Skip to main content

PISA 2018

The PISA 2018 'Main Survey' data collection is now wrapping up in Aotearoa New Zealand. All that's left now is a mountain of marking, plus the ubiquitous data quality checks and creating the summary reports for all the participating schools.

On a personal note, I would like to say a massive public thank you to every single school who has participated. Thank you. Ngā mihi nui. The amount of goodwill and good humour from every member of school staff who has called our little research team has been tremendously heartwarming. (A few particular standouts but not allowed to name names, sorry.)

Having grown up around my teacher parents and their many teacher friends, there's a special place in my heart for teachers and the past few months have reminded me why.

Although our research team has worked hard behind the scenes to try to minimise what we needed to ask school staff to do to prepare for PISA this time, one staff member at each school still got labelled 'PISA School Coordinator' for these past months, with all the tasks associated with this role. If you know that person in your school, they probably deserve at least a pat on the back a well-earned day off!

Frankly, it's been a marathon. It seems to me PISA happens every 3 years because that's how much effort goes into it each time, nationally and internationally.

I won't bore you with the details (there's fine books like this for a lot more insight):


But here's a quick photo-based run-through of this large-scale international research programme from a NZ point of view.

Development. (And negotiating permitted adaptations to the test items, questionnaire items and documentation for the NZ context.)


Then into the (2-year) rinse cycle of thorough national trialling of all the items and procedures before scaling up for the main data collection: Training - Field Trial - Marking - Review. Training - Main Survey - Marking - Review.

International training
A post shared by PISA NZL (@pisa_nzl) on


More international training
A post shared by PISA NZL (@pisa_nzl) on


Printing letters and materials


National training


Data collection in schools



Receiving back data, attendance sheets and review forms - for data entry


Marking


Preparing and sending thank-you certificates to all the students who took part


Designing School Feedback reports, as a thank you to schools






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Themes from Research ED Auckland

Like everyone else at Research ED Auckland #rEDauck yesterday, I was swept up and inspired by the presentations and conversations.  Here are the patterns/themes I for one noticed, in no particular order. I'm pleased to be spending my Saturday at the #rEDAuck Conference thinking about how we can become a more evidence-informed teaching profession with @tombennett71 and about 150 others pic.twitter.com/KO4swYGUFW — Jay allnutt (@MrJayall) June 1, 2018 1. Resentment toward the Ministry of Education for seemingly forcing open-plan 'Modern Learning Environments' on schools. (Reading further, the MoE denies it is 'pushing'  MLEs.) And more generally for 'implementing policies not based on high quality evidence'. Key points heard include: Is there a research base to support pouring so much money into these? (After a quick search, I can't find any research base cited on the MoE website about these .) If not, are children in MLE schools b...