Staff View: Mind the gap: What explains Malaysia’s underperformance in Pisa?

Mind the gap: What explains Malaysia’s underperformance in Pisa?

East Asia's phenomenal economic rise has been attributed to its early investment in human capital. While countries such as South Korea and Singapore dominate in international student assessments, other countries from the region (e.g. Malaysia) lag far behind despite heavy spending in education....

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Main Authors:	Perera, Liyanage Devangi H., Asadullah, M. Niaz
Format:	Article
Published:	Elsevier 2019
Subjects:	HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform L Education (General)
Online Access:	http://eprints.um.edu.my/23759/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2018.08.010
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id	my.um.eprints.23759
record_format	eprints
spelling	my.um.eprints.237592020-02-12T02:57:03Z http://eprints.um.edu.my/23759/ Mind the gap: What explains Malaysia’s underperformance in Pisa? Perera, Liyanage Devangi H. Asadullah, M. Niaz HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform L Education (General) East Asia's phenomenal economic rise has been attributed to its early investment in human capital. While countries such as South Korea and Singapore dominate in international student assessments, other countries from the region (e.g. Malaysia) lag far behind despite heavy spending in education. This paper assesses student performance in mathematics, science and reading in Malaysia vis-à-vis Korea and Singapore by examining the relative contribution of individual, family background, school, teacher and institutional factors in explaining between-country test score differences. Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis is performed using data from the 2012 round of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to determine how much of the between-country test scores gap can be explained by observed family and school specific characteristics. Our results demonstrate that while socio-economic and school specific factors matter, more than half of the achievement gap between the two high performers and Malaysia remains unexplained even after accounting for the contribution of those factors. We conclude by highlighting policy, institution and culture related explanations for this unexplained gap. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd Elsevier 2019 Article PeerReviewed Perera, Liyanage Devangi H. and Asadullah, M. Niaz (2019) Mind the gap: What explains Malaysia’s underperformance in Pisa? International Journal of Educational Development, 65. pp. 254-263. ISSN 0738-0593 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2018.08.010 doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2018.08.010
institution	Universiti Malaya
building	UM Library
collection	Institutional Repository
continent	Asia
country	Malaysia
content_provider	Universiti Malaya
content_source	UM Research Repository
url_provider	http://eprints.um.edu.my/
topic	HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform L Education (General)
spellingShingle	HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform L Education (General) Perera, Liyanage Devangi H. Asadullah, M. Niaz Mind the gap: What explains Malaysia’s underperformance in Pisa?
description	East Asia's phenomenal economic rise has been attributed to its early investment in human capital. While countries such as South Korea and Singapore dominate in international student assessments, other countries from the region (e.g. Malaysia) lag far behind despite heavy spending in education. This paper assesses student performance in mathematics, science and reading in Malaysia vis-à-vis Korea and Singapore by examining the relative contribution of individual, family background, school, teacher and institutional factors in explaining between-country test score differences. Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis is performed using data from the 2012 round of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to determine how much of the between-country test scores gap can be explained by observed family and school specific characteristics. Our results demonstrate that while socio-economic and school specific factors matter, more than half of the achievement gap between the two high performers and Malaysia remains unexplained even after accounting for the contribution of those factors. We conclude by highlighting policy, institution and culture related explanations for this unexplained gap. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd
format	Article
author	Perera, Liyanage Devangi H. Asadullah, M. Niaz
author_facet	Perera, Liyanage Devangi H. Asadullah, M. Niaz
author_sort	Perera, Liyanage Devangi H.
title	Mind the gap: What explains Malaysia’s underperformance in Pisa?
title_short	Mind the gap: What explains Malaysia’s underperformance in Pisa?
title_full	Mind the gap: What explains Malaysia’s underperformance in Pisa?
title_fullStr	Mind the gap: What explains Malaysia’s underperformance in Pisa?
title_full_unstemmed	Mind the gap: What explains Malaysia’s underperformance in Pisa?
title_sort	mind the gap: what explains malaysia’s underperformance in pisa?
publisher	Elsevier
publishDate	2019
url	http://eprints.um.edu.my/23759/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2018.08.010
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score	13.211869

Mind the gap: What explains Malaysia’s underperformance in Pisa?

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