| Jianjun Wang
California State University, Bakersfield
A comparative study of student science achievement between the United States and the People's Republic of China
FINAL REPORT:
Study 1: Comparative Study of Student Science Achievement between United States and China
Comparable Chinese and American databases were identified in this study through a review of existing international projects in the United States and China. The Chinese data were collected from a random sample of more than 12,000 ninth-grade students in the SISS Extended Study, a key project supported by the China State Commission of Education in the late 1980s. The U.S. data were collected at the same grade level using the same international instrument. The achievement comparison revealed a small difference between Chinese and American average scores. Variability of the score distribution was larger in the United States than in China. These findings were triangulated with other comparative research results to shed light on the condition of Chinese and American science education.
Study 2: International Achievement Comparison: Interesting Debates on Inconclusive Findings
Intemational achievement comparison has drawn dramatic attention from the American public. However, the empirical findings have been quite confusing, due to conflicting interpretations disseminated in the research community. Evolution of the existing debates is reviewed in this article with emphases on some of the TIMSS responses relevant to educational practitioners. Technical issues in developing free-response items, conducting curriculum analyses, and evaluating videotape findings are also highlighted to penetrate potentially overlooked aspects of TIMSS. The balanced discussion illustrates some of the inconclusive features in comparative education.
Study 3: An Empirical Approach toward the Prediction of Students' Science Achievement in the United States and Hubei, China, (Co-author J.R. Staver).
An empirical approach is adopted in this article to explore a possible model for the prediction of students' science achievement in China and the United States. The construction of the model was based on the ninth-grade data base from Phase II of the Second IEA Science Study (SISS) in the United States, and the SISS Extension Study in the Hubei province of China. The common independent variables of the students' science achievement are classified into five categories: students' gender, attitude, home back-ground, classroom experience, and personal effort, according to distinction between visible and latent characteristics, and scree plots from principal component analyses. Latent factors are represented by the first principal components in each of the four latent categories: students' attitudes, home background, classroom experience, and personal effort. Predictors of the model are constructed by polynomials of the visible and latent factors and their interactions in a multivariate Taylor series. Significant predictors were selected through a backward elimination procedure using the Statistical Analysis System. The structure of the four latent factors and the model complexity are compared between the two countries in terms of their educational, political, social, and cultural contexts.
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