISA, the national and international experts and institutions working within…

PISA 2015 Results: Excellence and Equity in Education. Volume I

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2016

2016-01-01

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examines not just what students know in science, reading and mathematics, but what they can do with what they know. This report is the product of a collaborative effort between the countries participating in PISA, the national and international experts and institutions working within…

PISA 2015 Results (Volume V): Collaborative Problem Solving

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2017

2017-01-01

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examines not just what students know in science, reading and mathematics, but what they can do with what they know. Results from PISA show educators and policy makers the quality and equity of learning outcomes achieved elsewhere, and allow them to learn from the policies and practices…

PISA 2015 Results: Students' Financial Literacy. Volume IV

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2017

2017-01-01

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examines not just what students know in science, reading and mathematics, but what they can do with what they know. Results from PISA show educators and policy makers the quality and equity of learning outcomes achieved elsewhere, and allow them to learn from the policies and practices…

Communities of Practice and PISA for Schools: Comparative Learning or a Mode of Educational Governance?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewis, Steven

2017-01-01

This paper examines the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) "PISA for Schools," a new variant of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that compares school-level performance on reading, math and science with international schooling systems (e.g., Shanghai-China, Finland). Specifically, I…

Moving beyond Country Rankings in International Assessments: The Case of PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Perry, Nancy; Ercikan, Kadriye

2015-01-01

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was designed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to evaluate the quality, equity, and efficiency of school systems around the world. Specifically, the PISA has assessed 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy on a 3-year cycle, since…

Computers and Student Learning: Interpreting the Multivariate Analysis of PISA 2000

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bielefeldt, Talbot

2005-01-01

In November 2004, economists Thomas Fuchs and Ludger Woessmann published a statistical analysis of the relationship between technology and student achievement using year 2000 data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The 2000 PISA was the first in a series of triennial assessments of 15-year-olds conducted by the…

What PISA Measures: Some Remarks on Standardized Assessment and Science Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roehl, Tobias

2015-01-01

Drawing on a sociocultural perspective on educational assessment the empirical examples of Margareta Serder and Anders Jakobsson serve as a starting point for a critical analysis of PISA and the image of science education it perpetuates. While PISA claims to neutrally measure competencies relevant to science education, I argue that the test…

Chinese Lessons: Shanghai's Rise to the Top of the PISA League Tables

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tucker, Marc S., Ed.

2014-01-01

Marc Tucker, President of the National Center on Education and the Economy, presents this compilation of interviews with top Chinese education leaders and international researchers exploring some of the policies and practices behind Shanghai's outstanding performance on PISA 2009 and PISA 2012. The interviews include perspectives from Kai-ming…

PISA — Pooling Information from Several Agents: Multiplayer Argumentation from Experience

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wardeh, Maya; Bench-Capon, Trevor; Coenen, Frans

In this paper a framework, PISA (Pooling Information from Several Agents), to facilitate multiplayer (three or more protagonists), "argumentation from experience" is described. Multiplayer argumentation is a form of dialogue game involving three or more players. The PISA framework is founded on a two player argumentation framework, PADUA (Protocol for Argumentation Dialogue Using Association Rules), also developed by the authors. One of the main advantages of both PISA and PADUA is that they avoid the resource intensive need to predefine a knowledge base, instead data mining techniques are used to facilitate the provision of "just in time" information. Many of the issues associated with multiplayer dialogue games do not present a significant challenge in the two player game. The main original contributions of this paper are the mechanisms whereby the PISA framework addresses these challenges.

Effects of Self-Evaluated Value and Cognition on Leisure Science Engagement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jack, Brady Michael; She, Hsiao-Ching; Lin, Huann-shyang

2016-01-01

This study uses the Taiwan Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 Main Survey and Taiwan PISA 2015 Field Trial survey datasets to investigate how self-evaluated values (i.e. personal and general) and cognitive factors (i.e. self-efficacy and self-concept) of two groups of Taiwanese 15-year-old students separated by 8 years of…

Jumping to Conclusions--The PISA Knee-Jerk: Some Remarks on the Current Economic-Educational Discourse

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bittlingmayer, Uwe H.; Boutiuc, Alina Florentina; Heinemann, Lars; Kotthoff, Hans-Georg

2016-01-01

Ever since PISA studies have been constantly present in mainstream media, a close relation between academic achievement and economic outcome has been routinely presumed. This essay takes a closer look at some of the most common lines of argument, then goes on to outline a critique of the assumptions underlying the alleged causal relationship…

Education under the Regime of PISA & Co.: Global Standards and Local Traditions in Conflict--The Case of Germany

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Münch, Richard

2014-01-01

Background: The PISA study (assessing the competences of 15-year-old students in their mother tongue, in mathematics and in natural sciences) deals with the benchmarking of the OECD member states when it comes to meeting globally defined educational standards. Transnational educational experts now form the most powerful group within the…

Pre-Primary Education and Long-Term Education Performance: Evidence from Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Thailand

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pholphirul, Piriya

2017-01-01

Several research papers have assessed the long-term benefits of pre-primary education in terms of academic performance and labor market outcomes. This study analyzes data obtained from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to estimate the effects of preschool enrollment of Thai students on producing long-term benefits in their…

Explaining the Achievement Gap between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Students: An Analysis of PISA 2009 Results for Australia and New Zealand

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Song, Steve; Perry, Laura B.; McConney, Andrew

2014-01-01

This study investigates the relative roles of home and school variables in accounting for achievement gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in Australia and New Zealand. Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA] 2009, our findings show that achievement gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous…

What Do We Really Learn from PISA? The Sociology of Its Reception in Three European Countries (2001-2008)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pons, Xavier

2011-01-01

This article synthesises some findings of an international research project called "Know&Pol" to question the effects of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) on the public debate in three European countries (France, Portugal and Scotland). Using a political science approach, it shows that Pisa did not…

Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2000: Analysis of Questionnaire Data from United States Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ngwudike, Benjamin C.

2005-01-01

The Program for International Student Assessment 2000 (PISA) is an International Examination that was developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to assess the reading, mathematics, and science literacy of students in participating countries, including the United States. PISA is a two-hour paper-and-pencil…

Financial Literacy of 15-Year-Olds: Results from PISA 2015. Data Point. NCES 2017-086

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gonzales, Patrick; Sen, Anindita

2017-01-01

On May 24, the National Center for Education Statistics released Financial Literacy of 15-year-olds: Results from PISA 2015. The PISA assessment of financial literacy measured students' knowledge and understanding of fundamental elements of the financial world, including financial concepts, products, and risks, and their ability to apply what they…

The OECD and the Expansion of PISA: New Global Modes of Governance in Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sellar, Sam; Lingard, Bob

2014-01-01

This paper examines the expansion of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and associated growth in the influence of the OECD's education work. PISA has become one of the OECD's most successful "products" and has both strengthened the role of the Directorate for Education within the organization and enhanced…

PISA in Finland: An Education Miracle or an Obstacle to Change?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sahlberg, Pasi

2011-01-01

The present article discusses the role and impact of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in Finland. PISA has created a new geography of education policies and reforms by shifting global interest away from Anglo-Saxon education systems to Asian countries, as well as to Finland and Canada in the West. The article describes how…

Science Teachers' Satisfaction: Evidence from the PISA 2015 Teacher Survey. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 168

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mostafa, Tarek; Pál, Judit

2018-01-01

In 2015, for the first time in its history, PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment) asked teachers to describe the various aspects of their working environment and teaching practices. This paper examines how teacher, student, and school characteristics are related to science teachers' satisfaction in 19 PISA-participating…

Beyond PISA: Schools as Contexts for the Promotion of Children's Mental Health and Well-Being

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cefai, Carmel; Cavioni, Valeria

2015-01-01

Over the past couple of decades, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) has gained an increasing role in shaping educational systems and policies across the world. PISA's measurement of a limited range of cognitive abilities across cultures, however, promotes a narrow view of education, one that focuses primarily on preparing…

The Impact of OECD-PISA Results on Japanese Educational Policy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tasaki, Noritomo

2017-01-01

The author describes the results of PISA, including those of 2015 and Japan's reaction, as well as their impact. Highly-ranked in PISA, Japan has always tried to improve its education system. The promotion of reading comprehension remains an important issue and low interest and motivation to learn subjects are crucial problems. The author…

Golden Relics & Historical Standards: How the OECD is Expanding Global Education Governance through PISA for Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Addey, Camilla

2017-01-01

Setting this paper against the backdrop of scholarly research on recent changes in the OECD's approach and workings in education, I analyse how the OECD has reinforced its infrastructural and epistemological global governance through the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Development (PISA-D). Drawing on qualitative data,…

PISA 2015 Assessment and Analytical Framework: Science, Reading, Mathematic, Financial Literacy and Collaborative Problem Solving

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2017

2017-01-01

What is important for citizens to know and be able to do? The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) seeks to answer that question through the most comprehensive and rigorous international assessment of student knowledge and skills. The PISA 2015 Assessment and Analytical Framework presents the conceptual foundations of the…

Counting and Comparing School Performance: An Analysis of Media Coverage of PISA in Australia, 2000-2014

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baroutsis, Aspa; Lingard, Bob

2017-01-01

This paper empirically documents media portrayals of Australia's performance on the Program for the International Student Assessment (PISA), 2000-2014. We analyse newspaper articles from two national and eight metropolitan newspapers. This analysis demonstrates increased media coverage of PISA over the period in question. Our research data were…

Are Model PISA Pupils Happy at School? Quality of School Life of Adolescents in Finland and Korea

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yoon, Junghyun; Järvinen, Tero

2016-01-01

This paper explores the quality of school life (QSL) of two 'model pupils' in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, Finland and Korea, and investigates students' views on the central aspects of QSL ("general satisfaction," "peer relations" and "teacher-student relations") using PISA 2012 data.…

Impact of a Geometric Correction for Proximal Flow Constraint on the Assessment of Mitral Regurgitation Severity Using the Proximal Flow Convergence Method.

PubMed

Jang, Jeong Yoon; Kang, Joon-Won; Yang, Dong Hyun; Lee, Sahmin; Sun, Byung Joo; Kim, Dae-Hee; Song, Jong-Min; Kang, Duk-Hyun; Song, Jae-Kwan

2018-03-01

Overestimation of the severity of mitral regurgitation (MR) by the proximal isovelocity surface area (PISA) method has been reported. We sought to test whether angle correction (AC) of the constrained flow field is helpful to eliminate overestimation in patients with eccentric MR. In a total of 33 patients with MR due to prolapse or flail mitral valve, both echocardiography and cardiac magnetic resonance image (CMR) were performed to calculate regurgitant volume (RV). In addition to RV by conventional PISA (RV PISA ), convergence angle (α) was measured from 2-dimensional Doppler color flow maps and RV was corrected by multiplying by α/180 (RV AC ). RV measured by CMR (RV CMR ) was used as a gold standard, which was calculated by the difference between total stroke volume measured by planimetry of the short axis slices and aortic stroke volume by phase-contrast image. The correlation between RV CMR and RV by echocardiography was modest [RV CMR vs. RV PISA (r = 0.712, p < 0.001) and RV CMR vs. RV AC (r = 0.766, p < 0.001)]. However, RV PISA showed significant overestimation (RV PISA - RV CMR = 50.6 ± 40.6 mL vs. RV AC - RV CMR = 7.7 ± 23.4 mL, p < 0.001). The overall accuracy of RV PISA for diagnosis of severe MR, defined as RV ≥ 60 mL, was 57.6% (19/33), whereas it increased to 84.8% (28/33) by using RV AC ( p = 0.028). Conventional PISA method tends to provide falsely large RV in patients with eccentric MR and a simple geometric AC of the proximal constraint flow largely eliminates overestimation.

The Role of Content and Context in PISA Interest Scales: A study of the embedded interest items in the PISA 2006 science assessment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Drechsel, Barbara; Carstensen, Claus; Prenzel, Manfred

2011-01-01

This paper focuses interest in science as one of the attitudinal aspects of scientific literacy. Large-scale data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 are analysed in order to describe student interest more precisely. So far the analyses have provided a general indicator of interest, aggregated over all contexts and contents in the science test. With its innovative approach PISA embeds interest items within the cognitive test unit and its contents and contexts. The main difference from conventional interest measures is that in most questionnaires, a relatively small number of interest items cover broad fields of contents and contexts. The science units represent a number of systematically differentiated scientific contexts and contents. The units' stimulus texts allow for concrete descriptions of relevant content aspects, applications, and contexts. In the analyses, multidimensional item response models are applied in order to disentangle student interest. The results indicate that multidimensional models fit the data. A two-dimensional model separating interest into two different knowledge of science dimensions described in the PISA science framework is further analysed with respect to gender, performance differences, and country. The findings give a comprehensive description of students' interest in science. The paper deals with methodological problems and describes requirements of the test construction for further assessments. The results are discussed with regard to their significance for science education.

The Impact of the PARSEL Way to Teach Science in Germany on Interest, Scientific Literacy, and German National Standards

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Graeber, Wolfgang; Lindner, Martin

2008-01-01

This paper shows how PARSEL modules help to realize the German standards in practice. After analyzing the disappointing results of the TIMSS- and PISA-studies, which caused a kind of "PISA-shock" in Germany, and looking at school systems of winning nations, several changes have been initiated in the German educational system. The most…

Do They Feel the Same Way about Math? Testing Measurement Invariance of the PISA "Students' Approaches to Learning" Instrument across Immigrant Groups within Germany

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Segeritz, Micha; Pant, Hans Anand

2013-01-01

This article summarizes the key finding of a study that (a) tests the measurement invariance (MI) of the popular Students' Approaches to Learning instrument (Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA]) across ethnic/cultural groups within a country and (b) discusses implications for research focusing on the role of affective measures in…

How Does ICT Use Influence Students' Achievements in Math and Science over Time? Evidence from PISA 2000 to 2012

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Danhui; Liu, Luman

2016-01-01

This study aims to investigate the impacts of information and communication technology (ICT) use on students' math and science achievements, with a special focus on examining the trends of these relationships over the past decade. Data from all five waves of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) from 2000 to 2012 were used.…

Alignment Content Analysis of TIMSS and PISA Mathematics and Science Assessments Using the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum Methodology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Council of Chief State School Officers, 2009

2009-01-01

In Fall 2008, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) conducted an alignment content analysis of the 2007 TIMSS Mathematics and Science education assessments for students at grades 4 and 8 and the 2006 PISA Mathematics and Science Literacy assessments for students at age 15 (i.e., TIMSS--Trends in Mathematics and Science Study,…

Identifying the Relationships between Motivational Features of High and Low Performing Students and Science Literacy Achievement in PISA 2015 Turkey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kartal, Seval Kula; Kutlu, Ömer

2017-01-01

In this study, the predictive roles of intrinsic and instrumental motivations, science self-efficacy on success in the lower and upper quartiles of score distribution are analyzed in scientific domain of PISA 2015 Turkey sample. Since their index values cannot be calculated due to missing values, some students are excluded from the sample and the…

The Efficiency of Italian Secondary Schools and the Potential Role of Competition: A Data Envelopment Analysis Using OECD-PISA2006 Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Agasisti, Tommaso

2013-01-01

In this study, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to compute efficiency scores for a sample of Italian schools by employing OECD-PISA2006 data aggregated at school level. Efficiency has been defined as the ability to transform inputs (resources, student background, etc.) into outputs (student achievement). Different versions of the DEA models…

Digital Reading in PISA 2012 and ICT Uses: How Do VET and General Education Students Perform? JRC Science for Policy Report

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dinis da Costa, Patrícia; Araújo, Luísa

2016-01-01

The analyses presented in this report indicate that in several Member States (MS) 15-year-old students in vocational-oriented programmes (VET) perform better in digital reading than in print reading in PISA 2012. When differentiated by programme of study--VET versus general education programmes--VET students perform better in digital than in print…

First Cycle of PISA (2000-2006)--International Perspectives on Successes and Challenges: Research and Policy Directions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderson, John O.; Chiu, Mei-Hung; Yore, Larry D.

2010-01-01

This special edition of IJMSE focuses on the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) project now that it has completed a full cycle of administration--reading, mathematics, and science--to look at ways in which PISA has been used in participating countries and with what consequences, and to identify potential research and policy…

Lessons Learned from PISA: A Systematic Review of Peer-Reviewed Articles on the Programme for International Student Assessment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hopfenbeck, Therese N.; Lenkeit, Jenny; El Masri, Yasmine; Cantrell, Kate; Ryan, Jeanne; Baird, Jo-Anne

2018-01-01

International large-scale assessments are on the rise, with the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) seen by many as having strategic prominence in education policy debates. The present article reviews PISA-related English-language peer-reviewed articles from the programme's first cycle in 2000 to its most current in 2015. Five…

PISA Test Items and School-Based Examinations in Greece: Exploring the Relationship between Global and Local Assessment Discourses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anagnostopoulou, Kyriaki; Hatzinikita, Vassilia; Christidou, Vasilia; Dimopoulos, Kostas

2013-01-01

The paper explores the relationship of the global and the local assessment discourses as expressed by Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test items and school-based examinations, respectively. To this end, the paper compares PISA test items related to living systems and the context of life, health, and environment, with Greek…

Developing the Sixth Level of PISA-Like Mathematics Problems for Secondary School Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kamaliyah; Zulkardi; Darmawijoyo

2013-01-01

Indonesia's involvement in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is one attempt to see how far the development of educational programs in our country compared to other countries in the world. PISA results show that Indonesia is still at the lower level. This means that the ability of Indonesian students in solving problems that…

The Politics of PISA: The Media, Policy and Public Responses in Norway and England

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hopfenbeck, Therese N.; Görgen, Kristine

2017-01-01

Using the PISA 2015 releases in Norway and England, this article explores how PISA has been presented in the media and how the policy level has responded to the results. England will be used as an example for comparison. The article presents early media responses from the 20 most circulated daily newspapers in the two countries and discusses them…

Rethinking the Pattern of External Policy Referencing: Media Discourses over the "Asian Tigers" PISA Success in Australia, Germany and South Korea

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Waldow, Florian; Takayama, Keita; Sung, Youl-Kwan

2014-01-01

The article compares how the success of the "Asian Tiger" countries in PISA, especially PISA 2009, was depicted in the media discussion in Australia, Germany and South Korea. It argues that even in the times of today's "globalised education policy field", local factors are important in determining whether or not a country…

Examination of the PISA 2009 Reading Skills and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Use Skills of Turkish Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Acar, Tülin

2015-01-01

The aim of this paper is to determine relation between PISA Reading Skills and ICT use skills of Turkish students. In this study are four variables such as joy/like Reading, use of Libraries, Online Reading and Plausible value in reading which are dealt with as indications of reading skills. It constitutes six variables such as attitude towards…

A Comparative Evaluation of Pisa 2003-2006 Results in Reading Literacy Skills: An Example of Top-Five OECD Countries and Turkey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aydin, Ayhan; Erdagf, Coskun; Tas, Nuray

2011-01-01

In this study it is aimed to describe and evaluate comparatively the reading literacy exam results, the finance of education and schools, and socio-cultural status of parents in Turkey and the top-five OECD countries, Finland, Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand respectively, in the light reports and publications by OECD regarding PISA 2003 and…

Multilevel Classification of PISA 2015 Research Participant Countries' Literacy and These Classes' Relationship with Information and Communication Technologies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yalcin, Seher

2018-01-01

In this study, it is aimed to distinguish the reading skills of students participating in PISA 2015 application into multi-level latent classes at the student and country level. Furthermore, it is aimed to examine how the clusters emerged at country-level is predicted by variables as students have the information and communication technology (ICT)…

Analysis of Student and School Level Variables Related to Mathematics Self-Efficacy Level Based on PISA 2012 Results for China-Shanghai, Turkey, and Greece

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Usta, H. Gonca

2016-01-01

This study aims to analyze the student and school level variables that affect students' self-efficacy levels in mathematics in China-Shanghai, Turkey, and Greece based on PISA 2012 results. In line with this purpose, the hierarchical linear regression model (HLM) was employed. The interschool variability is estimated at approximately 17% in…

Teacher Mathematical Literacy: Case Study of Junior High School Teachers in Pasaman

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ahmad, D.; Suherman, S.; Maulana, H.

2018-04-01

The aim of this paper was to examine the ability of junior high school mathematics teachers to solve mathematical literacy base Problems (PISA and PISA-like problems) for the case Pasaman regency. The data was collected by interviews and test. As the results of this study, teacher ability in solving mathematical literacy base problems for level 1 until 3 has been good, but for level 4 or above is still low. It is caused by teacher knowledge about mathematical literacy still few.

Control and Estimation of Distributed Parameter Systems. Volume 126, International Conference in Vorau (Austria)

DTIC Science & Technology

1998-01-01

Parabolic Boundary Control Problem ARIELA BRIANI AND MAURIZIO FALCONE Dipartimento di Matematica Universitä di Pisa Dipartimento di Matematica ...Ministry for University and Scientific Research (MURST Project "Analisi Numerica e Matematica Computazionale"). 50 A Priori Estimates for the...Briani Dipartimento di Matematica Universitä di Pisa Via Buonarroti 2 1-56126 Pisa e-mail:briani@dm.unipi.it Maurizio Falcone Dipartimento di

Resisting the Seduction of the Global Education Measurement Industry: Notes on the Social Psychology of PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Biesta, Gert

2015-01-01

The question I raise in this paper is why measurement systems such as PISA have gained so much power in contemporary education policy and practice. I explore this question from the bottom up by asking what might contribute to the ways in which people invest in systems such as PISA, that is, what are the beliefs, assumptions and desires that lead…

Why Do East Asian Children Perform so well in PISA? An Investigation of Western-Born Children of East Asian Descent

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jerrim, John

2015-01-01

A small group of high-performing East Asian economies dominate the top of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. This has caught the attention of Western policymakers, who want to know why East Asian children obtain such high PISA scores, and what can be done to replicate their success. In this paper I investigate…

Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students in Mathematics, Science, and Reading Literacy in an International Context. First Look at PISA 2012. NCES 2014-024

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kelly, Dana; Nord, Christine Winquist; Jenkins, Frank; Chan, Jessica Ying; Kastberg, David

2013-01-01

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a system of international assessments that allows countries to compare outcomes of learning as students near the end of compulsory schooling. PISA core assessments measure the performance of 15-year-old students in mathematics, science, and reading literacy every 3 years. Coordinated by…

Pisa syndrome in Parkinson's disease: An integrated approach from pathophysiology to management.

PubMed

Tinazzi, Michele; Geroin, Christian; Gandolfi, Marialuisa; Smania, Nicola; Tamburin, Stefano; Morgante, Francesca; Fasano, Alfonso

2016-12-01

Pisa syndrome was first described in 1972 in patients treated with neuroleptics. Since 2003, when it was first reported in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), Pisa syndrome has progressively drawn the attention of clinicians and researchers. Although emerging evidence has partially clarified its prevalence and pathophysiology, the current debate revolves around diagnostic criteria and assessment and the effectiveness of pharmacological, surgical, and rehabilitative approaches. Contrary to initial thought, Pisa syndrome is common among PD patients, with an estimated prevalence of 8.8% according to a large survey. Furthermore, it is associated with the following specific patient features: more severe motor phenotype, ongoing combined pharmacological treatment with levodopa and dopamine agonists, gait disorders, and such comorbidities as osteoporosis and arthrosis. The present literature on treatment outcomes is scant, and the uneven effectiveness of specific treatments has produced conflicting results. This might be because of the limited knowledge of Pisa syndrome pathophysiology and its variable clinical presentation, which further complicates designing randomized clinical trials on this condition. However, because some forms of Pisa syndrome are potentially reversible, there is growing consensus on the importance of its early recognition and the importance of pharmacological adjustment and rehabilitation. © 2016 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society. © 2016 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.

A Logistic Regression Analysis of Turkey's 15-Year-Olds' Scoring above the OECD Average on the PISA'09 Reading Assessment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kasapoglu, Koray

2014-01-01

This study aims to investigate which factors are associated with Turkey's 15-year-olds' scoring above the OECD average (493) on the PISA'09 reading assessment. Collected from a total of 4,996 15-year-old students from Turkey, data were analyzed by logistic regression analysis in order to model the data of students who were split into two: (1)…

NEXAFS Depth Profiling of Surface Segregation in Block Copolymer Thin Films

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-01-01

a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number. PLEASE DO NOT RETURN YOUR FORM TO THE ABOVE ADDRESS. a...and compared with those of homopolymer and random copolymer controls . The carbon atoms from the relatively high surface energy phenyl groups were...e Chimica Industriale and UdR Pisa INSTM, Universita di Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy, ^Department of Materials, University of California, Santa Barbara

Technical Report and User's Guide for the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA): 2009 Data Files and Database with U.S. Specific Variables. NCES 2011-025

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hopstock, Paul J.; Pelczar, Marisa P.

2011-01-01

This technical report and user's guide is designed to provide researchers with an overview of the design and implementation of the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), as well as with information on how to access the PISA 2009 data. This information is meant to supplement that presented in Organization for Economic Cooperation…

Structure and mechanism of an inverting alkylsulfatase from Pseudomonas sp. DSM6611 specific for secondary alkyl sulfates.

PubMed

Knaus, Tanja; Schober, Markus; Kepplinger, Bernhard; Faccinelli, Martin; Pitzer, Julia; Faber, Kurt; Macheroux, Peter; Wagner, Ulrike

2012-12-01

A highly enantioselective and stereoselective secondary alkylsulfatase from Pseudomonas sp. DSM6611 (Pisa1) was heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli BL21, and purified to homogeneity for kinetic and structural studies. Structure determination of Pisa1 by X-ray crystallography showed that the protein belongs to the family of metallo-β-lactamases with a conserved binuclear Zn(2+) cluster in the active site. In contrast to a closely related alkylsulfatase from Pseudomonas aeruginosa (SdsA1), Pisa1 showed a preference for secondary rather than primary alkyl sulfates, and enantioselectively hydrolyzed the (R)-enantiomer of rac-2-octyl sulfate, yielding (S)-2-octanol with inversion of absolute configuration as a result of C-O bond cleavage. In order to elucidate the mechanism of inverting sulfate ester hydrolysis, for which no counterpart in chemical catalysis exists, we designed variants of Pisa1 guided by three-dimensional structure and docking experiments. In the course of these studies, we identified an invariant histidine (His317) near the sulfate-binding site as the general acid for crucial protonation of the sulfate leaving group. Additionally, amino acid replacements in the alkyl chain-binding pocket generated an enzyme variant that lost its stereoselectivity towards rac-2-octyl sulfate. These findings are discussed in light of the potential use of this enzyme family for applications in biocatalysis. © 2012 The Authors Journal compilation © 2012 FEBS.

Premigration School Quality, Time Spent in the United States, and the Math Achievement of Immigrant High School Students.

PubMed

Bozick, Robert; Malchiodi, Alessandro; Miller, Trey

2016-10-01

Using a nationally representative sample of 1,189 immigrant youth in American high schools, we examine whether the quality of education in their country of origin is related to post-migration math achievement in the 9th grade. To measure the quality of their education in the country of origin, we use country-specific average test scores from two international assessments: the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). We find that the average PISA or TIMSS scores for immigrant youth's country of origin are positively associated with their performance on the 9th grade post-migration math assessment. We also find that each year spent in the United States is positively associated with performance on the 9th grade post-migration math assessment, but this effect is strongest for immigrants from countries with low PISA/TIMSS scores.

Quantitation of valve regurgitation severity by three-dimensional vena contracta area is superior to flow convergence method of quantitation on transesophageal echocardiography.

PubMed

Abudiab, Muaz M; Chao, Chieh-Ju; Liu, Shuang; Naqvi, Tasneem Z

2017-07-01

Quantitation of regurgitation severity using the proximal isovelocity acceleration (PISA) method to calculate effective regurgitant orifice (ERO) area has limitations. Measurement of three-dimensional (3D) vena contracta area (VCA) accurately grades mitral regurgitation (MR) severity on transthoracic echocardiography (TTE). We evaluated 3D VCA quantitation of regurgitant jet severity using 3D transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) in 110 native mitral, aortic, and tricuspid valves and six prosthetic valves in patients with at least mild valvular regurgitation. The ASE-recommended integrative method comprising semiquantitative and quantitative assessment of valvular regurgitation was used as a reference method, including ERO area by 2D PISA for assigning severity of regurgitation grade. Mean age was 62.2±14.4 years; 3D VCA quantitation was feasible in 91% regurgitant valves compared to 78% by the PISA method. When both methods were feasible and in the presence of a single regurgitant jet, 3D VCA and 2D PISA were similar in differentiating assigned severity (ANOVAP<.001). In valves with multiple jets, however, 3D VCA had a better correlation to assigned severity (ANOVAP<.0001). The agreement of 2D PISA and 3D VCA with the integrative method was 47% and 58% for moderate and 65% and 88% for severe regurgitation, respectively. Measurement of 3D VCA by TEE is superior to the 2D PISA method in determination of regurgitation severity in multiple native and prosthetic valves. © 2017, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

List of Participants

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

2014-07-01

Alba Paolo (Università di Torino) Becattini Francesco (Università di Firenze) Bombaci Ignazio (Università di Pisa) Bonaccorso Angela (INFN Pisa) Colonna Maria (INFN-LNS Catania) Coraggio Luigi (INFN Napoli) Covello Aldo (Università di Napoli) Di Toro Massimo (Università di Catania) De Angelis Giacomo (INFN-LNL Legnaro) Gargano Angela (INFN Napoli) Gattobigio Mario (INLN, Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, CNRS, France) Gensini Paolo (INFN Lecce) Giannini Mauro (Università di Genova) Girlanda Luca (Università del Salento) Giusti Carlotta (Università di Pavia) Greco Vincenzo (Università di Catania) Grossi Eduardo (Università di Firenze) Itaco Nunzio (Università di Napoli) Kievsky Alejandro (INFN Pisa) Lanza Edoardo (INFN Catania) Lavagno Andrea (Politecnico di Torino) Logoteta Domenico (Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal) Lo Iudice Nicola (Università di Napoli) Lombardo Maria Paola (INFN-LNF Frascati) Lo Meo Sergio (ENEA Bologna) Mannarelli Massimo (INFN-LNGS Assergi) Marcucci Laura Elisa (Università di Pisa) Matera Francesco (Università di Firenze) Orlandini Giuseppina (Università di Trento) Pacati Franco (Università di Pavia) Pederiva Francesco (Università di Trento) Pirrone Sara (INFN Catania) Puglisi Armando (Università di Catania) Radici Marco (INFN Pavia) Rinaldi Matteo (Università di Perugia) Roggero Alessandro (Università di Trento) Rolando Valentina (Università di Ferrara) Rosati Sergio (Università di Pisa) Ruggieri Marco (Università di Catania) Salmè Gianni (INFN Roma) Santopinto Elena (INFN Genova) Scopetta Sergio (Università di Perugia) Taiuti Mauro (Università di Genova) Vigezzi Enrico (INFN Milano) Viviani Michele (INFN Pisa) Vorabbi Matteo (Università di Pavia)

Distinct signatures of dental plaque metabolic byproducts dictated by periodontal inflammatory status

PubMed Central

Sakanaka, Akito; Kuboniwa, Masae; Hashino, Ei; Bamba, Takeshi; Fukusaki, Eiichiro; Amano, Atsuo

2017-01-01

Onset of chronic periodontitis is associated with an aberrant polymicrobial community, termed dysbiosis. Findings regarding its etiology obtained using high-throughput sequencing technique suggested that dysbiosis holds a conserved metabolic signature as an emergent property. The purpose of this study was to identify robust biomarkers for periodontal inflammation severity. Furthermore, we investigated disease-associated metabolic signatures of periodontal microbiota using a salivary metabolomics approach. Whole saliva samples were obtained from adult subjects before and after removal of supragingival plaque (debridement). Periodontal inflamed surface area (PISA) was employed as an indicator of periodontal inflammatory status. Based on multivariate analyses using pre-debridement salivary metabolomics data, we found that metabolites associated with higher PISA included cadaverine and hydrocinnamate, while uric acid and ethanolamine were associated with lower PISA. Next, we focused on dental plaque metabolic byproducts by selecting salivary metabolites significantly decreased following debridement. Metabolite set enrichment analysis revealed that polyamine metabolism, arginine and proline metabolism, butyric acid metabolism, and lysine degradation were distinctive metabolic signatures of dental plaque in the high PISA group, which may be related to the metabolic signatures of disease-associated communities. Collectively, our findings identified potential biomarkers of periodontal inflammatory status and also provide insight into metabolic signatures of dysbiotic communities. PMID:28220901

Application of color Doppler flow mapping to calculate orifice area of St Jude mitral valve

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Leung, D. Y.; Wong, J.; Rodriguez, L.; Pu, M.; Vandervoort, P. M.; Thomas, J. D.

1998-01-01

BACKGROUND: The effective orifice area (EOA) of a prosthetic valve is superior to transvalvular gradients as a measure of valve function, but measurement of mitral prosthesis EOA has not been reliable. METHODS AND RESULTS: In vitro flow across St Jude valves was calculated by hemispheric proximal isovelocity surface area (PISA) and segment-of-spheroid (SOS) methods. For steady and pulsatile conditions, PISA and SOS flows correlated with true flow, but SOS and not PISA underestimated flow. These principles were then used intraoperatively to calculate cardiac output and EOA of newly implanted St Jude mitral valves in 36 patients. Cardiac output by PISA agreed closely with thermodilution (r=0.91, Delta=-0.05+/-0.55 L/min), but SOS underestimated it (r=0.82, Delta=-1.33+/-0.73 L/min). Doppler EOAs correlated with Gorlin equation estimates (r=0.75 for PISA and r=0.68 for SOS, P<0.001) but were smaller than corresponding in vitro EOA estimates. CONCLUSIONS: Proximal flow convergence methods can calculate forward flow and estimate EOA of St Jude mitral valves, which may improve noninvasive assessment of prosthetic mitral valve obstruction.

3-DIMENSIONAL Geometric Survey and Structural Modelling of the Dome of Pisa Cathedral

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Aita, D.; Barsotti, R.; Bennati, S.; Caroti, G.; Piemonte, A.

2017-02-01

This paper aims to illustrate the preliminary results of a research project on the dome of Pisa Cathedral (Italy). The final objective of the present research is to achieve a deep understanding of the structural behaviour of the dome, through a detailed knowledge of its geometry and constituent materials, and by taking into account historical and architectural aspects as well. A reliable survey of the dome is the essential starting point for any further investigation and adequate structural modelling. Examination of the status quo on the surveys of the Cathedral dome shows that a detailed survey suitable for structural analysis is in fact lacking. For this reason, high-density and high-precision surveys have been planned, by considering that a different survey output is needed, according both to the type of structural model chosen and purposes to be achieved. Thus, both range-based (laser scanning) and image-based (3D Photogrammetry) survey methodologies have been used. This contribution introduces the first results concerning the shape of the dome derived from surveys. Furthermore, a comparison is made between such survey outputs and those available in the literature.

Bispectral pairwise interacting source analysis for identifying systems of cross-frequency interacting brain sources from electroencephalographic or magnetoencephalographic signals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chella, Federico; Pizzella, Vittorio; Zappasodi, Filippo; Nolte, Guido; Marzetti, Laura

2016-05-01

Brain cognitive functions arise through the coordinated activity of several brain regions, which actually form complex dynamical systems operating at multiple frequencies. These systems often consist of interacting subsystems, whose characterization is of importance for a complete understanding of the brain interaction processes. To address this issue, we present a technique, namely the bispectral pairwise interacting source analysis (biPISA), for analyzing systems of cross-frequency interacting brain sources when multichannel electroencephalographic (EEG) or magnetoencephalographic (MEG) data are available. Specifically, the biPISA makes it possible to identify one or many subsystems of cross-frequency interacting sources by decomposing the antisymmetric components of the cross-bispectra between EEG or MEG signals, based on the assumption that interactions are pairwise. Thanks to the properties of the antisymmetric components of the cross-bispectra, biPISA is also robust to spurious interactions arising from mixing artifacts, i.e., volume conduction or field spread, which always affect EEG or MEG functional connectivity estimates. This method is an extension of the pairwise interacting source analysis (PISA), which was originally introduced for investigating interactions at the same frequency, to the study of cross-frequency interactions. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated in simulations for up to three interacting source pairs and for real MEG recordings of spontaneous brain activity. Simulations show that the performances of biPISA in estimating the phase difference between the interacting sources are affected by the increasing level of noise rather than by the number of the interacting subsystems. The analysis of real MEG data reveals an interaction between two pairs of sources of central mu and beta rhythms, localizing in the proximity of the left and right central sulci.

"Why bother so incredibly much?": student perspectives on PISA science assignments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Serder, Margareta; Jakobsson, Anders

2015-09-01

Large-scale assessment, such as the Programme for International Assessment (PISA), plays an increasingly important role in current educational practice and politics. However, many scholars have questioned the validity and reliability of the tests and the extent to which they actually constitute trustworthy representations of students' knowledge. In the light of such critical voices the present article adopts a sociocultural perspective of human knowledge and action in order to explore the encounters between students and the science test assignments with which their knowledge is tested. Of particular interest in this study are the described "real-life situations" presented as the relevant background in which scientific literacy is assessed in PISA. According to the sociocultural theoretical onset the methodology used to approach the students' meaning making of the image of science as portrayed in the test were collaborative situations in which students work in small groups with units of PISA assignments, enabling a study of student-assignment encounters in action. The data we worked with consists of video-recordings from 71 Swedish 15-year-old students working with three released units from the PISA science test. According to our analysis, the "real-life situations" described in the test emerge as problematic in the students' meaning-making. This is demonstrated for instance by the students' positioning themselves as being different from and opposed to the fictional pictured students who appear in the backstories of the test. This article provides examples of how the scientific and academic language used by the fictional students in the assignments mediates distance and resistance among the students. The fictional students' use of strict scientific language and methods in day-to-day life situations leads them to be perceived as "little scientists" and as elite stereotypes of the scientific culture. We conclude that, by using assignments of this type, measurements of students' knowledge in science run the risk of becoming a measurement of cultural consistency regarding how well students will overcome the hurdles of scientific cultures. We mean that all though understanding the scientific culture is an important goal for science education, there is a problem that the assessment organizations communicate the results as representations of students' knowledge in science. This study adheres to research that advises caution in not over-interpreting the PISA results and stresses that understanding students' "knowledge" about science is much more complex than what is communicated by the international assessment organizations.

Beyond Simple AB Diblock Copolymers: Application of Bifunctional and Trifunctional RAFT Agents to PISA in Water.

PubMed

Mellot, Gaëlle; Beaunier, Patricia; Guigner, Jean-Michel; Bouteiller, Laurent; Rieger, Jutta; Stoffelbach, François

2018-06-20

The influence of the macromolecular reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (macro-RAFT) agent architecture on the morphology of the self-assemblies obtained by aqueous RAFT dispersion polymerization in polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) is studied by comparing amphiphilic AB diblock, (AB) 2 triblock, and triarm star-shaped (AB) 3 copolymers, constituted of N,N-dimethylacrylamide (DMAc = A) and diacetone acrylamide (DAAm = B). Symmetrical triarm (AB) 3 copolymers could be synthesized for the first time in a PISA process. Spheres and higher order morphologies, such as worms or vesicles, could be obtained for all types of architectures and the parameters that determine their formation have been studied. In particular, we found that the total DP n of the PDMAc and the PDAAm segments, i.e., the same overall molar mass, at the same M n (PDMAc)/M n (PDAAm) ratio, rather than the individual length of the arms determined the morphologies for the linear (AB) 2 and star shaped (AB) 3 copolymers obtained by using the bi- and trifunctional macro-RAFT agents. © 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

From Self-Organized to Extended Criticality

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-04-26

Texas, Denton, TX, USA 2 Centro EXTREME, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy 3 Istituto di Fisiologia Clinica-CNR, Pisa, Italy 4 Department of Physics...Netherlands Klaus Linkenkaer-Hansen, Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research, Netherlands *Correspondence: Paolo Allegrini , Istituto di Fisiologia

The Science Training Program for Young Italian Physicists and Engineers at Fermilab

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Barzi, Emanuela; Bellettini, Giorgio; Donati, Simone

2015-03-12

Since 1984 Fermilab has been hosting a two-month summer training program for selected undergraduate and graduate Italian students in physics and engineering. Building on the traditional close collaboration between the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) and Fermilab, the program is supported by INFN, by the DOE and by the Scuola Superiore di Sant`Anna of Pisa (SSSA), and is run by the Cultural Association of Italians at Fermilab (CAIF). This year the University of Pisa has qualified it as a “University of Pisa Summer School”, and will grant successful students with European Supplementary Credits. Physics students join the Fermilabmore » HEP research groups, while engineers join the Particle Physics, Accelerator, Technical, and Computing Divisions. Some students have also been sent to other U.S. laboratories and universities for special trainings. The programs cover topics of great interest for science and for social applications in general, like advanced computing, distributed data analysis, nanoelectronics, particle detectors for earth and space experiments, high precision mechanics, applied superconductivity. In the years, over 350 students have been trained and are now employed in the most diverse fields in Italy, Europe, and the U.S. In addition, the existing Laurea Program in Fermilab Technical Division was extended to the whole laboratory, with presently two students in Master’s thesis programs on neutrino physics and detectors in the Neutrino Division. And finally, a joint venture with the Italian Scientists and Scholars North-America Foundation (ISSNAF) provided this year 4 professional engineers free of charge for Fermilab. More details on all of the above can be found below.« less

List of Participants

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bombaci, I.; Covello, A.; Marcucci, L. E.; Rosati, S.

2009-07-01

Armani Paolo (Università di Trento) Benhar Omar (INFN Roma) Bombaci Ignazio (Università di Pisa) Bonanno Luca (Università di Ferrara) Catara Francesco (Università di Catania) Cò Giampaolo (Università di Lecce) Colonna Maria (Laboratori Nazionali del Sud, INFN Catania) Colonna Nicola (INFN Bari) Conti Francesco (Università di Pavia) Coraggio Luigi (INFN Napoli) Covello Aldo (Università di Napoli) Cristoforetti Marco (Technische Universität München, Germania) Cuofano Carmine (Università di Ferrara) Di Toro Massimo (Università di Catania) Drago Alessandro (Università di Ferrara) Faccioli Pietro (Università di Trento) Farina Nicola (INFN Roma) Finelli Paolo (Università di Bologna) Fiorentini Giovanni (Università di Ferrara) Fortunato Lorenzo (Università di Padova) Gambacurta Danilo (Università di Catania) Gandolfi Stefano (Università di Trento) Gargano Angela (INFN Napoli) Giannini Mauro (Università di Genova) Girlanda Luca (INFN Pisa) Giusti Carlotta (INFN Pavia) Illarionov Alexei (SISSA Trieste) Itaco Nunzio (Università di Napoli) Kievsky Alejandro (INFN Pisa) Lanza Edoardo (INFN Catania) Leidemann Winfried (Università di Trento) Lenzi Silvia (Università di Padova) Lipparini Enrico (Università di Trento) Lissia Marcello (Università di Cagliari) Lo Iudice Nicola (Università di Napoli) Maieron Chiara (Università di Lecce) Marcucci Laura Elisa (Università di Pisa) Matera Francesco (Università di Firenze) Millo Raffaele (Università di Trento) Orlandini Giuseppina (Università di Trento) Pacati Franco (Università di Pavia) Pastore Alessandro (Univeristy of Jyväskylä, Finlandia) Pederiva Francesco (Università di Trento) Pisent Gualtiero (Università di Padova) Prete Gianfranco (INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro) Quarati Piero (Politecnico di Torino) Rosati Sergio (Università di Pisa) Salmè Giovanni (INFN Roma) Santopinto Elena (INFN Genova) Traini Marco (Università di Trento) Vigezzi Enrico (INFN Milano) Vitturi Andrea (Università di Padova) Viviani Michele (INFN Pisa)

Periodontal inflamed surface area and C-reactive protein as predictors of HbA1c: a study in Indonesia.

PubMed

Susanto, Hendri; Nesse, Willem; Dijkstra, Pieter U; Hoedemaker, Evelien; van Reenen, Yvonne Huijser; Agustina, Dewi; Vissink, Arjan; Abbas, Frank

2012-08-01

Periodontitis may exert an infectious and inflammatory burden, evidenced by increased C-reactive protein (CRP). This burden may impair blood glucose control (HbA1c). The aim of our study was to analyze whether periodontitis severity as measured with the periodontal inflamed surface area (PISA) and CRP predict HbA1c levels in a group of healthy Indonesians and a group of Indonesians treated for type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM2). A full-mouth periodontal examination, including probing pocket depth, gingival recession, clinical attachment loss, plaque index and bleeding on probing, was performed in 132 healthy Indonesians and 101 Indonesians treated for DM2. Using these data, PISA was calculated. In addition, HbA1c and CRP were analyzed. A validated questionnaire was used to assess smoking, body mass index (BMI), education and medical conditions. In regression analyses, it was assessed whether periodontitis severity and CRP predict HbA1c, controlling for confounding and effect modification (i.e., age, sex, BMI, pack years, and education). In healthy Indonesians, PISA and CRP predicted HbA1c as did age, sex, and smoking. In Indonesians treated for DM2, PISA did not predict HbA1c. Periodontitis may impair blood glucose regulation in healthy Indonesians in conjunction with elevated CRP levels. The potential effect of periodontitis on glucose control in DM2 patients may be masked by DM2 treatment. periodontitis may impair blood glucose control through exerting an inflammatory and infectious burden evidenced by increased levels of CRP.

Challenges for PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schleicher, Andreas

2016-01-01

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) provides a framework in which over 80 countries collaborate to build advanced global metrics to assess the knowledge, skills and character attributes of the students. The design of assessments poses major conceptual and technical challenges, as successful learning. Beyond a sound…

[The Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Pisa and San Diego Autoquestionnaire (TEMPS-A)--an important tool to study affective temperaments].

PubMed

Dembińska-Krajewska, Daria; Rybakowski, Janusz

2014-01-01

The aim of the paper is to describe the Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Pisa and San Diego Autoquestionnaire (TEMPS-A) constructed by prominent researchers of affective disorders, under the direction of Hagop Akiskal, and functioning in full version since 2005. The article refers to the definitions of temperament, including the concept of affective temperament, related to the area of emotionality and conceptualized as the endophenotype of affective disorders. Based on clinical observations, initially four types of temperament had been delineated: hiperthymic, depressed, irritable and cyclothymic, and, subsequently, the anxious temperament was added. Full version of the scale contains 110 items for the five types of temperament, which were discussed in detail. The TEMPS-A has been translated into 32 languages and its verification was performed in many countries, including Poland. The scale has been widely used in epidemiological and clinical studies in general population, in patients with affective disorders, and in other diseases. In affective disorders, different types of temperament show, among others, a relationship to the type and symptomatology of bipolar disorder as well as to a predisposition to suicidal behavior. In Poznań centre, an association between several dimensions of temperament of the TEMPS-A, and prophylacic efficacy of lithium has been shown. Different types of temperament also play a role in other mental disorders and somatic diseases. In the final section of the article, the studies performed so far on the molecular-genetic determinants of temperament dimensions, measured by the TEMPS-A are presented.

Logics and Models for Concurrency and Type Theory

DTIC Science & Technology

1992-06-16

monoidal) categories, al- though the basic reference still remains the original monograph of Eilenberg and Kelly . Therefore, the paper includes a fully...University of Pisa, Italy " Prof. Pierpaolo Degano, University of Parma, Italy " !,.r. Vladimiro Sassone, Unit Aity of Pisa, Italy " Ms. Maura Cerioli

PISA and High-Performing Education Systems: Explaining Singapore's Education Success

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Deng, Zongyi; Gopinathan, S.

2016-01-01

Singapore's remarkable performance in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has placed it among the world's high-performing education systems (HPES). In the literature on HPES, its "secret formula" for education success is explained in terms of teacher quality, school leadership, system characteristics and educational…

Scientific Literacy and Student Attitudes: Perspectives from PISA 2006 Science

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bybee, Rodger; McCrae, Barry

2011-01-01

International assessments provide important knowledge about science education and help inform decisions about policies, programmes, and practices in participating countries. In 2006, science was the primary domain for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), supported by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development…

PISA 2009 Results: Executive Summary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing (NJ1), 2010

2010-01-01

The OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) focuses on young people's ability to use their knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges. This orientation reflects a change in the goals and objectives of curricula themselves, which are increasingly concerned with what…

Policy Impact of PISA on Mathematics Education: The Case of Norway

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nortvedt, Guri A.

2018-01-01

This article addresses the policy implications of participation in international large-scale assessments (ILSAs), particularly the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and the ways in which such implications might influence mathematics education. Taking Norway as a special case, this discussion focuses on insights into teaching,…

International Comparisons of Innovation and Creativity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tienken, Christopher H.

2013-01-01

The release of the 2012 results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) on December 3, 2012, by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ([OECD], 2013) brought about another round of public education fear mongering on the part of bureaucrats and policymakers. However, weaknesses with the PISA test design,…

Chinese Responses to Shanghai's Performance in PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tan, Charlene

2017-01-01

This article analyses the public responses in China to Shanghai's performance in the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Based on data obtained from media accounts and other materials published between 2013 and 2016, the research findings show that the responses in China are generally reflective, measured and self-critical.…

Tracing the French Policy PISA Debate: A Policy Configuration Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pons, Xavier

2016-01-01

This article traces the evolution of the French policy PISA debate from 2001 to 2014 by analysing the results of two original qualitative researches. Theoretically, this debate is the outcome of specific policy configurations, which predetermine its scope, content and effectiveness. These configurations are themselves described through their…

Towards Community Oriented Curriculum in Finnish Literacy Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Makinen, Marita

2013-01-01

Finland's successful PISA "literacy results reflect" the foundation of the Finnish education system, which could be characterised by the words equality, equity and individual support. However, international interest in this PISA success has not focused on curricular aspects, and yet the core curriculum specifies teaching and learning practices in…

PISA Proficiency Scores Predict Educational Outcomes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fischbach, Antoine; Keller, Ulrich; Preckel, Franzis; Brunner, Martin

2013-01-01

The "Programme for International Student Assessment" (PISA) examines the extent to which 15-year-old students who are near the end of compulsory education have acquired some of the competencies essential for participation in the labor market and society. Given that this participation hinges on educational attainment, it is crucial to…

PISA Mathematics and Reading Performance Differences of Mainstream European and Turkish Immigrant Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arikan, Serkan; van de Vijver, Fons J. R.; Yagmur, Kutlay

2017-01-01

Lower reading and mathematics performance of Turkish immigrant students as compared to mainstream European students could reflect differential learning outcomes, differential socioeconomic backgrounds of the groups, differential mainstream language proficiency, and/or test bias. Using PISA reading and mathematics scores of these groups, we…

"Why Bother so Incredibly Much?": Student Perspectives on PISA Science Assignments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Serder, Margareta; Jakobsson, Anders

2015-01-01

Large-scale assessment, such as the Programme for International Assessment (PISA), plays an increasingly important role in current educational practice and politics. However, many scholars have questioned the validity and reliability of the tests and the extent to which they actually constitute trustworthy representations of students' knowledge.…

Numerical Study of HHFW Heating in FRC Plasmas

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ceccherini, Francesco; Galeotti, Laura; Brambilla, Marco; Dettrick, Sean; Yang, Xiaokang; TAE Team

2017-10-01

The TriAlpha Energy (TAE) code RF-Pisa is a Finite Larmor Radius (FLR) full wave code developed over the years to study RF heating in the Field Reversed Configuration (FRC) in both the ion and electron cyclotron regimes. The FLR approximation is perfectly adequate to address RF propagation and absorption at the fundamental and second harmonic frequencies (as in the minority heating scheme), but it is not able to describe higher order processes such as high-harmonic fast waves (HHFW). The latter ones have frequencies lying between the ion cyclotron and lower hybrid resonances and they may represent a viable path to develop an efficient method to deposit energy inside the FRC separatrix, as suggested by recent results obtained at NSTX. A significant upgrade of RF-Pisa to include HHFW has been undertaken. In particular, the so-called ``quasi local approximation'' originally proposed for toroidal geometries has been re-derived for the cylindrical geometry and a new HHFW version of RF-Pisa concurrent to the FLR version has been developed. Here we present the first results of the application of the new code to FRC equilibria and we discuss the features of the dispersion relations and the absorption processes which characterize this novel regime.

Error Analysis of Indonesian Junior High School Student in Solving Space and Shape Content PISA Problem Using Newman Procedure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sumule, U.; Amin, S. M.; Fuad, Y.

2018-01-01

This study aims to determine the types and causes of errors, as well as efforts being attempted to overcome the mistakes made by junior high school students in completing PISA content space and shape. Two subjects were selected based on the mathematical ability test results with the most error, yet they are able to communicate orally and in writing. Two selected subjects then worked on the PISA ability test question and the subjects were interviewed to find out the type and cause of the error and then given a scaffolding based on the type of mistake made.The results of this study obtained the type of error that students do are comprehension and transformation error. The reasons are students was not able to identify the keywords in the question, write down what is known or given, specify formulas or device a plan. To overcome this error, students were given scaffolding. Scaffolding that given to overcome misunderstandings were reviewing and restructuring. While to overcome the transformation error, scaffolding given were reviewing, restructuring, explaining and developing representational tools. Teachers are advised to use scaffolding to resolve errors so that the students are able to avoid these errors.

[Pediatric history in Pisa and the birth of world pediatrics].

PubMed

Farnetani, I; Farnetani, F

2009-10-01

The University of Pisa was the first in the world to nominate a professor of pediatirics. It was Gaetano Palloni who was nominated professor of ''children diseases'' on April 8(th), 1802 and was assigned to one of the two branch offices of the Pisan University, the one in Florence. He was assigned to ''Ospedale degli Innocenti'' where he taught and also supervised the clinical part. In 1923, he was nominated director of the Gennaro Fiore paediatric clinic and stayed there until 1952 when Augusto Gentili took over. In half a century there were only two professors and this didactic continuity made it possible for Pisa to become one of the greatest Italian pediatric schools.

Mathematics Curriculum in Ireland: The Influence of PISA on the Development of Project Maths

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kirwan, Liz

2015-01-01

This article interrogates the extent to which the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) through its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) influenced the development of Project Maths, a new second-level mathematics education policy in Ireland. It argues that the Irish government, in its revision of mathematics…

The Use (and Misuse) of PISA in Guiding Policy Reform: The Case of Spain

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Choi, Álvaro; Jerrim, John

2016-01-01

In 2013 Spain introduced a series of educational reforms explicitly inspired by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 results. These reforms were mainly implemented in secondary education--based upon the assumption that this is where Spain's educational problems lie. This paper questions this assumption by attempting to…

PISA Trends, Social Changes, and Education Reforms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aloisi, Cesare; Tymms, Peter

2017-01-01

The stability of educational test results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) over 15 years was examined, and the influence of demographics and social capital was assessed, as was the impact of educational reforms. The test results were remarkably stable, with correlations up to 0.99 for country-level results over 2…

The Roles of Teacher Leadership in Shanghai Education Success

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pang, Nicholas Sun-keung; Miao, Zhuang

2017-01-01

Teacher leadership is generally accepted as having a critical role in supporting school improvement. However, most knowledge on teacher leadership comes from the West, the roles of teacher leadership in the East, particularly, the most populated country, China, remain largely unexplored. Shanghai students were ranked top in PISA 2009 and PISA 2012…

PISA 2003 Australia: ICT Use Familiarity at School and Home. ACER Research Monograph Number 62

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thomson, Sue; De Bortoli, Lisa

2007-01-01

As countries continue to invest in information and communication technologies (ICT) and they become even more common in the workplace, there is an increasing demand for schools to produce technologically literate students. This report presents results from the "Programme for International Student Assessment" (PISA) 2003, and examines how…

Patterns of Parental Involvement in Selected OECD Countries: Cross-National Analyses of PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hartas, Dimitra

2015-01-01

Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), patterns of parental involvement were examined in selected OECD countries. The findings showed that, irrespective of educational qualifications, parents were frequently involved in their children's learning at the start of primary school and at age 15. Cross-national…

Comparing OECD PISA Reading in English to Other Languages: Identifying Potential Sources of Non-Invariance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Asil, Mustafa; Brown, Gavin T. L.

2016-01-01

The use of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) across nations, cultures, and languages has been criticized. The key criticisms point to the linguistic and cultural biases potentially underlying the design of reading comprehension tests, raising doubts about the legitimacy of comparisons across economies. Our research focused…

Policy, Philanthropy and Profit: The OECD's PISA for Schools and New Modes of Heterarchical Educational Governance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewis, Steven

2017-01-01

This paper examines the development and administration of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Schools--a new testing instrument of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development--to demonstrate the relevance of heterarchical processes to educational governance. Drawing suggestively across new "relational"…

The GED and the Rise of Contextless Accountability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hutt, Ethan

2014-01-01

Background/Context:Policy discussions in the U.S. and abroad have become increasingly studded with reference to the results of international tests like PISA. Unlike most assessments, PISA is not designed to measure whether students have mastered a particular school curriculum but rather provide a measure of students' ability to meet future…

An Opportunity to Better Understand Schooling: The Growing Presence of PISA in the Americas

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Milford, Todd; Ross, Shelley P.; Anderson, John O.

2010-01-01

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has been developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to provide participating nations with internationally comparative mean literacy scores in reading, mathematics, and science for students nearing the end of compulsory schooling. The number of nations from the…

PISA Data: Raising Concerns with Its Use in Policy Settings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gillis, Shelley; Polesel, John; Wu, Margaret

2016-01-01

This article considers the role played by policy makers, government organisations, and research institutes (sometimes labelled "think tanks") in the analysis, use and reporting of PISA data for the purposes of policy advice and advocacy. It draws on the ideas of Rizvi and Lingard (Globalizing Education Policy, 2010), Bogdandy and…

Italian Students' Results in the PISA Mathematics Test: Does Reading Competence Matter?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ajello, Anna Maria; Caponera, Elisa; Palmerio, Laura

2018-01-01

In Italy, from the 2003 reports to the present, the National Institute for the Educational Evaluation of Instruction and Training (INVALSI) has conducted research on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results in order to understand Italian students' low achievement in mathematics. In the present paper, data from a representative…

International Test Score Comparisons and Educational Policy: A Review of the Critiques

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carnoy, Martin

2015-01-01

Stanford education professor Martin Carnoy examines four main critiques of how international test results are used in policymaking. Of particular interest are critiques of the policy analyses published by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Using average PISA scores as a comparative measure of student achievement is misleading…

On the Cross-Country Comparability of Indicators of Socioeconomic Resources in PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pokropek, Artur; Borgonovi, Francesca; McCormick, Carina

2017-01-01

Large-scale international assessments rely on indicators of the resources that students report having in their homes to capture the financial capital of their families. The scaling methodology currently used to develop the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) background indices is designed to maximize within-country comparability…

International Comparisons and Sensitivity to Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wiliam, Dylan

2008-01-01

While international comparisons such as those provided by PISA may be meaningful in terms of overall judgements about the performance of educational systems, caution is needed in terms of more fine-grained judgements. In particular it is argued that the results of PISA to draw conclusions about the quality of instruction in different systems is…

Securing Quality and Equity in Education: Lessons from PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schleicher, Andreas

2009-01-01

Results from PISA show that strong educational performance, and indeed significant improvement over short periods of time, is possible. Whether in Asia (e.g., Japan and Korea), in Europe (e.g., Finland) or in North America (Canada), many countries display strong overall learning outcomes; equally important, they show that poor performance in…

Fifteen Years of Research on PISA Effects on Education Governance: A Critical Review

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pons, Xavier

2017-01-01

This article provides a literature review on the effects of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) on education governance and policy process across participating countries. This review seemed necessary because there has been a growing body of literature on this topic since 2003, especially since 2010, because this…

Improving Performance: Leading from the Bottom. PISA in Focus. No. 2

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing (NJ1), 2011

2011-01-01

Since the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2000 and 2009 surveys both focused on reading, one can track in detail how student reading performance has changed over that period. Among the 26 OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries with comparable results in both assessments, Chile, Germany,…

The Fabrications and Travels of a Knowledge-Policy Instrument

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carvalho, Luis Miguel

2012-01-01

This article sets forth the main elements of the conceptual framework for the overall approach to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) taken in this special issue. PISA is here examined as a (knowledge for policy) regulatory instrument made by intertwined cognitive and social practices, and involving multidirectional flows of…

Does Performance-Based Pay Improve Teaching? PISA in Focus. No. 16

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing (NJ1), 2012

2012-01-01

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has long established that high-performing education systems tend to pay their teachers more. They also often prioritise the quality of teaching over other choices, including class size. But in the current budgetary climate, paying everybody more may not be a viable alternative. So many…

Characteristics of 15-Year-Old Students Predicting Scientific Literacy Skills in Turkey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Demir, Ergül

2016-01-01

Since 2003, Turkey regularly participates in PISA. According to the PISA 2012 results, 15-year-old students in Turkey performed below both OECD countries and participating countries. Defining the relations between students' characteristics and their scientific literacy skills is thought to provide deeper understanding for the nature of this…

Cultural Capital--A Shift in Perspective: An Analysis of PISA 2009 Data for Croatia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Puzic, Saša; Gregurovic, Margareta; Košutic, Iva

2016-01-01

Using PISA 2009 data for Croatia, this paper addresses the relationship between socio-economic background, cultural capital and educational attainment. Following Bourdieu, we emphasized the importance of interpreting cultural capital effects as effects of family habitus. The results indicated that the material and the relational dimension of…

Single step generation of protein arrays from DNA by cell-free expression and in situ immobilisation (PISA method).

PubMed

He, M; Taussig, M J

2001-08-01

We describe a format for production of protein arrays termed 'protein in situ array' (PISA). A PISA is rapidly generated in one step directly from PCR-generated DNA fragments by cell-free protein expression and in situ immobilisation at a surface. The template for expression is DNA encoding individual proteins or domains, which is produced by PCR using primers designed from information in DNA databases. Coupled transcription and translation is carried out on a surface to which the tagged protein adheres as soon as it is synthesised. Because proteins generated by cell-free synthesis are usually soluble and functional, this method can overcome problems of insolubility or degradation associated with bacterial expression of recombinant proteins. Moreover, the use of PCR-generated DNA enables rapid production of proteins or domains based on genome information alone and will be particularly useful where cloned material is not available. Here we show that human single-chain antibody fragments (three domain, V(H)/K form) and an enzyme (luciferase) can be functionally arrayed by the PISA method.

Stimulus-Responsive Nanoparticles and Associated (Reversible) Polymorphism via Polymerization Induced Self-assembly (PISA).

PubMed

Pei, Yiwen; Lowe, Andrew B; Roth, Peter J

2017-01-01

Polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) is an extremely versatile method for the in situ preparation of soft-matter nanoparticles of defined size and morphologies at high concentrations, suitable for large-scale production. Recently, certain PISA-prepared nanoparticles have been shown to exhibit reversible polymorphism ("shape-shifting"), typically between micellar, worm-like, and vesicular phases (order-order transitions), in response to external stimuli including temperature, pH, electrolytes, and chemical modification. This review summarises the literature to date and describes molecular requirements for the design of stimulus-responsive nano-objects. Reversible pH-responsive behavior is rationalised in terms of increased solvation of reversibly ionized groups. Temperature-triggered order-order transitions, conversely, do not rely on inherently thermo-responsive polymers, but are explained based on interfacial LCST or UCST behavior that affects the volume fractions of the core and stabilizer blocks. Irreversible morphology transitions, on the other hand, can result from chemical post-modification of reactive PISA-made particles. Emerging applications and future research directions of this "smart" nanoparticle behavior are reviewed. © 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Problems in Deriving Italian Regional Differences in Intelligence from 2009 PISA Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cornoldi, Cesare; Giofre, David; Martini, Angela

2013-01-01

Recent results of international assessment programs (e.g., PISA) have shown a large difference in high school students' performance between northern and southern Italy. On this basis, it has been argued that the discrepancy reflects differences in average intelligence of the inhabitants of regions and is associated with genetic factors ( and ).…

How Does PISA Measure Students' Ability to Collaborate? PISA in Focus. No. 77

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2017

2017-01-01

Solving unfamiliar problems on one's own is important, but in today's increasingly interconnected world, people are often required to collaborate in order to achieve their goals. Teamwork has numerous benefits, from a diverse range of opinions to synergies among team members, and assigning tasks to those who are best suited to them. Collaboration…

PISA 2015: Findings and Some Implications for UK Science Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Osborne, Jonathan; Millar, Robin

2017-01-01

This article provides an overview of the main findings for the countries of the UK from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2015, where science was the major focus. The nature of the tests, the key findings and how they might be interpreted are discussed--in…

Errare Humanum Est! A Socio-Psychological Approach to a "Climbing Mount Fuji" PISA Question

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Selleri, Patrizia; Carugati, Felice

2018-01-01

There is a consensus that the items proposed by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) program allow us to focus on the outcomes of the processes of appropriation and transformation of learning tools at the end of compulsory schooling, particularly regarding the key competencies for lifelong learning and citizenship in digital…

Do Inequalities in Parents' Education Play an Important Role in PISA Students' Mathematics Achievement Test Score Disparities?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martins, Lurdes; Veiga, Paula

2010-01-01

This paper measures and decomposes socioeconomic-related inequality in mathematics achievement in 15 European Union member states. Data is taken from the 2003 wave of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). There is socioeconomic-related inequality in mathematics achievement, favoring the higher socioeconomic groups in each…

How Do Some Students Overcome Their Socio-Economic Background? PISA in Focus. No. 5

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing (NJ1), 2011

2011-01-01

Are socio-economically disadvantaged students condemned to perpetuate an intergenerational cycle of poor academic achievement, poor job prospects and poverty? Not if they attend schools that provide them with more regular classes. Resilient students in the 2006 and 2009 PISA surveys displayed high levels of academic achievement despite the fact…

Where Immigrant Students Succeed: A Comparative Review of Performance and Engagement in PISA 2003

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schleicher, Andreas

2006-01-01

This report examines how immigrant students performed, mainly in mathematics and reading, but also in science and problem-solving skills in the PISA 2003 assessment, both in comparison with native students in their adopted country and relative to other students across all countries covered in the report (the "case countries"). In…

A Comparative Analysis of PISA Scientific Literacy Framework in Finnish and Thai Science Curricula

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sothayapetch, Pavinee; Lavonen, Jari; Juuti, Kalle

2013-01-01

A curriculum is a master plan that regulates teaching and learning. This paper compares Finnish and Thai primary school level science curricula to the PISA 2006 Scientific Literacy Framework. Curriculum comparison was made following the procedure of deductive content analysis. In the analysis, there were four main categories adopted from PISA…

International Semiotics: Item Difficulty and the Complexity of Science Item Illustrations in the PISA-2009 International Test Comparison

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Solano-Flores, Guillermo; Wang, Chao; Shade, Chelsey

2016-01-01

We examined multimodality (the representation of information in multiple semiotic modes) in the context of international test comparisons. Using Program of International Student Assessment (PISA)-2009 data, we examined the correlation of the difficulty of science items and the complexity of their illustrations. We observed statistically…

School Autonomy and Accountability: Are They Related to Student Performance? PISA in Focus. No. 9

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing (NJ1), 2011

2011-01-01

In recent years, many schools have grown into more autonomous organisations and have become more accountable to students, parents and the public at large for their outcomes. PISA results suggest that, when autonomy and accountability are intelligently combined, they tend to be associated with better student performance. In countries where schools…

An Analysis of the Impact of Socio-Economic Disadvantage and School Quality on the Probability of School Dropout

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mahuteau, S.; Mavromaras, K.

2014-01-01

This paper combines the Australian Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) micro-level data with its longitudinal continuation, the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth data, to measure the association between individual PISA scores and early school dropouts. We use multilevel modelling to distinguish between student and school…

Developing Mathematics Problems Based on PISA Level of Change and Relationships Content

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ahyan, Shahibul; Zulkardi; Darmawijoyo

2014-01-01

This research aims to produce mathematics problems based on PISA level with valid and practical content of change and relationships and has potential effect for Junior High School students. A development research method developed by Akker, Gravemeijer, McKenney and Nieveen is used this research. This development research consists of three stages;…

Finland and Singapore in PISA 2009: Similarities and Differences in Achievements and School Management

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Soh, Kaycheng

2014-01-01

In PISA 2009, Finland and Singapore were both ranked high among the participating nations and have caught much attention internationally. However, a secondary analysis of the means for Reading achievement show that the differences are rather small and are attributable to spurious precision. Hence, the two nations should be considered as being on…

The OECD and the Local: PISA-Based Test for Schools in the USA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rutkowski, David

2015-01-01

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has recently piloted the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)-based Test for Schools in the USA. In this paper, I contend that by connecting directly with local school boards this new initiative has the potential to further promote the OECD's educational agenda in…

PISA 2012 Assessment and Analytical Framework: Mathematics, Reading, Science, Problem Solving and Financial Literacy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing (NJ3), 2013

2013-01-01

Are students well prepared to meet the challenges of the future? Can they analyse, reason and communicate their ideas effectively? Have they found the kinds of interests they can pursue throughout their lives as productive members of the economy and society? The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) seeks to answer these…

A Contribution to the Evidence of the Scale Validity of the PISA Test. (Technical Report IEIA-INEE)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tristan-Lopez, Agustin; Mendoza-Gonzalez, Liliana; Diaz-Gutierrez, Maria Antonieta; Flores-Vazquez, Gustavo; Solis-Gonzalez, Roberto; Canales-Sanchez, Damian; Morelos-Mora, Placido; de la C. Hernandez, Yesenia

2008-01-01

The international OECD PISA [Programme for International Assessment] 2006 test focused on the performance of Sciences of 15 years old students. The unsatisfactory results from Mexico were submitted to analysis, including multilevel models, to explain the origin of their deficiencies. It was clear that a differential functioning behavior or a…

An Exploration of Reasons for Shanghai's Success in the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Minxuan, Zhang; Lingshuai, Kong

2012-01-01

The outstanding performance of Shanghai students in the 4th Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2009) gained widespread attention at home and abroad. In this paper, the authors attribute this outstanding performance to three traditional factors and six modern factors. The traditional factors are high parental expectations, belief…

Colloquium Spectroscopicum Internationale XL, Pisa (Italy), 11-16 June 2017

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

D'Ulivo, Alessandro; Legnaioli, Stefano

2017-12-01

The 40th edition of the Colloquium Spectroscopicum Internationale (CSI XL) was held in Pisa (Italy) between 11 and 16 June 2017, at the Congress Center of Pisa. It is the third time that this prestigious conference on Analytical Spectroscopy is organized in Italy after the CSI II (Venice, 1951) and CSI XVII (Florence, 1973). In this occasion, the CSI XL took place together with the 9th Euro-Mediterranean Symposium on Laser Induced Breakdown spectroscopy (IX EMSLIBS, Chaired by Vincenzo Palleschi) with the aim to have a positive impact on both conferences by fostering synergisms among participants of all ages, as well as the level of participation, in the stimulating atmosphere of a beautiful city of art in Tuscany.

Bruno, Galileo, Einstein: The Value of Myths in Physics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Martinez, Alberto

2015-03-01

Usually, historical myths are portrayed as something to be avoided in a physics classroom. Instead, I will discuss the positive function of myths and how they can be used to improve physics education. First, on the basis of historical research from primary sources and significant new findings about the Catholic Inquisition, I will discuss how to use the inspirational story of Giordano Bruno when discussing cosmology. Next, I will discuss the recurring story about Galileo and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Finally, I will discuss how neglected stories about the young Albert Einstein can help to inspire students.

Mathematics Skill of Fifteen Years Old Students in Yogyakarta in Solving Problems Like PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wulandari, Nidya Ferry; Jailani

2018-01-01

The aims of this research were to describe mathematics skill of 8th fifteen-year old students in Yogyakarta in solving problem of PISA. The sampling was combination of stratified and cluster random sampling. The sample consisting of 400 students was selected from fifteen schools. The data collection was by tests. The research finding revealed that…

Are Students More Engaged When Schools Offer Extracurricular Activities? PISA in Focus. No. 18

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing (NJ1), 2012

2012-01-01

Are students more engaged and do they perform better in science if their school encourages them to work on science projects, participate in science fairs, belong to a science-related club or go on science-related field trips--in addition to teaching them the mandatory science curriculum? To find out, PISA (Programme for International Student…

Does Participation in Pre-Primary Education Translate into Better Learning Outcomes at School? PISA in Focus. No. 1

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing (NJ1), 2011

2011-01-01

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) Programme for International Student Assessment 2009 (PISA 2009) results show that in practically all OECD countries 15-year-old students who had attended some pre-primary school outperformed students who had not. In fact, the difference between students who had attended for more…

Academic Resilience: What Schools and Countries Do to Help Disadvantaged Students Succeed in PISA. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 167

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Agasisti, Tommaso; Avvisati, Francesco; Borgonovi, Francesca; Longobardi, Sergio

2018-01-01

Resilience refers to the capacity of individuals to prosper despite encountering adverse circumstances. This paper defines academic resilience as the ability of 15-year-old students from disadvantaged backgrounds to perform at a certain level in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in reading, mathematics and science that…

Exploring the Relationship between Purpose of Computer Usage and Reading Skills of Turkish Students: Evidence from PISA 2006

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gumus, Sedat; Atalmis, Erkan Hasan

2011-01-01

Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) has conducted a series of educational assessments in many OECD and non-OECD countries to support their sustainable economic growth since 2000. These assessments are named Program for International Student Achievement (PISA); they focus on the capabilities of 15-year olds in three main…

The Relationship of School-Based Parental Involvement with Student Achievement: A Comparison of Principal and Parent Survey Reports from PISA 2012

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sebastian, James; Moon, Jeong-Mi; Cunningham, Matt

2017-01-01

This paper explores parental involvement using principal and parent survey reports to examine whether parents' involvement in their children's schools predicts academic achievement. Survey data from principals and parents of seven countries from the PISA 2012 database and hierarchical linear modelling were used to analyse between- and within-…

Should Individual U.S. Schools Participate in PISA?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rutkowski, David; Rutkowski, Leslie; Plucker, Jonathan A.

2015-01-01

The OECD and its U.S. administrator, McGraw-Hill Education CTB, have recently concluded the first cycle of the OECD-Test for Schools in the U.S. This test is being marketed to local schools and is designed to compare 15-year-olds from individual participating schools against peers nationally and internationally using the OECD's PISA test as its…

Key Insights from PISA 2015 for the UK Nations. NFER Education Briefings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Foundation for Educational Research, 2016

2016-01-01

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide research project involving schools and students in over 70 countries. It is run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), takes place every three years, and is designed to examine how 15-year-olds can apply what they have learned in school to real…

How Have Schools Changed over the Past Decade? PISA in Focus. No. 52

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2015

2015-01-01

It seems that everyone is talking about improving education. Indeed, over the past decade, governments have invested more in education in an effort to improve the quality of primary and secondary schools. Has this investment paid off? In every PISA cycle since 2000, students and school principals were asked a series of questions relating to their…

What You Don't Find out about England's Educational Performance in the PISA League Table. Election Factsheet

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burge, Bethan

2015-01-01

This election factsheet highlights the following points: (1) It isn't always possible to say with certainty from looking at a country's rank in the PISA educational league tables alone whether one country or economy has definitely performed better than another; (2) England's position in the league tables is dependent on which countries and…

Did the Shift to Computer-Based Testing in PISA 2015 Affect Reading Scores? A View from East Asia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Komatsu, Hikaru; Rappleye, Jeremy

2017-01-01

In this Forum article, Komatsu and Rappleye report that the results of PISA 2015 released December 2016 revealed a major oddity: reading scores in several of the "leading" East Asian countries had apparently plummeted. An interesting point is that Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong are among the most advanced technological societies in…

The Difference That One Year of Schooling Makes for Russian Schoolchildren. Based on PISA 2009: Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tiumeneva, Yu. A.; Kuzmina, Ju. V.

2015-01-01

The PISA 2009 data (in reading) investigated the effectiveness of one year of schooling in seven countries: Russia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Germany, Canada, and Brazil. We used an instrumental variable, which allowed us to estimate the effect of one year of schooling through the fuzzy method of regression discontinuity. The analysis was…

Analyzing the Achievement and Isolation of Immigrant and U.S.-Born Students: Insights from PISA 2012

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Powers, Jeanne M.; Pivovarova, Margarita

2017-01-01

The 2016 Presidential election and the first months of the Trump administration have propelled immigration to the center of U.S. political debates. We use data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 to provide insights into the school experiences of high school-age immigrants and their U.S.-born peers. Our findings…

Is It Really Possible to Test All Educationally Significant Achievements with High Levels of Reliability?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Davis, Andrew

2015-01-01

PISA claims that it can extend its reach from its current core subjects of Reading, Science, Maths and problem-solving. Yet given the requirement for high levels of reliability for PISA, especially in the light of its current high stakes character, proposed widening of its subject coverage cannot embrace some important aspects of the social and…

Propensity Score Matching Helps to Understand Sources of DIF and Mathematics Performance Differences of Indonesian, Turkish, Australian, and Dutch Students in PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arikan, Serkan; van de Vijver, Fons J. R.; Yagmur, Kutlay

2018-01-01

We examined Differential Item Functioning (DIF) and the size of cross-cultural performance differences in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 mathematics data before and after application of propensity score matching. The mathematics performance of Indonesian, Turkish, Australian, and Dutch students on released items was…

The Influence of PISA Scores, Schooling and Social Factors on Pathways to and within Higher Education in Canada

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Murdoch, Jake; Kamanzi, Pierre Canisius; Doray, Pierre

2011-01-01

In this article, we use data from the Canadian Youth in Transition Survey (YITS). This survey has followed longitudinally the Canadian Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) students originally surveyed in 2000. The aim of this article is to look to what extent social factors (e.g. gender, parental education and socio-economic…

Issues with PISA's Use of Its Data in the Context of International Education Policy Convergence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Murphy, Dan

2014-01-01

In its analysis of data it collected in 2006, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) used a variety of statistical methods to arrive at the 'key findings' that school autonomy, school competition and the public posting of student achievement data were…

Developing a Machine-Supported Coding System for Constructed-Response Items in PISA. Research Report. ETS RR-17-47

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yamamoto, Kentaro; He, Qiwei; Shin, Hyo Jeong; von Davier, Mattias

2017-01-01

Approximately a third of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) items in the core domains (math, reading, and science) are constructed-response items and require human coding (scoring). This process is time-consuming, expensive, and prone to error as often (a) humans code inconsistently, and (b) coding reliability in…

In Which Countries and Schools Do Disadvantaged Students Succeed? PISA in Focus No. 80

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2018

2018-01-01

PISA 2015 data show that, on average across OECD countries, as many as three out of four students from the lowest quarter of socio-economic status reach, at best, only the baseline level of proficiency (Level 2) in reading, mathematics or science. While in Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong (China), Ireland, Japan, Korea, the…

JPRS Report: Telecommunications.

DTIC Science & Technology

1988-03-31

Services, Integrated Business Systems , Computasia, Unitel, Cable Television and Telco Properties. 07310 Cable TV License Bidder Eyes Intermediate...international network: ARPA CNUCE (CNR) Pisa EAN IASI (CNR) Roma EARN CNUCE (CNR) Pisa SPAN INFN (CNR) Bologna UCCP Systems & Management (Private company ...largest interna- tional telecommunications companies , in a joint venture with PTAT Systems Incorporated of the U.S. The cable will form a key link in

What Should Educational Reform in Indonesia Look Like?--Learning from the PISA Science Scores of East-Asian Countries and Singapore

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Suprapto, Nadi

2016-01-01

Indonesia always continually failed international assessments even though many efforts have been made. The results of PISA 2012 put Indonesian students in the worst position. In contrast, East Asian countries' performance well in mathematics, reading, and science. Indeed, Singapore has the best performance in the Southeast Asia region even in the…

The Comparison of Turkish Students' PISA Achievement Levels by Year via Data Envelopment Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yalçin, Seher; Tavsancil, Ezel

2014-01-01

This research aimed to determine the relative efficiency of the types of school common to three administrations of the PISA (2003-2006-2009) by comparing their results, along with the activities that are to be performed for inefficient school types and changes in the efficiency value of the school types by year. The comparative analysis was based…

Exploring the Relationship among New Literacies, Reading, Mathematics and Science Performance of Turkish Students in PISA 2012

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arikan, Serkan; Yildirim, Kasim; Erbilgin, Evrim

2016-01-01

Turkish students on average had lower scores than OECD countries on mathematics, science, and reading at international assessment programs. As PISA measures the extent to which 15-year-old students are prepared to handle the challenges they may encounter in their future lives, and evaluates students' ability to reflect and to apply their knowledge…

Quantitative assessment of primary mitral regurgitation using left ventricular volumes obtained with new automated three-dimensional transthoracic echocardiographic software: A comparison with 3-Tesla cardiac magnetic resonance.

PubMed

Levy, Franck; Marechaux, Sylvestre; Iacuzio, Laura; Schouver, Elie Dan; Castel, Anne Laure; Toledano, Manuel; Rusek, Stephane; Dor, Vincent; Tribouilloy, Christophe; Dreyfus, Gilles

2018-03-30

Quantitative assessment of primary mitral regurgitation (MR) using left ventricular (LV) volumes obtained with three-dimensional transthoracic echocardiography (3D TTE) recently showed encouraging results. Nevertheless, 3D TTE is not incorporated into everyday practice, as current LV chamber quantification software products are time consuming. To investigate the accuracy and reproducibility of new automated fast 3D TTE software (HeartModel A.I. ; Philips Healthcare, Andover, MA, USA) for the quantification of LV volumes and MR severity in patients with isolated degenerative primary MR; and to compare regurgitant volume (RV) obtained with 3D TTE with a cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) reference. Fifty-three patients (37 men; mean age 64±12 years) with at least mild primary isolated MR, and having comprehensive 3D TTE and CMR studies within 24h, were eligible for inclusion. MR RV was calculated using the proximal isovelocity surface area (PISA) method and the volumetric method (total LV stroke volume minus aortic stroke volume) with either CMR or 3D TTE. Inter- and intraobserver reproducibility of 3D TTE was excellent (coefficient of variation≤10%) for LV volumes. MR RV was similar using CMR and 3D TTE (57±23mL vs 56±28mL; P=0.22), but was significantly higher using the PISA method (69±30mL; P<0.05 compared with CMR and 3D TTE). The PISA method consistently overestimated MR RV compared with CMR (bias 12±21mL), while no significant bias was found between 3D TTE and CMR (bias 2±14mL). Concordance between echocardiography and CMR was higher using 3D TTE MR grading (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC]=0.89) than with PISA MR grading (ICC=0.78). Complete agreement with CMR grading was more frequent with 3D TTE than with the PISA method (76% vs 63%). 3D TTE RV assessment using the new generation of automated software correlates well with CMR in patients with isolated degenerative primary MR. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Instructional practices and science performance of 10 top-performing regions in PISA 2015

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lau, Kwok-chi; Lam, Terence Yuk-ping

2017-10-01

This study analysed 10 top-performing regions in PISA 2015 on their science performances and instructional practices. The regions include Singapore, Japan, Estonia, Taipei, Finland, Macao, Canada, Hong Kong, China and Korea. The science performances of the 10 regions and their teaching practices are described and compared. The construct of enquiry-based instruction as developed in PISA 2015 is revised into two new constructs using factor analysis. Then, the relationships of the teaching practices with science performance are analysed using hierarchical linear modelling. Adaptive instruction, teacher-directed instruction and interactive application are found positively associated with performance in all regions, while investigation and perceived feedback are all negative. The regions except Japan and Korea tend to have a high frequency of teacher-directed instruction facilitated by more or less authoritative class discussion in class. A fair amount of practical work is done, but not many of them are investigations. The cultural influences on teaching practices are discussed on how an amalgam of didactic and constructivist pedagogy is created by the Western progressive educational philosophy meeting the Confucian culture. The reasons for investigation's negative association with performance are also explored.

Sense of Belonging or Feeling Marginalized? Using PISA 2012 to Assess the State of Academically Gifted Students within the EU

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Godor, Brian P.; Szymanski, Antonia

2017-01-01

There are two competing stereotypes of gifted students: harmony theory (gifted students are well adjusted and successful in life) and disharmony theory (giftedness forms a threat to a harmonious development). In this context, the PISA 2012 data were used to explore middle-school students' experiences in terms of sense of belonging, student-teacher…

Low-Performing Students: Why They Fall Behind and How to Help Them Succeed. PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2016

2016-01-01

There is no country or economy participating in PISA 2012 that can claim that all of its 15-year-old students have achieved a baseline level of proficiency in mathematics, reading and science. Poor performance at school has long-term consequences, both for the individual and for society as a whole. Reducing the number of low-performing students is…

Highlights from PISA 2006: Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students in Science and Mathematics Literacy in an International Context. NCES 2008-016

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baldi, Stephane; Jin, Ying; Green, Patricia J.; Herget, Deborah

2007-01-01

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a system of international assessments administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that measures 15-year-olds' performance in reading literacy, mathematics literacy, and science literacy every 3 years. This report focuses on the performance of U.S.…

Impact of Proficiency on Early Entrants to the Labour Market: Evidence from the YITS. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 29

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Drewes, Torben

2010-01-01

The primary purpose of the report is to explore the impact of PISA reading scores on the early labour market outcomes of young Canadians of the Youth in Transition Survey. This inquiry is complicated by two facts. First, family and school characteristics that are positively correlated with PISA scores are also correlated with labour market…

Does the Quality of Learning Outcomes Fall When Education Expands to Include More Disadvantaged Students? PISA in Focus. No. 75

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2017

2017-01-01

Globally, enrolment in secondary education has expanded dramatically over the past decades. This expansion is also reflected in PISA data, particularly for low- and middle-income countries. Between 2003 and 2015, Indonesia added more than 1.1 million students, Turkey and Brazil more than 400,000 students, and Mexico more than 300,000 students, to…

Mapping an Experiment-Based Assessment of Collaborative Behavior onto Collaborative Problem Solving in PISA 2015: A Cluster Analysis Approach for Collaborator Profiles

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Herborn, Katharina; Mustafic, Maida; Greiff, Samuel

2017-01-01

Collaborative problem solving (CPS) assessment is a new academic research field with a number of educational implications. In 2015, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assessed CPS with a computer-simulated human-agent (H-A) approach that claimed to measure 12 individual CPS skills for the first time. After reviewing the…

An Optimisation Procedure for the Conceptual Analysis of Different Aerodynamic Configurations

DTIC Science & Technology

2000-06-01

G. Lombardi, G. Mengali Department of Aerospace Engineering , University of Pisa Via Diotisalvi 2, 56126 PISA, Italy F. Beux Scuola Normale Superiore...obtain engines , gears and various systems; their weights and centre configurations with improved performances with respect to a of gravity positions...design parameters have been arranged for The optimisation process includes the following steps: cruise: payload, velocity, range, cruise height, engine

A Multilevel Multidimensional Item Response Theory Model to Address the Role of Response Style on Measurement of Attitudes in PISA 2006

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lu, Yi

2012-01-01

Cross-national comparisons of responses to survey items are often affected by response style, particularly extreme response style (ERS). ERS varies across cultures, and has the potential to bias inferences in cross-national comparisons. For example, in both PISA and TIMSS assessments, it has been documented that when examined within countries,…

Evaluation of Reading Achievement of the Program School 2.0 in Spain Using PISA 2012

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vilaplana Prieto, Cristina

2016-01-01

In 2009, some Spanish regions implemented the Program School 2.0 with the purpose of introducing digital methodologies at schools. The aim of this paper is to analyse which part of the variation in reading scores is due to this program. For this purpose, we use data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA 2009 and 2012) for…

Gendered Career Expectations of Students: Perspectives from PISA 2006. OECD Education Working Papers No. 57

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sikora, Joanna; Pokropek, Artur

2011-01-01

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of adolescent career plans reported in PISA 2006. Its main focus is on the differences in the status and area of employment expected by girls and boys in high school. In almost all countries, girls lead boys in their interest in non-manual, high status professional occupations. This can be seen as a…

The Ability-Track Glass Ceiling of Israeli Schooling: Lessons from a Comparative Analysis of Israeli and Australian PISA 2012 Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Razer, Michal; Mittelberg, David; Ayalon, Snait

2018-01-01

Israeli students ranked in the bottom third of the countries surveyed by PISA 2012 in mathematical literacy, while the gap between the highest and lowest scores was the second largest in the OECD. This paper explores which variables led to disparities in mathematical literacy between different socioeconomic levels and between Israeli Arabs and…

Fifteen-Years-Old Students of Seven East Asian Cities in PISA 2009: A Secondary Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Soh, Kay Cheng

2012-01-01

Background: In PISA 2009, seven East Asian countries rank high among the 65 participating countries, but some of the differences among the seven countries are small to be of substantive meaning. Aims: This paper is an attempt to fine tune the comparisons for better understanding of the situation in East Asian. Sample: Data of the seven East Asian…

Quantification of mitral regurgitation using proximal isovelocity surface area method in dogs.

PubMed

Choi, Hojung; Lee, Kichang; Lee, Heechun; Lee, Youngwon; Chang, Dongwoo; Eom, Kidong; Youn, Hwayoung; Choi, Mincheol; Yoon, Junghee

2004-06-01

The present study was performed to determine the accuracy and reproducibility of calculating the mitral regurgitant orifice area with the proximal isovelocity surface area (PISA) method in dogs with experimental mitral regurgitation and in canine patients with chronic mitral insufficiency and to evaluate the effect of general anesthesia on mitral regurgitation. Eight adult, Beagle dogs for experimental mitral regurgitation and 11 small breed dogs with spontaneous mitral regurgitation were used. In 8 Beagle dogs, mild mitral regurgitation was created by disrupting mitral chordae or leaflets. Effective regurgitant orifice (ERO) area was measured by the PISA method and compared with the measurements simultaneously obtained by quantitative Doppler echocardiography 4 weeks after creation of mitral regurgitation. The same procedure was performed in 11 patients with isolated mitral regurgitation and in 8 Beagle dogs under two different protocols of general anesthesia. ERO and regurgitant stroke volume (RSV) by the PISA method correlated well with values by the quantitative Doppler technique with a small error in experimental dogs (r = 0.914 and r = 0.839) and 11 patients (r = 0.990 and r = 0.996). The isoflurane anesthetic echocardiography demonstrated a significant decrease of RSV, and there was no significant change in fractional shortening (FS), ERO area, LV end-diastolic and LV end-systolic volume. ERO area showed increasing tendency after ketamine-xylazine administration, but not statistically significant. RSV, LV end-systolic and LV end-diastolic volume increased significantly (p < 0.01), whereas FS significantly decreased (p < 0.01). The PISA method is accurate and reproducible in experimental mitral regurgitation model and in a clinical setting. ERO area is considered and preferred as a hemodynamic-nondependent factor than other traditional measurements.

Intergenerational Transfers of Preferences for Science Careers in Comparative Perspective

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sikora, Joanna; Pokropek, Artur

2012-11-01

Using data from 24 countries, which participated in the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), we examine the relationship between parental science employment and students' career expectations. In contrast to prior PISA-based studies, we find that the link between parental employment and adolescent plans to work in science is non-trivial and merits attention. In this context, we consider three versions of the gender socialisation hypothesis. The strong variant posits that girls' plans are shaped solely by their mothers' career pathways while boys model their expectations exclusively on fathers' occupations. The weaker version of this hypothesis expects children to be influenced more by the same-sex than by the opposite-sex parent. Finally, the third possibility is that, as egalitarian ideologies prevail, parents inspire adolescent occupational plans regardless of gender. These hypotheses are assessed separately for student career plans related to biology, agriculture and health (BAH) in contrast to computing, engineering and mathematics (CEM), because the involvement in these fields of science is known to be segregated by gender. Using two-level multinomial logit modelling, we find some support for the weak version of the gender socialisation hypothesis. Although within-family transfers of preferences for science careers vary considerably across countries, we note certain regularities. In many nations, relevant paternal employment enhances sons' interest in science careers regardless of their field. In contrast, maternal employment inspires daughters in fewer countries and this influence tends to be limited to careers in BAH. We discuss the possible implications of these findings for science educators.

RAFT-Polymerization-Induced Self-Assembly and Reorganizations: Ultrahigh-Molecular-Weight Polymer and Morphology-Tunable Micro-/Nanoparticles in One Pot.

PubMed

Zhang, Xiao-Yun; Liu, Dong-Ming; Lv, Xin-Hu; Sun, Miao; Sun, Xiao-Li; Wan, Wen-Ming

2016-11-01

A one-pot method is introduced for the successful synthesis of narrow-distributed (Đ = 1.22) vinyl polymer with both ultrahigh molecular weight (UHMW) (M w = 1.31 × 10 6 g mol -1 ) and micro-/nanomorphology under mild conditions. The method involves the following four stages: homogeneous polymerization, polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA), PISA and reorganization, and PISA and multiple reorganizations. The key points to the production of UHMW polystyrene are to minimize radical termination by segregating radicals in different nanoreactors and to ensure sufficient chain propagation by promoting further reorganizations of these reactors in situ. This method therefore endows polymeric materials with the outstanding properties of both UHMW and tunable micro-/nanoparticles under mild conditions in one pot. © 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Wisconsin High Schools Learn from New PISA Test: International Comparison Drives Efforts to Improve

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Borsuk, Alan J.

2015-01-01

This article explores Kettle Moraine High School's experience of participating in the PISA-based test, known in the U.S. as the OECD Test for Schools. The high school is located on the western edge of Milwaukee. Starting with a trial run in 2012 that involved more than 100 U.S. schools, the OECD Test for Schools has been offered to individual…

Is the United States Losing Its Status as a Reference Point for Educational Policy in the Age of Global Comparison? The Case of South Korea

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sung, Youl-Kwan; Lee, Yoonmi

2017-01-01

This paper seeks to contribute to recent comparative discussions about the shift of traditional referential points as a result of new global governance by the OECD through PISA. In doing so, the authors investigate whether the lower PISA rankings of the US have resulted in the shifting of its referential status in South Korea. For the purposes of…

PISA: Federated Search in P2P Networks with Uncooperative Peers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ren, Zujie; Shou, Lidan; Chen, Gang; Chen, Chun; Bei, Yijun

Recently, federated search in P2P networks has received much attention. Most of the previous work assumed a cooperative environment where each peer can actively participate in information publishing and distributed document indexing. However, little work has addressed the problem of incorporating uncooperative peers, which do not publish their own corpus statistics, into a network. This paper presents a P2P-based federated search framework called PISA which incorporates uncooperative peers as well as the normal ones. In order to address the indexing needs for uncooperative peers, we propose a novel heuristic query-based sampling approach which can obtain high-quality resource descriptions from uncooperative peers at relatively low communication cost. We also propose an effective method called RISE to merge the results returned by uncooperative peers. Our experimental results indicate that PISA can provide quality search results, while utilizing the uncooperative peers at a low cost.

75 FR 26943 - Notice of Proposed Information Collection Requests

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-05-13

... focuses on 15-year-olds' capabilities in reading, mathematics, and science literacy. It was first... Federal Register notice for the main study clearance in 2012. As in 2003, in PISA 2012, mathematics will...

75 FR 39922 - Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-07-13

...' capabilities in reading, mathematics, and science literacy. It was first implemented by the National Center for... study clearance in 2012. As in 2003, in PISA 2012, mathematics will be the major subject domain. The...

Outside school time: an examination of science achievement and non-cognitive characteristics of 15-year olds in several countries

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Suter, Larry E.

2016-03-01

Elementary and secondary students spend more hours outside of class than in formal school and thus have more time for interaction with everyday science. However, evidence from a large international survey, Program of International Student Assessment (PISA) (OECD 2012), found a negative relationship between number of hours attending after-school science and science assessment scores in many countries, raising questions about why. The secondary analysis of the 2006, 2009, and 2012 PISA surveys found that in most Western countries the longer students attended after-school science programs (in a typical week), the lower their PISA standardized science test score, but the higher their positive attitudes toward future science careers, interest in science, and self-confidence in science. Several potential hypotheses for this relationship are examined and rejected. Further analysis of a causal relationship between frequent attendance in after-school programs and student achievement and attitudes should clearly identify the content of the program so that the analysis could distinguish experiences closely related to regular school curricula from the informal science activities that are not. A new analysis also should include carefully designed longitudinal surveys to test the effectiveness of informal experiences on later life choices in career and study. Revision of a Paper prepared for AERA meetings in Chicago, 19 April 2015.

A synergy-driven approach to a myoelectric hand.

PubMed

Godfrey, S B; Ajoudani, A; Catalano, M; Grioli, G; Bicchi, A

2013-06-01

In this paper, we present the Pisa/IIT SoftHand with myoelectric control as a synergy-driven approach for a prosthetic hand. Commercially available myoelectric hands are more expensive, heavier, and less robust than their body-powered counterparts; however, they can offer greater freedom of motion and a more aesthetically pleasing appearance. The Pisa/IIT SoftHand is built on the motor control principle of synergies through which the immense complexity of the hand is simplified into distinct motor patterns. As the SoftHand grasps, it follows a synergistic path with built-in flexibility to allow grasping of a wide variety of objects with a single motor. Here we test, as a proof-of-concept, 4 myoelectric controllers: a standard controller in which the EMG signal is used only as a position reference, an impedance controller that determines both position and stiffness references from the EMG input, a standard controller with vibrotactile force feedback, and finally a combined vibrotactile-impedance (VI) controller. Four healthy subjects tested the control algorithms by grasping various objects. All controllers were sufficient for basic grasping, however the impedance and vibrotactile controllers reduced the physical and cognitive load on the user, while the combined VI mode was the easiest to use of the four. While these results need to be validated with amputees, they suggest a low-cost, robust hand employing hardware-based synergies is a viable alternative to traditional myoelectric prostheses.

The Effects of Upper-Secondary Education and Training Systems on Skills Inequality. A Quasi-Cohort Analysis Using PISA 2000 and the OECD Survey of Adult Skills

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Green, Andy; Pensiero, Nicola

2016-01-01

Research tells us much about the effects of primary and lower-secondary schooling on skills inequality, but we know less about the impact of the next stage of education. This article uses a differences-in-differences analysis of data on literacy and numeracy skills in PISA 2000 and SAS 2011/12 to assess the contribution of upper-secondary…

PREFACE: DICE 2008 - From Quantum Mechanics through Complexity to Spacetime: the role of emergent dynamical structures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Diósi, Lajos; Elze, Hans-Thomas; Fronzoni, Leone; Halliwell, Jonathan; Vitiello, Giuseppe

2009-07-01

These proceedings present the Invited Lectures and Contributed Papers of the Fourth International Workshop on Decoherence, Information, Complexity and Entropy - DICE 2008, held at Castello Pasquini, Castiglioncello (Tuscany), 22-26 September 2008. We deliver these proceedings as a means to document to the interested public, to the wider scientific community, and to the participants themselves the stimulating exchange of ideas at this conference. The steadily growing number of participants, among them acclaimed scientists in their respective fields, show its increasing attraction and a fruitful concept, based on bringing leading researchers together and in contact with a mix of advanced students and scholars. Thus, this series of meetings successfully continued from the beginning with DICE 2002, (Decoherence and Entropy in Complex Systems ed H-T Elze Lecture Notes in Physics 633 (Berlin: Springer, 2004)) followed by DICE 2004 (Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Decoherence, Information, Complexity and Entropy - DICE 2004 ed H-T Elze Braz. Journ. Phys. 35, 2A & 2B (2005) pp 205-529 free access at: www.sbfisica.org.br/bjp) and by DICE 2006, (Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Decoherence, Information, Complexity and Entropy - DICE 2006 eds H-T Elze, L Diósi and G Vitiello Journal of Physics: Conference Series 67 (2007); free access at: http://www.iop.org/EJ/toc/1742-6596/67/1) uniting about one hundred participants from more than twenty different countries worldwide this time. It has been a great honour and inspiration for all of us to have Professor Sir Roger Penrose from the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford with us, who presented the lecture ``Black holes, quantum theory and cosmology'' (included in this volume). Discussions under the wider theme ``From Quantum Mechanics through Complexity to Spacetime: the role of emergent dynamical structures'' took place in the very pleasant and inspiring atmosphere of Castello Pasquini, which - with its beautiful surroundings, overlooking a piece of Tuscany's coast, and with splendid weather throughout - was conducive to the success of the meeting. The 5-day program was grouped according to the following topics: Quantum Physics and Some Important Questions it Raises Emergent Dynamics, from Quantum to Brain and Beyond Exploring Quantum Mechanics Atomistic Theories of Spacetime Quantum-Entanglement/Gravity/Cosmology A Public Roundtable Discussion formed an integral part of the program under the theme ``Dialoghi sulla complessita' - dall' atomo all' Universo'' and with the participation of physicists and philosophers: F T Arecchi (Firenze), L Fronzoni (Pisa), A M Iacono (Pisa), F Luccio (Pisa) and G Vitiello (Salerno, coordinator). This event drew a large audience, who participated in the lively discussions until late in the evening. The workshop has been organized by L Diósi (Budapest), H-T Elze (Pisa, chair), L Fronzoni (Pisa), J Halliwell (London) and G Vitiello (Salerno), with great help from our conference secretaries M Pesce-Rollins (Siena) and L Baldini (Pisa) and from our students F Caravelli and E Di Nardo, both from Pisa. Several institutions and sponsors generously supported the workshop and their representatives and, in particular, the citizens of Rosignano/Castiglioncello are deeply thanked for the help and kind hospitality: Comune di Rosignano A Nenci (Sindaco di Rosignano), S Scarpellini (Segreteria sindaco), D Del Seppia (Assessore allo Sviluppo Economico del Comune di Rosignano), A Franchi (Assessore al turismo del Comune di Rosignano/Presidente dell' associazione Armunia), A Corsini (Ufficio economato del Comune di Rosignano). REA Rosignano Energia Ambiente s.p.a. F Ghelardini (Presidente della REA), A Cecchini (Ufficio - Responsabile stampa della REA). Solvay Chimica Italia s.a. Dott S Piccoli (Responsabile Relazioni Esterne, Solvay Rosignano), G Becherucci (Comunicazione e Relazioni Esterne). Associazione Armunia M Paganelli (Direttore), G Mannari (Programmazione). Special thanks go to G Mannari for her advice and great help in all the many practical matters that had to be dealt with, in order to run the meeting at Castello Pasquini smoothly. Funds made available by Universitá di Pisa, by Domus Galilaeana (Pisa), Centro Interdisciplinare per lo Studio dei Sistemi Complessi - CISSC (Pisa), Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica (Universitá di Salerno), Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici - IISF (Napoli), and by IOP Publishing (Bristol) are gratefully acknowledged. Last but not least, special thanks go to L Pesce (Vitrium Galleria, Populonia) for her artwork (``Art and Science'') displayed during the conference at Castello Pasquini. The research papers presented at the workshop, often incorporating further developments since then, or presenting original new work, have been edited by L Diósi, H-T Elze, L Fronzoni, J J Halliwell and G Vitiello, with major assistance from J Yearsley (London), which we gratefully acknowledge. They are collected here, essentially following the program of the workshop, however, divided into Invited Lectures (we regret that lectures by E Arimondo, N Gisin, and W Schleich could not be reproduced here) and Contributed Papers, respectively. In the name of all participants, we would like to thank Dr J Schwarz and G Douglas (IOP Publishing, Bristol), and their collaborators, for friendly advice, always immediate help during the editing process, and for their efforts making the Journal of Physics: Conference Series available to all. Budapest, Pisa, London and Salerno, May 2009 Lajos Diósi, Hans-Thomas Elze, Leone Fronzoni, Jonathan Halliwell and Giuseppe Vitiello

Science Notes: Interdisciplinary Teaching of Biology and Physical Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wegner, Claas; Spintzyk, Katharina; Strehlke, Friederike; Minnaert, Lea; Gröben, Bernd

2014-01-01

In 2000, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study was conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It is a worldwide study of 15-year-old students' performance in mathematics, science and reading skills. The study showed relatively poor results for German students' scientific literacy…

How do american students measure up? Making sense of international comparisons.

PubMed

Koretz, Daniel

2009-01-01

In response to frequent news media reports about how poorly American students fare compared with their peers abroad, Daniel Koretz takes a close look at what these comparisons say, and do not say, about the achievement of U.S. high school students. He stresses that the comparisons do not provide what many observers of education would like: unambiguous information about the effectiveness of American high schools compared with those in other nations. Koretz begins by describing the. two principal international student comparisons-the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Both assessments, he stresses, reflect the performance of students several years before they complete high school. PISA, which targets fifteen-year-old students, measures students' abilities to apply what they have learned in school to real-world problems. By contrast, TIMSS tests fourth and eighth graders. Unlike PISA, TIMSS follows the school curriculum closely. Because the findings of the two tests are sometimes inconsistent, Koretz stresses the importance of considering data from both sources. He cautions against comparing U.S. students with an "international average," which varies widely from survey to survey depending on which countries participate, and recommends instead comparing them with students in other nations that are similar to the United States or that are particularly high-achieving. Many observers, says Koretz, speculate that the lackluster average performance of American students in international comparisons arises because many, especially minority and low-income U.S. students, attend low-performing schools. But both TIMSS and PISA, he says, show that the performance of American students on the exams is not much more variable than that of students in countries that are socially more homogeneous or that have more equitable educational systems. Koretz emphasizes that the international comparisons provide valuable information and are a useful source of hypotheses about American secondary schooling to be tested by researchers. Studies designed to explain differences between U.S. students and those in very similar countries, he says, might provide especially useful suggestions for changes in policy and practice.

An interview with Alfredo Falcone and Lisa Salvatore: RECOURSE and trifluridine/tipiracil in metastatic colorectal cancer.

PubMed

Falcone, Alfredo; Salvatore, Lisa

2016-09-01

Professor Alfredo Falcone and Dr Lisa Salvatore speak to Roshaine Gunawardana, Managing Commissioning Editor: Professor Alfredo Falcone is the Director of the Department of Oncology and the Specialization School at the University Hospital of Pisa, Italy. He trained in Pisa and Genoa, Italy, and has held major positions in Italian oncology since 2000. He currently has more than 300 publications, including papers in peer-reviewed international and national journals, book chapters, and more than 600 abstracts of presentations to international and national conferences. The majority of his papers regard clinical and translational research, with a particular focus on metastatic colorectal cancer. Dr Lisa Salvatore is a medical oncologist in the Department of Translational Research and New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Pisa. She has been an author on about 40 publications in major peer-reviewed publications and has made numerous presentations in national and international conferences. Her main interest is focused on clinical and translational research in metastatic colorectal cancer.

Application of a Bonner sphere spectrometer for the determination of the angular neutron energy spectrum of an accelerator-based BNCT facility.

PubMed

Mirzajani, N; Ciolini, R; Di Fulvio, A; Esposito, J; d'Errico, F

2014-06-01

Experimental activities are underway at INFN Legnaro National Laboratories (LNL) (Padua, Italy) and Pisa University aimed at angular-dependent neutron energy spectra measurements produced by the (9)Be(p,xn) reaction, under a 5MeV proton beam. This work has been performed in the framework of INFN TRASCO-BNCT project. Bonner Sphere Spectrometer (BSS), based on (6)LiI (Eu) scintillator, was used with the shadow-cone technique. Proper unfolding codes, coupled to BSS response function calculated by Monte Carlo code, were finally used. The main results are reported here. Crown Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Provenance of marbles used for building the internal spiral staircase of the bell tower of St. Nicholas Church (Pisa, Italy)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lezzerini, Marco; Antonelli, Fabrizio; Gallello, Gianni; Ramacciotti, Mirco; Parodi, Luca; Alberti, Antonio; Pagnotta, Stefano; Legnaioli, Stefano; Palleschi, Vincenzo

2017-05-01

The aim of this study is to investigate the provenance of marbles used as architectural elements (bases, shafts and capitals of columns) for building the internal spiral staircase of the medieval bell tower of St. Nicholas Church at Pisa, Italy. Accordingly, the 45 collected marble samples have been analysed by optical microscopy, X-ray powder diffraction and mass spectroscopy for carbon and oxygen stable isotope ratio analysis; additionally, SEM-EDS analysis have been performed to complement data about accessory minerals. By comparison with literature data on the main sources of the white Mediterranean marbles used in ancient times, the results show that the analysed samples are mainly white crystalline marbles from Carrara (Italy) and, subordinately, from other Tuscan and Eastern Mediterranean quarrying areas. In fact, Mt. Pisano and Campiglia M.ma (Tuscany, Italy) and Marmara (Turkey), Paros, Mt. Penteli, Thasos (Greece) are minor sources. The other coloured stones identified on the strength of their macroscopic features are quartzites from Mt. Pisano area and granitoids from Sardinia and Island of Elba (Italy). Occasionally, a very limited number of architectonical elements made up of Acquabona limestone from Rosignano Marittimo (Livorno, Italy), red limestone with ammonites (the so-called "Rosso Ammonitico") and black limestone belonging to the Tuscan Nappe sequence, outcropping at northwest of Pisa in the nearby Monti d'Oltre Serchio area, are present.

Comparison of Learning Strategies for Mathematics Achievement in Turkey with Eight Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kilic, Serpil; Cene, Erhan; Demir, Ibrahim

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine learning strategies accounted for mathematics achievement across Turkey and neighboring countries. Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Azerbaijan, Russian Federation, Israel, Serbia, Romania and Jordan were involved in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2009) study. Since other neighbors of Turkey…

The Synergistic Effect of Affective Factors on Student Learning Outcomes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jack, Brady Michael; Lin, Huann-shyang; Yore, Larry D.

2014-01-01

This study investigates how affective and self-related factors impact participation in science learning and environmental awareness and responsibility. Using PISA 2006 datasets from Taiwan and Canada having similar level of science competency, the model for this study verifies and expands an earlier model by examining the relationships among…

The Complexities in Fostering Critical Thinking through School-Based Curriculum Innovation: Research Evidence from Singapore

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tan, Liang See; Koh, Elizabeth; Lee, Shu Shing; Ponnusamy, Letchmi Devi; Tan, Keith Chiu Kian

2017-01-01

Singapore's strong performance in international benchmarking studies--Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)--poses a conundrum to researchers who view Singapore's pedagogy as characterized by the teaching of facts and procedures, and lacking in constructivist…

A Game of Thrones: Organising and Legitimising Knowledge through PISA Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mølstad, Christina E.; Pettersson, Daniel; Forsberg, Eva

2017-01-01

This study investigates knowledge structures and scientific communication using bibliometric methods to explore scientific knowledge production and dissemination. The aim is to develop knowledge about this growing field by investigating studies using international large-scale assessment (ILSA) data, with a specific focus on those using Programme…

A Cross-National Study of Students' Attitudes toward School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lai, Shu-Ling; Stevens, Carla; Martinez, Jorge; Ye, Renmin

2015-01-01

Using an international educational database, PISA 2009, this study investigates and analyzes 15-year-old students' attitudes toward school in 11 Asia-Pacific units (country, city, or area). For each unit, the study demonstrates four types of students' attitudes toward school, compares male and female students, and examines the relationships of the…

The Effect of Student-Centered Approaches on Students' Interest and Achievement in Science: Relevant Topic-Based, Open and Guided Inquiry-Based, and Discussion-Based Approaches

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kang, Jingoo; Keinonen, Tuula

2017-04-01

Since students have lost their interest in school science, several student-centered approaches, such as using topics that are relevant for students, inquiry-based learning, and discussion-based learning have been implemented to attract pupils into science. However, the effect of these approaches was usually measured in small-scale research, and thus, the large-scale evidence supporting student-centered approaches in general use is insufficient. Accordingly, this study aimed to investigate the effect of student-centered approaches on students' interest and achievement by analyzing a large-scale data set derived from Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006, to add evidence for advocating these approaches in school science, and to generalize the effects on a large population. We used Finnish PISA 2006 data, which is the most recent data that measures science literacy and that contains relevant variables for the constructs of this study. As a consequence of the factor analyses, four teaching methods were grouped as student-centered approaches (relevant topic-based, open and guided inquiry-based, and discussion-based approaches in school science) from the Finnish PISA 2006 sample. The structural equation modeling result indicated that using topics relevant for students positively affected students' interest and achievement in science. Guided inquiry-based learning was also indicated as a strong positive predictor for students' achievement, and its effect was also positively associated with students' interest. On the other hand, open inquiry-based learning was indicated as a strong negative predictor for students' achievement, as was using discussion in school science. Implications and limitations of the study were discussed.

Chronotype correlates with developmental index, intelligence and academic achievement: A study based on nationwide indicators.

PubMed

Randler, Christoph

2017-01-01

Chronotype or morningness-eveningness (M/E) is an individual trait with a biological basis. In this study, I analysed the relationship between M/E and nationwide available data, such as economic variables, school achievement, intelligence and conscientiousness, which is a personality trait. These variables have been chosen because, first, they are linked on the individual level with circadian preference, and, second these associations have been found based on meta-analyses, which gives these findings a high plausibility. In addition, economic status has also been proposed to be related to M/E. Higher developed countries showed a lower morningness, based on both, the ranking of countries as well as on the HDI value. Similarly, GNI was related to morningness, while higher intelligence and performance in PISA were related to eveningness. Conscientiousness was related to morningness, although the results failed the significance level marginally. When using IQ as a control variable in partial correlations, the relationship between GNI and morningness disappeared, as did the correlation between eveningness and PISA results.

An Eye Tracking Study of High- and Low-Performing Students in Solving Interactive and Analytical Problems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hu, Yiling; Wu, Bian; Gu, Xiaoqing

2017-01-01

Test results from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveal that Shanghai students performed less well in solving interactive problems (those that require uncovering necessary information) than in solving analytical problems (those having all information disclosed at the outset). Accordingly, this study investigates…

The Role of Online Reader Experience in Explaining Students' Performance in Digital Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gil-Flores, Javier; Torres-Gordillo, Juan-Jesus; Perera-Rodriguez, Victor-Hugo

2012-01-01

This study explores the relationship between students' extracurricular experiences online and their performance on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), focusing specifically on students' competence in digital reading. The study uses a descriptive, correlational, ex post facto design. The data are taken from Spanish students'…

Family Influences on Science Learning among Hong Kong Adolescents: What We Learned from PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ho, Esther Sui Chu

2010-01-01

This study investigated the relationship between family factors and students' scientific literacy performance in Hong Kong, which has excelled in science performance in previous international studies. Data were obtained from the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment. Multilevel analysis was used to examine the relationship between…

International Tests and the U.S. Educational Reforms: Can Success Be Replicated?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Turgut, Guliz

2013-01-01

The ranking of the United States in major international tests such as the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is used as the driving force and rationale for the current educational reforms in the United…

Measuring Mathematics Teachers' Professional Competence by Using Video Clips (COACTIV Video)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bruckmaier, G.; Krauss, S.; Blum, W.; Leiss, D.

2016-01-01

The COACTIV video study is part of the COACTIV research program in which secondary mathematics teachers whose students participated in PISA 03/04 were examined, with respect to their professional knowledge, motivational orientations, beliefs, and self-regulation. In the video study, 284 German secondary mathematics teachers were asked to specify…

Linking Errors between Two Populations and Tests: A Case Study in International Surveys in Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hastedt, Dirk; Desa, Deana

2015-01-01

This simulation study was prompted by the current increased interest in linking national studies to international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) such as IEA's TIMSS, IEA's PIRLS, and OECD's PISA. Linkage in this scenario is achieved by including items from the international assessments in the national assessments on the premise that the average…

The Role of Secondary Education in Explaining Competitiveness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baumann, Chris; Winzar, Hume

2016-01-01

The literature establishes that education drives economic performance, but the extent that education is associated with a country's competitiveness is empirically untested. Our study analyses Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from 63 countries to ascertain education's role in explaining the competitiveness of a country.…

Mathematics Self-Related Beliefs and Online Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ichinose, Cherie; Bonsangue, Martin

2016-01-01

This study examined students' mathematical self-related beliefs in an online mathematics course. Mathematical self-related beliefs of a sample of high school students learning mathematics online were compared with student response data from the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The treatment group reported higher levels…

Education Reforms and Innovations to Improve Student Assessment Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McAfee, Wade J.

2014-01-01

International assessments such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) have exhibited United States students specifically in the fourth and eighth grades, are not performing well when compared to their international peers. Educational stakeholders including…

The sanctuary of Punta Stilo at Kaulonia-Monasterace (Rc, Italy): preliminary results of the close range photogrammetric surveys 2012-2013

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Taccola, E.; Parra, M. C.; Ampolo, C.

2014-06-01

During the 2012-2013 excavations at the Sanctuary of Punta Stilo at Kaulonia, carried out by the University of Pisa and the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, close range aerial and terrestrial photogrammetric surveys were tested for the first time. The aim of the test was to verify the accuracy of the site planimetry currently used, dating back also to a century ago. The 3D data obtained have allowed new data to be acquired for correcting and updating the mapping of the site.

Assessment of mitral regurgitation severity by Doppler color flow mapping of the vena contracta in dogs.

PubMed

Di Marcello, M; Terzo, E; Locatelli, C; Palermo, V; Sala, E; Dall'Aglio, E; Bussadori, C M; Spalla, I; Brambilla, P G

2014-01-01

Quantitative and semiquantitative methods have been proposed for the assessment of MR severity, and though all are associated with limitations. Measurement of vena contracta width (VCW) has been used in clinical practice. To measure the VCW in dogs with different levels of MR severity. Two hundred and seventy-nine dogs were classified according to 5 levels of MR severity. This was a retrospective study. EROA and regurgitant volume calculated by the PISA method, were measured and indexed to BSA. Descriptive statistics were calculated for VCW and VCW index for all categories of MR severity. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients (ρs ) were calculated to compare the results of the different methods (VCW and VCW index vs RV PISA, RV PISA index, EROA, EROA index), and between VCW and VCW index versus MR severity. All Spearman's rank correlation coefficients were significant (P < .001). The median values of VCW resulted of 2.9 mm (IQR 3.4-2.5) and of 4.6 mm (IQR 5.4-4.1) in the groups previously classified as mild-to-moderate and moderate-to-severe, respectively. The median values of VCW index resulted of 4.4 mm/m(2) (IQR = 5.5-4.2) in mild-to-moderate MR and of 10.8 mm/m(2) (IQR = 12.8-9.4) in moderate-to-severe MR. This is not a validation study against any previously validated invasive gold standard, the VCW method has proved easy to employ and it might be an additional tool in quantifying disease severity that supports, rather than replace, data coming from other techniques in daily clinical practice and research. Copyright © 2014 by the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine.

PISA Lends Legitimacy: A Study of Education Policy Changes in Germany and Sweden after 2000

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ringarp, Johanna

2016-01-01

School issues have become increasingly important in public elections and political debates, leading to increased focus on the results students achieve in international large-scale assessments and in the rankings of the involved countries. One of the most important studies of scholastic performance is the Programme for International Student…

Assessing Student's Level of Scientific Literacy Using Interdisciplinary Scenarios

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Soobard, Regina; Rannikmae, Miia

2011-01-01

The goal of this study was to develop an instrument for assessing grade 10 and 11 student's levels of scientific literacy in the areas of problem solving and decision making. In concentrating on determining the scientific literacy of gymnasium level students, it was taken as a first; previous international studies like PISA have focused on ninth…

Universal Beliefs and Specific Practices: Students' Math Self-Efficacy and Related Factors in the United States and China

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Yin

2016-01-01

This study intends to compare and contrast student and school factors that are associated with students' mathematics self-efficacy in the United States and China. Using hierarchical linear regressions to analyze the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 data, this study compares math self-efficacy, achievement, and variables…

Standard Errors for National Trends in International Large-Scale Assessments in the Case of Cross-National Differential Item Functioning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sachse, Karoline A.; Haag, Nicole

2017-01-01

Standard errors computed according to the operational practices of international large-scale assessment studies such as the Programme for International Student Assessment's (PISA) or the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) may be biased when cross-national differential item functioning (DIF) and item parameter drift are…

Are Low Performers Missing Learning Opportunities? PISA in Focus. No. 62

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2016

2016-01-01

Although low performers should invest more time and effort in their studies, they seldom do. One reason is because they often feel that they get no return on their investment: more studying does not automatically lead to better marks in school. But with the right kind of in-school support, including creative and engaging mathematics-related…

The U.S. Writing Center Model for High Schools Goes to Germany: And What Is Coming Back?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Braer, Gerd

2006-01-01

The 2000 and 2003 international studies of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) among all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries presented disappointing results for Germany's fifteen-year-old students' reading skills. These studies pointed out two necessities for future reform: to extend the…

Gender Differences in Online Reading Engagement, Metacognitive Strategies, Navigation Skills and Reading Literacy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, J-Y.

2014-01-01

This study examined how knowledge of metacognitive strategies and navigation skills mediate the relationship between online reading activities and printed reading assessment (PRA) and electronic reading assessment (ERA) across 19 countries using the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2009 database. Participants were 34?104…

Judgmental and Statistical DIF Analyses of the PISA-2003 Mathematics Literacy Items

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yildirim, Huseyin Husnu; Berberoglu, Giray

2009-01-01

Comparisons of human characteristics across different language groups and cultures become more important in today's educational assessment practices as evidenced by the increasing interest in international comparative studies. Within this context, the fairness of the results across different language and cultural groups draws the attention of…

Influence of Contextual Challenges and Constraints on Learning-Centered Leadership

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tan, Cheng Yong

2014-01-01

The present study examines from the contingency opportunities perspective the influence of contextual factors on principals' learning-centered leadership using HLM. Participants were 18,641 school principals from 73 jurisdictions who participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009. Results showed that principals were…

Mathematic Achievement of Canadian Private School Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cadigan, Francoise Jane; Wei, Yichun; Clifton, Rodney A.

2013-01-01

Very little Canadian research has examined the academic achievement of private school students. Data from The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 were used to examine the achievement of private school students. The study found that private school students outperformed their public school peers. In addition, the students'…

Science Education and Teachers' Training: Research in Partnership

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pilo, Miranda; Gavio, Brigitte; Grosso, Daniele; Mantero, Alfonso

2012-01-01

International researchers put to evidence a worrying decrease in science disciplines' role in many countries, especially in the European Community and a poor quality in scientific competences, as issues of TIMMS (trends in international mathematics and science study) and PISA (programme for international student assessment) have proved, together…

How Is Formative Assessment Related to Students' Reading Achievement? Findings from PISA 2009

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Hongli

2016-01-01

Drawing on the programme for international student assessment 2009 US data-set, this study examines the relationship between formative assessment and students' reading achievement using a structural equation modelling approach. We find that formative assessment is positively related to students' reading achievement directly and indirectly (through…

Understanding PISA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Downes, Stephen

2005-01-01

The headline was dramatic enough to cause a ripple in the reading public. "Students who use computers a lot at school have worse maths and reading performance," noted the BBC news article, citing a 2004 study by Ludger Woessmann and Thomas Fuchs (Fuchs and Woessman, 2004). It was not long before the blogosphere took notice. Taking the…

The Professional Educator: Lessons from Finland

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sahlberg, Pasi

2011-01-01

Since Finland emerged in 2000 as the top-scoring Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nation on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), researchers have been pouring into the country to study the so-called "Finnish miracle." How did a country with an undistinguished education system in the…

Science Education Reform in Qatar: Progress and Challenges

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Said, Ziad

2016-01-01

Science education reform in Qatar has had limited success. In the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS), Qatari 4th and 8th grade students have shown progress in science achievement, but they remain significantly below the international average. Also, in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), Qatari…

Mathematics, PISA, and Culture: An Unpredictable Relationship

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Andrews, Paul

2015-01-01

Recent studies have indicated, particularly in the European context, that students' mathematical successes on international tests of student achievement may not be attributable to the quality of classroom instruction, although, as is shown, this is unlikely to be the case in Flanders, the autonomous Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. Flemish…

Montenegro in the PISA Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Milic, Saša

2011-01-01

Montenegro, a country that has been in transition for the last two decades, is trying intensively to restructure its socioeconomic system and reform the main social systems, such as the education system, health care, the judicial system, the social welfare system, etc. Numerous strategic documents have been adopted in the past decade emphasising…

Teacher Salary and National Achievement: A Cross-National Analysis of 30 Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Akiba, Motoko; Chiu, Yu-Lun; Shimizu, Kazuhiko; Liang, Guodong

2012-01-01

Using national teacher salary data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and student achievement data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), this study compared secondary school teacher salary in 30 countries and examined the relationship between average teacher salary and national…

Comparisons and Analyses of Gifted Students' Characteristics and Learning Methods

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lu, Jiamei; Li, Daqi; Stevens, Carla; Ye, Renmin

2017-01-01

Using PISA 2009, an international education database, this study compares gifted and talented (GT) students in three groups with normal (non-GT) students by examining student characteristics, reading, schooling, learning methods, and use of strategies for understanding and memorizing. Results indicate that the GT and non-GT gender distributions…

Promoting Scientific Literacy through the Online Argumentation System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsai, Chun-Yen

2013-01-01

This study investigated how the scientific competencies advocated by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) could be improved by using online argumentation. An online argumentation system served as an aid for argumentation instruction and activities among students during the experiment. Seventy-one 10th grade high school…

Factors Implicated in High Mathematics Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Forgasz, Helen J.; Hill, Janelle C.

2013-01-01

The most recent Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) (2009) mathematical literacy results provide evidence that in Western English-speaking countries, including Australia, the gender gap in achievement appears to be widening in favour of males. In the study reported in this article, the aim was to explore the effects of gender,…

A Comparative Analysis of the Efficiency of National Education Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thieme, Claudio; Gimenez, Victor; Prior, Diego

2012-01-01

The present study assesses the performance of 54 participating countries in PISA 2006. It employs efficiency indicators that relate result variables with resource variables used in the production of educational services. Desirable outputs of educational achievement and undesirable outputs of educational inequality are considered jointly as result…

Decomposing Achievement Gaps among OECD Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Liang; Lee, Kristen A.

2011-01-01

In this study, we use decomposition methods on PISA 2006 data to compare student academic performance across OECD countries. We first establish an empirical model to explain the variation in academic performance across individuals, and then use the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method to decompose the achievement gap between each of the OECD…

The Influence of School Tracking Systems on Educational Expectations: A Comparative Study of Austria and Italy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Bommi

2014-01-01

School tracking is usually criticised as a mechanism for social and cultural reproduction. Evidence from the literature shows a significant effect of early tracking on social inequality. Some studies also show that early tracking has a negative effect on the probability of completing higher education. This study uses PISA 2009 data and the…

The first year pre-service teachers' chemical literacy in individual learning case using the fuel cell technology based-chemical enrichment book

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hernani, Saefulloh, Mudzakir, Ahmad

2017-08-01

This research aims to analyze chemical literacy ability of pre-service teachers based on PISA 2015 scientific competency. This research used descriptive method. Instrument that used in this research is multiple choice question that built based on scientific competency of PISA 2015. The result is grouping by PISA 2015 competency and mapped by high, medium and low GPA classified. This research involves 19 the first year pre-service teachers of 90 population that randomly chosen. According to the result, chemical literacy ability of pre-service described as follows: 1) 35.5% of sample are able to explain phenomena scientifically. Based on GPA, for high, medium and low GPA group respectively 25.0%, 40.3% and 29.2%; 2) 31.6% of sample are able to evaluate and design scientific enquiry. Based on GPA, for high, medium and low GPA group respectively 16.7%, 35.4% and 31.3%; 3) 31.6% of sample are able to Interpret data and evidence scientifically. Based on GPA, for high, medium and low GPA group respectively 50.0%, 25.0% and 37.5%; For the attitude competency, 68.4% of sample able to showing PISA attitude competency that consist of interest in science, environment awareness and Valuing scientific approaches to enquiry attitude. Based on GPA, for high, medium and low GPA group respectively 77.8%, 63.9% and 75.0%. According to the data, chemical literacy ability of pre-service teachers in average are bellow to 50.0% thereby need to be given special attention while scientific attitude are above to 50.0%.

Study of the Factors Affecting the Mathematics Achievement of Turkish Students According to Data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Güzeller, Cem Oktay; Eser, Mehmet Taha; Aksu, Gökhan

2016-01-01

This study attempts to determine the factors affecting the mathematics achievement of students in Turkey based on data from the Programme for International Student Assessment 2012 and the correct classification ratio of the established model. The study used mathematics achievement as a dependent variable while sex, having a study room, preparation…

Monitoring human exposure to urban air pollutants

PubMed Central

Barale, R.; Barrai, I.; Sbrana, I.; Migliore, L.; Marrazzini, A.; Scarcelli, V.; Bacci, E.; Di Sibio, A.; Tessa, A.; Cocchi, L.; Lubrano, V.; Vassalle, C.; He, J.

1993-01-01

A multidisciplinary study on a general population exposed to vehicle exhaust was undertaken in Pisa in 1991. Environmental factors such as air pollution and those associated with lifestyle were studied. Meanwhile, biological and medical indicators of health condition were investigated. Chromosomal aberrations, sister chromatid exchanges (SCEs), and micronuclei in lymphocytes were included for the assessment of the genotoxic risk. Because of the large number (3800) of subjects being investigated, standardization of protocols was compulsory. The results on data reproducibility are reported. To assess the reliability of the protocol on a large scale, the population of Porto Tolle, a village located in northeast Italy, was studied and compared to a subset of the Pisa population. Preliminary results showed that probable differences between the two populations and invididuals were present in terms of SCE frequencies. The study was potentially able to detect the effects of several factors such as age, smoking, genetics, and environment. The in vitro treatment of lymphocytes with diepoxybutane confirmed the presence of more responsive individuals and permitted us to investigate the genetic predisposition to genetic damage. The possible influence of environmental factors was studied by correlation analyses with external exposure to air pollutants as well as with several lifestyle factors. PMID:8143653

The Design of PSB-VVER Experiments Relevant to Accident Management

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nevo, Alessandro Del; D'Auria, Francesco; Mazzini, Marino; Bykov, Michael; Elkin, Ilya V.; Suslov, Alexander

Experimental programs carried-out in integral test facilities are relevant for validating the best estimate thermal-hydraulic codes(1), which are used for accident analyses, design of accident management procedures, licensing of nuclear power plants, etc. The validation process, in fact, is based on well designed experiments. It consists in the comparison of the measured and calculated parameters and the determination whether a computer code has an adequate capability in predicting the major phenomena expected to occur in the course of transient and/or accidents. University of Pisa was responsible of the numerical design of the 12 experiments executed in PSB-VVER facility (2), operated at Electrogorsk Research and Engineering Center (Russia), in the framework of the TACIS 2.03/97 Contract 3.03.03 Part A, EC financed (3). The paper describes the methodology adopted at University of Pisa, starting form the scenarios foreseen in the final test matrix until the execution of the experiments. This process considers three key topics: a) the scaling issue and the simulation, with unavoidable distortions, of the expected performance of the reference nuclear power plants; b) the code assessment process involving the identification of phenomena challenging the code models; c) the features of the concerned integral test facility (scaling limitations, control logics, data acquisition system, instrumentation, etc.). The activities performed in this respect are discussed, and emphasis is also given to the relevance of the thermal losses to the environment. This issue affects particularly the small scaled facilities and has relevance on the scaling approach related to the power and volume of the facility.

INFN-Pisa scientific computation environment (GRID, HPC and Interactive Analysis)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Arezzini, S.; Carboni, A.; Caruso, G.; Ciampa, A.; Coscetti, S.; Mazzoni, E.; Piras, S.

2014-06-01

The INFN-Pisa Tier2 infrastructure is described, optimized not only for GRID CPU and Storage access, but also for a more interactive use of the resources in order to provide good solutions for the final data analysis step. The Data Center, equipped with about 6700 production cores, permits the use of modern analysis techniques realized via advanced statistical tools (like RooFit and RooStat) implemented in multicore systems. In particular a POSIX file storage access integrated with standard SRM access is provided. Therefore the unified storage infrastructure is described, based on GPFS and Xrootd, used both for SRM data repository and interactive POSIX access. Such a common infrastructure allows a transparent access to the Tier2 data to the users for their interactive analysis. The organization of a specialized many cores CPU facility devoted to interactive analysis is also described along with the login mechanism integrated with the INFN-AAI (National INFN Infrastructure) to extend the site access and use to a geographical distributed community. Such infrastructure is used also for a national computing facility in use to the INFN theoretical community, it enables a synergic use of computing and storage resources. Our Center initially developed for the HEP community is now growing and includes also HPC resources fully integrated. In recent years has been installed and managed a cluster facility (1000 cores, parallel use via InfiniBand connection) and we are now updating this facility that will provide resources for all the intermediate level HPC computing needs of the INFN theoretical national community.

Effect of Monomer Solubility on the Evolution of Copolymer Morphology during Polymerization-Induced Self-Assembly in Aqueous Solution

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) has become a widely used technique for the rational design of diblock copolymer nano-objects in concentrated aqueous solution. Depending on the specific PISA formulation, reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) aqueous dispersion polymerization typically provides straightforward access to either spheres, worms, or vesicles. In contrast, RAFT aqueous emulsion polymerization formulations often lead to just kinetically-trapped spheres. This limitation is currently not understood, and only a few empirical exceptions have been reported in the literature. In the present work, the effect of monomer solubility on copolymer morphology is explored for an aqueous PISA formulation. Using 2-hydroxybutyl methacrylate (aqueous solubility = 20 g dm–3 at 70 °C) instead of benzyl methacrylate (0.40 g dm–3 at 70 °C) for the core-forming block allows access to an unusual “monkey nut” copolymer morphology over a relatively narrow range of target degrees of polymerization when using a poly(methacrylic acid) RAFT agent at pH 5. These new anisotropic nanoparticles have been characterized by transmission electron microscopy, dynamic light scattering, aqueous electrophoresis, shear-induced polarized light imaging (SIPLI), and small-angle X-ray scattering. PMID:28216792

Are learning strategies linked to academic performance among adolescents in two States in India? A tobit regression analysis.

PubMed

Areepattamannil, Shaljan

2014-01-01

The results of the fourth cycle of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) revealed that an unacceptably large number of adolescent students in two states in India-Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu-have failed to acquire basic skills in reading, mathematics, and science (Walker, 2011). Drawing on data from the PISA 2009 database and employing multivariate left-censored to bit regression as a data analytic strategy, the present study, therefore, examined whether or not the learning strategies-memorization, elaboration, and control strategies-of adolescent students in Himachal Pradesh (N = 1,616; Mean age = 15.81 years) and Tamil Nadu (N = 3,210; Mean age = 15.64 years) were linked to their performance on the PISA 2009 reading, mathematics, and science assessments. Tobit regression analyses, after accounting for student demographic characteristics, revealed that the self-reported use of control strategies was significantly positively associated with reading, mathematical, and scientific literacy of adolescents in Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. While the self-reported use of elaboration strategies was not significantly associated with reading literacy among adolescents in Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, it was significantly positively associated with mathematical literacy among adolescents in Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Moreover, the self-reported use of elaboration strategies was significantly and positively linked to scientific literacy among adolescents in Himachal Pradesh alone. The self-reported use of memorization strategies was significantly negatively associated with reading, mathematical, and scientific literacy in Tamil Nadu, while it was significantly negatively associated with mathematical and scientific literacy alone in Himachal Pradesh. Implications of these findings are discussed.

A Comparative Study of Learning Strategies Used by Romanian and Hungarian Preuniversity Students in Science Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lingvay, Mónika; Timofte, Roxana S.; Ciascai, Liliana; Predescu, Constantin

2015-01-01

Development of pupils' deep learning approach is an important goal of education nowadays, considering that a deep learning approach is mediating conceptual understanding and transfer. Different performance at PISA tests of Romanian and Hungarian pupils cause us to commence a study for the analysis of learning approaches employed by these pupils.…

Using Comparative International Studies for Modeling Educational Effectiveness: A Secondary Analysis of PISA-2009 Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Azigwe, John Bosco

2016-01-01

International surveys of student achievement are becoming increasingly popular with governments around the world, as they try to measure the performance of their country's education system. The main reason for this trend is the shared opinion that countries will need to be able to compete in the "knowledge economy" to assure the economic…

On Matrix Sampling and Imputation of Context Questionnaires with Implications for the Generation of Plausible Values in Large-Scale Assessments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kaplan, David; Su, Dan

2016-01-01

This article presents findings on the consequences of matrix sampling of context questionnaires for the generation of plausible values in large-scale assessments. Three studies are conducted. Study 1 uses data from PISA 2012 to examine several different forms of missing data imputation within the chained equations framework: predictive mean…

Beating the Odds: Trees to Success in Different Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Finch, W. Holmes; Marchant, Gregory J.

2017-01-01

A recursive partitioning model approach in the form of classification and regression trees (CART) was used with 2012 PISA data for five countries (Canada, Finland, Germany, Singapore-China, and the Unites States). The objective of the study was to determine demographic and educational variables that differentiated between low SES student that were…

Universal Factors of Student Achievement in High-Performing Eastern and Western Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Jihyun

2014-01-01

This study investigates whether a common set of student attitudes and behavioral tendencies can account for academic achievement across different, especially high-performing, countries via analysis of the PISA 2009 international data set. The 13 countries examined are 5 of the top-performing Eastern countries/systems, namely Shanghai China, South…

Investigating the Relationship between School Level Accountability Practices and Science Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gándara, Fernanda; Randall, Jennifer

2015-01-01

This study investigates the relationship between school-level accountability practices and science achievement of 15-year-olds, across four counties: Australia, Korea, Portugal, and the United States. We used PISA 2006 data, since 2006 is the only administration that has focused on science. School-level accountability practices are here defined as…

Understanding Student Achievement in Mathematics and Science: The Case of Trinidad and Tobago

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alexander, Vivian; Maeda, Yukiko

2015-01-01

This study aims to disentangle the complex relationships among student attributes, school context, and student performance in mathematics and science in Trinidad and Tobago, using the PISA 2009 data. Our findings reveal that schools account for a substantial amount of variation in students' mathematics and science performances. School…

Workplace-Based Competence Measurement: Developing Innovative Assessment Systems for Tomorrow's VET Programmes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Achtenhagen, Frank; Winther, Esther

2014-01-01

As a consequence of the large-scale assessment studies (TIMMS; PISA) in compulsory schooling, attention is now being given to the modelling and measurement of competencies in initial vocational education and training. This new output-led perspective of teaching/training and learning/working processes demands new approaches to research. Using the…

Tracking Effects Depend on Tracking Type: An International Comparison of Students' Mathematics Self-Concept

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chmielewski, Anna K.; Dumont, Hanna; Trautwein, Ulrich

2013-01-01

The aim of the present study was to examine how different types of tracking--between-school streaming, within-school streaming, and course-by-course tracking--shape students' mathematics self-concept. This was done in an internationally comparative framework using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). After…

How to Construct an Organizational Field: Empirical Educational Research in Germany, 1995-2015

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zapp, Mike; Powell, Justin J. W.

2016-01-01

Over the past two decades, educational research in Germany has undergone unprecedented changes. Following large-scale assessments such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and a political interest in evidence-based policy-making, quality assessment and…

Development of Intellectual Activity in Solving Exponential Inequalities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alpyssov, Akan; Mukanova, Zhazira; Kireyeva, Assel; Sakenov, Janat; Kervenev, Kabylgazy

2016-01-01

The article describes the possibilities and the main directions of development of intellectual activity in teaching mathematics in school. The aims and specific features of application of international comparative TIMSS and PISA studies, as well as their results in the field of mathematics education in relation to the pupils in Kazakhstan are…

An Investigation of Singapore Preschool Children's Emerging Concepts of Floating and Sinking

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Teo, Tang Wee; Yan, Yaw Kai; Ong, Woei Ling Monica

2017-01-01

Despite Singapore's excellent science achievements in international benchmark tests such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), little is known about Singaporean children's (aged 4-8) emerging science conceptions as formal science schooling begins at Grade 3…

Family and Motivation Effects on Mathematics Achievement: Analyses of Students in 41 Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chiu, Ming Ming; Xihua, Zeng

2008-01-01

This study examines family and motivation effects on student mathematics achievement across 41 countries. The Rasch estimates of PISA mathematics test scores and questionnaire responses of 107,975 15-year-old students were analyzed via multilevel analyses. Students scored higher in richer or more egalitarian countries; when living with two…

Information Technology, Mathematics Achievement and Educational Equity in Developed Economies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tan, Cheng Yong; Hew, Khe Foon

2017-01-01

The present study examined how access to home and school IT resources impacted student mathematics achievement. Data comprised 144,395 secondary school students from 7,308 schools in 22 developed economies who participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012. Results of hierarchical linear modelling showed that after…

Taking the Lead in Science Education: Forging Next-Generation Science Standards. International Science Benchmarking Report. Appendix

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Achieve, Inc., 2010

2010-01-01

This appendix accompanies the report "Taking the Lead in Science Education: Forging Next-Generation Science Standards. International Science Benchmarking Report," a study conducted by Achieve to compare the science standards of 10 countries. This appendix includes the following: (1) PISA and TIMSS Assessment Rankings; (2) Courses and…

School Autonomy: A Comparison between China and the United States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xia, Jiangang; Gao, Xingyuan; Shen, Jianping

2017-01-01

This study examined and compared school autonomy in China and the United States. Based on the international PISA 2012 school data, the authors examined three aspects of school autonomy. We found that in comparison with the United States, (1) principals from China were less likely to have responsibility over eleven school decisions (hiring…

Reading Comprehension of Immigrant Students in Germany: Research Evidence on Determinants and Target Points for Intervention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marx, Alexandra E.; Stanat, Petra

2012-01-01

International studies, such as the "Programme for International Student Assessment" (PISA), have shown that, in most participating countries, students who do not typically speak the test language at home reach lower levels of reading comprehension than students using the test language at home (Stanat & Christensen, "2006").…

Conceptualizing the Science Curriculum: 40 Years of Developing Assessment Frameworks in Three Large-Scale Assessments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kind, Per Morten

2013-01-01

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…

Socio-Economic Diversity and Mathematical Competences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thiel, Oliver

2012-01-01

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has proved that in Germany the impact that socio-economic background has on 15-year-old pupils' achievement is stronger than in other countries. The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) showed that the correlation is less with 10-year-old children, but is still apparent.…

Inquiry, Engagement, and Literacy in Science: A Retrospective, Cross-National Analysis Using PISA 2006

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McConney, Andrew; Oliver, Mary C.; Woods-McConney, Amanda; Schibeci, Renato; Maor, Dorit

2014-01-01

In this study, we examine patterns of students' literacy and engagement in science associated with different levels of "inquiry-oriented" learning reported by students in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. To achieve this, we analyzed data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's 2006 Programme for International…

Cultural, Social, and Economic Capital Constructs in International Assessments: An Evaluation Using Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Caro, Daniel H.; Sandoval-Hernández, Andrés; Lüdtke, Oliver

2014-01-01

The article employs exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) to evaluate constructs of economic, cultural, and social capital in international large-scale assessment (LSA) data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006 and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009. ESEM integrates the…

The Relationship between Ethnic Diversity and Classroom Disruption in the Context of Migration Policies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Veerman, Gert-Jan M.

2015-01-01

This paper studies the relationship between ethnic school composition and classroom disruption in secondary education in the context of migration policies. We measured classroom disruption using students' reports from 3533 schools in 20 countries provided by cross-national PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2009 data. We employ…

Student and School Factors Affecting Mathematics Achievement: International Comparisons between Korea, Japan and the USA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shin, Jongho; Lee, Hyunjoo; Kim, Yongnam

2009-01-01

The purpose of the study was to comparatively investigate student- and school-level factors affecting mathematics achievement of Korean, Japanese and American students. For international comparisons, the PISA 2003 data were analysed by using the Hierarchical Linear Modeling method. The variables of competitive-learning preference, instrumental…

[Prevalence of depression and body dysmorphic disorder in patients before functional rhinosurgery].

PubMed

Bender, M; Rustige, L; Lindemann, J

2014-11-01

Psychiatric disorders are known to influence the result of many surgical procedures. Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is found in many patients undergoing plastic surgery. The prevalence before functional rhinosurgery has not been examined so far. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of depression and BDD before functional rhinosurgery. 201 patients were prospectively examined with a questionnaire before functional rhinosurgery. Beck-Depression-Index was used to rate depression, the PISA body dsymorphic symptom scale was used to evaluate the likelihood that a patient suffers from body dysmoprhic disorder. 186 patients returned a complete questionnaire. In 33.9% showed a mild or strong indication for a body dysmorphic disorder. Patients who were planned to undergo septorhinoplasty had a significantly higher scores in the PISA-scale compared to patients before septoplasty. 1.7% patients were depressive without a significant difference between the planned surgical procedure. Many patients before functional septorhinoplasty show signs of body dysmorphic disorder. Whether this influences the subjective clinical outcome needs to be evaluated in further studies. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

Psychoticism and disruptive behavior can be also good predictors of school achievement.

PubMed

Flores-Mendoza, Carmen; Widaman, Keith; Mansur-Alves, Marcela; Bacelar, Tatiane Dias; Saldanha, Renata

2013-01-01

The relations of Gf (Standard Progressive Matrices Raven), Gc (verbal scale of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Version), personality dimensions (Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Junior Version), and disruptive behavior (TDAH scale) with school achievement (measured by TDE test and PISA test) were investigated. Two samples of students (total N = 534) representing a broad range of socioeconomic status (SES) participated in this study. Path models were conducted. The results demonstrated that (1) in both samples no sex differences related to school achievement were found; (2) in the first sample, after controlling for age and SES differences, Gf and psychoticism predicted (.38 and -.13, respectively) school achievement (measured by TDE test); (3) in the second sample, after controlling for SES differences to which additional measures were administered, Gf and Gc positively predicted (.22 and .40, respectively) school achievement (measured by PISA test). In addition, psychoticism and disruptive behavior also predicted school performance (-.14 and -.28, respectively). Some theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Colonization by Legionella spp. of water networks in residential buildings of the Province of Pisa, Italy.

PubMed

Baggiani, A; Casini, B; Totaro, M; Aquino, F; Valentini, P; Bruni, B; Porretta, A; Casalini, F; Miccoli, M; Privitera, G

2015-01-01

Despite the increase of community acquired cases of legionellosis in Italy over the last years, the Italian guidelines do not give indications for prevention and control of Legionella in the hot water networks (or centralized conditioning systems) of residential buildings. We performed a survey on eight medium sized apartment buildings in the Pisa district to assess the prevalence of Legionella spp. in the water network and the respondance to drinking water requisites at the point of use, according to the Italian norms. For each building two hot water and three cold water samples (located at water entrance from the aqueduct network into the building pipework, at the exit from pressure autoclave, and at a remote tap) were collected. Legionella was detected in 20% of residential buildings, mostly in those with a central hot water production system. The study highlights a condition of potential risk for susceptible population subgroups and supports the need for measures of risk assessment and control.

The Impact of Gender on Interest in Science Topics and the Choice of Scientific and Technical Vocations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Buccheri, Grazia; Abt Gürber, Nadja; Brühwiler, Christian

2011-01-01

Many countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) note a shortage of highly qualified scientific-technical personnel, whereas demand for such employees is growing. Therefore, how to motivate (female) high performers in science or mathematics to pursue scientific careers is of special interest. The sample for this study is taken from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006. It comprises 7,819 high performers either in sciences or mathematics from representative countries of four different education systems which generally performed well or around the OECD average in PISA 2006: Switzerland, Finland, Australia, and Korea. The results give evidence that gender specificity and gender inequity in science education are a cross-national problem. Interests in specific science disciplines only partly support vocational choices in scientific-technical fields. Instead, gender and gender stereotypes play a significant role. Enhancing the utility of a scientific vocational choice is expected to soften the gender impact.

Malaysian and Singaporean students' affective characteristics and mathematics performance: evidence from PISA 2012.

PubMed

Thien, Lei Mee; Ong, Mei Yean

2015-01-01

This paper attempts to identify the extent to which the affective characteristics of Malaysian and Singaporean students' attainment compared to the OECD average in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012, and examine the influence of students' affective characteristics, gender, and their socioeconomic status on mathematics performance at both student and school levels. Sample consisted of 5197 and 5546 15-year-old Malaysian and Singaporean students. Data were analysed using hierarchical linear modelling approach with HLM 7.0 software. Results showed that the Index of economic, social, and cultural status (ESCS), mathematics self-efficacy, and mathematics anxiety have significant effects on mathematics performance in Malaysia and Singapore at the student level. Proportion of boys at the school level has no significant effects on mathematics performance for both Malaysian and Singaporean students. ESCS mean at the school level has positive and significant effects on mathematics performance in Malaysia, but not in Singapore. Limitations, implications, and future studies were discussed.

What Studying Problems Are Faced by the Adolescent Grade Repeaters in Macao: Uncovering Underlying Mechanisms Based on Evidences from the PISA 2012 Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sit, Pou-seong; Cheung, Kwok-cheung; Cheong, Wai-cheong; Mak, Soi-kei; Soh, Kay-cheng; Ieong, Man-kai

2015-01-01

Most schools in Macao are private schools, and there is a variety of grade repetition policy practiced in the 45 secondary schools. The policies are translated into school-based accountability of some kind of minimum competency standards. The objective of this study is to uncover the mediation mechanisms accounting for the influences of grade…

High risk of brain tumors in military personnel: a case control study.

PubMed

Fallahi, P; Elia, G; Foddis, R; Cristaudo, A; Antonelli, A

2017-01-01

Scientific literature suggests a relationship between military occupation and the development of brain tumors, but no italian study has investigated on the impact of this job on the brain cancer morbidity. In this a study information were obtained from patients recruited in the Neurosurgical Department of the University-Hospital of Pisa, Italy, from 1990 to 1999. The study has been conducted as a case-control study. 161, newly diagnosed cases of brain tumors (glioma and meningiomas, histologically confirmed), were recruited, such as 483 controls (with other non tumoral neurologic diseases: trauma, hemorrhagic brain disorders, aneurism, etc), by matching cases and controls (1:3), for age (± 5 years) and gender. Cases and controls were interviewed in the Neurosurgical Department, University-Hospital of Pisa, Italy, and the occupational histories of cases and controls were compared. Cases and controls have showed a statistically significant difference, based on their occupation (military vs. non-military occupation). A statistically significant association was seen between brain tumors and military occupation among evaluated patients (p=0.013). Further studies regarding this population group are needed, to determine the causes for the increased risk of this cancer. Furthermore, a subsequent reevaluation in other patients collected in more recent years will be needed to evaluate the trend of this association.

IQs in Italy Are Higher in the North: A Reply to Felice and Giugliano

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lynn, Richard

2012-01-01

Criticisms advanced by Felice and Giugliano (2011) of the thesis that IQs in Italy are higher in the north than in the south are answered and new data confirming the thesis are given from the PISA 2009 study and for math and reading abilities in the recent INVALSI study. New genetic data are given showing higher frequency of blond hair the…

Quality of Educational Resources: A Comparative Evaluation of Schools That Joined PISA 2015 from Turkey and Singapore

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Özkan, Metin; Balci, Suphi; Kayan, Selman; Is, Engin

2018-01-01

The objective of the study was to make a comparison among the two countries according to the level of sufficiency of educational resources and to determine the accuracy level at which variables related to educational resources can classify the schools on the basis of countries. Relational survey model was used. The sample group of the study was…

School Climate: A History of the Concept and Approaches to Defining and Measuring it on PISA Questionnaires

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chirkina, T. A.; Khavenson, T. E.

2018-01-01

School climate is one of the significant factors determining educational achievement. However, the lack of instruments to measure it has complicated the study of this concept in Russia. We review the history of the study of the concept of "school climate," and we discuss approaches to how it can be defined. We describe the most widely…

Profile of Secondary School Students with High Mathematics Ability in Solving Shape and Space Problem

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Putra, Mulia; Novita, Rita

2015-01-01

This study aimed to describe the profile of secondary school students with high mathematics ability in solving shape and space problem in PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). It is a descriptive research with a qualitative approach, in which the subjects in this study were students of class VIII SMP N 1 Banda Aceh. The results show…

Shared Academic Values: Testing a Model of the Association between Hong Kong Parents' and Adolescents' Perception of the General Value of Science and Scientific Literacy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Acosta, Sandra; Hsu, Hsien-Yuan

2014-01-01

This study investigated parent general value of science operationalized in the 2006 questionnaire of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), as a determinant of adolescents' scientific literacy performance. The transmission of academic values literature is small. To the best of our knowledge, no previous studies to date have…

Comparative Study: Impact of Family, School, and Students Factors on Students Achievements in Reading in Developed (Estonia) and Developing (Azerbaijan) Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shukakidze, Berika

2013-01-01

The work is based on PISA 2009 International Assessment Study. Two counties were selected: a developed country, Estonia and a developing country, Azerbaijan. The following Datum was used for statistical analysis: students average scores in reading (162 schools, 4 600 students from Azerbaijan; 17 schools, 4 923 students from Estonia). The work is…

VII Workshop Italiano sulla fisica pp a LHC

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

LHCpp2016 è la settima edizione dell'incontro nazionale sulla fisica p-p a LHC. Questa serie di incontri è nata a Pisa nel 2003 con lo scopo di stimolare lo scambio di idee tra le comunità sperimentali di ATLAS, CMS e LHCB e la comunità teorica. Caratteristica fondamentale di questi incontri è la preparazione di larga parte dei talk in collaborazione tra i vari esperimenti e la comunità teorica. Largo spazio nella preparazione e presentazione dei talk viene dato ai giovani ricercatori. In questa settima edizione, che si tiene di nuovo a Pisa, vogliamo concentrare l'attenzione sulle potenzialità di scoperta offerte dai dati raccolti durante il runII di LHC.

Socially Disadvantaged Students in Socially Disadvantaged Schools: Double Jeopardy in Mathematics Achievement in the G8 Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dundas, Traci Lynne

2010-01-01

Using the G8 countries' (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States) samples from the 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), this study aimed to explore the phenomenon of double jeopardy in mathematics achievement for socially disadvantaged students. Double jeopardy…

Children's Writing Ability: Effects of Parent's Education, Mental Speed and Intelligence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rindermann, Heiner; Michou, Christina Dimitra; Thompson, James

2011-01-01

Verbal ability comprises receptive (understanding) and active (producing) facets. While the first (e.g. as literacy in PIRLS and PISA) is frequently analyzed in its relationship to further cognitive abilities and parental attributes the latter is rarely investigated. The present study using data from N=280 students aged 9 to 14 years investigated…

Do Schools Make a Difference in Their Students' Environmental Attitudes and Awareness? Evidence from PISA 2006

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coertjens, Liesje; Boeve-de Pauw, Jelle; De Maeyer, Sven; Van Petegem, Peter

2010-01-01

The environmental agenda is gaining momentum as an international policy issue. This is reflected in an increase in environmental education research focussing on children's awareness and attitudes toward the environment. In this study, we focused on this issue from a school effectiveness perspective and evaluated (a) which student characteristics…

Can the Principles of Cognitive Acceleration Be Used to Improve Numerical Reasoning in Science?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clowser, Anthony; Jones, Susan Wyn; Lewis, John

2018-01-01

This study investigates whether the Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE) scheme could be used to meet the demands of the Literacy and Numeracy Framework (LNF). The LNF is part of the Welsh Government's improvement strategy in response to perceived poor performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)…

Exploring Plausible Causes of Differential Item Functioning in the PISA Science Assessment: Language, Curriculum or Culture

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huang, Xiaoting; Wilson, Mark; Wang, Lei

2016-01-01

In recent years, large-scale international assessments have been increasingly used to evaluate and compare the quality of education across regions and countries. However, measurement variance between different versions of these assessments often posts threats to the validity of such cross-cultural comparisons. In this study, we investigated the…

Influences of Metacognitive and Self-Regulated Learning Strategies for Reading on Mathematical Literacy of Adolescents in Australia and Singapore

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kaur, Berinderjeet; Areepattamannil, Shaljan

2012-01-01

This study, drawing on data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009, explored the influences of metacognitive and self-regulated learning strategies for reading on mathematical literacy of adolescents in Australia and Singapore. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses revealed the positive influences of…

What Specific Science Abilities and Skills Are Romanian Students Developing during Primary Education? A Comparison with the Abilities Tested by the TIMSS 2011 Inquiry

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ciascai, Liliana; Dulama, Maria-Eliza

2013-01-01

The results of Romanian students at international comparative TIMSS and PISA tests have constantly proven to be unsatisfactory. The present paper aims at analyzing the school syllabi "Mathematics and Environment exploration", "Environmental Education" and "Natural Sciences" studied during primary education in Romania…

Testing the Cultural Differences of School Characteristics with Measurement Invariance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Demir, Ergül

2016-01-01

In this study, it was aimed to model the school characteristics in multivariate structure, and according to this model, aimed to test the invariance of this model across five randomly selected countries and economies from PISA 2012 sample. It is thought that significant differences across group in the context of school characteristics have the…

Second-Generation Turkish Youth in Europe: Explaining the Academic Disadvantage in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Song, Steve

2011-01-01

This investigation examines the role of students' home and school variables in producing the achievement gap between second-generation Turkish students and their native peers in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Using the data from PISA 2006, this study supports past findings that both home and school resources affect the educational outcomes of…

The Varied Educational Effects of Parent-Child Communication: A Comparative Study of Fourteen Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Park, Hyunjoon

2008-01-01

In this article, the author compares the ways in which parent-child communication--a major indicator of parental involvement--influences children's educational achievement across 14 countries. Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the author examines the extent to which social class differences in the effect of…

The Impact of the Programme for International Student Assessment on Academic Journals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dominguez, Maria; Vieira, Maria-Jose; Vidal, Javier

2012-01-01

The aim of this study is to assess the impact of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) on international scientific journals. A bibliometric analysis was conducted of publications included in three main scientific publication databases: Eric, EBSCOhost and the ISI Web of Knowledge, from 2002 to 2010. The paper focused on four main…

The More, the Better? The Impact of Instructional Time on Student Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cattaneo, Maria A.; Oggenfuss, Chantal; Wolter, Stefan C.

2017-01-01

Building on earlier work that explored within-student variation in hours of instruction across school subjects, we investigate the impact of instruction time on student test scores in Switzerland, as measured by the PISA 2009 test. Our results confirm the results of previous studies of a positive effect of instruction time on student performance.…

Back to the Basics: Socio-Economic, Gender, and Regional Disparities in Canada's Educational System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Edgerton, Jason D.; Peter, Tracey; Roberts, Lance W.

2008-01-01

This study reassessed the extent to which socio-economic background, gender, and region endure as sources of educational inequality in Canada. The analysis utilized the 28,000 student Canadian sample from the data set of the OECD's 2003 "Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)". Results, consistent with previous findings,…

Do Country Stereotypes Exist in PISA? A Clustering Approach for Large, Sparse, and Weighted Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saarela, Mirka; Kärkkäinen, Tommi

2015-01-01

Certain stereotypes can be associated with people from different countries. For example, the Italians are expected to be emotional, the Germans functional, and the Chinese hard-working. In this study, we cluster all 15-year-old students representing the 68 different nations and territories that participated in the latest Programme for…

Relationships of Out-of-School-Time Mathematics Lessons to Mathematical Literacy in Singapore and Australia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kaur, Berinderjeet; Areepattamannil, Shaljan

2013-01-01

This study, drawing on date from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009, examined the relationships of out-of-school-time mathematics lessons to mathematical literacy in Singapore and Australia. Results of two-level hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) analyses revealed that out-of-school-time enrichment lessons in…

Lost in Translation? A Case Study of Macao in Fabricating a European Education Space in Asia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vong, Teresa Sou-Kuan; Wong, Matilda

2014-01-01

The creation of a European education space has been extensively discussed in Europe. Many scholars are concerned about the way in which the emergence of "global governmentality," such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)'s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), has produced a "soft…

Using the Mixture Rasch Model to Explore Knowledge Resources Students Invoke in Mathematic and Science Assessments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Danhui; Orrill, Chandra; Campbell, Todd

2015-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether mixture Rasch models followed by qualitative item-by-item analysis of selected Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) mathematics and science items offered insight into knowledge students invoke in mathematics and science separately and combined. The researchers administered an…

An Assessment of Civic Scientific Literacy in Japan: Development of a More Authentic Assessment Task and Scoring Rubric

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Naganuma, Shotaro

2017-01-01

Scientific literacy has been measured by a variety of assessment tools in the past few decades. International surveys such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) emphasize the importance of scientific literacy. Scientific literacy is now regarded as a…

An International Comparison of Equity in Education Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gorard, Stephen; Smith, Emma

2004-01-01

This paper uses pupil responses to the PISA study in 2000 for all EU countries. Using indicators of the pupil intakes to schools and their outcomes it computes segregation indices for 15 countries, and then tries to explain the resulting patterns in terms of the characteristics of national school systems. Segregation by sex in each country is…

International Assessments of Student Achievement and Public Confidence in Education: Evidence from a Cross-National Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pizmony-Levy, Oren; Bjorklund, Peter, Jr.

2018-01-01

One of the overarching goals of international large-scale assessments (ILSA) is to inform public discourse about the quality of education in different countries. To fulfil this function, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), for example, raises awareness of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)…

Unfinished Student Answer in PISA Mathematics Contextual Problem

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lutfianto, Moch.; Zulkardi; Hartono, Yusuf

2013-01-01

Solving mathematics contextual problems is one way that can be used to enable students to have the skills needed to live in the 21st century. Completion contextual problem requires a series of steps in order to properly answer the questions that are asked. The purpose of this study was to determine the steps performed students in solving…

Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) 2009 Cohort: Wave 1 (2009)--Frequency Tables. Technical Report 70

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER), 2012

2012-01-01

The Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) program studies the progress of several groups of young Australians as they move from school into post-secondary education and work. Since 2003, the LSAY program has been integrated with the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted by the Organisation for Economic…

Relevance of Education and Intelligence at the National Level for the Economic Welfare of People

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rindermann, Heiner

2008-01-01

Cognitive abilities are important for the economic and non-economic success of individuals and societies. For international analyses, the collection of IQ-measures from Lynn and Vanhanen was supplemented and meliorated by data from international student assessment studies (IEA-Reading, TIMSS, PISA, PIRLS). The cognitive level of a nation is highly…

Cross-National Estimates of the Effects of Family Background on Student Achievement: A Sensitivity Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nonoyama-Tarumi, Yuko

2008-01-01

This article uses the data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2000 to examine whether the influence of family background on educational achievement is sensitive to different measures of the family's socio-economic status (SES). The study finds that, when a multidimensional measure of SES is used, the family background…

"Education Is a Life Marathon Rather than a Hundred-Meter Race": Chinese "Folk" Comparative Discourses on Finnish Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Haiqin; Dervin, Fred

2017-01-01

Over the past decade Finnish education has been praised worldwide for its students' "amazing" results in the OECD PISA studies. Thousands of pedagogical tourists--including policy-makers, researchers and educators--have visited the country to find out about the reasons behind the success and to borrow, often uncritically and…

Evaluating a Concept Mapping Training Programme by 10 and 13 Year-Old Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Habók, Anita

2012-01-01

The PISA 2000 study found large differences between countries in terms of quality of learning. In some countries, students prefer rote learning to meaningful learning. However, such memorisation of the material does not lead to recallable and usable knowledge in the long run. Ausubel's (1968) well-known theory serves as a basis for several…

Contributions of Academic Language, Perspective Taking, and Complex Reasoning to Deep Reading Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

LaRusso, Maria; Kim, Ha Yeon; Selman, Robert; Uccelli, Paola; Dawson, Theo; Jones, Stephanie; Donovan, Suzanne; Snow, Catherine

2016-01-01

"Deep reading comprehension" refers to the process required to succeed at tasks defined by the Common Core State Literacy Standards, as well as to achieve proficiency on the more challenging reading tasks in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) framework. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that three…

An Exploration of Differences in Mathematics Attainment among Immigrant Pupils in 18 OECD Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shapira, Marina

2012-01-01

This article presents findings from a comparative study of sources of educational disadvantage of immigrant children across 18 OECD countries, which is based the data from the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The findings show that disadvantaged family background and lack of host-country-specific cultural capital account…

What PISA Tells Us about the Quality and Inequality of Japanese Education in Mathematics and Science

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Knipprath, Heidi

2010-01-01

Researchers, policy officials, and the wider public in Japan and abroad often hold different views about the quality of Japanese education. Whereas Western researchers are attracted by the academic performance of Japanese students in international assessment studies, Japanese university professors launched a public debate in 1999 about declining…

Sustainable Leadership and Future-Oriented Decision Making in the Educational Governance--A Finnish Case

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Metsamuuronen, Jari; Kuosa, Tuomo; Laukkanen, Reijo

2013-01-01

Purpose: During the new millennium the Finnish educational system has faced a new challenge: how to explain glorious PISA results produced with only a small variance between schools, average national costs and, as regards the average duration of studies, relatively efficiently. Explanations for this issue can be searched for in many different…

A Competence-Based Approach to the Design of a Teaching Sequence about Oral and Dental Health and Hygiene: A Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blanco-López, Ángel; Franco-Mariscal, Antonio Joaquín; España-Ramos, Enrique

2016-01-01

We present a case study to illustrate the design and implementation of a teaching sequence about oral and dental health and hygiene. This teaching sequence was aimed at year 10 students (age 15-16) and sought to develop their scientific competences. In line with the PISA assessment framework for science and the tenets of a context-based approach…

What Does Democracy Mean to 14-Year-Old Turkish Children? A Comparison with Results of the 1999 IEA Civic Education Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Doganay, Ahmet

2010-01-01

The scores of Turkish students on the international tests such as TIMMS and PISA, which assess basic science concepts, reading and problem-solving abilities, are among the lowest. Although understanding the concept of democracy has been studied across the countries, it has not been clearly researched in Turkey. For this reason, the focus of this…

The Effects of Resilience in Learning Variables on Mathematical Literacy Performance: A Study of Learning Characteristics of the Academic Resilient and Advantaged Low Achievers in Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheung, Kwok-Cheung

2017-01-01

Many students from disadvantaged homes participating in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 were classified as academic resilient (called "disadvantaged high achiever", the DHA in this study). In comparison with peers of comparable home background status, there were also students from advantaged homes performing…

Cross-National Data on Victims of Bullying: How Does PISA Measure up with Other Surveys? An Update and Extension of the Study by Smith, Robinson, and Marchi (2016)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Peter K.; Lopez-Castro, Leticia

2017-01-01

Until recently, there were four sources of large-scale self-report survey data on victim rates, cross-nationally: EU Kids Online, Global School Health Survey, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, and Health Behaviour of School-aged Children. Smith, Robinson, and Marchi (2016) examined the internal validity and external validity…

Assessment Drives Learning: The Effect of Central Exit Exams on Curricular Knowledge and Mathematical Literacy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jurges, Hendrik; Schneider, Kerstin; Senkbeil, Martin; Carstensen, Claus H.

2012-01-01

In this paper, we use data from the German PISA 2003 sample to study the effects of central exit examinations on student performance and student attitudes. Unlike earlier studies we use (i) a value-added measure to pin down the effect of central exit exams on learning in the last year before the exam and (ii) separate test scores for mathematical…

The Mean Southern Italian Children IQ Is Not Particularly Low: A Reply to R. Lynn (2010)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cornoldi, Cesare; Belacchi, Carmen; Giofre, David; Martini, Angela; Tressoldi, Patrizio

2010-01-01

Working with data from the PISA study (OECD, 2007), Lynn (2010) has argued that individuals from South Italy average an IQ approximately 10 points lower than individuals from North Italy, and has gone on to put forward a series of conclusions on the relationship between average IQ, latitude, average stature, income, etc. The present paper…

Problem Solving and Immigrant Student Mathematics and Science Achievement: Multination Findings from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martin, Andrew J.; Liem, Gregory A. D.; Mok, Magdalena M. C.; Xu, Jacob

2012-01-01

The present study investigates problem-solving skill alongside more widely recognized settlement and sociodemographic factors in first-generation (1G) and second-generation (2G) immigrant students' science and mathematics achievement. A total of 113,767 students (ages 15-16 years) from 17 countries were drawn from the 2003 Programme for…

Wonders of the World

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Healy, John W.

2006-01-01

The Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Great Pyramids of Gaza and the Great Wall of China--all are architectural symbols of a national, proudly shared identity of the people who live near these structures. A country's unique architecture can be a form of art to study as well as a symbol of pride and unity. The author of…

Universals and Specifics of Math Self-Concept, Math Self-Efficacy, and Math Anxiety across 41 PISA 2003 Participating Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Jihyun

2009-01-01

The overarching goal of the present study is to investigate the factorial structure of three closely related constructs: math self-concept, math self-efficacy, and math anxiety. The factorial structure consisting of three factors, each representing math self-concept, math self-efficacy, and math anxiety, is supported in all 41 countries employed…

The Role of Teacher Behavior in Adolescents' Intrinsic Reading Motivation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

De Naeghel, Jessie; Valcke, Martin; De Meyer, Inge; Warlop, Nele; van Braak, Johan; Van Keer, Hilde

2014-01-01

Given the weak intrinsic reading motivation of many adolescents on the one hand and the importance of this type of motivation for reading competence on the other hand, the aim of the present study is to identify the related role of teacher behavior. To pursue this aim, a secondary analysis was carried out on PISA 2009 data. More particularly, data…

A Latent Profile Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling of the Instructional Quality of Mathematics Classrooms Based on the PISA 2012 Results of Korea and Singapore

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yi, Hyun Sook; Lee, Yuree

2017-01-01

Teachers' classroom behaviors and their effects on student learning have received significant attention from educators, because the quality of instruction is a critical factor closely tied to students' learning experiences. Based on a theoretical model conceptualizing the quality of instruction, this study examined the characteristics of…

The Paper Implementation of the German Educational Standards in Geography for the Intermediate School Certificate in the German Federal States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schöps, Andreas

2017-01-01

Up to the publication of the results of Germany's first participation in the PISA study in 2001, there had been no national educational standards in Germany's 16 federal states. In the aftermath of the discussions about the disappointing outcomes, Germany's federal states decided to develop national standards, yet focusing on "core…

Transition-from-Early-to-Sophisticated-Literacy (TESL) as a Factor in Cross-National Achievement Differences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Galletly, Susan A.; Knight, Bruce Allen

2011-01-01

The PISA studies of reading achievement of 15 year old students in OECD and partner nations show Anglophone nations to have continuing high proportions of weak readers (less than or equal to Level 2), with no improvement in this area from 2000 to 2006 (OECD, "Science competencies for tomorrow's world: Executive summary," 2007). The…

Teaching Aids and Work with Models in E-Learning Environments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jancaríková, Katerina; Jancarík, Antonín

2017-01-01

PISA study has defined several key areas to be paid attention to by teachers. One of these areas is work with models. The term model can be understood very broadly, it can refer to a drawing of a chemical reaction, a plastic model, a permanent mount (taxidermy) to advanced 3D projections. Teachers are no longer confined to teaching materials and…

Lessons from Finland: Where the Country's Education System Rose to the Top in Just a Couple Decades

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sahlberg, Pasi

2011-01-01

Since Finland emerged in 2000 as the top-scoring Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nation on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), researchers have been pouring into the country to study the so-called "Finnish miracle." How did a country with an undistinguished education system in the…

The Reading Gap: The Socio-Economic Gap in Children's Reading Skills: A Cross-National Comparison Using PISA 2009

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jerrim, John

2013-01-01

This report supplements Jerrim (2012) where John Jerrim investigated the link between family background and children's reading tests across a series of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Previous studies for the Sutton Trust (Smithers 2012) have suggested that policy and provision for the highly able in…

Education and Reproduction of Social Inequality: German Politics and Sociology of Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sunker, Heinz

2004-01-01

This article deals with central issues in the field of sociology and politics of education after the publication of the outcomes of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study for Germany. These outcomes serve to remind us of the old debate on politics of education in the 1960s. The main topic since then remains the reproduction…

Developing Perspective: What Can We Learn about Education from Lower-Income Countries? The Claremont Letter. Volume 5, Issue 1

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Luschei, Thomas

2010-01-01

To the extent that Americans look abroad for lessons about education, they primarily concern themselves with wealthy nations that perform well on international tests like the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In this paper, the author argues that Americans…

Equity in Mathematics and Science Outcomes: Characteristics Associated with High and Low Achievement on PISA 2006 in Ireland

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gilleece, Lorraine; Cosgrove, Jude; Sofroniou, Nick

2010-01-01

Equity in education is a key concern internationally; however, it is rare that this issue is examined separately for low- and high-achieving students and concurrently across different subject domains. This study examines student and school background characteristics associated with low and high achievement in mathematics and science on the…

Shadow Education in Spain: Examining Social Inequalities through the Analysis of PISA Results

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Runte-Geidel, Ariadne; Marzo, Pedro Femia

2015-01-01

This article examines the use of shadow education by students of compulsory secondary education in Spain over the period 2000-2010. The study identifies the proportion of the student population that uses this type of education and examines how the use of shadow education has evolved during this period. Data was drawn from the student questionnaire…

Students in Australian Catholic and Independent Schools Have More Positive Learning Environments: Evidence from the 2012 PISA Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marks, Gary N.

2017-01-01

Critics of Catholic and independent (nongovernment) schools in Australia contend that the higher levels of performance of students in nongovernment schools can be dismissed as simply a function of student- and especially school-level socioeconomic status (school-SES). A recent article extends this critique to school-sector differences in students'…

Resettling the Thoughts of Ernst Mach and the Vienna Circle in Europe: The Cases of Finland and Germany

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Siemsen, Hayo; Siemsen, Karl Hayo

2009-04-01

Although it is generally assumed that the thoughts of Ernst Mach and the scientific fields he influenced (in this case psychophysics and Gestalt psychology) emigrated from Europe during Second World War they apparently survived in Finland, influencing the Finnish education system. The following article evaluates this relationship and its implications from a historical and an empirical perspective. In empirical studies comparing the education systems of different countries, such as PISA, the Finns are in general regarded as being very successful with their school system. Does this apparent success have anything to do with a Machian influence? Our current research has so far revealed that the Finns have gone through an independent cultural development in two specific aspects: in the idea of the development of the individual personality (Snellman) and in a specific phenomenalism (developed primarily by Eino Kaila, in which Kaila was heavily influenced in this by Ernst Mach). The result can be regarded as a nation-wide “Experiment”, the empirical evaluation of which can be found partly in the statistics of the PISA Studies, especially the evaluation of Finland in relation to other countries.

Persistent gender inequities in mathematics achievement and expectations in Australia, Canada and the UK

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Forgasz, Helen J.; Leder, Gilah C.

2017-09-01

We report the general public's perceptions and those of 15-year-old school students, about aspects of mathematics learning. For the adult sample, survey data were gathered from pedestrians and Facebook users in Australia, Canada and the UK—countries in which English is the dominant language spoken. Participants responded to items about the teaching and learning of mathematics, the gender stereotyping of mathematics and the perceived importance of studying mathematics for future careers. Collection of the data from the pedestrian samples partially overlapped with the period of data gathering via Facebook and coincided loosely with the administration of the Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA] 2012 in the three countries of interest. We examined participants' views/beliefs by country and by respondent age. We also compared the results of the adult samples with student responses to four PISA 2012 attitudinal items for which the foci were comparable to items administered to the general public. Thus, we were able to compare the responses of three different age groups. While participants considered mathematics to be important for everyone to study, and important for employment, vestiges of traditional gender stereotyped beliefs and expectations were evident, more so among the younger than older respondents.

Acknowledgements

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

2016-07-01

The Meeting was sponsored by the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), the Società Italiana di Fisica (SIF), the European Physics Society (EPS), the University of Pisa and the University of Siena.

Can Test Construction Account for Varying Gender Differences in International Reading Achievement Tests of Children, Adolescents and Young Adults?--A Study Based on Nordic Results in PIRLS, PISA and PIAAC

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Solheim, Oddny Judith; Lundetrae, Kjersti

2018-01-01

Gender differences in reading seem to increase throughout schooling and then decrease or even disappear with age, but the reasons for this are unclear. In this study, we explore whether differences in the way "reading literacy" is operationalised can add to our understanding of varying gender differences in international large-scale…

Development of innovative problem based learning model with PMRI-scientific approach using ICT to increase mathematics literacy and independence-character of junior high school students

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wardono; Waluya, B.; Kartono; Mulyono; Mariani, S.

2018-03-01

This research is very urgent in relation to the national issue of human development and the nation's competitiveness because of the ability of Indonesian Junior High School students' mathematics literacy results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) by OECD field of Mathematics is still very low compared to other countries. Curriculum 2013 launched one of them reflect the results of PISA which is still far from the expectations of the Indonesian nation and to produce a better quality of education, PISA ratings that reflect the nation's better competitiveness need to be developed innovative, interactive learning models such as innovative interactive learning Problem Based Learning (PBL) based on the approach of Indonesian Realistic Mathematics Education (PMRI) and the Scientific approach using Information and Communication Technology (ICT).The research was designed using Research and Development (R&D), research that followed up the development and dissemination of a product/model. The result of the research shows the innovative interactive learning PBL model based on PMRI-Scientific using ICT that developed valid, practical and effective and can improve the ability of mathematics literacy and independence-character of junior high school students. While the quality of innovative interactive learning PBL model based on PMRI-Scientific using ICT meet the good category.

Opportunities-to-Learn at Home: Profiles of Students With and Without Reaching Science Proficiency

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Xiufeng; Whitford, Melinda

2011-08-01

This study examines the relationship between opportunity-to-learn (OTL) at home and students' attainment of science proficiency. The data set used was the 2006 PISA science US national sample. Data mining was used to create patterns of association between home OTL variables and student attainment of science proficiency. It was found that students who failed to reach science proficiency are characterized by having fewer than 100 books at home; these students are also found to take out-of-school individual or group lessons with their teachers or with other teachers. On the other hands, students who reached science proficiency are characterized by having more than 100 books at home, not taking any out-of-school lessons, and having a highest parent level of graduate education. In addition to the above common characteristics, other home characteristics (e.g. computer and internet at home and language spoke at home) are also identified in profiles of students who have reached science proficiency. We explain the above findings in terms of current social-cultural theories. We finally discuss implications of the above findings for future studies and for improving science education policy and practice.

What Could Be More Practical than Good Research? On Mutual Relations between Research and Practice of Mathematics Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sfard, Anna

2005-01-01

These seem to be very special times for mathematics education. The public interest in the topic has never been greater. Probably the most prominent among the occurrences that occasioned this recent leap in popularity are international comparative studies such as TIMSS and PISA. The fact that, in spite of the ongoing efforts toward reform in…

A Time-Lag Analysis of the Relationships among PISA Scores, Scientific Research Publication, and Economic Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yu, Chong Ho; DiGangi, Samuel; Jannasch-Pennell, Angel

2012-01-01

Due to the poor performance of US students in international math and science tests, many authors worry that the US lead in science is in jeopardy. A recent study by Chen and Luoh ("Soc Indic Res" 96: 133-143, 2010) challenged this pessimistic view by delinking test performance and labor force quality. It was found that measures such as…

A Study on Detecting of Differential Item Functioning of PISA 2006 Science Literacy Items in Turkish and American Samples

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Çikirikçi Demirtasli, Nükhet; Ulutas, Seher

2015-01-01

Problem Statement: Item bias occurs when individuals from different groups (different gender, cultural background, etc.) have different probabilities of responding correctly to a test item despite having the same skill levels. It is important that tests or items do not have bias in order to ensure the accuracy of decisions taken according to test…

A Multilevel Modelling Approach to Investigating Factors Impacting Science Achievement for Secondary School Students: PISA Hong Kong Sample

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sun, Letao; Bradley, Kelly D.; Akers, Kathryn

2012-01-01

This study utilized data from the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment Hong Kong sample to investigate the factors that impact the science achievement of 15-year-old students. A multilevel model was used to examine the factors from both student and school perspectives. At the student level, the results indicated that male students,…

Quantity and Quality of Computer Use and Academic Achievement: Evidence from a Large-Scale International Test Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheema, Jehanzeb R.; Zhang, Bo

2013-01-01

This study looked at the effect of both quantity and quality of computer use on achievement. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 student survey comprising of 4,356 students (boys, n = 2,129; girls, n = 2,227) was used to predict academic achievement from quantity and quality of computer use while controlling for…

The Family as a Place of Education. between a School-Centred Focus on Education and Family Needs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loch, Ulrike

2016-01-01

The results of PISA studies over recent years have revealed the social selectivity of the scholastic education system. Based on my empirical research on families with mentally ill parents, I show how, for the children involved, social exclusion begins before they even start school. I also show how parents' mental illness is seen to affect…

Potential of Global Tests Seen as Unrealized: Scholars Urged to Scour TIMSS, PISA for Policy Insights

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Viadero, Debra

2006-01-01

In 1958, a group of international scholars met in Hamburg, Germany, and hatched an idea for a huge study to measure student learning around the globe. They saw the world as one big educational laboratory, with each country acting as its own naturally occurring experiment. If tests could gauge the effects of those experiments, the researchers…

Impacts of a STSE High School Biology Course on the Scientific Literacy of Hong Kong Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lau, Kwok-chi

2013-01-01

The PISA performance of Hong Kong has prompted this study to investigate if scientific literacy (SL) of Hong Kong students can be improved further through a high school biology course employing the STSE approach. A STSE course was developed in accordance to the contexts of Hong Kong and a framework for the assessment of scientific literacy was…

Influences of Disciplinary Classroom Climate on High School Student Self-Efficacy and Mathematics Achievement: A Look at Gender and Racial-Ethnic Differences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheema, Jehanzeb R.; Kitsantas, Anastasia

2014-01-01

The present study investigated the role of disciplinary climate in the classroom and student math self-efficacy on math achievement. The student part of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 survey containing 4,199 U.S. observations was employed in a weighted least squares nested multiple regression framework to predict math…

The Relationship between Item Context Characteristics and Student Performance: The Case of the 2006 and 2009 PISA Science Items

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ruiz-Primo, Maria Araceli; Li, Min

2015-01-01

Background: A long-standing premise in test design is that contextualizing test items makes them concrete, less demanding, and more conducive to determining whether students can apply or transfer their knowledge. Purpose: We assert that despite decades of study and experience, much remains to be learned about how to construct effective and fair…

Comparative Study on Romanian School Science Curricula and the Curriculum of TIMSS 2007 Testing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ciascai, Liliana

2009-01-01

The results of Romanian school students in Science PISA and TIMSS testings have been and continue to be systematically slack. In the present paper we intend to do a comparative analysis of Science curriculum TIMSS 2007 and Romanian Science school curricula of 4th and 8th grades. This analysis, based on Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive domain,…

High risk of brain tumors in farmers: a mini-review of the literature, and report of the results of a case control study.

PubMed

Fallahi, P; Foddis, R; Cristaudo, A; Antonelli, A

2017-01-01

Even though a relationship between farmer work and the development of brain tumors was suggest by the scientific literature, a small number of italian studies investigate on the impact of this job on the cancer morbidity of farmer population. The informations about this case-control study were obtained from patients recruited in the Neurosurgical Department of the University-Hospital of Pisa, Italy, from 1990 to 2000. One hundred and seventy-four, newly diagnosed cases of brain tumors (glioma and meningiomas, histologically confirmed), were recruited, such as 522 controls (with other non tumoral neurologic diseases: trauma, etc), by matching cases and controls (1:3), for age (± 5 years) and gender. Cases and controls were interviewed in the Neurosurgical Department, University-Hospital of Pisa, Italy, and the occupational histories of cases and controls were compared. Cases and controls have showed a statistically significant difference, based on their occupation (agricultural vs. non-agricultural). We observed a significant association among brain tumors and rural activity in evaluated patients (P=0.008). Further studies regarding this population group are needed, to determine the causes for the increased risk of this cancer, particularly in regions where there is an intense agricultural activity and where pesticides are used. Furthermore, a subsequent reevaluation in other patients collected in more recent years will be needed to evaluate the trend of this association.

Performance on International Assessments and Learning Time: A Snapshot of How the U.S. Compares to Other Education Systems on an International Scale. Informing Policy & Improving Practice. Policy Brief

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saxena, Pooja; Sell, LeeAnn

2016-01-01

Drawing from two international measures, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS) and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), this brief provides a snapshot comparison of the United States to other education systems. Specifically, this brief addresses how the U.S. compares to other countries in overall…

The Influence of Socioeconomic Status, Self-Efficacy, and Anxiety on Mathematics Achievement in England, Greece, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Turkey, and the USA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kalaycioglu, Dilara Bakan

2015-01-01

The purpose of this study is to examine relationships among the such variables as socioeconomic status, math self-efficacy, anxiety, and mathematics achievement using structural equation modeling. A sample group of 8,806 students from England, Greece, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Turkey, and the USA participated in the PISA 2012. To show how much…

The role of school performance in narrowing gender gaps in the formation of STEM aspirations: a cross-national study.

PubMed

Mann, Allison; Legewie, Joscha; DiPrete, Thomas A

2015-01-01

This study uses cross-national evidence to estimate the effect of school peer performance on the size of the gender gap in the formation of STEM career aspirations. We argue that STEM aspirations are influenced not only by gender stereotyping in the national culture but also by the performance of peers in the local school environment. Our analyses are based on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). They investigate whether 15-year-old students from 55 different countries expect to have STEM jobs at the age of 30. We find considerable gender differences in the plans to pursue careers in STEM occupations in all countries. Using PISA test scores in math and science aggregated at the school level as a measure of school performance, we find that stronger performance environments have a negative impact on student career aspirations in STEM. Although girls are less likely than boys to aspire to STEM occupations, even when they have comparable abilities, boys respond more than girls to competitive school performance environments. As a consequence, the aspirations gender gap narrows for high-performing students in stronger performance environments. We show that those effects are larger in countries that do not sort students into different educational tracks.

Sex Differences in Mathematics and Reading Achievement Are Inversely Related: Within- and Across-Nation Assessment of 10 Years of PISA Data

PubMed Central

Stoet, Gijsbert; Geary, David C.

2013-01-01

We analyzed one decade of data collected by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), including the mathematics and reading performance of nearly 1.5 million 15 year olds in 75 countries. Across nations, boys scored higher than girls in mathematics, but lower than girls in reading. The sex difference in reading was three times as large as in mathematics. There was considerable variation in the extent of the sex differences between nations. There are countries without a sex difference in mathematics performance, and in some countries girls scored higher than boys. Boys scored lower in reading in all nations in all four PISA assessments (2000, 2003, 2006, 2009). Contrary to several previous studies, we found no evidence that the sex differences were related to nations’ gender equality indicators. Further, paradoxically, sex differences in mathematics were consistently and strongly inversely correlated with sex differences in reading: Countries with a smaller sex difference in mathematics had a larger sex difference in reading and vice versa. We demonstrate that this was not merely a between-nation, but also a within-nation effect. This effect is related to relative changes in these sex differences across the performance continuum: We did not find a sex difference in mathematics among the lowest performing students, but this is where the sex difference in reading was largest. In contrast, the sex difference in mathematics was largest among the higher performing students, and this is where the sex difference in reading was smallest. The implication is that if policy makers decide that changes in these sex differences are desired, different approaches will be needed to achieve this for reading and mathematics. Interventions that focus on high-achieving girls in mathematics and on low achieving boys in reading are likely to yield the strongest educational benefits. PMID:23516422

Hi-tech restoration by two steps biocleaning process of Triumph of Death fresco at the Camposanto Monumental Cemetery (Pisa, Italy).

PubMed

Ranalli, Giancarlo; Zanardini, Elisabetta; Andreotti, Alessia; Colombini, Maria Perla; Corti, Cristina; Bosch-Roig, Pilar; De Nuntiis, Paola; Lustrato, Giuseppe; Mandrioli, Paolo; Rampazzi, Laura; Giantomassi, Carlo; Zari, Donatella

2018-05-13

In this work, the "hi-tech" complex biocleaning and restoration of the 14th-century fresco Triumph of Death (5.6x15.0 m) at the Camposanto Monumental Cemetery (Pisa, Italy) is reported. Since 2000, the restoration based on the biological cleaning of noble medieval frescoes, has been successfully utilized in this site. The novelty of this study is the 2-steps biocleaning process using Pseudomonas stutzeri A29 viable cells, previously applied for recovering other valuable frescoes. In this case, after the fresco detachment from the asbestos-cement support (eternity), both the animal glue and the residues of calcium caseinate were biologically removed respectively from the front and from the back of the fresco in 3 hours as indicated by GC-MS and PY/GC-MS analyses. The data obtained during the monitoring of the bio-restoration process confirmed that the adopted procedure does not leave residual cells on the fresco surfaces as showed by plate count method, ATP determination and also SEM observation. In addition, to avoid the risk of condensation phenomena after the relocation of the restored fresco sections onto the original walls, the use of a new support has been set up together with the design of a control system that allows a continuous monitoring of environmental parameters for prevention and conservation purposes. This large-scale biorestoration work clearly shows and confirms that this biotechnology is highly efficient, safe, non-invasive, risk-free and very competitive compared to the traditional cleaning methods, offering an unusual "resurrection" of the degraded artworks also in very complicated and delicate conditions such as the Triumph of Death fresco, defined for its dimension and artistic importance the 'Pisa's Sistina frescoes'. These findings can be of significant importance for other future new restoration activities and they are crucial for determining preservation strategies in this field. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Sex differences in mathematics and reading achievement are inversely related: within- and across-nation assessment of 10 years of PISA data.

PubMed

Stoet, Gijsbert; Geary, David C

2013-01-01

We analyzed one decade of data collected by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), including the mathematics and reading performance of nearly 1.5 million 15 year olds in 75 countries. Across nations, boys scored higher than girls in mathematics, but lower than girls in reading. The sex difference in reading was three times as large as in mathematics. There was considerable variation in the extent of the sex differences between nations. There are countries without a sex difference in mathematics performance, and in some countries girls scored higher than boys. Boys scored lower in reading in all nations in all four PISA assessments (2000, 2003, 2006, 2009). Contrary to several previous studies, we found no evidence that the sex differences were related to nations' gender equality indicators. Further, paradoxically, sex differences in mathematics were consistently and strongly inversely correlated with sex differences in reading: Countries with a smaller sex difference in mathematics had a larger sex difference in reading and vice versa. We demonstrate that this was not merely a between-nation, but also a within-nation effect. This effect is related to relative changes in these sex differences across the performance continuum: We did not find a sex difference in mathematics among the lowest performing students, but this is where the sex difference in reading was largest. In contrast, the sex difference in mathematics was largest among the higher performing students, and this is where the sex difference in reading was smallest. The implication is that if policy makers decide that changes in these sex differences are desired, different approaches will be needed to achieve this for reading and mathematics. Interventions that focus on high-achieving girls in mathematics and on low achieving boys in reading are likely to yield the strongest educational benefits.

PREFACE: 5th International Workshop DICE2010: Space-Time-Matter - Current Issues in Quantum Mechanics and Beyond

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Diósi, Lajos; Elze, Hans-Thomas; Fronzoni, Leone; Halliwell, Jonathan; Prati, Enrico; Vitiello, Giuseppe; Yearsley, James

2011-07-01

These proceedings present the Invited Lectures and Contributed Papers of the Fifth International Workshop on Decoherence, Information, Complexity and Entropy - DICE 2010, held at Castello Pasquini, Castiglioncello (Tuscany), 13-17 September 2010. These proceedings are intended to document the stimulating exchange of ideas at this conference for both the interested public and the wider scientific community, as well as for the participants. The number of participants attending this series of meetings has been growing steadily, which reflects its increasing attraction. Our intention to bring together leading researchers, advanced students, and renowned scholars from various areas in order to stimulate new ideas and their exchange across the borders of specialization seems to bear fruit. In this way, the series of meetings has continued successfully from the beginning with DICE 2002 [1], followed by DICE 2004 [2], DICE 2006 [3], and DICE 2008 [4], uniting more than 100 participants representing almost 30 countries worldwide. It has been a great honour and inspiration to have Professor Luc Montagnier (Nobel Prize for Medicine 2008) from the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention with us, who presented the lecture DNA waves and water (included in this volume). The discussions took place under the wider theme Space-Time-Matter - current issues in quantum mechanics and beyond in the very pleasant and inspiring atmosphere of Castello Pasquini, which - with its beautiful surroundings, overlooking the Tuscany coast - hosted the conference very successfully for the second time. The five-day program was grouped according to the following topics: Gravity and Quantum Mechanics Quantum Coherent Processes in Biology / Many-Body Systems From Quantum Foundations to Particle Physics The Deep Structure of Spacetime Quantum - Relativity - Cosmology A Public Roundtable Discussion formed an integral part of the program under the theme Sull' Onda Della Coerenza" - le nuove frontiere della scienza moderna with the participation of E Del Giudice (INFN & Università di Milano), L Fronzoni (Università di Pisa) and G Vitiello (Università di Salerno). By now forming a tradition, this evening event drew a large audience, who participated in lively discussions until late. The workshop was organized by L Diósi (Budapest), H-T Elze (Pisa, chair), L Fronzoni (Pisa), J Halliwell (London), E Prati (Milano) and G Vitiello (Salerno), with essential help from our conference seceretaries M Pesce-Rollins and L Baldini and from our students G Gambarotta and F Vallone, all from Pisa. Several institutions and sponsors supported the workshop; their representatives and, in particular, the citizens of Rosignano / Castiglioncello are deeply thanked for their generous help and kind hospitality: Comune di Rosignano - A Franchi (Sindaco di Rosignano), S Scarpellini (Segreteria sindaco), L Benini (Assessore ai lavori pubblici), M Pia (Assessore all' urbanistica). REA Rosignano Energia Ambiente s.p.a. - F Ghelardini (Presidente della REA), E Salvadori (Segreteria). Associazione Armunia - M Paganelli (Direttore), G Mannari (Programmazione). Special thanks go to G Mannari and her collaborators for their advice and great help in all the practical matters that had to be dealt with in order to run the meeting at Castello Pasquini smoothly. Funds made available by Università di Pisa, by Domus Galilaeana (Pisa), Centro Interdisciplinare per lo Studio dei Sistemi Complessi - CISSC (Pisa), Dipartmento di Matematica e Informatica (Università di Salerno), Instituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici - IISF (Napoli), and by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund OTKA, are gratefully ackowledged. Last, but not least, special thanks are due to Laura Pesce (Vitrium Galleria, San Vincenzo) for the exposition for her artwork Dal io al cosmo at Castello Pasquini during the conference. The papers presented at the workshop and collected here have been edited by L Diósi, H-T Elze, L Fronzoni, J J Halliwell, E Prati, G Vitiello and J Yearsley. The proceedings essentially follow the order of presentation during the conference program, however, divided into Invited Lectures and Contributed Papers. (We regret that lectures by D Bouwmeester, G G Guerreschi, G C Ghirardi and C Kiefer could not be reproduced here, partly for copyright reasons.) In the name of all the participants, we would like to thank S Toms and G Douglas, and their collaborators at IOP Publishing (Bristol) for their friendly advice and most valuable and immediate help during the editing process and, especially, for their continuing efforts to make the Journal of Physics: Conference Series available to all. Budapest, Pisa, London, Milano and Salerno, May 2011 Lajos Diósi, Hans-Thomas Elze, Leone Fronzoni, Jonathan Halliwell, Enrico Prati, Guiseppe Vitiello and James Yearsley [1] Elze H-T (ed) 2004 Decoherence and Entropy in Complex Systems Lecture Notes in Physics 633 (Berlin: Springer) [2] Elze H-T (ed) 2005 Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Decoherence, Information, Complexity and Entropy - DICE 2004 Braz. Journ. Phys. 35 2A and B pp 205-529free access at: www.sbfisica.org.br/bjp[3] Elze H-T, Diósi L, Fronzoni L, Halliwell J J and Vitiello (eds) 2007 Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Decoherence, Information, Complexity and Entropy - DICE 2006 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 67free access at: www.iop.org/EJ/toc/1742-6596/67/1[4] Elze H-T, Diósi L, Fronzoni L, Halliwell J J and G Vitiello (eds) 2009 Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Decoherence, Information, Complexity and Entropy - DICE 2008 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 174free access at: www.iop.org/EJ/toc/1742-6596/67/1

Storm recovery on two Italian coarse-grained beaches: a comparison between a mixed sand and gravel and a pebble beach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bertoni, Duccio; Grottoli, Edoardo; Ciavola, Paolo; Sarti, Giovanni; Pozzebon, Alessandro

2014-05-01

High energy events emphasize beach erosion processes, sometimes leading to huge volume deficits not balanced by recovery under fair-weather conditions. In this scenario, artificial replenishments are frequently used as a form of coastal protection with large volumes of sediments re-injected in the system without strongly altering the environment as it happens with hard structures. Since climate change is expected to accentuate in the near future erosion effects, the need to artificially feed beaches is likely to increase. Gravel and pebbles are more and more often used as beach fill, on some occasions replacing sandy sediments. That was the case for two beaches located at either sides of the Italian Peninsula (Portonovo, Adriatic Sea; Marina di Pisa, Ligurian Sea), which constitute the study area of the present research. Portonovo is a 500 m-long mixed sand and gravel beach with a significant pebble-sized content (about 40%), unloaded on the beach during multiple replenishments. Marina di Pisa is an artificial, 180 m-long beach, mainly composed of 40-to-90 mm pebbles; it was built in 2008 as a part of a larger protection scheme. Groins or headlands that prevent any sediment exchange with adjacent areas bound both beaches. Periodic topographic surveys were carried out to evaluate the response of these human-altered beaches to high-energy events. The topographic surveys, undertaken with a DGPS-RTK instrument along cross-shore transects (from the landward end of the backshore to about 1.5 m depth seaward), were done following intense storm events occurred during the time period of the research. Transects were done out every 10 m along the entire length of the beaches. Prior to the first topographic survey, a sediment tracing experiment was set up as a form of control of the results provided by the geomorphologic analysis. Pebbles directly sampled from the beaches were marked by means of the RFID technology and injected back all along the beachface. As expected, considerable beach profile changes after the storms were identified, in particular at Portonovo (mixed beach), where huge sediment volumes were displaced longshore according to the incident wave direction as opposed to Marina di Pisa (gravel dominated), where the main beach changes developed along the cross-shore direction. In terms of resilience, results showed a better response of the Portonovo beach rather than the Marina di Pisa beach. The different response might be ascribed to the grain-size that constitutes the beaches: no physical process can rework the pebbles at Marina di Pisa once they are moved during the storms towards the back-end of the backshore or seaward of the step, thus preventing any beach recovery process to take place. Since the awareness on storm impacts is more critical than in the past, the understanding of beach recovery to extreme events needs new insights to combine the preservation of natural beach evolution as well as maintenance for end-users. That is particularly pressing on coarse-grained beaches, where the need to predict storm impact and recovery is much more vital considering that finding suitable sediment to refill the beach is never an easy task.