Session Information
09 SES 01 B, Findings from Large-scale Assessments
Paper Session
Contribution
Recent educational studies have shown that students’ academic success depends on how students learn and what’s going on in the classrooms. Successful students are said to be aware of their own learning, evaluate their learning needs to generate and implement useful strategies, reflect their thinking before, during and after learning (Hacker et al., 2009; Jones, 2007). That kind of advanced thinking ability is known as metacognition, stated as cognition of one’s own cognitive processes (Flavell, 1979; Baker, 2002).
Metacognitive learning skills are proved to have highly positive effect on improving learning results, they appear to be strong predictors of academic performance, and they are possible to develop with training independent of student’s intellectual ability (van der Stel & Veenman, 2010). Teacher’s role here is said to be crucial, as the skill is developed through talk while learning: self-reflection, planning the work, evaluating etc (Jones, 2007).
The PISA 2009 study asked students about their awareness and use of reading or learning strategies, including metacognition (OECD, 2010a). The analysis of PISA 2009 Estonian data showed that low-performing students tend to use less metacognitive skills and more traditional methods such as memorising or control strategies (Mikk et al., 2012). The struggling readers are also described to typically have certain background characteristics such as male gender, low socio-economic status plus some classroom environment factors like disruptive disciplinary climate or poor teacher-student relationship (Garbe et al, 2010; OECD, 2010b).
On the school level the issue of school language has been raised, as in Estonia the Russian speaking schools have been performing on the lower level compared to the Estonian speaking schools (Tire et al., 2010, 27). Similar effects, where students speaking the minority language tend to perform lower, in spite of being educated with their own language, have been observed in other countries also, e.g. in the high-performing Finland (Harju-Luukkainen & Nissinen, 2011).
The aim of the paper is to study the role of different learning strategies in explaining test results among boys and girls in Estonian and Russian speaking schools, and to which extent the level of learning skills depends on student or school. The research problems were set as follows :
- How much of the between-school and student variation in reading literacy performance is attributable to learning strategies?
- How large is the contribution of each learning strategy in explaining PISA student scores?
- Does the contribution of learning strategies vary between boys and girls or school language subgroups?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Baker, L. (2002). Metacognition in comprehension instruction. In C.Block & M.Pressley (Eds.) Comprehension instruction: Research-based best practices (pp.77-95). New York: Guilford. Flavell, J.H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive-developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34, 906-911. Garbe, C., Holle, K., Weinhold, S., Meyer-Hamme A., & Barton, A. (2010) Characteristics of adolescent struggling readers. In C.Garbe, K.Holle, S.Weinhold (Eds.) ADORE- Teaching struggling adolescent readers in European countries. Key elements of good practice (pp. 1-44). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Goldstein, H.(2011) Multilevel statistical models. 4th edition. Chichester: Wiley. Hacker, D.J., Dunlosky, J., Graesser, A.C (2009). A growing sense of “agency”. In J.D.Hacker, J.Dunlosky & A.C.Graesser (Eds) Handbook of Metacognition in Education (pp 1-4), NY: Routledge. Harju-Luukkainen, H. & Nissinen, K. (2011). Finlandssvenska 15-åriga elevers resultatnivå I PISA 2009 –undersökningen. Jyväskylä: Finnish Institute for Educational research. (note: in Swedish) Jones, D. (2007) Speaking, listening, planning and assessing: the teacher’s role in developing metacognitive awareness / Early Child Development and Care, Vol. 177, Nos 6 & 7, 569–579. doi: 10.1080/03004430701378977 OECD (2010a). PISA 2009 Assessment Framework: Key Competencies in Reading, Mathematics and Science, Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/11/40/44455820.pdf OECD (2010b), PISA 2009 results: Learning to learn- student engagement, strategies and practices(Volume III), http://dx.doi.org/10.178/9789264083943-en Mikk, J., Kitsing, M., Must, O., Säälik, Ü., Täht, K. (2012) Eesti PISA 2009 kontekstis: tugevused ja probleemid. Programmi Eduko uuringutoetuse kasutamise lepingu aruanne.Retrieved from Estonian Ministry of Education and Research website: http://www.hm.ee/index.php?048181 Tire, G., Puksand, H., Henno, I., Lepmann, T. (2010). PISA 2009-Eesti tulemused. Eesti 15-aastaste õpilaste teadmised ja oskused funktsionaalses lugemises, matemaatikas ja loodusteadustes. Retrieved from http://www.ekk.edu.ee/vvfiles/0/PISA_2009_Eesti.pdf van der Stel, M., Veenman M.V.J. (2010). Development of metacognitive skillfulness: A Longitudinal study. Learning and Individual Differences 20, 220-224, Elsevier. doi: 10.1016/j.lindif.2009.11.005
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