Session Information
09 SES 02 A, Countries’ Strive of Combining High Achievement with Equality: Success or Failure? Evidence from Trends over Time in TIMSS and PIRLS
Symposium
Contribution
In many countries education has two main goals: reaching high achievement and equal opportunities, i.e. that all groups of students are to the same extent able to attain a high achievement level. However, student achievement is - in different countries to a more or less extent - influenced by students’ socio-economic status (SES) and ethnicity as well as by school composition in terms of SES and ethnicity. Therefore, countries have been making efforts over the past decades to reduce these inequalities without reducing or even while increasing their overall achievement levels.
At the same time, contemporary societies change at an incredibly high pace. Many West-European countries face demographic changes, with a high amount of immigrants entering the educational system along with an increase of students coming from low SES backgrounds (Banks & McGee-Banks, 2009). This poses additional challenges to countries’ educational system in their strive for high achievement and equality.
This symposium aims at investigating whether countries succeed in accomplishing both goals.
TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) allows to measure trends in mathematics and science achievement at the fourth and eighth grade and is conducted on a regular 4-year cycle, since 1995. PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) measures trends in reading comprehension at the fourth grade. This study takes place on a regular 5-year cycle, since 2001. Both studies contain information from over 30 countries each cycle, with an amount of countries who have been taken part in each data measurement cycle. These international databases allow us to investigate the trends over time in, a.o., countries’ achievement level and educational equality.
In this symposium, three studies will be presented which investigate trends in achievement linked to social and ethnic equality. In a first study, the change in SES and ethnic equality linked to math and science achievement is investigated in 7 European countries, based on TIMSS 2003 & 2011, Grade 4. Both influences of student SES and ethnicity as well as school composition on achievement are studied. A second study will go into depth on the link between demographic changes in SES and ethnicity in relation to language achievement in Germany, based on the PIRLS 2001-2011 data. The third study gives a detailed investigation of the trends in social and ethnic equality in Sweden and Norway in relation to language achievement, based on PIRLS 2001-2011 data. Here as well, both student characteristics and school composition effects on achievement are looked at. With these studies, this symposium contributes to the debate on whether and to what extent countries’ educational systems succeed in reaching high achievement for all.
Banks, J.A., & McGee-Banks, C.A. (2009). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives. US: John Wiley & Sons.
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