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Helen Abadzi
هيلين عباءجي University of Texas at Arlington
Unesco, Doha
March 5, 2015
PISA:
Lessons learned from international experience to
improve learning outcomes in GCC countries
Comparing and understanding test scores Topics to explore • Learning from TIMSS, PIRLS
• Grade 8 TIMSS should relate closely to PISA
• Reading speed, language proficiency
• Knowledge organization in memory networks
• Math enigmas
• Sampling selectivity
Do the students have the knowledge to answer the PISA questions? • This is unknown !!!!
• Test cannot answer this question
• The key to performance is recall of right answer at the right moment.
• Info may be encoded in inaccessible part of the memory network
• Score shows what the student could bring into working memory and in milliseconds to answer an item.
• Recall depends on how well a cue at test time matches the cue at study time.
Effects of teaching methods on test scores
• Deficits due to delayed reading fluency • Limited “world knowledge”
• Limited elaboration of concepts • Almost verbatim repetition, little extraction of gist • Limited connection to related concepts
• Limited practice, slow information processing
• Blocked rather than random practice
• Insufficient examples to facilitate learning transfer
• Encoding specificity – test items not similar to encoded info and do not elicit responses
Reading - lower scores in the early grades May result in lower performance at age 15
Students may read Arabic letters, words more slowly
They may interpret Standard Arabic grammar more slowly
They may be unsure about word meaning
So they can’t search their knowledge network
Milliseconds of delays add up in a long text
Students run out of working memory !
• They cannot answer correctly
Memory basics
45-60 words per minute minimum reading speed
Students reading in Yemen, rural Egypt
(2004, 2007)
Speed and fluency matter !
• Chunking, practice to automaticity
• Speed needed for everything, including comprehension
• To respond to TIMSS, Students must first lift the print off the page
• Literal comprehension comes with speed • Assuming you know the language!
• Automaticity needed to respond to tests effortlessly, enjoy reading
Links among items determine recall
Retrieval paths: Information is recalled along the same paths on which it was encoded
Info learned through serial recall Info learned through elaboration Linkages, analysis, synthesis
Practice and increased complexity
• Mixture of prior knowledge with new
• Transfer basics: the more the practice with variety, the more likely; • More items more likely
• The previous learning curve must dovetail into the next
• All information becomes one integrated learning curve
The more you know, the less you forget Richer cognitive networks have more “hooks”
4/8/2015 15
Spanish course content recall up to 50 years
Unexpected events improve learning
• Mind-blowing events facilitate retention of unrelated items presented at the same time
• Phenomenon may explain rural-urban gap
• Protected life of girls, few opportunities to turn on “hyper-learning”
Some educational implications of network functions • Organization and links matter as much as the info itself
• Info is specifically encoded • must be taught so as to be retrievable from multiple paths
• Knowledge is cumulative • Students need multiple “hooks” with prior knowledge
• Students falling behind can’t catch up by themselves • primary school deficits don’t get fixed in secondary school
• They need remediation!
• Matthew effect: the extras benefit the best who can “hook” them up
Educated people tend to overlook basic information processing
• We do not have a good intuitive conception of working memory
• We overestimate declarative memory
• We are quite oblivious to implicit memory
• We cannot monitor speed in milliseconds
• we do not have a good sense of automaticity
• We focus on higher level processing and conscious memory
Early numeracy for higher math scores Predictive value
What are the percentages in each GCC country? 4th grade TIMSS questionnaires contain these
In order to solve
interactive problems,
students must be open to
novelty, tolerate doubt
and uncertainty, and be
able to use intuition to initiate a solution.
Students who do well in mathematics, reading
and science also tend to perform well in problem-
solving and do well with unfamiliar problems in
contexts outside of school subjects. These students
are better equipped to develop coherent mental
representations of problem situations and plan
ahead in a focused way.
Performing in math-science vs. solving real problems Only UAE participated
GCC countries have certain demographic complexities • Different percentages of the 15-year old population answering the
test
• Language of the test, some may be English for mainly foreigners
• % of students of various ethnicities
• Governments decide who should be tested
• The smaller the percentage of the 15 year olds sampled, the more selective the group • The higher the likely score
• So, concerns about China
Population selectivity
•What should the students be able to perform in earlier grades to perform well in PISA?
•What can ministries of education do to increase the probability that students will recall the content while answering PISA questions?
We see PISA as final scores, and we try to reverse-engineer success • Not really possible
• Skills have to be built up from smaller components
• At slow timeframes so that they can be consolidated and reconsolidated in memory
• They must be mixed up and connected in various contexts, so they can be retrieved under most or all circumstances.
Improving instruction before PISA
•What should the students be able to perform in earlier grades to perform well in PISA?
•What can ministries of education do to increase the probability that students will recall the content while answering PISA questions?
Instructional focus for improved PISA
• Automatizing basic components early • Intuitive numeracy since preschool; standard Arabic grammar
• Contemplating information, linking it from various aspects
• Blocked as well as random practice
• Interleaving of problems
• Spaced, distributed learning and reviews
• “Critical incidents”, unexpected events
• Clear training for implicit memory when the curriculum calls for that
• Frequent quizzes – helps reconsolidation, strengthens memory
Creativity, critical thinking can be taught
Successful experiments in the UK, US for complex problem solving Creativity Critical thinking Improvements are domain-specific
Some Recommendations
• consider video studies, particularly of math • Link methods to test scores, change instruction
• Analyze TIMSS and PIRLS questionnaire data, particularly related to instruction and engagement
• Early development of numeracy
• Standard Arabic and literacy issues
Thank you for your attention !
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