The Gathering Storm still looms

A number of East Asian education systems (e.g. Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Shanghai, Singapore and Taiwan) have gained international prominence over the years, due to their rapid climbs to top positions in international tests such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). For example, Hong Kong was placed 17th in PIRLS reading literacy, and Singapore ranked 15th in 2001, but within 5 years, they garnered 2nd and 4th places in 2006, respectively. In the 2015 PISA results, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, Japan and Beijing-Shanghai-Jiangsu-Guangzhou (B-S-J-G), China, were top achievers (OECD, Report on PISA 2015: results in focus. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2016).

Background:In the same year 2015, PISA (The Programme for International Student Assessment) and TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) are coming up to us together.PISA and TIMSS, which clock is more accurate to indicate national S&T (science & technology) competitiveness?Material and methods:Number of S & T journal articles (per million people) is used as a measure to represent the national S&T competitiveness. Average IQ of the population, research and development (R&D) expenditure (% of GDP) and number of R&D researchers and technicians which affect the national competitiveness in S&T were also investigated.Results:the study shows that PISA science scores would more significantly predict competence in S & T than TIMSS. Moreover, the study also shows a strong link between competence in S & T and IQ, R&D expenditure (% of GDP) or number of R&D researchers and technicians.Conclusions:The findings from this paper indicate that higher quality of human capital and more R&D inputs are the two magic weapons to national competence in S&T, especially higher quality of human capital.

In East Asian countries, shadow education has long existed as an alternative form of education alongside public schooling to enhance academic achievement. This system of shadow education includes personalized preparation for high school and university entrance exams via home-based individual tutoring (gawoe), group learning (hakwon), and online learning. Shadow education is a supplementary “learning space”—in the sense proposed by Davies and Aurini (2006)—that permeates the K-12 education of students in East Asian countries. When examining students' academic success and learning culture, the meaning, value, and impact of shadow education should be discussed. Theorizing Shadow Education and Academic Success in East Asia: Understanding the Meaning, Value, and Use of Shadow Education by East Asian Students by Kim and Jung presents the first international study introducing Western scholars to the contribution of shadow education to the world-class academic achievements of East Asian students on international tests such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Furthermore, the theoretical approach and empirical data used in this book provide a comprehensive framework to help readers understand the role of shadow education, offering insights into the academic success of East Asian students through ethnographic and qualitative research methods. This book is divided into three parts. Part 1 establishes a new theoretical ground of shadow education through the lens of transboundary learning culture and East Asian students' nomadic identities, revisiting the dominant discourse on shadow education and uncovering its defining characteristics. It explores how shadow education is applied to facilitate the academic success of East Asian students through an analysis of empirical data. This part induces a shift in the perception of the power and influence of shadow education, which has previously been portrayed negatively in the works of both Eastern and Western educational scholars. Part 2 documents case studies of shadow education in five East Asian countries—South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—written by scholars specializing in each country, exploring how shadow education is embedded within learning cultures that enhance students' academic achievement. This book forms the first academic effort in which leading scholars from each country introduce the learning culture associated with shadow education in relation to the academic achievement and self-development of elementary, middle, and high school students in the East Asian context. Part 3 highlights three negative impacts of shadow education on students' educational growth and future success: (1) shadow education widens the learning gap between slow and fast learners, (2) its hidden curriculum negatively influences students, and (3) it reproduces inequality based on meritocracy and social class. The authors extend general issues of educational inequality and learning gaps in public education to practices of shadow education, calling on educational scholars in various fields—such as curriculum studies, sociology of education, educational anthropology, and educational policy—to discuss solutions and policy implementation necessary to address the three issues. The authors reinvent Western definitions of East Asian learning culture and methods using postmodern concepts such as “de-truth,” “students as nomads,” and “learning culture beyond borders.” This book is, therefore, an ethnographic anthology on the academic success of East Asian students facilitated by shadow education. By examining postcolonial cases, the book effectively explains the diversity and important aspects of East Asian students' learning methods and cultures for academic success using ethnographic and qualitative research (Kim et al. 2020). A limitation of this book is its somewhat narrow perspective that focuses only on East Asia. Therefore, it would be beneficial to include a broader comparative perspective that encompasses other regions, such as Southeast Asia or South Asia, where private education is also widespread. This could help strengthen the argument that private education is a global phenomenon with diverse regional manifestations. This book, which positions shadow education as a cultural and social practice, provides a new framework for understanding how education operates outside formal education systems. The focus on East Asian students' experiences and perceptions offers valuable insights into how educational practices are shaped by cultural and social expectations. This book can serve as a valuable resource for understanding shadow education as an alternative learning space facilitating the academic success of East Asian students, a topic that has not been seriously discussed or theorized in Western educational scholarship. Thus, this anthology could help Western scholars determine the factors underlying the superior academic achievements of East Asian students in tests such as PISA and TIMSS. Broadly speaking, the postcolonial research presented in this book can effectively shift the anthropological research focus from Western-centered student learning and academic development to more diverse, non-Western, and multicultural contexts. This study was supported by the KU Research Professor Program of Konkuk University.

Large-scale international assessment studies such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) or Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) provide researchers and policy makers the opportunity to conduct secondary analyses to answer questions related to educational outcomes and compare the impact of certain inputs on student outcomes across countries. These comparisons are made under the assumption that the questionnaire items translated to different languages are understood in the same way by its participants. Presenting a case from Turkey, this paper shows that equivalency of questionnaire items is not always achieved. The case explores demographic information related to teacher preparation and the sample is drawn from eighth grade science and mathematics teachers participated in TIMSS 2007, 2011, and 2015 in Turkey. Descriptive analysis of data collected from these teachers and comparisons across subjects and years show that teachers may have misunderstood a question regarding their major, thus limiting potential claims related to teacher preparation in Turkey. Researchers and policy analyst who use secondary data collected by international assessment studies should be aware of such comparability issues in adapted items prior to conducting any secondary analyses.

This report presents the achievement results for Ireland in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2023. TIMSS assesses the mathematical and scientific knowledge and skills of students in Fourth Grade and Eighth Grade (Fourth Class and Second Year in Ireland). TIMSS is a study of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and has been conducted every four years since 1995. TIMSS 2023 is the eighth cycle of the study and included 656,360 students from 65 countries. This national report focuses on trends in overall achievement in Ireland, as well as the distribution of achievement (performance at various percentiles), student performance at the TIMSS International Benchmarks, relative strengths and weaknesses on the TIMSS content and cognitive domains, and teachers’ reports of curriculum coverage. Performance in Ireland is explored in the context of selected countries; compared with previous cycles of TIMSS where data are available (since 2011 for Fourth Class and since 2015 for Second Year); and, where applicable, examined by gender and by socioeconomic status at both individual level and at school level (DEIS status). TIMSS 2023 also marks Ireland’s transition from paper-based to digital testing, as part of which Ireland completed a national mode effect study to examine the extent to which any differences in student achievement exist between digital and paper testing. Initial findings from this mode effect study are also presented. Finally, some conclusions and implications for policymakers in Ireland are outlined.

We are very pleased to write this introductory paper to the special issue of ZDM that provides readers with a glimpse of mathematics education in Korea. In July 2012 (7th–15th), the 12th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-12) takes place at COEX in the center of Seoul, Korea. The ICME is the most important congress in the mathematics education community. It is held once every 4 years under the auspices of the International Commission of Mathematical Instruction (ICMI). The impetus for having this special issue during ICME-12 arose from the scarcity of literature on Korean mathematics education despite Korean students’ high achievement on international comparison studies. Korean students have consistently performed well in recent international assessments of mathematics achievement such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), and the International Mathematics Olympiad. In addition, a recent study titled Mathematics Teaching in the 21st Century (MT21) compared prospective teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about teaching and learning in six participant countries, reporting that Korean prospective secondary mathematics teachers were better prepared than those in other countries (Schmidt et al., 2007; Schmidt, Blomeke, Tatto, 2011). Despite such outstanding performances of Korean students and prospective teachers, very little literature is available on factors that contribute toward it. In addition relatively little is also written about mathematics education in Korea. Many scholars, particularly in the West, are curious about Korea’s excellence in teacher quality and student achievement (e.g. Akiba, LeTendre, & Scribner, 2007; Kang & Hong, 2008). There are, however, a relatively small set of systematic studies that examine various aspects of Korean mathematics education substantively and carefully (Kwon, Park, & Park, 2011). Further, some studies on Asian education have even mistakenly assumed that mathematics education in Korea is almost the same as that in other East Asian countries (e.g., Leung, 2011). Considering teaching and learning as cultural practices (e.g., Alexander, 2000; Fernandez & Yoshida, 2004; Ma, 1999; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999), this could mislead readers to ignore the uniqueness of mathematics education in Korea. As a historical–cultural construct, educational practice of mathematics is situated in a specific cultural context of South Korean society, where there are a range of unique cognitive and normative assumptions around the functions and purposes of education, the kinds of knowledge pursued in school and society, the roles taken by teachers and students. Thus, this special issue not only overviews major aspects of Korean mathematics education, it also addresses the historical and cultural foundations of Korean mathematics education in order to foster an understanding of its practices. This issue, a thematic collection of studies, consists of nine papers that present and discuss emerging issues and challenges of Korean mathematics education with respect to various aspects of mathematics education such as curriculum, teaching practices, student learning, textbooks, assessment, and teacher education. It makes an important contribution by Korean mathematics educators to the international community. O. N. Kwon (&) S. J. Cho Department of Mathematics Education, College of Education, Seoul National University, Gwanak-ro 1, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-748, Korea e-mail: onkwon@snu.ac.kr

STEM Education intends to have Integrated Learning in the disciplines of Science, Technology, Mathematics and Mathematics to produce critical, innovative and creative students who contribute to the country's development. STEM education has a role not only as a channel to process and produce local skilled workers, even as a leader in the country's development economy. However, STEM education scenarios in Malaysia are dealing with various issues such as the lack of STEM teaching materials, the reduction in the number of students who continue study in STEM-related fields in the middle and tertiary rankings and low achievements in international level markers studies such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA ) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). These issues are related to one of the main challenges, namely STEM learning / teacher teaching quality that is not interesting and consistent and teacher quality in the STEM field. Increasing the quality of STEM learning, the quality of teacher teaching and the quality of teachers needs to be done as one of the proactive steps to strengthen STEM Education. If this effort is not carried out, the dictatorship of the country becomes incompetent in the global ranking and lags behind. This concept paper naturally discusses the issues and challenges of teacher factors in the education of STEM education and so on several reserves and initiatives to overcome the STEM learning challenges / teacher teaching quality that is not interesting and consistent and teacher quality is raised.

Based on different language systems and educational practices of their respective countries, hypotheses were made regarding how 15-year-old students from Shanghai-China and the US might differ in the 5 reading subskills designated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) when they have the same overall reading ability (i.e., when their overall reading ability is controlled for). A multilevel analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses using the PISA 2009 reading dataset. When we controlled for students' overall reading ability, individual socioeconomic status (SES), and school mean SES, Shanghai-Chinese students performed significantly better in integrating and interpreting than US students. Further, when we controlled for students' overall reading ability and school mean SES, US students showed significantly higher performance in reading non-continuous texts than Shanghai-Chinese students, whereas US students showed significantly lower performance in reading continuous texts. The results of this study can inform reading instruction and learning in the 2 countries.

ABSTRACTThis article presents an overview of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 Problem-Solving assessment. The assessment examined the capabilities of 15-year-olds in 40 nations and four large international cities, as well as the Canadian Provinces, to solve a set of 16 problem units presented in contextualized situations. These units each had two or three tasks for students to solve. Students' performances on these items served as a basis for developing the PISA score scale and the associated proficiency levels for each of the participating entities. Student performances on the PISA 2012 mathematics, reading, and science assessments provided an avenue to estimating student performances on the problem-solving assessment for students having similar score backgrounds in the three content areas. Student performances were also examined by item types and by differing problem situations. These latter two analyses provide...

Poor mathematics performance was generally reported from international assessments such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) among Malaysian students. Malaysia is ranked 52nd and 48th in the assessments for 2012 and 2018 respectively, while Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and even Vietnam have consistently performed well and held the top spots among the 78 countries evaluated in the PISA. Although numerous new technologies have been introduced, developed and implemented for education, incorporation of IT capability (ITC) to teach and learn Mathematics where still lacking commonly. Additionally, learning Mathematics in the traditional teaching contents could not accomplish desired learning outcomes because of dry contents and dull teachers. Therefore, this study is to design an appropriate ITC framework for improving learning experience and academic achievement of learning Mathematics. This study has adopted the development model of Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation (ADDIE) and Mayer (2010)’s cognitive theory for multimedia instructional content design. This study developed a new Multimedia Probability and Statistics system (MMPASS) for a subject of Probability and Statistics. The developed topics were concepts of discrete random variables and probability distribution function which were puzzled by students from preliminary study. An experiment was conducted with both control and experimental groups. The developed MMPASS blended multiple influential multimedia elements in the learning contents. A quantitative method and proportional stratified sampling were used to collect data. The blended topics were used by the experimental group whilst the control group was solely learning using the existing learning contents. Questionnaires were distributed to both groups after the lessons. 66 students participated in this survey. The collected data was then analysed and an ITC model was formed. Results of this study show that Perceived System Quality, Perceived Information Content Quality and Perceived System Performance as independent variables significantly improved learning experience. The findings also reveal that the performances of the experimental group have a higher mean score (9.65/10.00) compared to the control group (8.03/10.00), indicating the use of MMPASS improved students’ learning performance in subjects that involve understanding of concepts. While there is a lack of established ITC framework and IT application for Mathematics education in Malaysia, this study has verified the use of ITC improving performance of learning Mathematics in Malaysia.

It is often assumed that schools themselves play an important role in students not completing school. However, the literature is inconsistent on what school characteristics influence school leaving, and identified school effects may be spurious due to the absence, or poor measurement, of appropriate individual-level influences. The importance of schools on school leaving is examined in the Australian context using longitudinal data based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)'s 2003 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, which includes more comprehensive measures of socioeconomic background and student achievement than available previously. The strongest influence on school leaving was student performance in the PISA tests. Although there were sizable differences between schools in the proportion of school leavers, only a small proportion of schools showed significantly higher or lower levels of school leaving when individual-level influences were taken into account. The implications for policies on school leaving are discussed.

The main goal and purpose of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is its system monitoring function. PISA was originally designed to inform the educational policy of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member states by reporting on the performance of students at the age when they are about to leave compulsory education. Moreover, and especially, the assessment of learning contexts has become more and more important throughout the cycles of the PISA program. Today, a broad set of context questionnaires are implemented as part of PISA. They collect information on the learning contexts of different stakeholders in education: namely, students, principals, teachers and parents. The underlying idea is to explain differences in the educational outcomes as assessed by the cognitive tests through the information gathered about differences in educational contexts between countries. Context assessment has always been an important part of the PISA program, but with slightly different intentions and content focus in each study and cycle. The shifting of the major domains and the shifts of interest in measures of learning contexts have heavily influenced the respective topics and design of context assessment. Thus, the context questionnaires as assessment instruments of choice have evolved over time; this process is discussed in the present chapter. This chapter elaborates on the organization of context questionnaire and framework development, including the roles and responsibilities of the different expert groups involved. Changes in the assessment of learning context are discussed and, focusing on PISA 2015, the latest developments in the context questionnaires are described, before possible developments for future context assessment in PISA are elaborated upon.

The results of the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) survey in 2012-2015 on the achievement of mathematical competencies of Indonesian students showed a significant increase, but the overall achievement was still below the average of the countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Furthermore, the results of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) report showed that many students like and feel good about mathematics, but their confidence in their mathematical abilities was quite low. Many studies reveal the close association of Mathematics Self-Efficacy (MSE) with the performance/achievement of students' mathematical competencies. In 2015, the PISA survey was done using computerization except in 15 countries, one of them was in Indonesia. Therefore, the results of this study are to produce the first computer-based MSE scale developed in Indonesia.

During the last decade, in many European countries large investments were made to foster the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in education with the expectation that ICT would make teaching and learning more effective. This would, for example, become evident in scores obtained by students in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA studies show, however, that PISA achievements do not increase with ICT use. The question for research is why high-frequency ICT use tends to be related to lower PISA achievements. To answer this question, the author has looked at PISA results published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as well as at the results of his own analyses of PISA data. While it seems that ICT use as well as PISA achievements are related to cultural capital, the findings are not clear-cut and vary among the three European countries chosen for investigation.

This study was conducted to understand the effect of student-, classroom-, and school-level factors on the science performance of 8th-grade Taiwanese students in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2011 by using multilevel analysis. A total of 5,042 students from 153 classrooms of 150 schools participated in the TIMSS 2011 study, in which they were required to complete questionnaires. A 3-level multilevel analysis was used to assess the influence of factors at 3 levels on the science performance of 8th-grade Taiwanese students. The results showed that the provision of education resources at home, teachers’ level of education, and school climate were the strongest predictor of science performance at the student, classroom, and school level, respectively. It was concluded that the science performance of 8th-grade Taiwanese students is driven largely by individual factors. Classroom-level factors accounted for a smaller proportion of the total variance in science performance than did school-level factors.