Scientific Reasoning, School Achievement and Gender: a Multilevel Study of between and within School Effects in Finland

Abstract

The relationships between reasoning and school achievement were studied taking into account the multilevel nature (school- and class-levels) of the data. We gathered data from 51 classes at seven schools in metropolitan and Eastern Finland (N = 769, 395 males, 15-year-old students). To study scientific reasoning, we used a modified version of Science Reasoning Tasks, tapping control-of-variable schemata. Analyses were conducted by MLwiN2.10 multilevel modelling. The present results showed that the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) of schools for scientific reasoning is 7% and that the corresponding ICC of classes is 10%. Whereas the first finding confirms earlier PISA results, the second finding provides new insights into class variation within schools. In practice, class composition seems to be an efficient solution to meeting the differing needs of individual students.

Keywords:

• scientific reasoning
• GPA
• gender
• multilevel

Notes

¹OECD Programme for International Student Assessment.

²Ninety-five percent of the classes had a slope between –0.24 and +0.12 [formula: z = 0.488 ± 1.96*sqrt 0.137]. In approximately 9% of classes, boys were better than girls [z = 0.488/sqrt 0.137 = 1.32, in which 0.488 indicates the fixed gender effect and 0.137 the between-class variance in the slopes. From the z value table: z = 1.32 shows a value of 0.9066. 1–0.9066 = 0.093]. The lower limit of –0.24 indicates effect of boys, and effect for boys was rather small, only a 0.24 increase in GPA compared to girls, for whom the upper limit indicates a 1.2 number increase in GPA.