Measuring student knowledge and skills

The Design of OECD/PISA 2000
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OECD 1999
individual’s performance in one kind of question correlates with performance in another, and the patterns
of any differences in performance across particular dimensions; and second, the feasibility, given the
number of items that can be included in the assessment, of reporting on more than one scale in each
domain. Each scale corresponds to one type of score that will be assigned to students; having more than
one scale therefore implies that students will be assigned multiple scores reflecting different aspects of
the domain. The most likely scenario is that in the major domain that contains the most questions (read-
ing in OECD/PISA 2000) there will be scope for more than one scale but in the minor domains a single
scale will be used.
The context questionnaires and their use
To gather contextual information, students and the principals of their schools will also be asked to
respond to background questionnaires that will take 20 to 30 minutes to complete. These questionnaires
are central tools to allow the analysis of results in terms of a range of student and school characteristics.
The questionnaires will seek information about:
– the students and their family backgrounds, including the economic, social and cultural capital of
students and their families;
– aspects of students’ lives such as their attitudes to learning, their habits and life inside school and
their family environment;
– aspects of schools such as the quality of the school’s human and material resources, public and pri-
vate control and funding, decision-making processes and staffing practices;
– the context of instruction including institutional structures and types, class size and the level of
parental involvement.
The first cycle of OECD/PISA will also include an instrument that asks students to report on
self-regulated learning. This instrument is based on the following components:
– strategies of self-regulated learning, which govern how deeply and how systematically information
is processed;
– motivational preferences and goal orientations, which influence the investment of time and mental
energy for learning purposes as well as the choice of learning strategies;
– self-related cognition mechanisms, which regulate the aims and processes of action;
– action control strategies, particularly effort and persistence, which protect the learning process
from competing intentions and help to overcome learning difficulties;
– preferences for different types of learning situations, learning styles and social skills required for
co-operative learning.
Overall, the OECD/PISA context questionnaires will provide a detailed basis for policy-oriented
analysis of the assessment results. Together with information obtained through other OECD instruments
and programmes, it will be possible to:
– compare differences in student outcomes with variations in education systems and the instruc-
tional context;
– compare differences in student outcomes with differences in curriculum content and pedagogical
processes;
– consider relationships between student performance and school factors such as size and
resources, as well as the differences between countries in these relationships;
– examine differences between countries in the extent to which schools moderate or increase the
effects of individual-level student factors on student achievement;
– consider differences in education systems and the national context that are related to differences
in student achievement between countries.

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