Engagement and achievement of 15 year olds in PISA 2015 across EU member states
Non-traditional competences such as perseverance, effort and engagement are increasingly recognized as strong predictors of young people’s educational attainment and future life outcomes. The main purpose of the PISA2015-logfiles study is to gather sound empirical evidence that can inform public policy aimed at fostering youths’ non-cognitive competences and educational performance in the European countries. The analysis is carried out using Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 data. In its 2015 edition, PISA was for delivered the first time as a computer-based assessment, providing the research community with an unprecedented opportunity to investigate individuals’ non-cognitive competences and learning strategies. The computer-produced information (log-files) provide new – and possibly more reliable – measures of individuals’ non-cognitive competences as compared to the traditional measures based on self-reports. The importance of the study does not lie only in the methodological innovation in how non-cognitive competences are measured. The main, substantive contribution of the study is the systematic examination of the determinants of non-cognitive competences across European countries. More precisely, the policy relevance of the study lies in establishing the role played by the most prominent factors of education inequality (i.e. social background, gender, and migration background), and in identifying the main school-level and education system factors that foster non-cognitive skillsets in the young population. PISA2015-logfiles is a study funded by European Commission – DG for Education and Culture (EAC) Directorate A – Policy Strategy and Evaluation Unit A4 – Evidence-based Policy and Evaluation.