Jagiellonian Digital Library contains 900 722 digital objects
- In 1999, as a result of education system reform, a new type of lower secondary school, called “gymnasium”, was introduced in Poland. The main objective of introduction of gymnasium was to equalize education opportunities to rural youth, improve the level of education and extend general education by one year. The reformers foresaw gymnasiums as an independent school, located in new, well-equipped buildings, or as schools functioning alongside existing secondary schools. After 16 years of operation, four institutional models of gymnasium evolved: independent gymnasium, gymnasium together with a primary school with either the same or more narrow catchment area, and gymnasium together with upper secondary school. The article investigates differences in the organizational characteristics for each model of gymnasium, educational outcomes from different types of school, and their spatial distribution.
- In 1999, as a result of reforms of the education system, a new type of lower secondary school, called gymnasium, was introduced in Poland. The main objectives of introducing the gymnasium were to equalize the educational opportunities of rural youth, improve the level of education and extend general education by one year. The reformers envisioned gymnasiums as an autonomous school, located in new, well-equipped buildings, or as schools functioning alongside existing secondary schools. After 16 years of operation, four structural models of gymnasiums evolved: autonomous gymnasium, aggregate gymnasium in a complex with a primary school, gymnasium in a complex with a primary school having the same catchment area, and gymnasium with upper secondary school. The article investigates the differences in the organisational characteristics for each model of gymnasium, educational outcomes from different types of school, and their geographic distribution. Results show that even though gymnasiums in a complex with an upper secondary school attain on average the best results on the gymnasium completion exam, the highest scores in teaching effectiveness are achieved by gymnasiums in complexes with a primary school having the same catchment area.
- In a reading crisis it is necessary to think about how to encourage young people to be excited about literature. The article presents project-based learning (PBL) as an interesting teaching method which can make reading an unforgettable experience for the student. The teacher in PBL creates a problem scenario to encourage student actions and motivates creative research. The student has the opportunity to experience being a scholar discovering new meanings and inter-textual references. One of the most demanding aspects of PBL is to pose the question that will be the starting point for the project.
- In his text published in Edukacja, 141(2), 2017 („Education reform and inequality: fifteen years of new lower secondary schools in Poland”), Zbigniew Sawiński analyses data from the 2000 to 2012 editions of the OECD PISA study and argues that lower secondary school reform has not reduced educational inequalities in Poland. The importance of students’ social origin remained at the same level as before the reform, the impact of social origin on the choice of type of secondary school remained the same, and an increasing differentiation of lower secondary schools did not lead to an increase in educational inequalities. I present methodological arguments and the results of a re-analysis of PISA data, indicating changes in wider educational inequalities. Between 2000 and 2012: (a) the strength of association in the performance of 15-year-olds with the socio-economic status of students’ families did not change, but (b) the variation of results decreased, which was mainly due to the improved performance of the lowest performing students; (c) the differences between students of high and low socio-economic status decreased; (d) the influence of social origin on the choice of the type of upper secondary school decreased. The effects of socio-economic status on upper secondary school choice is largely direct: it is not mediated by the educational achievements of students. The commentary also highlights the complexity of lower secondary school reform, which was not limited to the introduction of such schools. I indicate the role of factors that make it difficult to interpret the results of the reform in causal terms – particularly the role of unobserved variables related to the changes in the learning environments of subsequent cohorts of students.
- In his text published in EDUKACJA („Polish lower secondary schools in the face of social inequalities” Edukacja, 135(4), 2015), Zbigniew Sawiński argues that based on the analyses of data from the 2000 to 2012 editions of the OECD PISA study, lower secondary school reform has not reduced educational inequalities in Polish education. The importance of students’ social origin remained at the same level as before the reform, the impact of social origin on the choice of type of secondary school remained the same, and an increasing differentiation of lower secondary schools did not lead to an increase in educational inequalities. The article presents methodological arguments and the results of a re-analysis of PISA data, indicating changes in wider educational inequalities. Between 2000 and 2012: (a) the strength of association in the performance of 15-year-olds with the socio-economic status of students’ families did not change, but (b) the variation of results decreased, which was mainly due to the improved performance of the lowest performing students; (c) the differences between students of high and low socio-economic status decreased; (d) the influence of social origin on the choice of the type of upper secondary school decreased. The effects of socio-economic status on upper secondary school choice is largely direct: it is not mediated by the educational achievements of students. The polemic also highlights the complexity of the so-called lower secondary school reform, which was not only limited to the introduction of such schools. The role of other factors is indicated, which makes it difficult to analyse the results of lower secondary school reform in terms of cause and effect – particularly the role of unobserved variables in the PISA study on changes in the learning environment of subsequent cohorts of study participants.
- In longitudinal data, changes in constructs over time can only be sensibly interpreted if the measured variables are assumed to be invariant across time. This article uses the empirical example of The Perceived Peer Integration Questionnaire (PPI) and three rounds of the nationwide study on School conditions of education effectiveness (N = 4349) to illustrate the use of structural equation modeling to systematically test the measurement invariance of the bifactor model across time. The results prove that the PPI questionnaire is a reliable tool; it is substantially one-dimensional, with a bifactor structure, a longitudinally invariant measurement: configural, metric and scalar, but not strict. We can therefore assume that even though the factor patterns, size of factor loadings and thresholds do not differ significantly in successive editions of the study, the level of reliability of the measurement cannot be considered invariant over time. A lower level of measurement reliability was recorded for grade 3 than for grades 5 or 6. The article also shows the consequences of ignoring the assumptions relating to longitudinal invariance on the results of the statistical analysis.
- In many countries, including Poland, attention has been focussed on teacher training and in-service training for the teaching of mathematics over recent years. Research has been initiated to identify the relationship between teacher competence and knowledge and skills of their students. This article reviews research conducted in different European countries.
- In Polish lower secondary schools biology, chemistry, physics and geography are taught as four separate subjects. School authorities however, can provide lessons during which two or more subjects are taught together. This is known as integrated teaching. A qualitative survey, based on focus group interviews (FGI) and individual in-depth interviews (IDI), was executed to determine how familiar teachers and heads of school were with the idea of integrated teaching, their attitudes towards it and obstacles that hamper its implementation. Results indicate that integrated science teaching is practically absent from Polish lower secondary schools. Although they often had the opinion that all science subjects should be grouped together, respondents in most cases could not imagine introducing regular lessons covering material from more than one subject into lower secondary schools. They perceived too many organizational, financial and content-related barriers, which, in their opinion, made it impossible to integrate science teaching at this level.
- In the literature, social return to education is defined as the sum of human capital return and external return. The novelty of this study is that it provides an international comparison of external return to education. Many authors claim that the social return rate exceeds the pure technical rate of return by a considerable margin. However, measurement of social return is challenged methodologically and by data problems. The approach employed in this study is based on comparative advantage theory which allows control for potential endogeneity and self-selection into different streams of education. External return was found to be positive in all European countries although magnitudes varied. The external return was greater in smaller economies where there was a smaller proportion of highly educated people.
- In the text, the question of inter-generational transmission of cultural heritage is addressed, with the focus on the role played by the school in that process. Through an analysis of the national educational programme, an attempt is made to reconstruct the role of national education policy in the framework. It is pointed out that official recommendations constitute only one element of the broadly defined discourse that shapes the individual, social and cultural identity of an adolescent. There-fore, an attempt is made to determine the position of the official discourse among other messages reaching the student and to assess the appeal of the concept as presented by schools in context of other narrations. Educational experiences relevant to the introduction of cultural tradition over the last forty years are referred to throughout the text and approaches accepting the role of a student as a subject creating their own identity are highlighted. Given all those observations, emphasis is placed on the role played in the education process by narrative concepts that help to explain the world.
- In this article an analysis concerning the efficiency evaluation of teaching and conducting research is reported. Thirty one public higher education institutions in Poland were studied using the nonparametric DEA method in the period 2001-2008. The results of teaching were measured according to the number of full-time and part-time graduates while the results of research activities were assessed by the number of publications, citations and value of research grants. The scores of teaching and research efficiency were negatively correlated which can indicate a tradeoff between teaching and research activities.
- In this article basic types of psychometric models useful in diagnostic educational measurement are presented. Particular attention is paid to a new measurement category for Polish educational psychometric models, referred to as statistical diagnostic models or cognitive diagnostic models. One of the cognitive diagnostic models: DINA was described and applied to Polish examination data (the mathematics part of the upper secondary mathematical-science exam). The article shows the benefits and limitations of the approach as an educational diagnostic measurement.
- In this article, we discuss the gender differences in the predictive validity of students’ Matura results. We use the achievement indicators (school grades, grade point average and standardized exam results) from lower secondary school as predictors of success on the Matura exams. Due to a number of psychological, socio-cultural and other factors, achievement indicators may function differentially according to gender. Thus, we hypothesize that the predictive validity itself may differ for girls and boys. We analyzed two cohorts of students – the first one took the exam at the end of lower secondary school in 2011 and the Matura in 2014, the second one took its exams in 2012 and 2015. We conducted the analysis using hierarchical linear modeling and ability level estimated within the IRT paradigm. The results show the differential functioning of achievement indicators according to gender and domain tested (mathematics and literacy). Combining exam results and school grades is the best strategy to predict the Matura’s results; however, the differences in the predictive validity between girls and boys is negligible.
- In this paper math anxiety and its consequences are characterized. Math anxiety is an important factor influencing math achievement. This specific type of anxiety is relatively independent of trait anxiety. When highly math anxious individuals solve math problems, their working memory capacity is restricted and their cognitive inhibition mechanisms are impaired. In the long-term, highly math anxious individuals avoid career pathways related to math. Math anxiety is also related to lower math achievement. Importantly, math anxiety is not equivalent to low math ability. Interventions aimed at reducing math anxiety lead to improvement in math achievement. It is worth noting that pre-service elementary school teachers are characterized by very high math anxiety, which may then be transferred to their pupils.
- In this study – based on a Polish nationwide, representative sample of third grade primary school pupils – we analysed the relationships between position within the peer network, its structural features (cohesion, hierarchy) and preferences for heterophily (PH), i.e. the frequency of choosing children of the other sex as liked. The analysis used two-part multi-level modelling. The results indicate that: (1) PH is relatively rare; (2) girls have a slightly higher PH level than boys; (3) PH is associated with a low position within peer networks among boys but not among girls; (4) the impact of network density and centralization (network measures at the class level) on PH is not consistent as it varies depending on whether the occurrence or intensity of PH is taken into account and it additionally differs for boys and girls. The article discusses potential changes in the functions performed by PH during primary school.
- Inequalities in education are so deeply embedded in social stratification that even far-reaching school reforms are not able to weaken the influence of social origin on school achievements. The aim of this article is to verify whether the education reform, which in Poland established a new type of 3-year lower secondary school (gimnazjum), simultaneously equalised the chances of students from different social backgrounds at the transition from lower to upper secondary school. All hypotheses were tested using PISA data from the years 2000–2012, which covered the period before and after school reform in Poland. In case of the first hypothesis, which concerned changes in the impact of social origin on student’s performance in the last year of the new schools, i.e. a year before transition to upper secondary school, PISA data clearly demonstrated that after the reform, there was no significant decrease in correlations between socio-economic status of students and their results in three PISA domains: mathematics, reading and science. In case of the second hypothesis, which was directly focused on social selections to upper secondary schools, PISA data did not confirm that anything changed in this respect after the reform. The third hypotheses addresses the problem of the growing differences among schools in terms of their performance. During the fifteen years since the reform, new schools started to diversify more and more, especially in large cities. PISA demonstrates, however, that this diversification did not perpetuate social inequalities, but rather resulted from competition among schools in the quality of instruction. The latter result was supported by PISA data from eight European countries where students, as in Poland, attend schools which are not divided into tracks. Between 2003 and 2012, growing differences among schools was observed in most of these countries, but in none of them was it accompanied by growing inequalities in education.
- Item response theory (IRT) is a family of statistical tools used to model relationships between item response and student ability. IRT models achieve this by parameterisation of item properties and distribution of the ability variable among students. This article presents a general introduction to the unidimensional IRT model, the most commonly used for dichotomously scored items (1PLM, 2PLM, 3PLM). Polytomously scored items and student ability estimation are also described. This article aims at introducing the reader to the technical aspects of IRT modelling in educational measurement and presents a range of practical applications. The article describes the analysis of complex research designs, test linking and equating, adaptive testing and item mapping as examples.
