Low achievers, teaching practices and learning environment

Abstract

The importance of reducing the incidence of low achievement is clearly recognized by the European Union, which – within its strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training – has set the objective of reducing the share of low-achieving 15-year-olds in mathematics, reading and science below 15% by 2020. This report uses data from the 2015 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to analyse the relationship between teaching practices – teacher-directed instruction, enquiry-based teaching, and adaptive instruction – and the likelihood that students are low achievers in science. Results show that teaching practices are strongly related with the probability of being a low-achieving student. Moreover, some complementarity exists between teaching practices. Properly combining different instruction methods leads to lower levels of underachievement in science. In particular, better outcomes are found in situations with high levels of adaptive instruction and teacher-directed methods, and medium intensity of enquiry-based practices.