Education for Innovation: the Role of Arts and STEM Education

OECD/France Workshop Paris, 23-24 May 2011

Effective Teaching for Improving

Students Motivation, Curiosity,
and Self-Confidence in Science
Evidence from PISA 2006

Francesco Avvisati

OECD Centre for Educational

Research and Innovation (CERI)
Motivation
Motivation
 Outline

PISA measures of behavioural skills

The paradox of international comparisons

of interest, curiosity, and self-confidence
between and within-country evidence
Teaching activities effectiveness on
students learning
within-country evidence
PISA measures of behavioural skills

PISA Test
interest in science topics (embedded)

PISA Context Questionnaire

Enjoyment of science
Science self-concept
Science self-efficacy
Part I

THE TEST-SCORE / INTEREST

PARADOX
The Test-Score/Interest Paradox
The Test-Score/Interest Paradox
A Logical Fallacy
Authentic attitudes or fake postures?

Social desirability bias?

 The Test-Score/Interest Paradox
Robustness
Interest is less sensitive to cultural biases
Adding confounders:
The Test-Score/Interest Paradox
Interpretation
 The Test-Score/Interest Paradox
Conclusion
Some school cultures (teaching cultures?)
have diverging effects on interest and
scores
High stake testing? (extrinsic motivation)
Low academic standards?
Teaching to the test, lack of cognitive
activation?
Japan, Germany, Korea, France
United States, Chile, Israel, Portugal
Part II

EFFECTIVE TEACHING
 Effective Teaching: Motivation

What teaching activities are associated

with better test-scores?
(subject-based competences)

What type of teaching develops

motivation, curiosity and self-confidence
the most?
(behavioural competences)
 Effective Teaching: Data
student reports on 4 clusters of activities
Interaction Hands-on
Collaboration and Guided activities
participatory around lab
exchanges experiments

Application Investigation
Drawing connections Autonomous
between school student inquiries
science and the
outside world
 Effective Teaching: Data

example: focus on models & applications

 Effective Teaching: Methods
Problems with interpreting correlations
causally:

Pupils differ ex-ante (correlation might be

spurious)
Control for observable individual and peer
characteristics; control for reading scores.
Explore robustness across countries
Measurement error and reverse causality in
reports of teaching activities
back-up reports with peer reports
(instrumental variables estimation)
Effective Teaching: Results
Effective Teaching: Results
Effective Teaching: Results
Effective Teaching: Results
 Effective Teaching: Interpretation
How big are effect sizes?
example: focus on models & applications
How to interpret a unit increase?
(+1 standard deviation)

activity at index = -.5 at index = +.5

every
1) Apply ideas to different phenomena 2.8 1.3
2) Relate to outside world 4.8 2.8
3) Explain relevance for student lives 4.0 2.2
4) Technological applications 5.1 3.1
lessons
based on: in all lessons = every single lsn, in most lsns = every 2 lsns,
in some lsns = every 5 lsns, never or hardly ever = every 10 lsns.
 Conclusion

International comparisons do not need to

limit themselves to cognitive test scores;
Patterns diverge between subject-based
skills and science-related attitudes;
Inquiry based activities: effectiveness
hinges critically on guidance;
Application activities foster positive
attitudes to learning and self.
francesco.avvisati@oecd.org

THANK YOU