Publications

Andrea Netten, in the article, shares her view that past good performance by students boosts their confidence and encourages them to do better in the future. She backs this opinion by considering data from PIRLS 2016 study.

Hanushek, Piopiunik and Wiederhold, in their article, explore the association of teacher's cognitive ability with student's performance. They use PISA and PIAAC studies to study the causal relationship. Furthermore, they examine how a smarter teacher workforce can be obtained given a relationship between the two exists.

Jenny Anderson reports the vision of Mr. Andreas Schleicher, of testing soft skills of students as well as their hard skills. As the head of the education division at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), he envisions measuring these skills in the future cycles of the PISA study, and increasing the roles of these skills in the world's educational systems.

Nick Chambers, in this article, highlights that there exists a gap between children's career aspirations and the demand of human resource in jobs of the future. These aspirations are influenced by factors such as gender, children's role models, and their socioeconomic status.

Dr. Hastedt points out in his article, referring to results obtained from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), that as children grow up, their confidence in the subject maths decreases. Furthermore, he explains how gender plays a role in instigating this attitude and how female teachers can help overcome the fear of the subject among children.

Through participating in successive TIMSS studies, Chinese Tapei could use the data produced to develop new programs to boost students’ confidence in and enjoyment of mathematics. Read more in the new IEA Compass Brief by Fou-Lai Lin

The new IEA Compass Brief article by David and Leslie Rutkowski (Indiana University, USA), finds that children who are bullied tend to do less well in math. Read the policy brief to gain a better understanding of the relationship between bullying and academics.

Carl O'Brien's article reports giving pupils access to laptops in the classroom has a negative effect, however, providing access to technology for teachers, rather than students, worked best.

This article by Dara Ramalingam is the second in a four-part blog series on the assessment of 21st-century skills.

From the Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment, Therese N. Hoppenbeck and Jenny Lenkeit publish a policy brief that investigates ways of making PIRLS results more useful for practitioners.