1. TIMSS 2003: CROSS COUNTRY COMPARISONS INFORMING RESEARCH Vijay Reddy Human Sciences Research Council 7 April 2006

2. TIMSS Example 1

4. TIMSS EXAMPLE 2

7. Structure of presentation 1.What is TIMSS? 2.South African performance in TIMSS 2003 3.Cross-country comparison in TIMSS. 4.Where to next?

8. What is TIMSS?

9. TIMSS tries to ascertain what do students know in mathematics and science and thus there are instruments to measure learners disciplinary knowledge and skills. In addition the study tries to explain the outcome and therefore collects data on the context (national, home and school)

10. TIMSS 2003 Study is conducted at the grade 4 and 8 level – South Africa participated at the grade 8 level. 50 countries participated. Data was collected at the end of 2002 – about 9000 learners.

11. SOUTH AFRICAN PERFORMANCE IN TIMSS 2003

15. KEY FINDING Scores are a reflection of the inequalities in the country. “Quality” and “Inequality”

16. What do we learn from cross- country comparative research?

17. Cross country analysis allows one to compare scores of learners, who have similar characteristics, from different countries. The comparison can be useful to generate or exclude hypotheses that might influence learner achievements.

18. Performance of African countries on TIMSS Av. Scale Scor e Pop (mil) Life expe ctan cy NER Prim NER Sec GNI per capita Egypt421 (3.9)66.46990781470 Tunisia404 (2.1)9.87397681990 Morocco396 (2.5)29.66888311170 Botswana365 (2.8)1.73881553010 Ghana255 (5.9)20.3556030270 South Africa244 (6.7)45.34690622500

19. Example 1

20. Example 2

21. Example 3

22. Class size and math scores

23. Economic disadvantage and math score

24. Teachers and principals perceptions of school climate

25. School attendance

26. What research now? Importance of schools in poorer societies. Understanding how concepts are developed inside classrooms. Educational/subject disciplinary researchers need to come to the fore.