A Closer Look at Academic Achievement of Japanese Students in PISA 2000-06

October 2, 2008 6:00 PM (finished)


Hyunjoon Park

(Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania)

Date/Time October 2, 2008 6:00 PM
Location Room 549 5th floor, Akamon Sogo Kenkyuto Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo  [map]
Abstract There is a growing concern for achievement 'crisis' among Japanese students, along with the report of the recent international comparison of student achievement, PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). Although Japanese 15-year-old student recorded a comparably high average reading score in PISA 2000, they showed the largest decline in PISA 2003 among all participant countries. In PISA 2006, Japanese students maintained the score as poor as that in PISA 2003. Meanwhile, students in Korea, Japan's neighboring country, showed even an increase in their average score from the already high score in PISA 2000, resulting in the top performing country. The sudden drop in the average scores among Japanese students, especially after the implementation of educational reform in 2002, has intensified criticisms on the reform measures toward reducing academic pressure, often described as academic achievement 'crisis' debate. However, recent public interests in and discussions about the results from PISA data, which exclusively focus on national average scores, are very limited in understanding the complicated nature of student achievement. In this presentation, I provide a closer look at Japanese students' performance in PISA 2000-06 by focusing on the /distribution/ of student achievement. The presentation highlights the growing inequality of student achievement in Japan.
Bio Hyunjoon Park is a Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, and Visiting Fellow in the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo. His research interests include sociology of education, social stratification, and family in cross-national comparative perspective, focusing on Korea, Japan and other East Asian countries. His recent research has explored how educational systems mediate the ways in which family and school influence children’s achievement using large-scale international data of student achievement such as PISA. Supported by the Abe Fellowship, his current research examines educational consequences of growing up with a single parent in Japan, Korea, and the United States.