Svein Lie

University of Oslo · Department of Educational Research

TIMSS Advanced 2008 is an international comparative study, and deals with examining student achievement in mathematics and physics in the final year at upper secondary school. The theme of this article is to look at how Norwegian and Swedish students performed in physics in 2008 compared to the study conducted in 1995. The results from the TIMSS Ad...

This article reports from a computer-based assessment of scientific literacy. The study was implemen- ted in Norway in the period from March to June 2005 by the use of 6 carry-in laptops. In total, 315 15- year old students participated. All students did a one hour paper-based test and a one-hour computer- based test. In addition to the cognitive r...

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...

This article deals with 15‐year‐old students’ tendencies to consider a future science‐related career. Two aspects have been the focus of our investigation. The first is based on the construct called ‘future science orientation’, an affective construct consisting of four Likert scale items that measure students’ consideration of being involved in fu...

The aim of the present contribution is to investigate similarities and differences of strengths in science competences between countries, based on TIMSS 2003 data. Analyses are based on systematic investigation of patterns of p values for individual science items. Hierarchical cluster analysis was applied to establish meaningful groups of countries...

The TIMSS (Third International Mathematics and Science Study) tests have not only an achievement aspect ("How much do they know?") but also an important diagnostic aspect ("What do they know?"). The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how the diagnostic perspective can be brought into focus when analysing the results of individual TIMSS items. In a...

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...

Developing the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) Advanced 2008 Assessment Frameworks was a collaborative venture involving mathematics and physics experts from around the world. The document contains two frameworks for implementing TIMSS Advanced 2008--one for advanced mathematics and one for physics. It also contains an...

A computer-based assessment of scientific literacy was implemented using laptop PCs. All students took a one hour paper-based test and a one-hour computer-based test. No statistically significant gender difference is found for the paper-based test, while a substantial gender difference in favour of boys is established for the computer-based test. T...

This article presents and discusses changes in science competency in the period from 1995 to 2003 in the Nordic countries based on analyses of data from PISA and TIMSS. One central feature of the PISA and TIMSS surveys is to study changes in students' competency over time in absolute terms. Some items are kept secure from cycle to cycle, and based...

In this paper the two international comparative studies IEA TIMSS and OECD PISA have been discussed by comparing their similarities and differences. A number of examples have been presented to demonstrate how findings in various areas are relevant to help improve science education. Focus are on students’ conceptual understanding, gender and school...

In this paper we have set out to search for similarities and differences between the Nordic countries concerning patterns of competencies defined as scientific literacy in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. The first part focuses on gender differences concerning the two types of competencies, understanding of scientifi...

In this chapter we describe some characteristic features of the TIMSS science results as seen from a Nordic perspective, in particular; from a Norwegian one. Four of the five Nordic countries participated in TIMSS: Iceland and the three Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. (Finland did not take part, but participated as the only Nor...

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...

The main goals of international assessment projects like TIMSS are to establish reliable and valid scores for achievement that can be compared between groups and related to various background and context variables. In addition, as we demonstrate here, the detailed item-by-item achievement results from TIMSS 1995 provide an opportunity for a closer...

The aim of the present contribution is to investigate similarities and differences of strengths in science competences between countries, based on TIMSS 2003 data. Analyses have been based on systematic investigation of patterns of p-values (percentage correct) for individual science items. Hierarchical cluster analysis has been applied to establis...