Globalization is a powerful force with far reaching impacts on education and education policy. The growth of large scale international surveys of student achievement and the increasing role played by intergovernmental agencies in education means that the influence that globalization exerts on education is likely to increase even further in the future. This open access book provides a significant and timely investigation into the impacts that globalization has exerted on science curricula in a diverse range of countries using extensive data sets collected by the IEA between 1995 and 2015. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this book considers the extent to which there have been changes to the intended and implemented science curricula in different countries over the last 20 years. Consideration is then given as to whether science curricula are becoming increasingly similar across countries over time. Finally the issue of whether the basis of an international core curriculum can be identified is addressed. Readers will gain a unique insight into the extent to which globalization and large scale international assessments have influenced science curricula in the last 20 years within both the primary and secondary phases.

This open access report explores the nature and extent of students’ misconceptions and misunderstandings related to core concepts in physics and mathematics and physics across grades four, eight and 12. Twenty years of data from the IEA’s Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and TIMSS Advanced assessments are analyzed, specifically for five countries (Italy, Norway, Russian Federation, Slovenia, and the United States) who participated in all or almost all TIMSS and TIMSS Advanced assessments between 1995 and 2015. The report focuses on students’ understandings related to gravitational force in physics and linear equations in mathematics. It identifies some specific misconceptions, errors, and misunderstandings demonstrated by the TIMSS Advanced grade 12 students for these core concepts, and shows how these can be traced back to poor foundational development of these concepts in earlier grades. Patterns in misconceptions and misunderstandings are reported by grade, country, and gender. In addition, specific misconceptions and misunderstandings are tracked over time, using trend items administered in multiple assessment cycles. The study and associated methodology may enable education systems to help identify specific needs in the curriculum, improve inform instruction across grades and also raise possibilities for future TIMSS assessment design and reporting that may provide more diagnostic outcomes.

This report aims to 'crack the code' by deciphering the factors that hinder and facilitate girls' and women's participation, achievement and continuation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and, in particular, what the education sector can do to promote girls' and women's interest in and engagement with STEM education and ultimately STEM careers.

This volume offers insights from modeling relations between teacher quality, instructional quality and student outcomes in mathematics across countries. The relations explored take the educational context, such as school climate, into account. The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is the only international large-scale study possessing a design framework that enables investigation of relations between teachers, their teaching, and student outcomes in mathematics. TIMSS provides both student achievement data and contextual background data from schools, teachers, students and parents, for over 60 countries. This book makes a major contribution to the field of educational effectiveness, especially teaching effectiveness, where cross-cultural comparisons are scarce. For readers interested in teacher quality, instructional quality, and student achievement and motivation in mathematics, the comparisons across cultures, grades, and time are insightful and thought-provoking. For readers interested in methodology, the advanced analytical methods, combined with application of methods new to educational research, illustrate interesting novel directions in methodology and the secondary analysis of international large-scale assessment (ILSA).