This book examines the results of the special portion of the 2003 PISA survey of student achievement relating to problem-solving skills. It examines how countries can raise their performance in this area and what countries with lower performance levels can learn from those whose students do well.

This report presents the first internationally comparable results to OECD's 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Survey of the educational performance of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science in 25 OECD countries.

PISA 2006: Science Competencies for Tomorrow’s World presents the results from the most recent PISA survey, which focused on science and also assessed mathematics and reading. It is divided into two volumes: the first offers an analysis of the results, the second contains the underlying data.

This book addresses challenges in the theoretically and empirically adequate assessment of competencies in educational settings. It presents the scientific projects of the priority program “Competence Models for Assessing Individual Learning Outcomes and Evaluating Educational Processes,” which focused on competence assessment across disciplines in Germany. The six-year program coordinated 30 research projects involving experts from the fields of psychology, educational science, and subject-specific didactics. The main reference point for all projects is the concept of “competencies,” which are defined as “context-specific cognitive dispositions that are acquired and needed to successfully cope with certain situations or tasks in specific domains” (Koeppen et al., 2008, p. 62). The projects investigate different aspects of competence assessment: The primary focus lies on the development of cognitive models of competencies, complemented by the construction of psychometric models based on these theoretical models. In turn, the psychometric models constitute the basis for the construction of instruments for effectively measuring competencies. The assessment of competencies plays a key role in optimizing educational processes and improving the effectiveness of educational systems. This book contributes to this challenging endeavor by meeting the need for more integrative, interdisciplinary research on the structure, levels, and development of competencies.

International comparisons of student achievement in mathematics, science, and reading have consistently shown that Japanese and Korean students outperform their peers in other parts of world. Understandably, this has attracted many policymakers and researchers seeking to emulate this success, but it has also attracted strong criticism and a range of misconceptions of the Japanese and Korean education system. Directly challenging these misconceptions, which are prevalent in both academic and public discourses, this book seeks to provide a more nuanced view of the Japanese and Korean education systems. This includes the idea that the highly standardized means of education makes outstanding students mediocre; that the emphasis on memorization leads to a lack of creativity and independent thinking; that students’ successes are a result of private supplementary education; and that the Japanese and Korean education systems are homogenous to the point of being one single system. Using empirical data Hyunjoon Park re-evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the existing education systems in Japan and Korea and reveals whether the issues detailed above are real or unfounded and misinformed. Offering a balanced view of the evolving and complex nature of academic achievement among Japanese and Korean students, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Asian, international and comparative education, as well as those interested in Asian society more broadly.

Salamone presents revolutionary ideas for: revamping entitlement programs or eliminating them entirely; implementing a two-year mandatory national service, and investing in early childhood education -- in schools and in the home -- to create a greater sense of citizenship in future generations right from the start. Working with Dr. Gilbert Morris, he also analyzes our founding documents and creates clear and specific connections between the loss of our founding values and the problems we face in our current political, economic, and cultural environment.

This book provides a rich, comparable, and up-to-date array of education indicators covering participation, expenditure, resources, outcomes, and management.

This annual report presents indicators showing who participates in education, what is spent on it and how education systems operate and the results achieved.

Solving non-routine problems is a key competence in a world full of changes, uncertainty and surprise where we strive to achieve so many ambitious goals. But the world is also full of solutions because of the extraordinary competences of humans who search for and find them.

The goal of this volume of Research in Science Education is to examine the relationship between science education policy and practice and the special role that science education researchers play in influencing policy. It has been suggested that the science education research community is isolated from the political process, pays little attention to policy matters, and has little influence on policy. But to influence policy, it is important to understand how policy is made and how it is implemented. This volume sheds light on the intersection between policy and practice through both theoretical discussions and practical examples. This book was written primarily about science education policy development in the context of the highly decentralized educational system of the United States. But, because policy development is fundamentally a social activity involving knowledge, values, and personal and community interests, there are similarities in how education policy gets enacted and implemented around the world. This volume is meant to be useful to science education researchers and to practitioners such as teachers and administrators because it provides information about which aspects of the science education enterprise are affected by state, local, and national policies. It also provides helpful information for researchers and practitioners who wonder how they might influence policy. In particular, it points out how the values of people who are affected by policy initiatives are critical to the implementation of those policies.