Test Scores, Creativity, and Global Competitiveness

Quality has emerged as a necessity in education as we are faced with increasing competition and a demand for better quality of life. There is an enormous gap in South Africa’s education system; 60% of South Africa’s children do not reach the final matriculation school year. Many Grade 12 learners, despite being taught Mathematics, remain effectively mathematically illiterates. The ability to provide quality education is more than ever essential and there is at present a consensus for fundamental reforms in our education sector, with emphasis on Quality. The result of quality education is not only about achieving academic excellence but the total development of the learner. If education does not cater for the future needs and challenges of the new millennium then it is ineffective for the new generation. Low scores in Mathematics are a major concern as learners are not able to meet the challenges in secondary schools to pursue careers in Mathematics. South Africa was placed last out of 41 countries worldwide in terms of Mathematics performance in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The World Economic Forum has placed South Africa last amongst 62 countries on the quality of Mathematics and Science Education in their annual report in 2012. Apartheid in South Africa was a complex period that paved the way for the new education dispensation. A paradigm shift was thus imperative and challenging to a democratic South Africa. It is more than two decades into the 21st century and into a democratic South Africa. The effects of apartheid are visible in many areas, more so in education. This study is underpinned by the transformation agenda attached to curriculum policy reform in South Africa. There is an interface in respect of policy construction and Skills, knowledge, attitudes and values (SKAV) constitution from the Department of Education to primary and to secondary schools. The implementation of various curriculum reforms led to a decline in the pass rate of learners in the National Senior Certificate examinations and in the Annual National Assessment. Some of the serious problems articulated by teachers were inadequate subject training in Mathematics, lack of communication, job dissatisfaction and the demanding administrative workload. It is envisaged that the findings of this study will make recommendations for SKAV development in teaching and learning of Mathematics in primary and secondary schools. In this regard, a model to improve quality in Mathematics education was proposed. The ability of education to meet the needs of the future both at individual and societal level is one of the critical elements of quality education.

Student scores from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) have been employed as a benchmark to measure school effectiveness in many districts across the United States. Bracey (2000) discussed the TIMSS results at the high school level. This article focuses on an in-depth examination of student performance from the TIMSS primary and middle school studies. The data analyses show substantial uncertainty of the country rankings from the released TIMSS reports. Other technical issues hinge on the instrument construction, curricular inequivalency, and statistical outliers. These analyses raise concerns about the use of the TIMSS benchmark for school reforms in the U.S. Taken together, these concerns have important implications for the interpretation and use of the TIMSS results.

Middle school data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) are analyzed in this article to compare achievement difference between seventh and eighth grades. The statistical computing involves a selective subtraction of item scores in more than 40 countries. The research findings indicate that not all TIMSS items have resulted in a higher mean score at the upper grade level. Item features are discussed to characterize part of the released TIMSS instrument that generates a higher average score at the lower grade. This empirical study may help enrich understanding of the TIMSS benchmark among mathematics and science educators.

If you are aware of the results given in the media reports about the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), you probably know that fourth graders from the United States (U.S.) scored above the international average in mathematics and that eighth and twelfth graders scored below average (Mullis et al. 1997). As an educator, you are aware of the dangers of looking only at averages of test scores. Rich information can be gleaned from the TIMSS data that will help us learn more about what our students know and are able to do. The data from a large-scale study, such as the TIMSS, often raise questions about what the numbers really mean. This article addresses one such question that arose from examining part of the third- and fourth-grade TIMSS data. The process that we used may be as valuable as the information that we found. Perhaps this process will help you answer questions that arise as you reflect on the TIMSS results.

Predecessor items and performance level

A GREAT deal has been made of student achievement data in international comparisons. Less information has been gathered about in various countries. We have a few field studies, such as those reported in The Teaching Gap, by James Stigler and James Hiebert, and in Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics, by Liping Ma. Neither depicts a particularly robust portrait of what American know about mathematics or how to teach it. With the new emphasis on highly qualified teachers from the U.S. Department of Education, teacher quality has moved to center stage. Two new studies add a bit to our knowledge of here and abroad. The first is Teaching Mathematics in Seven Countries: Results from the TIMSS 1999 Video Study, in which videotapes of actually teaching eighth-grade mathematics in seven countries were studied. The report (NCES 2003013) was put together by Hiebert and a host of other researchers and is available at www.nces.ed.gov/timss. The second is Preparing Teachers Around the World, from Aubrey Wang, Ashaki Coleman, Richard Coley, and Richard Phelps of the ETS Policy Information Center. It is available at www.ets.org/research/pic/teachprep.pdf. In 1995, as part of the original TIMSS (Third International Mathematics and Science Study), videos of were made in three nations: Germany, Japan, and the United States. In general, U.S. and German focused on teaching procedures, while Japanese emphasized conceptual matters. One accidental finding cropped up when people coding the videos had a What the hell was that? reaction to noises on the tapes. Those noises were mostly interruptions by the intercom, visitors, etc. More than 30% of American classes suffered interruptions. Zero percent of Japanese classes suffered an intrusion. The TIMSS 1999 Video Study extends the original research to seven countries, adding Australia, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and Switzerland and omitting Germany. (A more detailed summary of this study, by the TIMSS Video Mathematics Research Group, can be found in the June 2003 Kappan.) These countries all scored high or relatively high in TIMSS and TIMSS-R (Repeat). In TIMSS-R, only the Czech Republic did not have a score that was significantly higher than that of the U.S., which scored 502 as compared to the Czech Republic's 520. (The international average was 487.) Getting coders to agree on what they were seeing was difficult in the original study, and it was exponentially more difficult to get coders to agree about what they were seeing when viewing videos from seven countries. In addition, they might have missed something important, as overall judgments of quality did not correlate with judgments on the specific indicators of quality. (These results are from a presentation made at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in April, not from the report itself.) Coders first looked at how much time in different countries spent introducing new content, practicing new content, or reviewing earlier content. American spent more time reviewing old material than anyone else except the Czechs. None of the countries spent a great deal of time practicing new material, but Japanese did allot 60% of their time to introducing new content. Only Japan's lessons were considered to be of high or moderate complexity, 39% and 45% respectively. The U.S. had the fewest lessons considered to be of high complexity (6%) and the third-highest number judged to be of low complexity (67%), behind Australia (77%) and the Netherlands (69%). Only Japanese offered many proofs. Twenty- six percent of the problems in any given lesson contained proofs, and 39% of the lessons contained at least one proof. Second-place Switzerland posted just 3% and 11% respectively. The researchers asked whether the lessons consisted of stating concepts, using procedures, or making connections between mathematical facts. …

Germany has relied on its well-established tradition of preparing the workforce through the so-called dual system of practical in-firm training (apprenticeships) and theoretical foundations conveyed by vocational schools. Believing in the high quality of academic school programmes that prepare a small elite for university studies, the German public remained convinced until well into the 1990s that there was little need for innovation and improvement in German education. Although there had been earlier signs of concern, this conviction remained unchanged until the publication of the outcomes of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 1996. The ‘TIMSS shock’, reinforced by later studies, has resulted in a host of changes in educational policy, perhaps best characterised by the late Hermann Lange as the ‘turn towards evidence-based educational policy making’. Hallmarks of this trend were the decision by all 16 federal states in Germany to participate regularly in international large-scale assessments (ILSAs), including interstate comparisons (taken in 1997); the decision to define standards of educational performance (corresponding to the federally recognised school leaving certificates); the initiation of academic study programmes intended to foster the development of the required advanced technical skills; and the founding and/or expansion of agencies for quality management (including systems of reports on the state of education, both at the federal and the state levels). In this article, the role of ILSAs (including both IEA and others) in these policy changes are described and examined from a critical perspective.

Recent work on differences in mathematics achievement has highlighted the importance of classroom, teacher and school factors. The present study used data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) to look at student, classroom and school factors influencing mathematics achievement in Australia and the United States (US). It found that classroom differences account for about one-third of the variation in student achievement in the US and over one-quarter in Australia. Most of the classroom variation in both countries was due to compositional and organisational factors, very little of it due to differences between teachers. This has important implications for policy regarding the improvement of mathematics achievement. It suggests that school systems may gain little by targeting teachers only, and need to give consideration to the role of pupil grouping practices and the effects of tracking and streaming on classroom learning environments.

The video survey is a promising new approach for studying classrooms and teaching across cultures. Drawing from experience in working with two cross-cultural video surveys, the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and its follow-up study (TIMSS-R), this article presents some of the challenges of studying classrooms across cultures and some of the ways that the video survey can deal with these challenges. The article begins by identifying some of the issues in cross-cultural research and classroom surveys that led to the creation of the video survey. Examples from the TIMSS and the TIMSS-R video studies are then used to illustrate some benefits and limitations of video surveys and to share some of the lessons that were learned about studying classrooms across cultures.

International comparisons of academic achievements in schools have become necessary to make countries competitive in the global economy. The most prominent international and comparative assessments of academic achievements were the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In 2002, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) was implemented, sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and involving thirty-two countries. The difference between PISA and TIMSS is that PISA emphasized more the usefulness of education in practical situations rather than focusing mainly on curriculum and academic achievement. The results of both studies show low performance of students in many countries, especially some who claim to be industrial and economic leaders.

This paper is concerned with the measurement of curriculum and its role in cross-national curriculum evaluation studies. The methods developed and the data used to illustrate the procedures are taken from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

Efficiency and equity in schools around the world

This report describes an inquiry-based Earth systems curriculum and strategies for teaching diverse students, which were embedded in the curriculum. The curriculum was implemented with 5th-grade students with varied linguistic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds in five schools in a large, southeastern U.S., urban school district. At the end of the school year, all schools showed statistically significant improvement on two assessments: (1) an Earth systems unit test and (2) a sample of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) items. Students’ perspectives regarding the cognitive and affective domains of the curriculum are discussed as are implications of the findings and recommendations for future research.

Mathematics curriculum materials have come under heavy criticism in the wake of the results of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). According to the TIMSS analysis, the mathematics curriculum has been characterized as splintered and unfocused, and United States mathematics textbooks have been described as “a mile wide and an inch deep” (Schmidt, McKnight, and Raizen 1996). Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation has funded the development of new mathematics materials that are designed to align with national standards (NCTM 1989) and to address the perception that current textbooks need improvement. These new materials are now becoming available through commercial publishers.

Attention to the quality of human capital in different countries naturally leads to concerns about how school policies relate to student performance. The data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) provide a way of comparing performance in different schooling systems.