Aims and objectives

 

Aims of the Project

 There are three main aims of the project:

  1. Identifying educational effectiveness factors, i. e. teacher and school variables important for explaining pupils’ mathematics and science achievement;
  2. Giving individual school feedback about school’s value added – school’s contribution to pupil achievement after controlling for pupil background factors;
  3. Creating and implementing professional development programs and materials for teachers and educators in order to improve their teaching practice.


Main activities

The central part of this project is educational effectiveness research in 125 elementary schools in Serbia which participated in TIMSS 2011 study. Research findings are drawn from the analyses of the relationships between 4th grade pupils’ TIMSS 2011 achievement results and these pupils’ final exam achievement in 2015, as well as multitude of data about teaching, schools and pupil background variables, which were gathered from pupils`, their parents` and teachers` questionnaires. The project has very strong application aspects, since every school will receive an automated individual school performance feedback, which has been possible by utilizing and improving already existing SPF system. Also, every school will receive the Handbook on educational effectiveness handbook, so the school staff can improve their teaching and school practices. Finally, the professional development programs with specially developed materials were offered to 240 teachers and educators from 36 Serbian primary schools, to 40 teachers from 20 Belgian primary schools, and to 60 teachers from 20 primary schools in Cyprus.

Apart from aiming to help schools involved in this project in the ways described above, the project aspires to test, refine and validate the SPF system and dynamic model of educational effectiveness in order to make them applicable in diverse educational settings. It also intends to make more visible the potential of the EER to depart academic community and improve the real schools. Finally, the goals of this project are to advocate for the benefits of EER results and applications with education policymakers, in order to make the outputs of this project more noticeable and sustainable.