Savanna theory of happiness and Urban-rural happiness gradient

From The Washington Post:

"Savanna theory of happiness" - people who live in more densely populated areas tend to report less satisfaction with their life overall.

"Our ancestors lived as hunter–gatherers in small bands of about 150 individuals". Take a brain evolved for that environment, plop it into today's Manhattan, and you can see how you'd get some evolutionary friction.

"The higher the population density of the immediate environment, the less happy" the survey respondents said they were. Second, they find that the more social interactions with close friends a person has, the greater their self-reported happiness.

But there was one big exception. For more intelligent people, these correlations were diminished or even reversed.

Survey: "When high-IQ individuals spend more time with their friends, it makes them less happy."

"Urban-rural happiness gradient" - "Residents of rural areas and small towns are happier than those in suburbs, who in turn are happier than those in small central cities, who in turn are happier than those in large central cities."

References:

Why smart people are better off with fewer friends http://buff.ly/1ZoqBEm
Why smart people tend to be loners http://buff.ly/1q007Nk
Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain.

Learning by heart may not be best for your mind

by Alfonso Echazarra

Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills



PISA 2012 Released Mathematics Item (Proficiency Level 6)

Some of the greatest geniuses had remarkable memories. Mozart, according to legend, sat and listened to Allegri’s “Miserere”, then transcribed the piece of music, entirely from memory, later in the day. Kim Peek, the savant who was the inspiration for the blockbuster film, Rain Man, memorised as many as 12 000 books. But unlike Mozart, who composed more than 600 works during his brief life, Peek was unable to distinguish between the relevant and the irrelevant, or discover hidden meanings and metaphors in the texts he had committed to memory.

What do these stories have to do with learning mathematics? Or, put another way: in light of these stories, how would you encourage students to learn mathematics? By understanding what mathematics concepts, procedures and formulae mean and applying them to a lot of different maths problems set in a lot of different contexts? Or by learning them by heart and applying them to a lot of similar maths problems? Sooner or later, the method matters. Students who avoid making an effort to understand mathematics concepts may succeed in some school environments; but a lack of deep, critical and creative thinking may seriously penalise these students later in life when confronted with real, complex problems. As Albert Einstein provocatively said: “Any fool can know; the point is to understand”.

A similar message is relayed in this month’s PISA in Focus and a new OECD paper on education, “How teachers teach and students learn: Successful strategies for school”. The analyses show that students who mainly use memorisation when they study do well on easy questions. For example, “CHARTS Q1”, a multiple-choice question from the PISA 2012 test, refers to a simple bar chart and is considered one of the easiest questions in the mathematics assessment. Some 87% of students answered this question correctly. Students who reported that they use some type of memorisation strategy when they study mathematics, such as learning by heart, recalling work already done or going through examples again and again, had about the same success rate on this easy item as students who reported using other learning strategies.

But complex problems are a different matter; they require more than a good memory. For the most challenging question from the PISA 2012 mathematics test, “REVOLVING DOOR Q2”, students who reported using mainly memorisation strategies were much less likely than students using other strategies, such as connecting ideas or working out exactly what is important to learn, to answer correctly. Answering “REVOLVING DOOR Q2” correctly requires substantial geometric reasoning and creativity, involves multiple steps, and draws heavily on students’ ability to translate a real situation into a mathematical problem. Only 3% of participants answered this question correctly.

The findings also show that, contrary to received wisdom, East Asian students are not necessarily the ones who use memorisation strategies the most. Memorisation is used almost everywhere, but fewer 15-year-olds in Hong Kong-China, Japan, Korea, Macao-China, Shanghai-China, Chinese Taipei and Viet Nam reported using it than students in, let’s say, English-speaking countries to whom they are often compared. For instance, 5% of students in Viet Nam, 12% of students in Japan and 17% of students in Korea reported that they learn as much as they can by heart when they study mathematics, compared to 26% of students in Canada, 28% in Ireland, 29% in the United States, 35% in Australia and New Zealand, and 37% in the United Kingdom.

In some situations, memorisation is useful, even necessary. It can give students enough concrete facts on which to reflect; it can limit anxiety by reducing mathematics to a set of simple facts, rules and procedures; and it can help to develop fluency with numbers early in a child’s development, before the child is asked to tackle more complex problems. But to perform at the very top, 15-year-olds need to learn mathematics in a more reflective, ambitious and creative way – one that involves exploring alternative ways of finding solutions, making connections, adopting different perspectives and looking for meaning. So yes, you can use your memory; just use it strategically, lest Einstein call you a fool.

Links:
PISA in Focus No. 61: Is memorisation a good strategy for learning mathematics? by Alfonso Echazarra
PISA á la loupe No. 61: La mémorisation : Une stratégie payante pour l’apprentissage des mathématiques?
How teachers teach and students learn: Successful strategies for school.
PISA Try the Test: Explore PISA 2012 Mathematics, problem solving and financial literacy test question
Source: PISA 2012 Released Mathematics Items

Is international academic migration stimulating scientific research and innovation?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Higher education and academic research are among the most rapidly globalising systems. Today, around 5 million students study and do research in a country other than their own, attracted by the quality of overseas universities and willing to complement their education portfolio with international experience. Employers generally value the impact international education has on the skills and mind-set of graduates, and see international experience as indispensable for future global leaders.

But in an age when governments are increasingly concerned about rising levels of migration and are making their migration policies more stringent, international student mobility is also being scrutinised. Some countries impose stricter visa requirements or limitations on the time for international students to stay in the country. Others make it more difficult for graduates to stay and work in the country where they have studied. The prospect of losing the economic returns from international students and the income provided by fee-paying students does not seem to dissuade some governments from imposing stricter regulations on international students.

The recent Education Indicators in Focus brief looks in more detail at the international mobility of master’s and doctoral students. The mobility of doctoral students is of special concern because of its relevance to research policy. The chart above illustrates the close relationship between the number of international doctoral students in a country and the country’s commitment to research, as measured by spending on R&D in tertiary education. Countries with a large share of international doctoral students are also countries that invest a lot in research.

The chart does not suggest any causality. In fact, there are two ways to interpret the relationship. Countries with relatively high levels of investment in university research are probably well-integrated in global research networks. International collaboration naturally leads to an exchange of researchers. Favourable research climates, high levels of investment and the prospect of collaborating with researchers working at the cutting edge in their fields offer attractive opportunities for young doctoral researchers.

The global research landscape is diversifying. Next to the academic centres in the United States and the United Kingdom, new strongholds of global academic research are emerging in countries such as Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden. These countries have opened up their universities for international researchers, and now 30%, 40% or even more than 50% of the doctoral students in these countries are of foreign origin.

But it could very well be that the causality also works in the other direction. Higher numbers of international researchers probably contribute to the global competiveness of academic research by strengthening integration in research networks or by facilitating international knowledge transfer. We can find support for this hypothesis in comparing our data on the percentage of international doctoral students with OECD data on the share of publications in the top 10% academic journals. The strong country-level correlation between both sets of data suggests that doctoral students have a positive impact on the quantity and quality of scientific research in the host country. In turn, this could prompt governments to increase their R&D spending on universities. Indirectly, international students then contribute to the innovation process and the development of a research-intensive knowledge economy in the host country.

The case of Switzerland is telling. A small country in the heart of Europe that is now fiercely debating migration policy, Switzerland has opened up its universities to international researchers and doctoral students, while at the same time increasing its R&D investment. Anyone who looks at international rankings has noticed that Switzerland is rising rapidly up the global academic hierarchy. Sweden and the Netherlands are close behind. This is no coincidence.

Current debates about international student mobility tend to overemphasise the benefits for the individual student or the financial returns for the host institution or host country. But it is also important to look into the wider benefits of academic migration. Laboratories and research centres at the frontier of their fields cannot do without strong integration in global networks and without international researchers. Progress in scientific research happens by sharing and confronting ideas, questioning established wisdom and looking at the world from different perspectives. International exchange and mobility of doctoral researchers is absolutely critical to this. Countries that curtail academic mobility risk paying a high price.

Links:
The internationalisation of doctoral and master's studies, Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 39, by Gabriele Marconi.
L’internationalisation des études de doctorat et de master, Les indicateurs de l'éducation à la loupe, issue No. 39 (French Version).

Graph sources: OECD Education Database, http://stats.oecd.org/, (accessed 21 January 2016), and OECD (2015a), Education at a Glance 2015: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eag-2015-en, Table B1.2.

We can do better on education reform

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

A generation ago, teachers could expect that what they taught would equip their students with the skills needed for the rest of their lives. Today, teachers need to prepare students for more change than ever before, for jobs that have not yet been created, to use technologies that have not yet been invented, and to solve social problems that we just can’t imagine. And many of the world’s social and economic difficulties end up on the doorsteps of schools too.

So expectations for teachers are high. We expect them to have a deep understanding of what they teach; to be passionate, compassionate and thoughtful; to make learning central and encourage students’ engagement and responsibility; to respond effectively to students of different needs, backgrounds and mother tongues, and to promote tolerance and social cohesion; to provide continual assessments of students and feedback; and to ensure that students feel valued and included and that learning is collaborative. And we expect teachers themselves to collaborate and work in teams, and with other schools and parents, to set common goals, and plan and monitor the attainment of goals collaboratively.

That’s a long list. But it reflects the transition from an industrial work organisation towards a professional work organisation that many sectors of our economies went through a long time ago. People typically define professionalism as the level of autonomy and internal regulation that members of an occupation exercise. So they look to see whether people work mainly through external forces exerting pressure and influence on them, or whether the work is the outcome of advanced skills, internal motivation and the efforts of the members of the profession itself.

As OECD data show, when rated on their knowledge base for teaching, their decision-making power over their work and their opportunities for exchange and support, teachers still have significant challenges ahead of them. Rarely do teachers own their professional standards, and rarely do they work with the level of professional autonomy and in the collaborative work culture that we, in other knowledge-based professions, take for granted.

But our data also show that where teachers teach a class jointly, where they regularly observe other teachers’ classes, and where they take part in collaborative professional learning, they are more satisfied with their careers and feel more effective in their teaching.

It’s time for governments, teachers’ unions and professional bodies to redefine the role of teachers, and to create the support and collaborative work organisation that will help teachers grow in their careers and meet the needs of 21st-century students. And that’s precisely why ministers and union leaders from the world’s most advanced education systems are gathering in Berlin this week at the sixth International Summit on the Teaching Profession.They are well aware that education reform will always be difficult.

Everyone supports education reform – except when it may affect their own children. Everyone has participated in education and has an opinion about it. Reform is difficult to co-ordinate across an education system, and across multiple regional and local jurisdictions. And the fear of loss of privilege is particularly pervasive around education reform, simply because of the extent of vested interests in maintaining the status quo.

The summit will examine plenty of examples of successful reforms around the world that have already improved student learning outcomes. But education systems can and should be doing better. Both the lack of coherence in reform efforts across successive governments and the fact that just one in ten reforms is subject to any kind of evaluation of its impact or efficacy is inexcusable. It shows a lack of respect for both taxpayers and educators at the frontline. At the OECD, we’ve identified six crucial actions needed to make education reform happen.

The first is to strive for consensus about the aims of reform without compromising the drive for improvement. That means acknowledging divergent views and interests. Involving stakeholders cultivates a sense of joint ownership over policies, and helps build consensus on both the need for and the relevance of reform. Regular consultations help to develop trust among all parties, which, in turn, helps to build consensus.

The second lesson is to engage teachers not just in implementing reform but in designing it too. Policy can encourage that through leadership-development strategies that create and sustain learning communities, linking evidence of teachers’ commitment to professional learning to pay, providing seed money for self-learning in and among schools, or through professional self-regulation through processes and organisations that include teachers.

Third, experimenting with policies on a smaller scale first can help build consensus on implementation and, because of their limited scope, can help overcome fears and resistance to change.

Fourth, backing reforms with sustainable financing will always be central. This is not only about money; it’s first and foremost about building professional capacity and support.

Fifth, timing and sequencing are always critical. We need to acknowledge that it is rarely possible to predict clear, identifiable links between policies and outcomes, especially given the lag involved between the time at which the initial cost of reform is incurred, and the time when it is evident whether the intended benefits of reforms actually materialise. Everyone needs to develop realistic expectations about the pace and nature of reform – even in the heat of debate. Time is also needed to learn about and understand the impact of reform measures, build trust and develop the necessary capacity to move on to the next stage of policy development.

Last but not least, success is about building partnerships with education unions. Putting the teaching profession at the heart of education reform requires a fruitful dialogue between governments and unions. At the end of the day, different perspectives and positions are best addressed by strong social partnerships.

Links:
International Summit on the Teaching Profession - Framing the Issues, by Andreas Schleicher
Teaching Excellence through Professional Learning and Policy Reform: Lessons from around the World
International Summit on the Teaching Profession 2016
Follow on twitter: #ISTP2016

Long-term wellbeing of European societies is at stake

By Natália Mazotte
Freelance Journalist, SGI News

Child and youth opportunities

Children and young people are among the biggest losers in the European economic and debt crisis. What do the staggering numbers in youth unemployment and child poverty in Europe mean for the future of this generation – and the continent as a whole?

While Europe continues to struggle to leave the legacy of the financial crisis behind, an entire generation is feeling the effects of the economic fallout most directly. The remarkable increase in youth unemployment since 2008 is perhaps the most disturbing sign of this scenario. In over a dozen European economies, youth unemployment remains today above 20%, and more than one in three unemployed young people have been looking for work for more than a year, according to the Global Employment Trends for Youth.

If you live in Spain or Greece, are between 15 and 24 years of age, and look for work, you are just as likely to be unemployed as to enjoy the privilege of a work contract. The situation does not improve much in other EU countries, where unemployment rates among young people grew from about 15% in 2008, before the crisis, to 22.2% in 2014, affecting 5.3 million young people. 7.5 million Europeans between 15 and 24 are not in employment, education or training. As such, these young people have dropped off the radar of their country’s education, social and labour market systems, as underlined in the OECD 2015 Skills Outlook on Youth, Skills and Employability.

In the crisis-battered southern European countries, life opportunities have declined while the risk of poverty among children and youth has increased since 2007/08, according to the latest EU Social Justice Index of the Bertelsmann Stiftung.

The study contains dramatic numbers, such as 35.8% – more than one third – of children and youth today who are at risk of poverty and social exclusion in Spain. The rate is 31.7% in Portugal. In Greece, it stands at 36.7%, while the share of children living under conditions of severe material deprivation has more than doubled from 9.7% in 2007 to 23.2% in 2014.

Poor labor market and economic deprivation foster mistrust in political institutions

In a study published in 2011, David N. F. Bell and David Blanchflower show that long-term youth inactivity leaves a heritage of reduced lifetime earnings, a large risk of future periods of unemployment and a high likelihood of precarious employment, and it results in poorer health and well-being and lower job satisfaction more than twenty years later.

Additionally, this situation impacts the political scene, where young Europeans appear highly skeptical that those in power are able to address their needs. The shakiness of the labor market and the threat of economic deprivation and social exclusion are all contributing to a growing mistrust of institutionalised politics. Displeasure and frustration are the driving forces behind new forms of political participation, such as Los Indignados, a grassroots protest movement that has grown into the Podemos political party, which won over 20% of the votes in the Spanish general elections last December.

No wonder then that leaders and European institutions consider this one of the most important issues to tackle. In France, where youth unemployment is at a distressing 25.1%, the government recently unveiled new plans, to train young jobseekers and encourage job creation. The same objectives are integrated in the Europe 2020 strategy.

Although the scenario is grim for most EU countries, some of them have managed to go against this trend. Countries such as Germany and the Netherlands remained under 12% youth unemployment in 2015. According to Alain Dehaze, head of the world's largest recruitment company, this is because those countries are better at blending formal education, apprenticeships, work and international experience.

The EU Social Justice Index points out that in Europe as a whole “governments must seek to improve vocational training, reduce the number of early school leavers and improve the transition from the education system to the labor market.“

Poverty is a vicious circle

Whereas young people face hardships transitioning to independence and adulthood in a post-crisis economic context, children are among the biggest losers in countries where the recession has hit hardest.

The most recent Innocenti Report Cards, a UNICEF publication devoted to the living conditions and well-being of children in economically advanced countries, reveals a strong correlation between the extent to which the recession ravaged national economies and the decline in child well-being since 2008.

Some 1.6 million more children were living in severe material deprivation in 2012 (11.1 million) than in 2008 (9.5 million) in 30 European countries. The largest increase in child poverty has been in southern Europe – in Greece, Italy and Spain – as well as in Croatia.

According to the study, children from families who have experienced difficulty remaining in the labor market and satisfying their most basic material and educational needs suffer the stress directly. “Poverty is a self-reinforcing cycle. A child with unemployed parents may do less well at school. Doing less well at school may bring more stress at home. And so on. The longer a child is locked in the cycle, the fewer the possibilities of escape,” the report says.

The EU Social Justice Index does not present a more comforting picture but it highlights some of the ways which can reduce child poverty in Europe: governments should set priorities so that those disadvantaged in society “receive targeted support through a functioning tax and transfer system (e.g., effective child benefit and allowance schemes, housing benefits).” However, “combating poverty is not only a question of monetary support, it also depends on sound policies in other areas, such as education and employment,” the experts warn.

Measures to reverse the deterioration of children’s quality of life are urgently needed to avoid highly disturbing future prospects, not only for this generation, but also for Europe as a whole.

Links:
OECD Skills Outlook 2015: Youth, Skills and Employability
Europe 2020 strategy
EU Social Justice Index
UNICEF Innocenti Report Cards
Global Employment Trends for Youth 2015: Youth employment crisis easing but far from over
Graph source: @ BertelsmannStiftung

Overcoming Colonoscopy Fears with Educational Videos by EMMI

From Dartmouth-Hitchcock: patient education and engagement video by EMMI Solutions can decrease anxiety before a colonoscopy, decrease dosage of sedatives during the procedure and shorten recovery time after the procedure.

Emmi(TM), stands for Expectation Management and Medical Information, and was originally developed by physicians with the goal to educate patients and decrease malpractice risk specifically in surgical patients. As of February 2016, there are 4 published studies about EMMI in PubMed:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26210560
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26101988
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21245476
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19606763

Do you have any experience with EMMI?

Watch the Dartmouth-Hitchcock video below:



Here is the standard "Preparing for a Colonoscopy" video by Dartmouth-Hitchcock:



References:

http://www.dartmouth-hitchcock.org/news/newsdetail/64940/

How much time is spent on maths and science in primary education?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Compulsory instruction time per subject in primary education, in hours per school day (2015)

Primary school is a fundamental stage in children’s education. Yet it is often neglected in education research and policy debates, somehow squeezed between the seemingly more important stages of early childhood education and secondary education. The purpose of primary education is to build a solid foundation on which an entire life of learning can thrive. Cognitive processes such as working memory, attention, self-regulation, as well as character traits, communication skills, motivation and meta-learning attitudes grow enormously during the first years at school. And the primary school curriculum lays out the basic constituents of human knowledge by introducing students to its core disciplines.

Historically, the relative importance of the core subjects in primary school has always been a contentious issue. Many social interests and political opinions converge in the decision-making process, often resulting in an overcrowded curriculum prioritising expected social outcomes over children’s education needs and potential. A sound primary school curriculum should have sufficient “air” and flexibility to provide the space for children’s autonomous learning, for playful learning and for self-directed discovery of the world. Still, the relative weight of some of the core subjects in the curriculum is worth serious consideration.

The new Education Indicators in Focus brief presents the instruction time given to each of the main subjects in primary school across OECD countries in 2015. On average, primary school students receive 4.3 hours of instruction time per day. But as shown in the chart above, the differences across OECD countries are huge. More than one quarter of that time, 1.1 hours, on average, is spent on reading, writing and literature in the language used at school, ranging from almost two hours in France to .6 hours in Poland. France also devotes a relatively large amount of time to language instruction: no less than 37% of total instruction time.

Of course, language instruction is core to primary education. Reading and writing are foundation skills that are conventionally learned in the first years of primary school. Language instruction also supports wider cognitive development as well as social and communication skills.

But what about mathematics? And natural sciences? In most OECD countries, apart from some basic arithmetic, maths and science only made their way into the curriculum after the second industrial revolution. Curriculum reforms of the 1920s and 1930s provided space for maths and science education, often combined with new pedagogical approaches inspired by the child-centred pedagogy and the emerging field of cognitive psychology. In the second half of the 20th century it became generally accepted that basic mathematical understanding, or numeracy, and a basic knowledge of the natural world were as important foundation skills, to be mastered by every child, as literacy.

In 2015 on average across OECD countries, maths counted for 45 minutes of instruction time per day in primary education, and natural science for another 20 minutes. In relative terms, this translates to 17% of time devoted to maths and 8% devoted to science. So, on average primary schools across OECD countries spent approximately the same amount of instruction time on maths and science combined as on language. Thus, the core subjects of language, maths and science account for half of the total instruction time in primary education.

Yet, again, the differences among countries are huge. Korea and Poland provide less than half an hour per day of mathematics, while France, Mexico and Portugal devote more than one hour per day to maths at the primary level. The instruction time spent on maths and science outweighs that for language instruction by more than 25% in Chile, Portugal and Poland, while it counts for 25% or less time than for language instruction in Hungary, the Slovak Republic and Turkey.

Will the third and fourth industrial revolutions shake up the primary school curriculum again, leading to an increase in the time available for maths and science education? Contemporary concerns about STEM education have provoked new interest in the policy discussion on primary school curricula and the relative importance given to maths and science. To equip all students with the basic mathematical and scientific knowledge and understanding, sufficient time should be made available in the curriculum. Of course, time is only one of the variables in curriculum design. Even with all the time in the world, an uninspiring curriculum taught with bad pedagogies will yield poor results. And a badly designed curriculum that puts students under a lot of stress could reinforce maths anxiety and will dissuade students from pursuing maths education later on. Maths and science curricula need to be challenging, pedagogies need to focus on active learning and engagement, and children need sufficient time to understand the basics of maths and science. 

Links:
How is learning time organised in primary and secondary education? Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 38, by Eric Charbonnier
Les indicateurs de l'éducation à la loupe, issue No. 38 (French version)
Photo credit: © OECD

Why teacher professionalism matters

by Katarzyna Kubacka
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

If you were to search for the term teacher professionalism on the Internet, you may come across websites recommending professional dress code or “look” for teachers. Although this may be of some use to a new teacher, appearance is not what most policy makers, school leaders and teachers have in mind when they insist on the need for a quality professional teacher force.

So what exactly do we mean when we talk about teacher professionalism? The new Teaching in Focus brief: Teacher professionalism uses results from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) to show that teacher professionalism is about a teacher’s knowledge, their autonomy and their membership of peer networks. These are the key elements that lead to more effective teaching.

Based on the new OECD report: Supporting teacher professionalism: Evidence from TALIS 2013, the brief shows that different countries focus on different aspects of teacher professionalism. For example, some systems put more emphasis on supporting the teacher knowledge base through activities such as incentivising teacher professional development, some focus on autonomy through giving more decision making to teachers (e.g. over the course offerings or teaching content), and some focus on peer networks through cultivating strong networks of teachers.

These different practices are an important basis for a quality teaching force and they also impact on how teachers feel about their work. Teachers are more satisfied and confident, and have a higher perception of the value of the teaching profession in society, when there is more support for peer networks and development of knowledge base.

Practices that support strong teacher professionalism are particularly beneficial in schools with a high population of socio-economically disadvantaged students, second-learners or students with special needs (high needs schools). Teachers in such schools can face many challenges that are unfamiliar to teachers in well-performing, low needs schools. Unfortunately, practices to support teacher professionalism are, in many countries, less frequent in high than in low needs schools. This is a missed opportunity to provide a boost to teachers in challenging situations, particularly because the positive relationship between teacher professionalism and job satisfaction is amplified in high needs schools.

The OECD report provides clear recommendations to systems wanting to cultivate teaching, and in particular teacher professionalism. To increase teacher professionalism, systems should provide induction and mentoring programmes, create incentives for participating in professional development, and boost teacher collaboration. By supporting these practices, stakeholders can build a teaching force that is more professional, happier and more confident. The results will might not be seen in a teacher’s appearance, but definitely in the quality of the teaching and learning.

Links:
Supporting teacher professionalism: Evidence from TALIS 2013
TALIS 2013 Results: An International Perspective on Teaching and Learning 
A Teachers' Guide to TALIS 2013: Teaching and Learning International Survey
New Insights from TALIS 2013: Teaching and Learning in Primary and Upper Secondary Education 
Teaching in Focus No. 14: Teacher professionalism
L'enseignement á la Loupe No. 14: Professionnalisme des enseignants
For more on the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS): http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/talis.htm
Photo credit: © Andersen Ross/Inmagine LTD

You can join the launch live webcast hosted by Alliance for Excellent Education, NCTAF, and OECD from Washington Friday, February 12, 2016  10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. (ET) (16:00 Paris time)
Follow @OECDEduSkills for live tweeting.
Register now
Follow on #OECDTALIS

Are we failing our failing students?

by Daniel Salinas
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

Tens of thousands of students in each country, and millions of students around the world, reach the end of their compulsory education without having acquired the basic skills needed in today’s society and workplace. In fact, not even the countries that lead the international rankings of education performance can yet claim that all of their 15-year-old students have achieved a baseline level of proficiency in mathematics, reading and science. Apart from the obvious damage this does to individual lives, failure of this magnitude has severe consequences for economies and societies as a whole.

A new PISA report, Low-Performing Students: Why They Fall Behind and How to Help Them Succeed, offers an in-depth analysis of low performance at school and recommends ways to tackle the problem.

Analyses show that a combination and accumulation of factors contribute to the likelihood that some students perform poorly in school. Coming from a socio-economically disadvantaged family is the most obvious and perhaps strongest risk factor of low performance at school, but it is not the only one. Students with an immigrant background and those who speak a language at home that is different from the one spoken at school, rural students and those living in single-parent families are, in many countries, more likely to perform poorly. Interestingly, gender stereotypes affect girls and boys differently, depending on the subject: whereas girls are more likely than boys to be low performers in mathematics, boys are more likely than girls to be low performers in reading and science.

Students’ educational opportunities, attitudes and behaviours also matter. Students who had no or only brief access to pre-primary education are more likely to be low performers than those who attended more than a year of pre-primary education. Low performers are also more often found among those who have repeated a grade – whether because low performance led to grade repetition or because grade repetition in earlier grades led to disengagement from school and low performance at age 15 – or who are enrolled in vocational programmes. But students who make the most out of available opportunities – attending school regularly, working harder at school, spending more time doing homework, and participating in extracurricular activities available at school – are less likely to perform poorly.

School-related factors can also contribute to students’ low performance. For example, students are more likely to acquire at least basic proficiency in their school subjects when their teachers have high expectations for them, have better morale, and respond to their students’ needs. Schools where there is more socio-economic diversity among students and less grouping by ability between classes tend to provide a better learning environment for struggling students.

Clearly, there are things that can be done to improve student performance; and over the past decade a diverse group of countries – including Brazil, Germany, Japan and Mexico – has reduced the share of low performers in one or more subjects. The first step for policy makers is to make tackling low performance a priority in their education policy agenda. Because the profile of low performers varies significantly across countries, it is essential to identify low performers and develop multi-pronged, tailored approaches. Tackling low performance requires stepping in as early as possible. That means, among other things, offering pre-primary education opportunities and remedial support in early grades. Providing schools with language and/or psycho-social support (e.g. psychologists, mentors, counsellors) for struggling students and their families, offering extracurricular activities, and training teachers to work with these students can also help. Students, too, can help themselves make the most of their schooling – and their own potential – by showing up at school – on time – and investing their best efforts in learning.

Links:
Low-Performing Students: Why They Fall Behind and How to Help Them Succeed
PISA in Focus No. 60: Who are the low-performing students?
PISA á la loupe No. 60: Qui sont les élèves peu performants?
Photo credit: © OECD

Join a free Webinar (February 10, 19h30 CET) with Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director of Education and Skills, and Daniel Salinas, OECD education analyst and main author of the report. Register here
Follow on: #OECDPISA

On target for 21st-century learning? The answers (and questions) are now on line

by Tue Halgreen
Analyst, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills
Kelly Makowiecki
Research Assistant, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

Put your pencils down. No, the test isn’t over; it might just be starting: the PISA-based Test for Schools has gone digital.

School leaders are calling the PISA-based Test for Schools one of the better indicators out there of how well students are prepared for 21st century learning. It’s a wake-up call as to whether a school’s students are ready to compete on the global market. When asked what students like about the test, one responded: “The questions were relevant to today’s society.”

The PISA-based Test for Schools (known in the United States as the OECD Test for Schools) was developed by the OECD to provide school leaders and teachers with internationally comparable performance results as well as tangible insights on how to leverage improvements. Whereas PISA, the triennial international survey testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students, assesses education systems as a whole, the PISA-based Test for Schools assesses individual schools using the PISA scale to show how they compare with students and schools in education systems worldwide.

An online version of the test is launched today. The paper-based test was first piloted in 2012 and then offered on-demand to schools for the 2013-14 academic year. Since then, schools in the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain have signed up to participate, and participation is expected to grow with the availability of the PBTS online.

Schools that participate in the PISA-based Test for Schools administer the test to a random sample of 15-year-old students. The test questions are designed to simultaneously assess problem solving and critical thinking in three subjects: reading, mathematics and science. The test also includes a student survey questionnaire that gathers data about student attitudes and school culture. Schools receive a unique report of results that reveals school achievement in comparison to other schools nationally and worldwide- helping educators understand how to accelerate student achievement toward globally competitive outcomes.

School leaders have expressed positive feedback on participating in the PISA-based Test for Schools, repeatedly noting the value of the depth and breadth of the school report provided. The results have helped schools redefine their approaches to making improvements in areas such as curriculum, student’s skills base, and staff training, and helped them learn from global counterparts to make informed changes in policy and practice.

Links:

PISA-based Test for Schools website

Northwest Evaluation Association – OECD Test for Schools website
Photo Credit: Multiethnic group of students in the computer lab @Shutterstock