Session Information
09 SES 08 A, Findings from International Comparative Achievement Studies. Session 4: Relationships in Mathematics and Science Performance
Symposium
Contribution
This study aims at determining the influence of textbook content on fourth-grader science achievement in TIMSS. Content analyses were performed for Latvian, Kazakh, Russian Federation, Ukrainian and US-American third and fourth grade textbooks and for TIMSS 2007 achievement test items. Content analyses were performed by comparing frequencies of terms and concepts in the TIMSS test and the textbooks. Our main aim was detecting those terms and concepts from the TIMSS science test that were potentially unknown for students. The TIMSS science test contained 5900 words, the full test vocabulary content 1130 words. The test included 364 science terms and concepts, 123 of which were used only once. In the US-American textbooks, 34 concepts used in the TIMSS test were not mentioned. In the Russian Federation books 124 TIMSS test concepts were not mentioned, in Ukrainian books 114, in Latvian books 109, and in Kazakh books 85. Main conclusions: 1) The fourth grade TIMSS science test contains much more scientific concepts than usually are found in accordant science textbooks. 2) We cannot approve the hypothesis that the number of missing science concepts in textbooks influence science achievements. 3) This means that students obtain large parts of essential information outside of textbooks.
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