Experts’ Opinions on the High Achievement of Scientific Literacy in PISA 2003: A Comparative Study in Finland and Korea

Abstract

Despite the breadth of coverage and collaboration, few empirical studies have concerned educational background and its implementation in order for scrutinising the reasons for students' high scientific literacy in Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 at international level. Rather, many report the data as evidence of successful accountability in a country. In order to illuminate reasons for the high achievement, experts from Finland and Korea participated in a web-based survey. Their opinions revealed heterogeneous contributors: Korean parental support and private education, and Finnish policy involving educational equality; Finnish and Korean teacher education; and Korean centralisation, and Finnish devolution of curriculum and its implementation. Because of the reasons which are irrelevant to the policy orientation of PISA, careful analysis of the educational background and implementation ought to be recognised in advance of reporting the students' achievement as evidence of national accountability.

Physics Teacher Knowledge Aimed in Pedagogical Studies in Finland and in South Korea

“…However, the role of Korean teachers in Korean students' success has not been emphasized as much. An explanation is that Korea currently has the world's largest system of supplementary private "cram schools" and tutors (Baker & LeTendre, 2005;Kim, Lavonen, & Ogawa, 2009), which that hardly exist in the Finnish education system.…”

“…Moreover, equality is promoted through a basic education system that is free of charge (i.e., schoolbooks and other learning materials, school meals, transportation, and health care are provided to everyone). Neither private schooling nor tutoring explains the good learning outcomes of Finnish pupils in general, whereas the private education sector has a great impact on learning outcomes in Korea (Kim, Lavonen, & Ogawa, 2009). …”

The Intellectual Demands of the Intended Primary Science Curriculum in Korea and Singapore: An analysis based on revised Bloom's taxonomy

“…They seem promising for curriculum research and will thus be introduced to readers in this journal. (Kim, Lavonen, & Ogawa, 2009), primary science curricula in Korea and Singapore are highly centralized: There are mandatory learning outcomes, suggested pedagogies, and teaching hours (Lee, Park, Lee, & Han, 2005). Based on the national curriculum, textbooks and teacher's guidebooks have been developed and/or authorized by the government (Lim et al, 2007;Wee et al, 2011) to ensure their close alignment, a practice that has been in place for at least 20 years (Harlen, 1994).…”

Investigating the relationship between school-level accountability practices and science achievement

“…With regards to the limitations, it is important to remember that this is a correlational analysis and we are not attributing a causal effect from accountability on science achievement. Any cross-cultural interpretation of students' performance on international assessment needs to take into consideration the educational realities of the countries (Kim, Lavonen, & Ogawa, 2009). Because of this, we included several covariates identified as relevant by previous research.…”