Article
Are Teachers Accurate in Predicting Their Students’ Performance on High Stakes’ Exams? The Case of Russia
The paper focuses on how accurate teachers may or may not be in gauging their class’academic abilities. We use a sample of classrooms in three Russian regions to identify sources of mathematics and Russian teachers’ inaccuracies in predicting their high school classes’ scores on Russian and mathematics high stakes college entrance tests (the Unified State Exam, or USE). We test the hypothesis that teachers’ perceptions of their relationship with their classes are good predictors of such inaccuracies. This is important because teachers often focus on their relationship with the class as an end in itself or as a means to engaging students. Good teacher–student relations may indeed result in more students’ learning, but perhaps not nearly as much as teachers believe. We find that both Russian and mathematics teachers make inaccurate predictions of their class’ high stakes examination results based on how they perceive their relationship with their class. Teachers who believe they have a very good relationship with the class significantly overestimate their class’ performance on the USE, and those who perceive a poor relationship, underestimate their class’ performance, although this underestimate is generally not statistically significant.
Dramatic political, socio-economic, and cultural transformation of Russia in recent decades are often compared to the reforms of Peter the Great. The ongoing reform of education, which is part of the changer, attracts international attention. There have been voices within the Czech: pedagogical public, growing in intensity in the past few years, pointing out the lack of information on the development of education in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, on the transformation of the educational system, and on the problems solved by politicians, experts, as well as school practice in the multi-ethnic and multi-national state. These problems may be of interest not only to the witnesses of the era of Soviet pedagogy and intensive work and personal contacts with its representatives, but also to the younger generation of teachers and researchers. The aim of the publication is to draw attention to education in the Russian Federation, providing the Czech educational community, professionals, and the general public with up-to-date information, as well as documenting, from a critical-analytical perspective, the development, current situation, and trends in Russian schooling.
The paper discusses recent initiatives undertaken by the Russian Government that are aimed to attract highly qualified foreign specialists to Russian higher education institutions. The authors describe obstacles that both institutions and specialists face. Best practices to attract leading scientists used in various countries are identified.
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Across the world STEM (learning and work in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) has taken central importance in education and the economy in a way that few other disciplines have. STEM competence has become seen as key to higher productivity, technological adaptation and research-based innovation. No area of educational provision has a greater current importance than the STEM disciplines yet there is a surprising dearth of comprehensive and world-wide information about STEM policy, participation, programs and practice.
The Age of STEM is a state of the art survey of the global trends and major country initiatives in STEM. It gives an international overview of issues such as:
STEM strategy and coordination curricula, teaching and assessment women in STEM indigenous students research training STEM in the graduate labour markets STEM breadth and STEM depth
The individual chapters give comparative international analysis as well as a global overview, particularly focusing on the growing number of policies and practices in mobilising and developing talent in the STEM fields. The book will be of particular interest to anyone involved in educational policy, those in education management and leaders in both schooling and tertiary education. It will have a wider resonance among practitioners in the STEM disciplines, particularly at university level, and for those interested in contemporary public policy.
The chapter focuses on STEM policies in Russia in recent years. It discusses the dynamics of STEM provision at all levels of education from primary to postgraduate, including the decline of participation in STEM disciplines, the underrepresentation of women and other trends in the Russian context. It also notes the lack of evidence for a clearcut link between STEM education and labour market outcomes for STEM degree holders. STEM policies in Russia require greater consistency, and more effective integration with other educational policies and with goals of national development.
Institutions affect investment decisions, including investments in human capital. Hence institutions are relevant for the allocation of talent. Good market-supporting institutions attract talent to productive value-creating activities, whereas poor ones raise the appeal of rent-seeking. We propose a theoretical model that predicts that more talented individuals are particularly sensitive in their career choices to the quality of institutions, and test these predictions on a sample of around 95 countries of the world. We find a strong positive association between the quality of institutions and graduation of college and university students in science, and an even stronger negative correlation with graduation in law. Our findings are robust to various specifications of empirical models, including smaller samples of former colonies and transition countries. The quality of human capital makes the distinction between educational choices under strong and weak institutions particularly sharp. We show that the allocation of talent is an important link between institutions and growth.