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 !