Searching for the impact of national culture dimensions on student achievement: implications for educational effectiveness research

ABSTRACT

To explore the wider educational environment included in the dynamic model of educational effectiveness, this paper reexamines the association between student achievement and two national culture dimensions: Monumentalism-Flexibility and Collectivism-Individualism. Using Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 data of 317,127 students, 12,058 schools, and 41 countries, we evaluated three-level regression models controlling for students’ socioeconomic status, gender, and grade; school’s average socioeconomic status; and countries’ wealth. The results of the multilevel regressions show significant negative associations of the two culture dimensions with student achievement in mathematics, science, and reading. However, our models indicate that Monumentalism-Flexibility is a better predictor of student achievement in mathematics and science, and that there is variation in effect sizes across domains. Implications for educational effectiveness research are drawn.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational effectiveness research
• national context
• cultural values
• multilevel modeling
• educational outcomes
• international large-scale studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The positive correlations are due to a reversed scale (Flexibility-Monumentalism) used in Minkov, Bond, et al. (2018).

2 https://ucyweb.ucy.ac.cy/eerucy/en/material/research-material

Additional information

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 (2014-2020) under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 765400.

Notes on contributors

Ana María Mejía-Rodríguez

Ana María Mejía-Rodríguez completed her doctoral studies at the Department of Education of the University of Cyprus and is now a research analyst at the IEA Hamburg. Her main research interests are in the area of educational effectiveness research and international large-scale assessments.

Leonidas Kyriakides

Leonidas Kyriakides is Professor of Educational Research and Evaluation at the Department of Education of the University of Cyprus. His main research interests are in the area of educational effectiveness and improvement and especially in modeling the dynamic nature of educational effectiveness and in using research to promote quality and equity in education.