Kazakhstani students have been taking part in reputed international tests such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA),which help to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the education system, for several years . Despite some fluctuations in the results of both tests, they always gain remarkable scores from TIMSS while falling behind in the PISA rating. What is the reason behind this seemingly never-changing trend? I would say different testing formats and Kazakhstani teaching approaches that are more compatible with the purposes of TIMSS.
TIMSS generally aims to measure students’ traditional skills such as their understanding of classroom content. PISA, on the other hand, focuses more on analytical skills, or, in other words, tests if students can apply the knowledge they have gained from mathematics, science and reading to real life settings.
Being accustomed to teaching approaches that emphasize the memorization of factual information, Kazakhstani students naturally underperform in tests such as PISA which ask students to think. Most students at schools remind pre-programmed robots that can solve the assigned tasks only in certain fixed ways using familiar methods. Change that task slightly, and you might end-up making them feel like as if they were deciphering some kind of mythical codes sent by aliens. Moreover, tasks and activities, whether in-class or for home, resemble the exercises for memory expansion. So, the large proportion of what students do at school is usually the sequence of learn it by heart and retell it, learn it by heart and retell it. No analysis of the given material, no critical reflection, and of course, no questions about whether that knowledge is useful, and if yes, for what. Take a typical English class as an example. All students do are about memorization: memorizing grammatical rules, new words, dialogues. As a consequence, when faced with a real English speaker, they become unable to go further from uttering several simple greetings finding the foreign speech completely incomprehensible.
In conclusion, I think Kazakhstani teaching approaches need a complete overhaul that fosters thinking and currently the country is on the right track of improving it. Do you agree with me, or can you think of other factors that may also influence the TIMSS and PISA results?
P.S in case you get interested in how PISA tasks actually look like, I found some samples here
Photo credits to http://www.angulo7.com.mx/2016/12/07/maestros-se-deslindan-baja-calificacion-mexico-prueba-pisa/
NUWG 
Dear ariyavvv, I agree with your opinion that Kazakhstani teaching approaches need a renewal. I also see the situation of our students, which in most cases are lacking the skills that are located in the upper part of revised Bloom’s taxonomy(!), very dreadful. Currently as the country is on the right track of improving the old teaching approaches, what do you think the most important aspect in secondary education system that worth paying attention for?
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Dear yasawi859 thank you for your comment and the question. I believe it is very difficult to point out one particular aspect to be the most important, since secondary education is a “system” that consists of closely interconnected mechanisms each of which plays a crucial role in enhancing education quality. For instance, you can’t introduce a new revised curriculum without preparing teachers or appropriate teaching materials and vice versa. In my opinion, equal attention should be paid to every aspect, and changes should be implemented thoroughly covering all those aspects.
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Dear Ariya, I agree that in most of Kazakhstani schools critical thinking is not used in studying process. It became so accustomed for pupils to follow samples and examples. If teacher doesn’t give the sample, students have no idea what to do. Based on my own experience, I can say that while studying abroad I first time faced with critical thinking tasks and tried to analyze questions from different perspectives. Professors told us that there is no wrong opinion and every student’s point of view is interesting. While in Kazakhstani Education Institutions I always felt myself bounded and thought over everything carefully before saying it in class. Neither in school, nor in university I had a class that fostered students to think outside the box, create and invent ideas. For improving the results in tests as TIMSS and PISA we should insert a piece of critical thinking in every class of school program.
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Dear Alina, thank you for your comment:) I had the same experience as yours. I also encountered critical thinking for the first time during my studies abroad. The professor of English literature asked us to read several books including Shakespeare’s play ‘Merchant of Venice’ for the exam. During the exam, instead of merely asking about the plot, she was interested in “who was my favorite character and why”. So I had to analyze the actions, motives and feelings of the characters taking into account the social, historical and geographical backgrounds of the play to explain why I found this particular character to be the most appealing one. I had to ponder over the meaning of justice, morality and discrimination. It was interesting and at the same time very thought-provoking and challenging. I think embedding critical thinking to classes not only develops students’ analytical skills but also makes the whole learning process more enjoyable and less monotonous.
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Dear ariyavvv, thank you fro bringinp up this topic! i enjoyed reading it! I completely agree that we have to put a lot of effort to improve students’ critical thinking and problem solving if we want the outcomes of PISA tests to be good. However, I have several concerns regarding the whole PISA ranking tests. First of all, can it be that some countries PREselect only the best schools and their pupils in order to achieve better results? Because, in that case, I believe the results will be considerably different from the ones that could have been achieved if pupils were from a wide cross-section of society.
My next concern is that learning requirements may vary significantly from one country to another, so there is no universal curricula about what should person know at an age of fifteen. In this sense, will PISA tests be scientifically valid?
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Dear akalya77, thank you for your comment and the questions) To answer your questions I had to check the official website of the OECD organization back, and here is what I found: “Participating PISA countries and economies are invited to submit questions that are then added to items developed by the OECD’s experts and contractors. The questions are reviewed by the international contractors and by participating countries and economies and are carefully checked for cultural bias. Only those questions that are unanimously approved are used in PISA. Further, before the main test there is a trial test run in all participating countries and economies. If any test questions prove to have been too easy or too hard in certain countries and economies, they are dropped from the main test in all countries and economies.”So, taking into account that the test questions are developed and revised for several times by the participating countries themselves I assume that the chosen questions more or less represent the knowledge of and are applicable to the students of participating countries.
And for your first question the official website of Pisa writes that: “PISA applies strict technical standards including for the sampling of schools and students within schools. The sampling procedures are quality assured and the achieved samples and corresponding response rates are subject to an adjudication process that verifies that they have complied with the standards set. If any country’s response rate falls below the specified threshold this is reported.” Of course, being outsiders we don’t know much about the actual sampling process and to what degree and how it is “quality assured”, I think we should consult an “insider” of the organization to find the answers to all of our questions.
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Well done, Ariya. (5/5) This post is very effective in informing us about and discussing the role of these international standardized test. Great job!
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Dear @ariyavvv,
The issue you are discussing hasn’t lost its importance although Kazakhstan celebrated the 25th anniversary of independence this year. The reason I emphasize Kazakhstan’s self-government is because conventional method of teaching is a legacy of the Soviet past when the overall ideology was to build a nation of people who think and live in the same way. Several generations had been brought up in this way, and this so deeply embedded in the people’s minds that we are seeing its casualties even today. Excitingly, there are some signs of the shift towards the “creative thinking” approach; however, only urban and the most advanced schools are enjoying this luxury.
How can we ensure that all schools irrespective of their location adopt this practice? Is financing a determining factor here?
Kind regards,
Lenera.
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Dear Ariya, this is one of the legaces from the Soviet Union; in China, we also have imbalanced education system which inclines to the rote-learning methods and unflexbible teaching mode rather than critical thinking or individual-based teaching orientation. Although there are some issues within this kind of education system, it’s merit should also not be overlooked. For instance, students have solid knowledge foundation as well as learning abilities, and these enable them to further develop their study in highly competitive best international institutions. I would like to say that the education system in Kazakhstan needs advancement and changes by learning great experinces from other countries, but the most important thing is to retain what is suitable for it’s own social and cultural context and change those impede the development of the country.
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Dear Sharapat, I agree that having a solid knowledge in different subjects as a foundation is of paramount importance. In order to understand the subject you should memorize the basic necessary rules, formulas and theories. But many institutions both in Kazakhstan and China tend to extend the amount of information required to be learnt to overwhelming degrees. The result is: students start to memorize “the words” but not the “meanings”. In today’s world where any information is accessible through internet, it will be more useful to teach how to use that available information, instead of how to memorize them.
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