Collaboration and socio-economic inequality: Estimating the effects of intra-school and inter-school inequality on collaborative problem-solving skills

Abstract

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the world’s most extensive assessment of student scholastic abilities, included in its 2015 cycle a human-agent measure of collaborative problem-solving skills (CPS). To better understand the development of collaboration proficiency in youth, we assess the effects on CPS of several individual, mezzo, and national level variables, focusing on intra-school and inter-school wealth inequality. The results of the three-level hierarchical linear models on 46 countries show that both types of inequality have negative effects on CPS individual scores. In the case of intra-school inequality, the negative effect holds after controlling for individual differences in science performance. Generalized trust and political equality, measured at the national level, counteract these effects independently, reaffirming the importance of education to democratic citizenship and institutions.