Scientific Literacy and Its Assessment. Analysis of pisa Standardized Tests

The subject is the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) international evaluation survey for science, also referred to as scientific literacy. The pisa programme is directed by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and analyzes student performance in standardized tests administered every three years to produce an international assessment of competences or "literacies" achieved by fifteen-year-old students all over the world. The science units of the 2000 to 2006 pisa that have been released were analyzed. Six scientific capabilities (reproduction, implementation, reflection, transference, heuristics and argumentation) were taken as the matrix. The conclusion is that pisa tests mainly require low-level scientific abilities (implementation and reflection) and gloss over mere reproduction capability. The distance is found between the overall concept of literacy proposed in the OECD DESECO report and what PISA really seems to assess in the light of the results of our analysis. According to our research, PISA seems to fragment the notion of literacy; in so doing, it moves away from its original holistic approach. When the fragmented abilities are assessed individually, they do not actually seem to show students' real school performance levels.