Context factors and student achievement in the IEA studies: evidence from TIMSS

Abstract Background The present study investigates what factors related to the school context influence student achievement on TIMSS mathematics tests across countries. A systematic review of the literature on PIRLS, TIMSS, and ICCS was conducted upstream to identify those school, teacher, and classroom factors shown to be useful predictors of student performance in previous IEA studies. Data of student samples representative of grade 8 students from 28 countries who participated in TIMSS 2011 were analysed. The main aim of the present study is to verify what school and teacher characteristics are positively associated with students' mathematics achievement, mainly focusing on disadvantaged schools. Furthermore, it aims at identifying how school context variables contribute to explaining the performance of students in disadvantaged schools in comparison with more advantaged schools. Methods A separate analysis was carried out for each considered country, and the same multilevel regression model was used on the sampled schools as a whole and treating schools with high (highest tertile) and low (lowest tertile) socio-economic backgrounds as distinct groups. Results The results confirmed that a high socio-economic status has a significant and positive effect on student achievement: compared with students from socio-economic disadvantaged schools, students from advantaged schools performed better in mathematics achievement. This difference is more evident in countries where the gap between rich and poor people as measured by the Gini coefficient, which measures how much an economy deviates from perfect equality, is wider. However, this difference is restricted in countries with a smaller gap between rich and poor people. Conclusions According to the literature in the field, the results show significant differences across countries in relation to the school and teacher characteristics that have an impact on mathematics achievement of students from low and high SES schools. Different patterns were also found within countries for low and high SES schools

Attitudes toward Migration across European Countries: Results from ICCS 2009

The European Union is a region with high levels of migration, both from outside the EU as well as between member countries (OECD, 2012). The movement of people into some European countries from former colonies, as well the recent increased movement of people between countries in Europe, is leading to more multicultural communities in many European countries. Recent events resulting from the Syrian refugee crisis have highlighted the challenges that results from having to balance the rights, cultures and traditions of diverse groups in society. Education plays an important role in facilitating cohesion in society (Ajegbo, Kiwan, & Sharma, 2007; Osler & Starkey, 2005) while at the same time education systems are facing new challenges when dealing with students with an immigrant background (Olson, 2013). These changes resulting from migration from outside Europe and between European countries have had an impact on educational policies and school curricula which have begun to put more emphasis on diversity, social cohesion and European issues (Eurydice, 2009, 2012). The recent increase in refugees coming into Europe is originating proposals to reintroduce of border controls and to calls for limiting the freedom of movement across EU member countries. Using survey data from 2009, this paper investigates factors that influence European lower secondary students’ attitudes towards migration. Based on a conceptual framework that posits students’ dispositions toward civic issues as influenced by contextual factors related to the home and peer context, to the school and classroom environments, as well as to the wider community (see Schulz, Fraillon, Ainley, Losito, & Kerr, 2008), it reviews the associations of students’ attitudes toward migration with factors related to students’ background (gender, home context, immigration background), students’ civic knowledge, European identity as well as school-related contexts (such as reports on opportunities to learn about Europe). The findings provide comparative evidence across a range of European countries and with regard to the influence of possible context factors and related perceptions or beliefs on how lower secondary students viewed migration issues in 2009

The roles of schools and communities in civic and citizenships education

The first part of the present paper is an overview of school and community roles in students’ civic and citizenship education across ICCS countries. Data from school and teacher questionnaires were used to describe how schools and communities contribute to the development of students’ civic knowledge. The second part investigates, through multi-level analysis, the relationship between a selection of variables at student and school levels and a selection of student attitudes. More specifically, the attitudes taken into account are: attitudes toward equal gender rights, toward equal rights for immigrants, and toward equal rights for ethnic/racial groups

Collecting School and Teacher Data in International Civic and Citizenship Study

Characteristics of the school context and its impact on the development of students’ knowledge, as well as their dispositions and competencies in relation to their roles as citizens, are especially important for a study of civics and citizenship education. The school in itself represents both the principal institution in which young people are directly involved and, at the same time, the foremost community in which they can actively participate. Various characteristics of school context affect both the development of a formal and informal civic and citizenship curriculum, as well as the students actual learning experience within school in relation to school general ethos, culture and climate. Moreover, civic and citizenship education development encompasses a variety of learning situations: leadership and management, everyday activities of the school community, the quality of relations inside the school itself and between the school and the community. Students’ daily experience in school is a factor that strongly influences their perception of school as a democratic environment. This paper discusses and illustrates purposes and contents of the IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS 2009) teacher and school surveys and instruments

IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2016 Assessment Framework

The purpose of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) is to investigate the ways in which young people are prepared to undertake their roles as citizens in a range of countries in the second decade of the 21th century. ICCS 2016 is a continuation of this study, which was initiated in 2009. The development of a framework for ICCS 2016 needed to take account of recent developments and ongoing challenges. The international project team identified areas related to civics and citizenship education, which had either gained more attention in recent years or were regarded as relevant, but which were not addressed in great detail in the previous ICCS survey. The following three areas were identified for inclusion to broaden the scope of ICCS 2016: environmental sustainability in civic and citizenship education; social interaction in school; and the use of new social media for civic engagement. In addition, two further areas were identified that had been included in previous IEA surveys as deserving more explicit acknowledgement in the ICCS 2016 assessment framework: economic awareness as an aspect of citizenship; and the role of morality in civic and citizenship education. This report is divided into three major sections starting with background and an overview of the current study; followed by the civic and citizenship framework covering definitions and content domains; and finally the contextual framework which looks at the contexts for civic and citizenship education

ICCS 2009 International Report: Civic knowledge, attitudes and engagement among lower secondary school students in thirty-eight countries.

The International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) studied the ways in which countries prepare their young people to undertake their roles as citizens. ICCS was based on the premise that preparing students for citizenship roles involves helping them develop relevant knowledge and understanding and form positive attitudes toward being a citizen and participating in activities related to civic and citizenship education. These notions were elaborated in the ICCS framework, which was the first publication to emerge from ICCS (Schulz, Fraillon, Ainley, Losito, & Kerr, 2008)

Understanding School and Classroom Contexts for Civic and Citizenship Education: The Importance of Teacher Data in the IEA Studies

IEA surveys traditionally include a teacher questionnaire among the contextual questionnaires aiming at collecting data on school factors that could be associated with students' cognitive outcomes. This chapter discusses how data collected from teachers has played a role in IEA studies on civic and citizenship education from the Six Subjects Survey to the Civic Education Study (CIVED) 1999 and the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2009 and 2016. Elements of continuity and discontinuity are identified over time in relation to the content and the structure of the teacher questionnaires adopted in each survey, looking at the conceptions of civic and citizenship education that informed the instruments' development and at the changes that occurred over time in the delivering of civic and citizenship education at school. The use of data collected through the teacher questionnaire in IEA international reports as well as in secondary analyses is presented. A substantial increase in informative secondary analyses using teacher data has been registered in the last years, confirming the importance of the teacher questionnaire despite the difficulties in finding direct strong associations between teacher data and students' outcomes. Civic and citizenship education is one of the school education areas most characterized by gaps between principles and official regulations, between intended and implemented curricula, and between theory (or ideals) and practices. The information gathered through the teacher questionnaire is of great relevance for a better understanding of the characteristics of the schools as learning environments and provides policymakers and researchers with data from the perspective of teachers on the democratic experience students actually have at school

IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2016 Assessment Framework

Education policy and politics; Assessment, testing and evaluatio

Civic participation at school and school-based community participation

The idea of civic and citizenship education underpinning ICCS recognizes that civic and citizenship knowledge, dispositions to engage and attitudes related to civic and citizenship education are linked to the variety of contexts where students live, including family background, classrooms, schools, and the wider community (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, Kerr, 2008; Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Kerr, Losito, 2010). Particular importance is given to the actual opportunities students have to actively participate in school life and in the community where the school is located. The first part of this paper will provide a general overview of how schools in the countries participating in ICCS enhance and support student civic participation, both within the school and in the local communities where schools are located. It also illustrates if and how schools encourage participation of teachers, parents and students in the running of the school and the extent to which they can be considered as “democratic learning environment” open to student participation both at a school and at a classroom level. Furthermore, it attempts to clarify the role of school and teachers in student participation in civic related activities in the local community, providing an overview of the differences existing across the 38 countries participating in ICCS. In the second part, we will be presenting a selection of analyses aiming at exploring these results in depth, investigating the relationships between the openness of schools to students’ participation and civic engagement at school and in the wider community. We drew on data from ICCS student, teacher, and school questionnaire to perform these analyses

IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2022: Assessment Framework

The International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) investigates the preparation of young people to undertake their roles as citizens. It gathers and analyzes data from representative national samples on students’ conceptual knowledge and understanding of civics and citizenship, as well as their attitudes to, and engagement with, aspects of civics and citizenship. ICCS builds on a succession of IEA studies in this field dating back to 1971, and especially since 2009. The 2022 study has been developed to build on previous perspectives on, and monitor changes in, such enduring issues as: levels of civic knowledge and understanding; patterns of and dispositions toward civic engagement; attitudes to citizenship and equal rights; and schools as spaces for learning about citizenship. In addition, ICCS 2022 encompasses new developments such as increased globalization and migration; the implications of increasing social diversity; the roles of digital technologies in civic engagement and exchanging information; changing attitudes to traditional political systems; and the disruption to schooling associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The assessment framework provides a conceptual underpinning for the international instrumentation for ICCS 2022. It needs to identify and define those aspects of cognitive and affective-behavioral content that should be considered important learning outcomes of civic and citizenship education, as well as contextual factors that are setting the context for students’ civic learning. It should be noted that within the context of this framework, the term “learning outcomes” is used in a broad way and that it is not intended to confine civic and citizenship education to school learning or any specific theoretical perspective. The way students develop civic knowledge and understanding, as well as affective-behavioral dispositions towards civic and citizenship issues, potentially depends on many factors, including those beyond the learning environment at schools