engleski

Time Spent in School: Does it Count?

When trying to improve the quality of education and raise students’ achievements, some policy makers suggest that students spending more time in school could help them accomplish better school results. Research differentiates between instructional and non-instructional time spent in school. Instructional time is devoted to tutoring, while non-instructional time is used for organizational or administrative activities, classroom management and discipline. There is a limited body of research that studies the association between time spent in school and students’ achievement and the results are somewhat conflicted. In the last few years, comprehensive educational reform in Croatia has started a lively debate about whether students spend enough time in school. Therefore, the goal of this research is to examine the association between time spent in school and cognitive as well as non-cognitive variables. The analysis were done by using the TIMSS 2015 and TIMSS 2019 dataset. The participants of the TIMSS 2015 and TIMSS 2019 in Croatia were the 4th grade students, hence the study was focused on this age group. As a dependent cognitive variable, students’ achievement in math and science were taken and calculated as a test score on the TIMSS 2015 and TIMSS 2019. Students’ sense of school belonging and student bullying were used as non- cognitive dependent variables. Since the TIMSS results do not include data about total time spent in school (both instructional and non- instructional time), only the instructional time was used. Data were analyzed by using regression analyses in R intsvy package made specifically for the international education surveys such as TIMSS. In both years, 2019 and 2015, multiple regression models weren’t significant meaning there is no connection between total instructional time and used measures. Since there is a very limited scientific evidence on this topic when it comes to Croatian population, the insights from this study would be very helpful in shaping educational policy and planning especially if it is taken into account that curriculum reform is going on.

TIMSS, Policy, Instructional time, Regression analyses

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