Science teaching practices in Indonesian secondary schools: A portrait of educational quality and equity based on PISA 2015

Abstract

Good teaching practices should not only facilitate learning, but also be effective regardless of students’ family background. This study examines how three dimensions of teaching (instruction, classroom management, and emotional support) interact with students’ socioeconomic status (SES) to predict their science literacy in Indonesian secondary science classrooms. Participants were a nationally representative sample of 6513 students from 236 schools from the PISA 2015 database. Replicating previous studies, multilevel analyses revealed that interactive instruction and classroom management predicted better science literacy, while unguided inquiry-based instruction was associated with lower literacy. Interactive instruction is characterised by student-centered argumentation about science questions, combined with teacher explanations regarding the applications and relevance of science concepts. Meanwhile, unguided inquiry is characterised by student-led investigation activities bereft of teacher guidance. In addition, the current study extends previous literature by showing that interactive instruction is effective in middle and high SES schools, but not in low SES ones. This finding supports social stratification theories which posit that to benefit from student-centered instruction, students need to possess academic dispositions which are rarely socialised in lower SES families. Consequently, policies targeting educational equity should not only concern improvements in instructional quality, but also the preparedness of lower SES students to benefit from instruction.

Do student ratings provide reliable and valid information about teaching quality at the school level? Evaluating measures of science teaching in PISA 2015

“…As described in a preceding section, the teaching measures in PISA are theoretically related to instrinsic motivation, such that schools with better teaching quality should also have students with higher collective intrinsic motivation. The relationships between intrinsic motivation and classroom management, student support, as well as teacher-directed and inquiry-based instruction have been found in prior empirical studies (Aditomo, 2020;Aditomo & Klieme, 2020;Aldrup et al, 2018;Decristan et al, 2016;Fauth et al, 2014;Rjosk et al, 2014;Schiepe-tiska, 2019;Wallace et al, 2016). Thus, associations with intrinsic motivation at the school-level can be used as one source of evidence to assess the validity of teaching quality measures in PISA.…”