Teacher Learning and Quality STEM: Challenges and Initiatives:

A decade on, the situation portrayed in the influential report of a deteriorating US science and technology ecosystem has, if anything, worsened.

This chapter utilizes two major international student assessments, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and explores key issues about science pedagogies internationally from a comparative perspective. It explores the following questions: What do the findings from TIMSS and PISA say about science teaching and learning internationally? What do the findings from TIMSS and PISA suggest about the influence of culture and context on science teaching and learning? What can countries internationally learn from TIMMS and PISA to develop science teaching and learning in their own countries? There are many more, of course, and the combination of research and continuing to use PISA and TIMSS data in a critical way, while also promoting quality teacher education, is crucial to ensure that science teaching and learning is high quality, culturally appropriate and engages all our young people.

The PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study), TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), and PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) have become gold standards for the international comparison of children’s performances, when aged 10 and 15 years.
 This paper focuses on secondary analysis of basic statistical indicators on reading literacy (PIRLS), as well as the mathematics and scientific literacy (TIMSS) of pupils at 10 years of age, followed by their reading, mathematics and scientific literacy at 15 years of age (PISA). It compares the pupils’ main educational results in PIRLS and TIMSS with their PSA results. PIRLS, TIMSS, and PISA help to identify key problems within pupils’ educational levels in these selected literacies and create effective educational policy measures.
 One aspect of the comparison within the research paper is the aggregate indicator; this is the arithmetic mean of PIRLS and TIMSS results, using pupils’ PIRLS results from 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016, and TIMSS results from 2007, 2011 and 2015. The other aspect of the comparison is the aggregate indicator; which is the arithmetic mean of pupils’ PISA results for 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2015. A significant relationship was found to exist between the arithmetic mean of pupils’ PIRLS, TIMSS, and PISA results.
 Political and professional policy decisions within schooling affect the early years of pupils’ school attendance. This has a significant impact on their future education at all levels of schooling. The findings of this paper support a hypothesis regarding the effects of pupils’ educational performance and the need for measures to improve education in schools that should be adopted on an ongoing basis.

<p><em>The issues in education in Indonesia, particularly in the field of Natural Sciences, are very concerning. According to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey by the OECD, Indonesian students' abilities in science rank low globally, with a ranking of 71 out of 77 countries in 2018 and 68 out of 81 countries in 2023. The science scores also declined from 396 to 383, far below the RPJMN target of 402. Data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) shows that Indonesian 4th and 8th-grade students also rank low internationally. The research methodology uses a qualitative approach through a literature study. Data analysis indicates that the content and competency-based science curriculum in Finland provides a good model by integrating theoretical knowledge and practical skills. Science education in Finland, which is interactive and student-centered, can serve as a reference for improving the curriculum in Indonesia. A comprehensive and context-based science learning approach is needed to enhance the quality of science education in Indonesia. The PISA and TIMSS survey results emphasize the need for improvements in science learning in Indonesia. Science, as systematic knowledge and a scientific process, requires a holistic and integrated learning approach. An integrated science approach that connects science to everyday life is crucial for developing scientific processes in students. Science teachers are expected to have interdisciplinary abilities and knowledge integration. However, often the curriculum and the quality of teachers do not support this goal. This study compares the 2013 Curriculum in Indonesia with the Finnish Curriculum to see the similarities, differences, and obstacles in science learning</em>.</p>

This study compares the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 Mathematics results with the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2003 Grade 8 mathematics results, using country mean scores for 22 participants of both studies. It is found that Western countries generally performed better in PISA than in TIMSS, and Eastern European and Asian countries generally performed better in TIMSS than in PISA. Furthermore, two factors, content balance and years of schooling, can account for 93% of the variation between the differential performance of countries in PISA and TIMSS. Consequently, the rankings of countries in the two studies can be reconciled to a reasonable degree of accuracy.

This paper explores the measurement capabilities of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in assessing school factors that influence student performance. We specifically focus on the 2015 assessments of the science performance of eighth graders in Sweden and Norway. This was the latest year when the two assessments were conducted in the same year and science was the major subject area in the PISA assessment, which was essential for maximizing the assessments’ comparability. Using multilevel models, the study identifies common and unique factors across the assessments and investigates the factors that influence student performance at different proficiency levels. The findings highlight the importance of school-level factors, which are significant in both assessments. Moreover, both assessments provide information on overlapping sets of factors that have varying influence on the performance of students with different proficiency levels. Overall, there are limited common factors between TIMSS and PISA. School factors vary between low-performing and high-performing schools, with differing significance in Norway and Sweden. The results indicate that TIMSS and PISA assessments offer complementary information, particularly for low-performing schools. Our findings suggest that different school types may benefit or suffer from distinct school factors. The findings are relevant for both educational professionals and policy-makers.

INTERNATIONAL comparisons of education policy and practice were, until recently, the domain of just a small group of researchers. But with the rapid changes being brought about by globalization, they are fast becoming a significant new tool in the development of educational leaders. Clearly, one of the most pressing challenges facing the U.S. education system today is to maintain the American ideal of local control while producing a national work force that is prepared for global competition. This challenge is a source of ongoing conflict and mixed messages and is likely to be increasingly important in the future. A second major challenge is how to turn around low-performing schools and those with large achievement gaps between subgroups of students. Short-term improvement is often the result of individual leadership and other local variables, but the challenge is to change the system to sustain long-term improvement on a broad scale. While all nations view education as an investment in the future, most nations other than the U.S. treat the challenges of academic performance and of globalization as national priorities. Government officials, educators, and business leaders work closely together to create a coherent national improvement strategy. For example, the minister of education in Singapore, a nation already at the top of international measures of student performance, is advocating reform of that nation's education system to meet the demands of globalization. Singapore's system improvements emphasize the need to develop students' problem-solving skills earlier in their schooling in order to create a more broad-based academic experience and better prepare young people for life beyond school. The United States can learn a lot from the way other nations respond to new challenges. Too often America falls back on the political blame game, caring more about pointing fingers than identifying serious strategies for improving the education system. We don't work as a team--all too often it is government, both state and federal, versus local educators. We need to realize before it is too late that such an approach is a prescription for long-term national disaster. Being exposed to more cohesive systems of education is just one of many ways that educators in the United States can benefit from contact with their peers around the world. Another benefit is that of knowing how we as a nation are performing in our delivery of education to children relative to the performance of other countries. Tools such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) remind us that we still have significant progress to make when it comes to educating our secondary students. As a recent report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress highlights, TIMSS and PISA also give us an opportunity to compare countries' relative performance over time. (1) This study provides some insight as to not only which countries outperform the U.S. but also which ones are making significant gains. In addition, TIMSS and PISA contribute to a common language of education indicators and larger conversations about what elements of an education contribute to long-term success and productivity in higher education and the work force. Finally, competition can be a powerful motivator, and results such as these can be great professional development tools as well. A third benefit of international comparisons is that they offer a fresh perspective. While the circumstances and geography are different, most of the issues educators face are common--poverty, language and cultural differences within a school, level of government control--and looking at how other countries deal with these same issues allows for creative approaches to problem solving. …

Singapore participates in benchmark studies, like Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to assess the state of its education system. Mathematics, being a subject that is used as a proxy indicator, is an assessment tool used in both studies. As such achievement in mathematics after every cycle of TIMSS and PISA is often of interest to mathematics educators in Singapore and elsewhere. The data collected from systems of schooling of the participating countries and economies offer opportunities for educators and researchers to infer and investigate their concerns. Educators and researchers in Singapore use the data to benchmark school mathematics curriculum against international standards, identify gaps in curriculum plans, envision future goals of the curriculum and incidentally also contribute towards excellence in education internationally.

Large-scale international assessments of schooling effects attempt to provide comparative data for participating countries. Two such assessments are the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Singapore has participated in TIMSS since 1995 and PISA since 2009. These studies use student outcomes as measures of school effectiveness and educational achievement. They focus on student achievement mainly in three school subjects: mathematics, science and language. Other international studies like the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M) also provide comparative data on teachers of mathematics and related matters. Singapore participated in TEDS-M. The results of TEDS-M were available in 2012. This chapter presents snapshots of significant data and findings of Singapore’s participation in TIMSS 2015, PISA 2009 and 2015 and TEDS-M. For TIMSS 2015, it focuses on the performance of Singapore students and their engagement and attitudes for mathematics. For PISA 2009 and 2015, it focuses on the performance of Singapore students and their exposure to mathematics content and their drive and motivation to learn mathematics. For TEDS-M, it focuses on the national contexts and policies for teacher education and nature of mathematics teacher education programmes in Singapore. It also examines the performance of future teachers from Singapore in mathematics content knowledge (MCK) and mathematics pedagogical content knowledge (MPCK) and their beliefs and perceptions of opportunities to learn. The chapter concludes with possible reasons about the commendable performance of Singapore students in TIMSS and PISA.

In response to frequent news media reports about how poorly American students fare compared with their peers abroad, Daniel Koretz takes a close look at what these comparisons say, and do not say, about the achievement of U.S. high school students. He stresses that the comparisons do not provide what many observers of education would like: unambiguous information about the effectiveness of American high schools compared with those in other nations. Koretz begins by describing the. two principal international student comparisons-the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Both assessments, he stresses, reflect the performance of students several years before they complete high school. PISA, which targets fifteen-year-old students, measures students' abilities to apply what they have learned in school to real-world problems. By contrast, TIMSS tests fourth and eighth graders. Unlike PISA, TIMSS follows the school curriculum closely. Because the findings of the two tests are sometimes inconsistent, Koretz stresses the importance of considering data from both sources. He cautions against comparing U.S. students with an "international average," which varies widely from survey to survey depending on which countries participate, and recommends instead comparing them with students in other nations that are similar to the United States or that are particularly high-achieving. Many observers, says Koretz, speculate that the lackluster average performance of American students in international comparisons arises because many, especially minority and low-income U.S. students, attend low-performing schools. But both TIMSS and PISA, he says, show that the performance of American students on the exams is not much more variable than that of students in countries that are socially more homogeneous or that have more equitable educational systems. Koretz emphasizes that the international comparisons provide valuable information and are a useful source of hypotheses about American secondary schooling to be tested by researchers. Studies designed to explain differences between U.S. students and those in very similar countries, he says, might provide especially useful suggestions for changes in policy and practice.

Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) study and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is one of the principles in curriculum development in Indonesia. Judging from the results of the PISA study, the achievements obtained by Indonesian children especially in the aspects of mathematical literacy have not been satisfactory. The low achievement is inseparable from the learning process in schools, one of which students are not accustomed to solving questions with characteristics such as the PISA context. In addition, the way students absorb information also determines how learning achievements will be obtained by students. The way students learn is often referred to as a learning style. This indicates that the mathematics literacy of junior high school students in Indonesia is so weak that they still have difficulty in solving PISA questions. As a result, many mistakes were made by junior high school students when faced with PISA questions. The purpose of this study was to describe the errors of students with visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles in solving space and shape content PISA questions. Students' errors were analyzed from the adaptation of Newman's error analysis model namely comprehension, transformation, proccess skills, and encoding. This type of research is qualitative descriptive. Data collection techniques that be used are tests and interviews. The results showed that students with visual learning styles tend to make mistakes in the transformation step. Whereas students with auditory learning styles tend to make mistakes in understanding and transformation steps, and students with kinesthetic learning styles make mistakes in the steps of understanding, transformation, and process skills. This shows that students who have kinesthetic learning styles do not have a tendency in one type of error. Keywords: Error analysis, PISA, VAK Learning Style

While existing evidence strongly suggests that immigrant students underperform relative to their native counterparts on measures of mathematics, science, and reading, country-level analyses assessing the homogeneity of the immigrant achievement gap across different factors have not been systematically conducted. Beyond finding a statistically significant average achievement gap, existing findings show considerable variation. The goal of this quantitative synthesis was to analyze effect sizes which compared immigrants to natives on international mathematics, reading, and science examinations. We used data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). We investigated whether the achievement gap is larger in some content areas than others (among mathematics, science, and reading), across the different types of tests (PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS), across academic grades and age, and whether it has changed across time. Standardized mean differences between immigrant and native students were obtained using data from 2000 to 2009 for current Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Statistically significant weighted mean effect sizes favored native test takers in mathematics , reading , and science . Effects of moderators differed across content areas. Our analyses have the potential to contribute to the literature about how variation in the immigrant achievement gap relates to different national-level factors.

A great number of studies have investigated science teaching and learning (STL) using data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Nevertheless, there is little effort to synthesise these studies. Reviewing the status of research on STL, including the trends, approaches, and findings is crucial for identifying research gaps that require greater attention. Consequently, this review synthesises empirical studies investigating STL using TIMSS and PISA. First, we mapped their characteristics based on the aims, data, STL measures, and research approaches. Second, patterns of the findings were summarized by focusing on the (1) relationships between STL and student outcomes; (2) factors that explain STL variation; and (3) patterns of STL. Most studies examined STL related to inquiry activities and their relationships to student outcomes. Their findings were largely inconsistent and could be traced back to different ways STL was conceptualized and measured. This review calls for the studies examining TIMSS and PISA data to enhance the quality of research approaches and clarity in reporting them. It also encourages researchers to reflect upon the knowledge gained from harnessing these data to examine STL and discusses the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) are respected cross-national studies of pupil achievement. They have been specifically designed to study how countries’ educational systems are performing against one another, and how this is changing over time. These are, however, politically sensitive issues, where different surveys can produce markedly different results. This is shown via a case study for England, where apparent decline in PISA test performance has caused policymakers much concern. Results suggest that England's drop in the PISA ranking is not replicated in TIMSS, and that this contrast may be due to data limitations in both surveys. Consequently, I argue that the current coalition government should not base educational policies on the assumption that the performance of England's secondary school pupils has declined over the past decade.

Since 2013, the authors’ Japanese team in the Department of Science Education at Shizuoka University has held trials of STEM Education in informal fields as participatory action research (e.g., Science museum in Shizuoka, Lifelong Learning Center in Fujieda City, and STEM Summer camp) for the preparation for implementing STEM education in public schools and for proposing science education reform in a Japanese context. Problems in preparing STEM lessons include numerous new instructional materials and programs and emerging specialized schools. In addition, while most of these initiatives address one or more of the STEM subjects separately, there are increasing calls for emphasizing connections between and among the subjects (Honey, Pearson and Schweingruber, 2014). Unfamiliar problems for Japanese teachers are, What is Engineering? What is Design? and How can they be implemented in lessons? While gathering STEM learning materials to implement in their STEM Summer Camp, the authors noticed a pattern with which to develop a STEM lesson and developed a template “T-SM-E” in reference to prior STEM studies. After the STEM Summer Camp, the authors introduced the model in the pre-service teacher preparation program. As a result, the authors received suggestions about how teachers can develop integrated STEM lessons, how undergraduate (UG) teachers can implement it in their lessons, and how teachers can assess student learning in their STEM lessons. From standard based student assessments and reflections written by the UG teachers, the authors found that it was difficult for the UG teachers to include technology in their lessons, and their assessment also indicated that the students did not show performance proficiency in technology. The authors discuss this existing problem in the Japanese education system.