Reader’s guide
The results referred to in this volume are provided in Annex C via links to online tables.
The Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) link, referred to as the TALIS-PISA link in the report, covers schools that participated in both TALIS and PISA. TALIS-PISA link 2018 features results on students, teachers and school principals from nine countries and economies: Australia, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires (referred to as CABA [Argentina]), Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Georgia, Malta, Turkey, Viet Nam.
The report uses “students” as shorthand for the TALIS-PISA link target population of 15-year-old students who are surveyed by PISA. In PISA 2018, the international target population of students includes those who are aged between 15 years and 3 months and 16 years and 2 months at the time of the assessment and who are enrolled in school and have completed at least 6 years of formal schooling, regardless of: the type of institution in which they are enrolled and whether they are in full-time or part-time education; whether they attend academic or vocational programmes; and whether they attend public or private schools or foreign schools within the country. Since the target population of students is defined by age, not by grade level, 15-year-old students surveyed by PISA are enrolled in a programme either at International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 2 level (lower secondary education) or at ISCED 3 level (upper secondary education). In the case of student-level analyses, students’ outcomes and characteristics are weighted by the student weights. In the case of school-level analyses, students’ answers are averaged at the school level and are weighted by the school weights.
The report uses “teachers” as shorthand for the TALIS-PISA link target population of teachers who teach in schools surveyed by PISA and who, as part of their regular duties in a target school, provide instruction for 15-year-old students in programmes at ISCED 2 level (lower secondary education) or at ISCED 3 level (upper secondary education), or at both levels.
As the TALIS-PISA link data only permit the matching of a sample of teachers teaching 15-year-old students in a school with a sample of 15-year-old students of that same school, information on teachers is averaged at the school level. In the case of student-level analyses, teachers’ responses are weighted by the student weights, while, in the case of school-level analyses, they are weighted by the school weights.
The report uses “principals” and “school leaders” as equivalent shorthand for the TALIS-PISA link target population of principals working in schools surveyed by PISA that provide instruction for 15-year-old students in programmes at ISCED 2 level (lower secondary education) or at ISCED 3 level (upper secondary education) or at both levels. In the case of student-level analyses, principals’ responses are weighted by the student weights, while in the case of school-level analyses, they are weighted by the school weights.
The TALIS-PISA link average corresponds to the arithmetic mean of the respective country estimates with available data. In Chapter 2, the TALIS-PISA link average covers all participating countries and economies, excluding Viet Nam.1 In Chapter 3, the TALIS-PISA link average covers all participating countries and economies. In Chapter 4, the TALIS-PISA link average excludes Viet Nam in the case of student-level analyses and it excludes Malta2 and Viet Nam in the case of school-level analyses.
In the case of some countries, data may not be available for specific indicators, or specific categories may not apply. Therefore, readers should keep in mind that the terms “TALIS-PISA link average” refers to the countries included in the respective averages. Each of these averages may not necessarily be consistent across all columns of a table.
One symbol is used to denote non-reported estimates:
n: Data is missing due to computational process (e.g. regression coefficient is missing if an independent variable in a regression model is omitted due to collinearity).
TALIS data are based exclusively on self-reports from teachers and school leaders and, therefore, represent their opinions, perceptions, beliefs and accounts of their activities. No data imputation from administrative data or other studies is conducted and, as with any self-reported data, this information is subjective and may, therefore, differ from data collected through other means (e.g. administrative data or video observations). The same is true of school leaders’ reports about school characteristics and practices, which may differ from descriptions provided by administrative data at a national or local government level.
PISA data focuses on the extent to which 15-year-old students have acquired key competencies essential for full participation in social and economic life. PISA assessments do not just ascertain whether students can reproduce what they have learned, but they also examine how well students can extrapolate from what they have learned and apply their knowledge. Hence, while PISA focusses on students’ competences and on how well these competences are applied in different contexts, it may not reflect the curriculum for 15-year-old students. In each round of PISA, one subject among reading, mathematics and science, is tested in detail. The main subject in 2018 was reading.
Caution is warranted when interpreting the results presented in this report. Due to the specific survey design of the TALIS-PISA link data:
Findings only reflect the overall relationships between a student and a school’s average teacher, since no direct link can be drawn between a teacher and his/her students.
Results cannot be interpreted as causal, but only as correlational, given the cross-sectional nature of the data and the complexity and reciprocity of the relationships analysed.
Generalisability of the findings is limited due to the limited number of countries/economies included in the TALIS-PISA link.
Because of rounding, some figures in tables may not add up exactly to the totals. Totals, differences and averages are always calculated on the basis of exact numbers and are rounded only after calculation.
All standard errors (SE) in this publication have been rounded to one, two or three decimal places. Where the value 0.0, 0.00 or 0.000 is shown, this does not imply that the standard error is zero, but that it is smaller than 0.05, 0.005 or 0.0005, respectively.
This volume only comments on statistically significant estimates, with the significance level set to 5%, unless otherwise specified. These are denoted in darker colours in figures and in bold font in tables. See Annex B for further information.
For further information on TALIS and PISA documentation, instruments and methodology, see the TALIS 2018 Technical Report (OECD, 2019[1]), TALIS 2018 and TALIS Starting Strong 2018 User Guide (OECD, 2019[2]) and the PISA 2018 Technical Report (OECD, 2020[3]).
This report uses the OECD StatLinks service. All tables and charts are assigned a URL leading to a corresponding ExcelTM workbook containing the underlying data. These URLs are stable and will remain unchanged over time. In addition, readers of the e-books will be able to click directly on these links and the workbook will open in a separate window if their Internet browser is open and running.
References
[3] OECD (2020), PISA 2018 Technical Report, https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/pisa2018technicalreport/ (accessed on 16 November 2020).
[2] OECD (2019), TALIS 2018 and TALIS Starting Strong 2018 User Guide, OECD, Paris, http://www.oecd.org/education/talis/TALIS_2018-TALIS_Starting_Strong_2018_User_Guide.pdf.
[1] OECD (2019), TALIS 2018 Technical Report, OECD, Paris, http://www.oecd.org/education/talis/TALIS_2018_Technical_Report.pdf.
Notes
← 1. Since Viet Nam does not have data on PISA test scores, it is not included in the analyses presented in Chapters 2 and 4.
← 2. In Malta, there are only 17 out of the 44 schools that are not single-gender schools (i.e. all students surveyed in the school are same-gender students) and where the within-school differences in performance between girls and boys can be computed. Thus, it is not included in the school-level analysis presented in Chapter 4.