Inequalities in Opportunity to Learn: a Within- or Between- School Issue?

• In Event: 52.020 - Proceeding Toward Justice: Understanding Aspects of Educational Equity Through International Comparative Research

Abstract

Many international comparisons of education over the past 50 years have included some measure of students’ opportunity to learn (OTL) in their schooling. Results have typically confirmed the common sense notion that a student’s exposure in school to the assessed concepts is related to what the student has learned. This project will explore opportunity to learn in PISA 2012 – which, for the first time, included several OTL items on the student survey – and its relationship with mathematics performance and socio-economic status. OTL is strongly related to both performance and status, but the strength of those relationships varies across countries. Using multiple methods, the project will tackle explore the following key questions: 1) does OTL have a significant direct effect on student outcomes? 2) How strong is the relationship between socio-economic status and OTL? And 3) How strong is the association between performance and socio-economic status differences in OTL are taken into account? Emerging evidence suggests that in many countries the organization of content exacerbates educational inequalities.

Authors

• Pablo Zoido, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

• Nathan A Burroughs, Michigan State University

• William H. Schmidt, Michigan State University