Постигнуће ученика из природних наука: главни налази, трендови и наставни програм

Abstract

In the modern world, science literacy is considered to be one of the key competencies that should be developed during education and it is emphasized that a certain degree of understanding of sciences is necessary, so that people could, make informed decisions about themselves and the world they live in. In that sense, the results of TIMSS on science achievement represent an important indicator of a science literacy of elementary school students and in that way, indirectly, they testify about the quality of part of the national education system as well as its “positioning“ in an international context. The aim of this paper is to present the main results which elementary school fourth graders in Serbia achieved on TIMSS 2015 science tests, as well as to compare achievement in two research cycles (2011–2015). The results show that our student achievement (525 points) is significantly considerably higher than the TIMSS 2015 scale average (>500), which is a positive indicator of the first-level education system in Serbia. In other words, we can make a conclusion that the goals of science teaching from the first to the fourth grade of primary school in Serbia are, to a large extent, successfully implemented. According to the average science achievement, Serbia leveled the score with numerous more developed countries in regard to their socioeconomic status and even has a better score than some of them (e.g. Belgium, Portugal, France, Cyprus). Besides, a trend of improving our student achievement in science, in comparison with the previous cycle, has been noted. It is particularly important that a significant progress has been made in the domain of more complex student cognitive skills. Namely, in comparison with 2011, our students had higher scores in solving the tasks that required the application of knowledge from science. The science results obtained from both TIMSS cycles, conducted with fourth graders in Serbia, are especially encouraging if we compare them to the results in previous international research studies at older ages (TIMSS and PISA). It turns out that students at the end of elementary school experience problems in solving complex tasks. Also, more than one-third of students at the end of elementary school education haven’t achieved a functional literacy level in the science domain. A significant progress in our student achievement in science at the end of the first-level education system obliges researchers in education to analyze potential contextual factors that contributed to that. In this way, recommendations for planning future activities for the purpose of teaching improvement, on the basis of research evidence, could be given.