National Instructional Policy, Classroom Instruction, and Opportunity Gap: A Cross-National Examination

• In Event: 63.085 - MTCC Roundtable Session 26
  In Roundtable Session: 63.085-12 - International Discussions on Education Issues

Abstract

Governments around the world often invoke two key policy tools—standardization of curriculum and test-based control– to equalize the learning opportunities among students. But it is still debated whether these policies can achieve the desired goal of narrower opportunity to learn gap in students’ exposure to complex classroom practice. Currently, research that can inform the discussion is limited because studies based on a single country were not able to disentangle the independent impact of these policy tools. Using data from 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) from 45 countries, this study examines how two key national instructional policies vary across nations and whether the policies contribute to more equalized exposure to different types of instructional practices across classrooms.

Author

• Yoonjeon Kim, University of California - Berkeley