Rolf Vegar Olsen

University of Oslo · Center for Educational Measurement

The Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) collects data from representative samples of teachers and principals across the world about their practices and work conditions, school and classroom contexts, and attitudes, motivation, and satisfaction with their profession and jobs. Given the growth of participating countries, the number of...

This study provides a systematic literature review of secondary analyses of TALIS data, summarizing the past 15 years of TALIS research. The review includes a synthesis of 195 peer-reviewed journal articles, providing bibliographical information about articles as well as the scope and impact of analysis of TALIS data.

In this paper, we report on teachers’ and principals’ shared perceptions regarding beliefs, rules, trust, and encouragement of new initiatives. Collectively, these are aspects of leadership for learning (LFL) describing an overall shared climate in schools. We demonstrate how these perceptions on school climate differ across teachers and principals...

Enabling comparable scores across grades is of interest for policymakers to evaluate educational systems, for researchers to investigate substantive questions, and for teachers to infer student growth. This study implemented a vertical scaling design to numeracy tests given in grades 5 and 8 as part of the Norwegian national testing system. Our des...

This report concerns the ongoing work on realizing the renewal of the Norwegian national curriculum “Læreplanverket for Kunnskapsløftet 2020” (LK20/LK20S) at the county, municipal, and school levels. It focuses on the realization of LK20/LK20S in autumn 2021 and spring 2022, examining how schools and local authorities work in this phase. The report...

[Open-access article] A great number of studies have investigated science teaching and learning (STL) using data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Nevertheless, there is little effort to synthesise these studies. Reviewing the status of research on STL,...

Background: The present study addresses the equality of school effectiveness across schools. One central aim of compulsory education is for students to learn equally well at all schools in a country even if these schools differ in terms of student composition. However, measuring equality of learning gains independently from selection effects usuall...

The purpose of this study is to examine leadership for learning practices across the world by establishing profiles of leadership at school and country levels. Consequently, the study brings to our attention the (ir)relevance of school and system features for leadership for learning. The paper contributes to the field through the use of an extensiv...

I evalueringen av fagfornyelsen er det utviklet spørreundersøkelser til elever og lærere som skal måle hvordan læreplanverket blir innført i norsk skole. Denne rapporten beskriver utviklingen av undersøkelsene og presenterer resultatene fra den første av fire målinger.

In the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), instructional leadership is measured by the self-reports of principals on three items only. When this measure is investigated together with teacher satisfaction with current work environment, no significant associations were found in the Nordic countries participating in the TALIS 2013 roun...

This chapter provides a brief overview of national and international large-scale assessment in Norway. Embedded in a range of assessment tools that consist of mapping tests in grades 1–4, national assessments in grades 5–9, national exams at the end of lower and upper secondary school and student surveys in grades 7–11, the international large-scal...

How teacher characteristics are related to student outcomes may indicate ways to improve the effectiveness of schooling. This paper examines how consistent such relations are by utilizing TIMSS data on five teacher characteristics (teacher education major, teaching experience, professional development, preparedness and instructional quality) and tw...

Artikkelen presenterer de mest sentrale verktøyene for kvalitetsmonitorering som har blitt innført som en del av det «Nasjonale kvalitetsvurderingssystemet for grunnopplæringen» (de nasjonale prøvene, kartleggingsprøvene og elev-undersøkelsen), i all hovedsak ut fra et perspektiv om at dette er målinger som skal bidra med informasjon til skoler, sk...

Hvilke roller har eksamen i norsk grunnopplæring? I Forskrift til opplæringslova framgår det blant annet at eksamenskarakteren skal fastsette kompetansen til eleven ved slutten av opplæringen i faget. Denne artikkelen viser imidlertid at policydokumenter og policyutviklere har en rekke forventninger til hva man skal oppnå ved å ha eksamen og hva ma...

4 Fødselsmåned og skoleprestasjoner ROLF VEGAR OLSEN OG JULIUS KRISTJAN BJØRNSSON SAMMENDRAG I Norge går alle barn født det samme året på samme klassetrinn, med veldig få unntak. Dette betyr at forskjell i alder kan vaere bortimot tolv måneder på det samme trinnet. I idrett og utdanning viser eksisterende litteratur at generelt preste-rer de eldste...

1 Tjue år med internasjonale skoleundersøkelser i Norge: Bakgrunn, laeringspunkter og veien videre ROLF VEGAR OLSEN OG JULIUS KRISTJAN BJÖRNSSON SAMMENDRAG TIMSS 1995 kan regnes som den første internasjonale undersøkel-sen av sitt slag, og i de mer enn 20 årene som har gått, har vi sett en framvekst av flere og mer varierte internasjonale undersøke...

TIMSS-undersøkelsene har vist at norske elever på 4. og 8. trinn har hatt en framgang i matematikk- og naturfagprestasjoner siden 2003. Dette kom etter en tilsvarende stor tilbakegang fra 1995 til 2003. I dette kapitlet presenteres en analyse hvor endringen i gjennomsnittlig matematikkskår for 8. trinn fra 2003 til 2015 blir knyttet til endringer f...

7 Hvordan har likeverd i norsk skole endret seg de siste 20 årene? TRUDE NILSEN, JULIUS KRISTJAN BJØRNSSON OG ROLF VEGAR OLSEN SAMMENDRAG Likeverd er et viktig aspekt ved norsk skole, og forskjeller i prestasjo-ner knyttet til hjemmebakgrunn er små i Norge sett i et internasjonalt perspektiv. Likevel er det mye som tyder på at dette kanskje er i fe...

In this chapter, we compare and discuss similarities and differences in the way the two large-scale international studies, PISA and TIMSS, formulate and set descriptions of standards. Although the studies use similar methods, different decisions have been made regarding the nature and properties of the final descriptions of student achievement. In...

This article contributes to the field of reading assessment in English as a second language (L2). Few reading studies have been carried out at the upper secondary school level, and the present study provides insight into upper secondary school students' L2 reading proficiency. It examines whether such proficiency can be explained by reading profici...

This chapter examines how crucial input and process characteristics of schooling are related to cognitive student outcomes. It was hypothesized that teacher quality predicts instructional quality and student achievement, and that instructional quality in turn predicts student achievement. The strengths of these relations may vary across countries,...

This study systematically reviews literature on assessment instruments of primary and secondary school students' ICT literacy. It has three objectives: (1) Describe the development and characteristics of the assessments; (2) Present a synthesis of the facets of ICT literacy measured; and (3) Investigate to what extent information about reliability...

Framework, aims and population differs in TIMSS (8th grade study) and PISA. We see this as an opportunity to get more knowledge and insight in the educational system in different countries than one study alone could offer. Several countries participated in both studies in 2003. By comparing the countries’ ranks in the two studies it is evident t...

Den 31. august 2011 finner vi følgende overskrift på NRK sin nettside: ”Mer enn hver tredje kommune strøk på NRKs måling av skolekvalitet. Bare 19 av landets 430 kommuner fikk toppkarakterer. Dette er skole-Norge 2011” (Krekling og Heggen 2011). I artikkelen vises det til en måling av kommunenes skolekvalitet som er gjennomført av NRK og Kommunal r...

Table displaying generic items ordered by importance score and with highest prevalence of "Not applicable" in any group shown. Core items in bold.

Table displaying item per cent missing and 'Not applicable' responses per analysis group

Generic questionnaire about experiences and importance

Table displaying item scores on user experiences and importance per analysis group

Questionnaires are commonly used to collect patient, or user, experiences with health care encounters; however, their adaptation to specific target groups limits comparison between groups. We present the construction of a generic questionnaire (maximum of ten questions) for user evaluation across a range of health care services. Based on previous t...

The Programme for International Student Assessment in 2006 included several measures of students’ interest in science. These measures were constructed by combining information from several items where students are asked to respond to statements along Likert scale categories. Since there is evidence for Likert scales providing culturally biased coun...

The Psychiatric Out-Patient Experiences Questionnaire. This document contains the complete questionnaire with the 11 items and response scales translated to English. This version does not reflect the original layout of the questionnaire.

The Psychiatric Out-Patient Experiences Questionnaire (POPEQ) is an 11-item core measure of psychiatric out-patients experiences of the perceived outcome of the treatment, the quality of interaction with the clinician, and the quality of information provision. The POPEQ was found to have evidence for reliability and validity following the applicati...

Accompanying the rise in the number of working parents is a growing demand for after-school care schemes for children. After-school care schemes, in addition to school, provide pupils with more learning opportunities than the experiences that school provides. The hypothesis is that after-school care schemes offer a better knowledge-basis for learni...

Helsedirektoratet

This study demonstrated that a less scientific worldview predicted health science (HS) students' positive attitude towards complementary-alternative medicine (CAM), independently of important background characteristics as gender, pre-college science immersion, age, and type of HS education of the students. A total of 473 students in their final 3rd...

This chapter argues that PISA is more than a driver for policy decisions in many countries. The study also provides unique data with the potential to engage educational researchers across the world in conducting a range of secondary analyses. The first section of the chapter describes how the primary purpose of such studies in general has gradually...

The present article presents a systematic overview of primary and secondary research perspectives related to the large-scale international studies like PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study). Firstly, the primary purpose for these studies is discussed, and it is descri...

This chapter presents the analysis of the so-called item-by-country interactions for the cognitive items in the domain mathematical literacy in PISA 2003. By using cluster analysis the aim is to establish whether it is reasonable to speak of a distinct Nordic profile of achievement in mathematics as this is operationalised in PISA. The analyses pre...

Correspondence to r.v.olsen@ils.uio.no ABSTRACT The cognitive items covering the domain of scientific literacy in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) are explored through a cluster analysis of the item p-value residuals. Such residuals are often referred to as item-by-country interactions. The analysis clearly indicates distin...

is a research fellow at the Department of Teacher Education and School Development at the University of Oslo. He is in the process of completing his Phd thesis. In his work he is particularly concerned about how the data in large scale international comparative assessments, such as PISA and TIMSS, may be used in secondary analysis to add-ress resea...

In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) the items are organised in small clusters relating to the same stimulus material (called ‘units’). Homogeneity analysis (HA) is used to develop a detailed description of the relationship between all the items in one unit, using the categorical information available in the PISA data. The m...

The previous chapter dealt with the development of the relative achievement profiles for countries across all the items within the domain of mathematical literacy in PISA 2003. Analyses of the overall pattern in these profiles indicated that the Nordic countries' profiles were relatively strongly correlated. Furthermore, the analysis also revealed...

The study reported in this paper is a survey (n=236) that examines how upper secondary students (18-19 years old) in Norway come to terms with the wave-particle duality as presented as part of a short introduction to quantum physics. The main conclusion is that this concept is poorly understood. Some students demonstrate clear and explicitly formul...

The main issue addressed in this article is that there is much to learn about students' knowledge and thinking in science from large-scale international quantitative studies beyond overall score measures. Response patterns on individual or groups of items can give valuable diagnostic insight into students' conceptual understanding, but there is als...