International Educational Assessments Research Articles

A Joint MLE Approach to Large-Scale Structured Latent Attribute Analysis

Structured latent attribute models (SLAMs) are a family of discrete latent variable models widely used in education, psychology, and epidemiology to model multivariate categorical data. A SLAM assumes that multiple discrete latent attributes explain the dependence of observed variables in a highly structured fashion. Usually, the maximum marginal likelihood estimation approach is adopted for SLAMs, treating the latent attributes as random effects. The increasing scope of modern assessment data involves large numbers of observed variables and high-dimensional latent attributes. This poses challenges to classical estimation methods and requires new methodology and understanding of latent variable modeling. Motivated by this, we consider the joint maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) approach to SLAMs, treating latent attributes as fixed unknown parameters. We investigate estimability, consistency, and computation in the regime where sample size, number of variables, and number of latent attributes all can diverge. We establish the statistical consistency of the joint MLE and propose efficient algorithms that scale well to large-scale data for several popular SLAMs. Simulation studies demonstrate the superior empirical performance of the proposed methods. An application to real data from an international educational assessment gives interpretable findings of cognitive diagnosis.

Play-based learning and phenomenon-based learning in the Finnish Early Childhood Education

Since 2005, with the impact of the results of international educational assessments, Finland and its educational system has been the focus of interest for educators around the world and different aspects of the system's functioning and structure have been explored. This text presents two of the key elements in early childhood education and care, learning based on play and learning based on the phenomenon; and how these pedagogical approaches structure practices that support students' learning, and are articulated with the subsequent educational process. Going beyond the mere description of pedagogical practices and not repeat what other researchers have already narrated about the Finnish educational system, the developmental aspects of these practices and how they are articulated with the extensive training of teachers is evident throughout this text.

Do students’ high scores on international assessments translate to low levels of creativity?

Responding to an earlier Phi Delta Kappan article, the author rejects the argument that East Asian students’ high scores on international educational assessments come at the expense of learning to be creative and entrepreneurial. According to survey research, people in Japan, Korea, and other East Asian nations perceive themselves to be not very entrepreneurial, but the author explains that their responses have do mainly with cultural differences in the ways people respond to such surveys, making them poor evidence that high school graduates in those countries actually are less creative than students in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Opinions of the 8th Grade Students and Teachers Who Participated in TIMSS 2015 on the Test: “The Example of Ağri”

TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), is an international serway study that was held to evaluate the 4 th and 8 th grade students’ knowledge and their skills in mathematics and science at four-year intervals by International Educational Assessment Agency IEA Success (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement). In our country TURKEY, the TIMSS studies are conducted by Ministry of National Education (MoNE) Measurement, Evaluation and Examinations Services. Shortly Timss is defined as the researches of international science and mathematics educations. This survey study is conducted by the International Sudy center in BostonCollege- TIMSS PIRLS. The research to which many country across the globe has participated is a project which affects the education policies of the participatory countries. The aim of this study is to bring out the opinions of the 8th grade students who attended timss 2015 and teachers about the exam. This study has been conducted under case study approach. Case study method offers opportunities only in the case of searching the subject in depth but holistically within the context. M oreover the case study method is suitable to design and analyse for both quantitative and qualitative researches. The study was conducted with 24 students studying in the relevant class of a secondary school of Agri province centre where the exam is held and 6 teachers who give science and mathematic lectures in this school and at the same time participated in TIMSS activity as controllers. The data were collected through a queationnare prepared by the researchers. The data obtained from the study were subjected to descriptive and content analysis. In the study analysis were presented seperately as descriptive analyse and content analyse. As a result of the study, it was concluded that the students havent adequately prepared for the timss exam due to teog exams, the questions were hermeneutical rather than requiring knowledge and awareness level of the the teachers are low

Global prevalence of sleep deprivation in students and heavy media use

The latest two international educational assessments found global prevalence of sleep deprivation in students, consistent with what has been reported in sleep research. However, despite the fundamental role of adequate sleep in cognitive and social functioning, this important issue has been largely overlooked by educational researchers. Drawing upon evidence from sleep research, literature on the heavy media use by children and adolescents, and data from web analytics on youth-oriented game sites and mobile analytics on youth-oriented game apps, we argue that heavy media use, particularly digital game play, may be an important contributor to sleep deprivation in students. Therefore, educational researchers, policy makers, teachers, and parents should pay greater attention to student sleep and develop programs and interventions to improve both quality and quantity of student sleep.

Education for Sustainable Development and International Student Assessments: Governing Education in Times of Climate Change

AbstractAt the end of the UN's Decade of Education for Sustainable Development there are few, if any, indications of comprehensive educational reforms meeting the challenges of sustainable development. Rather, a central aim for current educational reforms appears to be improvement of student performance on national and international educational assessments, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)'s Programme for International Student Assessments (PISA). Against this background, this article explores the relationship between the UN's measures to promote education for sustainable development (ESD) and the OECD's measures to assist the development of education policy through PISA. The article finds that there are asymmetries in the ways these two different measures shape education systems. Moreover, the article also finds tensions between the educational practices associated with ESD, and those associated with ambitions to improve scores on PISA and other tests.

HOW MUCH ARE WE WILLING TO CONTRIBUTE FOR BETTER EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES? EVIDENCE FROM A SURVEY EXPERIMENT

AbstractWe use a survey experiment on a sample of Argentine households to elicit willingness to contribute toward improving the performance of public school students in international educational assessments. Households are presented with a sequence of bids that they can accept or reject. Information is presented in vignettes that vary in the proportion of children who benefited from the gains in educational attainment. We find a higher willingness to contribute for larger gains. In total, households would be willing to contribute an additional 12.8% of current educational expenditure to guarantee improved education quality. (JEL I22, I25, C83, H52)

Fitting an item response theory model with random item effects across groups by a variational approximation method

Purpose. Data from international educational assessments conducted in many countries are mostly analyzed using item response theory. The assumption that all items behave the same in all countries is often not tenable. The variability of item parameters across countries can be taken into account by assuming that the item parameters are random effects (De Jong et al. in J. Consum. Res. 34:260–278, 2007; De Jong and Steenkamp in Psychometrika 75:3–32, 2010). However, the complex latent structure of such a model, with latent variables both at the item and the person level, renders maximum likelihood estimation computationally challenging. We describe a variational estimation technique that consists of approximating the likelihood function by a computationally tractable lower bound.

Two recent (2003) international surveys of schooling attainments in mathematics: England’s problems

The two recent (2003) international surveys of pupils’ attainments were uncoordinated, overlapped considerably, were costly and wasteful, especially from the point of view of England where inadequate response‐rates meant that no reliable comparisons at all could be made with other countries. The surveys were conducted by the OECD (Programme of International Student Assessment—PISA) and by the US‐based International Educational Assessment group (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study—TIMSS). Sources of the problem are investigated.

Reliability of Assessment of Reading Ability in Three Countries

Over the last few decades, there have been a number ofnational and international programmes to assessperformance in key subjects. For example theInternational Association for Evaluation ofEducational Attainment (IEA), International Assessmentof Educational Progress (IAEP), and the ThirdInternational Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS)programs have aimed to compare performance betweenparticipating countries. Such exercises have different requirements from thosetests, such as public examinations, which aim toassess the attainment of individuals. National andinternational assessments aim to cover a very widerange of materials, and often use the technique ofmultiple matrix sampling to do so. The investigation is based on generalizability-typeanalyses of three national data sets at two ages, andlooks not only at the variance components arising fromsampling of schools, and of pupils within them, butalso at the variation between different assessmentinstruments, and between items within assessmentinstruments. If interpreted with care, such resultscan be of value in the design of future studies. Thispaper concentrates largely on the precision ofestimates of overall means, but analyses of the typedescribed could also be used to compare theperformance of subpopulations.

What Can We Learn from International Assessments?

The kinds of inferences that can be drawn from international educational assessment are explored, considering the evidence that can be obtained and how it can be interpreted. International assessments have been thought of as yielding information that allows comparisons of relative achievement by country and subject, or that allows the improvement in or, country from the determinants of achievement in another, or Emily as a way to provide information to policymakers on the status of achievement and practices in their own countries. Issues of population definition and of sampling plans make international comparisons very difficult. Ile comparability of assessment tasks is complicated by the difficulty in identifying a common frame of reference. It is argued that indicts of educational achievement that are to varying degrees comparable across nations can be useful, but that it must be recognized that ascertaining the relative standings of nations will tell very little about how to set educational policy or to improve instructional practice. Two tables and two figures illustrate the discussion. (Contains 48 references.) (SLD) *********************************************************************::* Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document: * U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of FOucabonal RimeaR.F nd impeovement EDIJC TIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERICI MS O0Coment haS been repro0oCed as r ec e ved from the person Or orgen.zafion orcpnaltnrj .1 '.-l'ArnOr changes mine been rnacie lb .rnorc.e retaroduct.on (wanly Points of vew or OPm.Ons slated nItoSdOro meet clo not neceSSanly represent ofbc.a. OE RI poso.on or dOly 0 -PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY 11) 6A fi ()A) TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERIC1 WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM INTERNATIONAL ASSESSMENTS?

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM INTERNATIONAL ASSESSMENTS?

The kinds of inferences that can be drawn from international educational assessment are explored, considering the evidence that can be obtained and how it can be interpreted. International assessments have been thought of as yielding information that allows comparisons of relative achievement by country and subject, or that allows the improvement in or, country from the determinants of achievement in another, or Emily as a way to provide information to policymakers on the status of achievement and practices in their own countries. Issues of population definition and of sampling plans make international comparisons very difficult. Ile comparability of assessment tasks is complicated by the difficulty in identifying a common frame of reference. It is argued that indicts of educational achievement that are to varying degrees comparable across nations can be useful, but that it must be recognized that ascertaining the relative standings of nations will tell very little about how to set educational policy or to improve instructional practice. Two tables and two figures illustrate the discussion. (Contains 48 references.) (SLD) *********************************************************************::* Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document: * U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of FOucabonal RimeaR.F nd impeovement EDIJC TIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERICI MS O0Coment haS been repro0oCed as r ec e ved from the person Or orgen.zafion orcpnaltnrj .1 '.-l'ArnOr changes mine been rnacie lb .rnorc.e retaroduct.on (wanly Points of vew or OPm.Ons slated nItoSdOro meet clo not neceSSanly represent ofbc.a. OE RI poso.on or dOly 0 -PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY 11) 6A fi ()A) TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERIC1 WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM INTERNATIONAL ASSESSMENTS?

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT: ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Language LearningVolume 18, Issue s3 p. 125-145 INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT: ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE E. Glyn Lewis, E. Glyn Lewis University of WalesSearch for more papers by this author E. Glyn Lewis, E. Glyn Lewis University of WalesSearch for more papers by this author First published: August 1968 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1968.tb00227.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume18, Issues3August 1968Pages 125-145 RelatedInformation