Science Education News (SEN) Journal 2017 Volume 66 Number 4 December 2017 | Page 30

ARTICLES
Serious flaws in how PISA measured student behaviour and how
Australian media reported the results
By Prof. Alan Reid, EduResearch Matters
What is PISA and how was classroom
discipline included?
International student performance test results can spark media
frenzy around the world. Results and rankings published by
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) are scrutinized with forensic intensity and any ranking
that is not an improvement is usually labelled a ‘problem’ by
the politicians and media of the country involved. Much time,
energy and media space is spent trying to find solutions to such
problems.
PISA is an OECD-administered test of the performance of students
aged 15 years in Mathematical Literacy, Science Literacy and
Reading Literacy. It has been conducted every three years since
2000, with the most recent tests being undertaken in 2015 and
the results published in December 2016. In 2015, 72 countries
participated in the tests, which are two hours in length. They
are taken by a stratified sample of students in each country. In
Australia in 2015 about 750 schools and 14,500 students were
involved in these tests.
It is a circus that visits Australia regularly.
We saw it all last December when the latest Programme for
International Student Assessment (PISA) results were published.
We were treated to headlines such as ‘Pisa results: Australian
students' science, maths and reading in long-term decline’ from
the Australian edition of the Guardian.
How ‘classroom disciplinary climate’ was involved in PISA testing
During the PISA testing process, other data are gathered for the
purpose of fleshing out a full picture of some of the contextual
and resource factors influencing student learning. Thus in
2015, Principals were asked to respond to questions about
school management, school climate, school resources, etc; and
student perspectives were gleaned from a range of questions
and responses relating to Science, which was major domain in
2015. These questions focused on such matters as classroom
environment, truancy, classroom disciplinary climat