Publications

Five questions to ask if you think teaching problem-solving works. By John Sweller

Every few decades there is a campaign to include general problem-solving and thinking skills in school curricula. The motivation is understandable. Everyone would like our schools to enhance students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Because it is so obviously important for students to have such skills, these campaigns are frequently successful in including thinking and

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Lessons Learned from PISA 2018 Statistics and Other International Student Assessments

2021, Crato, N. (Ed.) Improving a Country’s Education: PISA Results in 10 Countries PISA 2018 was the largest large-scale international assessment to date. Its results confirm the improvements of some countries, the challenges other countries face, and the decline observed in a few others. This chapter reflects on the detailed analyses of ten countries policies,

Assessment Background: What PISA Measures and How

This chapter provides a short description of what the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) measures and how it measures it. First, it details the concepts associated with the measurement of student performance and the concepts associated with capturing student and school characteristics and explains how they compare with some other International Large-Scale Assessments(ILSA). Second,

Relationship between equity and excellence in education: Multilevel analysis of international students assessment data with a focus on Turkey.

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Özdemir, Caner Ph.D., Department of Sociology Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ayşe Gündüz Hoşgör July 2015, 236 pages

ABSTRACT: This dissertation aims at finding the relationship between equity and excellence in education and how these two dimensions interplay in Turkey. It is found that inequalities in education are not functional as suggested by functionalist theories. On the other hand, findings of this dissertation show that more equity brings more success. Results also show that Turkish education system is neither equitable nor excellent. Moreover, it is found that current education structure in Turkey worsens existing social inequalities. One of the main research questions of this thesis is: “What is the relationship between equity and excellence in education?” It is found that there is a positive relationship between equity and excellence. Unlike earlier claims about a trade-off between equity and excellence, there are serious hints about a relationship in which these two dimensions of education are enabling each other.

A fragmented-periodogram approach for clustering big data time series

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Abstract
We propose and study a new frequency-domain procedure for characterizing and comparing large sets of long time series. Instead of using all the information available from data, which would be computationally very expensive, we propose some regularization rules in order to select and summarize the most relevant information for clustering
purposes. Essentially, we suggest to use a fragmented periodogram computed around the driving cyclical components of interest and to compare the various estimates. This procedure is computationally simple, but able to condense relevant information of the time series. A simulation exercise shows that the smoothed fragmented periodogram works in general better than the non-smoothed one and not worse than the complete periodogram for medium to large sample sizes. We illustrate this procedure in a study of the evolution of several stock markets indices. We further show the effect of recent financial crises over these indices behaviour.

Lessons Learned from PISA 2018 Statistics and Other International Student Assessments

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2021, Crato, N. (Ed.) Improving a Country’s Education: PISA Results in 10 Countries

PISA 2018 was the largest large-scale international assessment to date. Its results confirm the improvements of some countries, the challenges other countries face, and the decline observed in a few others. This chapter reflects on the detailed analyses of ten countries policies, constraints, and evolutions. It highlights key factors, such as investment, curriculum, teaching, and student assessment. And it concludes by arguing that curriculum coherence, an emphasis on knowledge, student observable outcomes, assessment, and public transparency are key elements. These elements are crucial both for education success in general and for its reflection on PISA and other international assessments.

Download the article here.