Education Monitoring As A Prognostic Basis For Its Strategic Development

Abstract

The authors provide an analysis of the problem solution for constructing an education reality for the purposes of strategies development based on indicators of education systems monitoring. First of all, it was necessary to form an array of key indicators as a prognostic basis for determining the strategic development of national education systems. To solve this problem, various methods were used: descriptive, comparative, temporal, correlation, prognostic, etc. As an example of the results, a table of composite indices with administrative levels of monitoring and strategic decision making is presented. The development strategy of Global Education for 2030 led to the transformation of national monitoring systems. A model of global education 2030 is also described as an example of the number of functional literacy kinds necessary for a student. The empirical part of the study is presented: a) forecasts of the levels of education based on monitoring of various types; b) categorization of monitoring indicators characterizing schoolteachers. Variable strategic development forecasts consist of indices and rankings used in the global educational space. The authors show the necessity to calculate these indices independently for federal districts and regions, for urban and rural schools, etc. Findings include certain practical recommendations for the improvement of the education systems monitoring procedures.

Keywords: Monitoringprognosticstrategicglobalindicatorindices

Introduction

If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow..

John Dewey

It is education, that is, pedagogy as an interdisciplinary science (Youngblood, 2007), that influences seriously our future. The one who comes to school in 2019 (Young et al., 2016) will finish it in 2030 and will choose the path for his/her future life. Therefore, we should start planning this future already today; otherwise, as Dewey wrote (see the epigraph), we will lose this future (as cited in Rogacheva, 2013).

In order to construct strategies for the development of education, it is necessary to take into account many factors and consider development strategies, both globally (Leask, 2014) and nationally (UNESCO, 2017). To this end, it is necessary to rely on a certain foundation, in which the results of monitoring (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2018) and examination (York, Gibson III, & Rankin, 2015). of national education (Naydenova, 2016) are used as education. It is the indicators of monitoring the education system (OECD, 2018b), that will constitute the factual predictive basis of development strategies (Dolganovskaya & Katicheva, 2014).

Proper selection of monitoring indicators, preferably objective (Rudneva & Rubcova, 2018), measured (Naydenova, 2015) and evaluated (Glebova, Kuznecova, & Shadrikov, 2012), has become a problematic goal of this study.

Problem Statement

The statement of the problem for this study was determined primarily in the framework of the designed educational space. Any educational space, including the world educational space (Rassulova, 2015), is formed every time in its own way: depending on the subject, educational environment (Janova, Adolf, & Ignatova, 2012), standards of training and assessment, curricula, qualifications of teaching and administrative staff, funding, etc.

Therefore, the problem of constructing an educational space is relevant for achieving the goals of strategic development of education declared in the world: Education 2030 (OECD, 2018a); the fourth Goal for Sustainable Development (UNESCO. Institute for Statistics (UIS), 2017); Education monitoring (Borovkova & Morev, 2004); indexes and rankings of educational systems (Indeksy I indikatory chelovecheskogo razvitiya. Obnovlennye statisticheskie dannye, 2018) and others.

The prognostic basis for planning the strategic development of education is determined by the data collected in the monitoring mode of the education system. Different monitoring indicators (observable, calculated, measurable) reflect educational reality (Naydenova, Shaposhnikova, Zianshina, & Myasnikov, 2018). The designed educational reality (Naydenova et al., 2018) is constructed as a result of selecting different types of monitoring indicators, while a separate array, which will determine the further prognostic analysis of the strategy for the development of education, is specified for this purpose. Therefore, different arrays will give different constructs of educational reality. The problem is to find something common in all these constructs, which can be considered a predictive monitoring basis for the strategic planning of the national education system development.

Consequently, the problem of constructing an educational space can be solved by integrating selected indicators of education systems monitoring.

Research Questions

The study of the multifaceted integration of global and national indicators for monitoring formal and non-formal education is assumed to be among the key research questions.

In accordance with the problem stated, the following questions were posed in order to be considered during the research:

1. What indicators will be selected for the prognostic basis? Statistically observable indicators for different levels of learning were selected as such indicators.

2. What method should form an array of indicators for the prognostic basis? As the main method, factor analysis was chosen in order to compress information and form integral constructs.

3. How will monitoring indicators be included in prognostic equations? The hierarchical linear modeling method was chosen as indicators for inclusion in the prognostic equation.

Purpose of the Study

The main objective was to develop recommendations for the formation of a set of federal monitoring indicators with a view to filling out the factual definition of strategic educational development in the country in accordance with national and international trends. First of all, the strategy for the development of global education through the international monitoring of the quality of school education was reviewed.

Since the problem and research questions required the inclusion of a factor reducing the number of indicators, one of the goals was: a) taking into account the temporal correlation between monitoring and development strategy; b) comparative analysis of global and national trends in the strategic development of pre-university education; c) a descriptive analysis of monitoring forms for building a prognostic basis.

Research Methods

The main methods for solving the questions posed were: 1) methods of working with large amounts of data and their compression by the method of principal components; 2) comparative methods, including dispersive and correlation analyzes; 3) the method of examination of the results of monitoring studies; 4) prognostic methods; 5) invariant methods of strategic forecasts.

Findings

In accordance with the purpose of the study and the theoretical and empirical research methods chosen, the following topics were considered:

1. Designed educational reality through the indicators of monitoring of education systems.

2. Strategy for the development of global education in the transformation of national monitoring systems.

3. Global trends in national strategies of different countries: comparative analysis.

4. Selection of key indicators and monitoring indicators for the construction of predictive trends.

5. Varying strategic development forecasts: indices and rankings.

Strategy for the development of global education in the transformation of national monitoring systems

The development strategy of global education for 2030 led to the transformation of national monitoring systems. The vector of transformations is determined due to the fact that planning strategic development paths, it is necessary to take into account not only factors, indices and indicators (let us call them components) of monitoring over several years, but also include risk analysis (Bebenina & Elkina, 2017). Conventionally, this can be written in two logical statements:

1. If the analysis of the monitoring components is evaluated together with possible risks, then the output indices should be analyzed together with the risks at this level of management decision making.

2. Then the factors of strategic development of education based on monitoring data are analyzed together with the risks that may arise in the future, which will lead to the definition of a specific objective development strategy without unnecessary risks arising at each stage of the CIPO model.

It turns out that it is not so much to consider the development trends, as to include analytics of possible risks (OECD, 2019).

Therefore, global and national risks are included in the monitoring.

The model of global education 2030 is presented in Fig. 1 . The student is at the center of the model and should be functionally literate in four areas.

See Full Size >

At the same time, the formation of these competencies is carried out from different subjects: parents, teachers, communities, peers.

By 2030, the concepts themselves will change. So, competences are knowledge, skills, attitudes and values. Knowledge will be subject, interdisciplinary, epistemic, procedural. Skills develop at levels: cognitive and metacognitive, socio-emotional, physical-practical. Levels of relationships and values are: personal, local, social, global.

A student should be able to create new values; take responsibility; reconcile tensions and resolve dilemmas; be a team member and be able to work independently. By the way, the student owns all kinds of literacy at the level of expectations, actions and reflection.

Virtually all economically developed countries form their 2030 strategies along the same lines.

Thus, the transformation of national monitoring should already include a number of indicators in order to build a predictive basis for finding national development strategies.

Global trends in national strategies of different countries: comparative analysis

3. Global trends in national strategies of different countries are present in different aspects. For example, a number of countries incorporate monitoring research into their strategies, including global and local risks. For example, in the post-Soviet space in Lithuania, the CIPO model was developed where priority is given to the PISA study for the purpose of examining educational achievements.

In general, national development strategies rely on national monitoring of the educational systems of past years that lack these types of literacy.

The Russian assessment of learning outcomes is substantive, as in most countries. Consequently, monitoring is substantive, and thus the strategy also remains substantive.

Global trends in the development of education are still empirically experimental in most countries. It is difficult to say that the constructed educational reality has become as stated in the global strategy.

Figure 2 shows an example of monitoring different types of different research results: international, national different ways (official monitoring through statistical observation; external - monitoring through external services; traditional - monitoring through the national general examinations and tests; independent - monitoring independent of management bodies education services (on the materials of Natalia N. Naydenova from the Russian experience of multiplex evaluation of the quality of school education).

See Full Size >

Data is given in a unified international scale of 1000 points. A single starting point for forecasting is selected for the form IV (the average score is 500).

For the other forms, prognostic equations were constructed. From this forecast, it follows that external and independent monitoring is closer to international results.

It should be noted that, while earlier the monitoring structure changed once every ten years in most countries, now the temporal changes in education systems have sharply accelerated. The national monitoring system is reviewed in some countries once in 5 years, and somewhere in every three years (Singapore, Scandinavian countries, South Korea, etc.).

Conclusion

Due to page restrictions, we defer proofs of all the results of calculations. However, the following conclusions can be drawn:

1. The education space does not fully reflect the educational reality through monitoring indicators.

2. Designed education space of the monitoring type has the properties of discreteness, length, dimension and temporality.

3. Strategies for the development of education on the predictive basis of monitoring have factual certainty.

4. Monitoring transformations should occur more often, so that the reliability and validity of the data does not become obsolete for building new strategies.

5. Indices and rankings of the international level should be independently calculated for different strata characterizing the development of education in Russia.

Acknowledgments

The study was carried out as part of the State Assignment of the Institute for Strategy of Education Development of the Russian Academy of Education No. 073-00086-19-01 for the year 2019 and for the planned period 2020 and 2021, the project “Monitoring the education system in accordance with the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of August 5, 2013 No. 662 “On monitoring the education system””.

References

1. Bebenina, E.V., & Elkina, I.M. (2017). University Rankings As A Subject And An Object Of Educational Space. DOI:
2. Borovkova, T. I., Morev, I. A. (2004). Monitoring razvitiya sistemy obrazovaniya. Chast 1. [Monitoring of the development of the education system. Part 1]. Teoreticheskie aspekty: Uchebnoe posobie. Vladivostok: Izdatelstvo Dalnevostochnogo universiteta.
3. Dolganovskaya, N. V., & Katicheva, M. G. (2014). Prognozy I strategii razvitiya obrazovaniya na sovremennom etape. Izvestiya vysshikh uchebnikh zavedeniy. Severo-kavkazskiy region [Forecasts and strategies for the development of education at the present stage. News of higher educational institutions. North Caucasus region]. Obschestvennye nauki, 6(184), 137-141.
4. Eriksson, E., Björklund Boistrup, L., & Thornberg, R. (2017). A categorisation of teacher feedback in the classroom: a field study on feedback based on routine classroom assessment in primary school. Research Papers in Education, 32(3), 316-332. DOI:
5. European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice (2018). Structural Indicators for Monitoring Education and Training Systems in Europe 2018, an internal report. European Commission 2017.
6. Glebova, L. N., Kuznecova, M. D., & Shadrikov, V.D. (2012). Monitoring kachestva vysshego pedagogicheskogo obrazovaniya [Monitoring the quality of higher pedagogical education]. Monograph. Moscow: Logos.
7. Indeksy I indikatory chelovecheskogo razvitiya. Obnovlennye statisticheskie dannye [Indexes and indicators of human development. Updated statistics] (2018). Programma razvitiya Organizacii Ob’edinennykh Nacii (PROON). Polnopravnie lyudi, Ustoichivye strany.
8. Ivanova, S.V. (2015). Reprezentaciya I interpretaciya resheniy kak poisk kompromissa v sovremennom grazhdanskom obschestve [Representation and interpretation of solutions as a search for compromise in modern civil society]. Almanakh Prostranstvo I Vremya, 9, 2.
9. Janova, M.G., Adolf, V.A., & Ignatova, V.V. (2012). Antinomy as a structuring principle of the formation of organizational and pedagogical culture of the student in the socio-cultural educational environment. Alma mater, 12, 82-87.
10. Leask, B. (2014). Internationalizing the Curriculum and all Students’ Learning. International Higher Education, 78(special issue 2014), 5-6.
11. Naydenova, I. S. (2016). Ocenka kachestva obrazovaniya v rezhime monitoringa uchebnykh dostizheniy [Assessment of the quality of education in the monitoring of educational achievements mode]. Sovremennaya pedagogika, 4.
12. Naydenova, N. N. (2015). Kachestvo obrazovaniya: globalnoe I nacionalnoe izmerenie [Quality of education: global and national dimension]. Professionalnoe obrazovanie, 6, 15-21.
13. Naydenova, N.N., Mamchenko, A.A., Shaposhnikova, T.D., Sukhin, I.G., Dolgaya, O.I., & Myasnikov, V.A. (2018). Constructing Interdisciplinary Educational Reality into Information Age. In 2018 International Conference "Education Environment for the Information Age" (EEIA-2018) (pp. 472-484).
14. Naydenova, N.N., Shaposhnikova, T.D., Zianshina, R.I., & Myasnikov, V.A. (2018). Interdisciplinary educational reality of basic education: religious and secular components. 7-th icCSBs 2018 Annual International Conference on Cognitive - Social, and Behavioural Sciences, 12-14 November 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.futureacademy.org.uk/files/images/upload/icCSBs2018_agenda&abstract_book.pdf
15. OECD (2018a). The future of education and skills: Education 2030. Retrieved from: https://www.oecd.org/education/2030/E2030%20Position%20Paper%20(05.04.2018).pdf
16. OECD (2018b). Education at a Glance 2018: OECD Indicators. OECD Publishing, Paris. DOI:
17. OECD (2019). Trends Shaping Education 2019. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/trends_edu-2019-en.
18. Rassulova, S. (2015). Mirovoe obrazovatelnoe prostranstvo: perspektivy I gorizonty [World Educational Space: Perspectives and Horizons]. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2583522
19. Rogacheva, E. Yu. (2013). Vospitanie detey v semye Jona Diyui [Education of children in the family of John Dewey]. Istoriko-pedagogicheskiy zhurnal, 2, 81-97.
20. Rudneva, T. I., & Rubcova, T. P. (2018). Vnutrivuzovskiy monitoring kachestva obucheniya [In-University monitoring of the quality of education]. Vestnik Samarskogo Universiteta. Istoriya, pedagogika, filologiya, 24(2), 70-76.
21. Scheerens, J. (2015). School Effectiveness Research. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 21, 80-85. DOI:
22. UNESCO (2017). A National Strategy for the Development of Education Statistics (NSDES). Guidelines for country-level design of the NSDES. Retrieved from: http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/national-strategy-development-education-statistics-guidelines-2017-en_1.pdf
23. UNESCO. Institute for Statistics (UIS). (2017). SDG 4 Data Digest 2017. The Quality Factor: Strengthening National Data to Monitor Sustainable Development Goal 4. Montreal: UIS.
24. York, T., Gibson III, C., & Rankin, S. (2015). Defining and Measuring Academic Success. Practice Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 20, 20.
25. Youngblood, D. (2007). Multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and bridging disciplines: A matter of process. Journal of Research Practice, 3(2), article M18 (date of access 01.12.2018). Retrieved from: http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/ article/view/104/101
26. Young, M., Ross, K., Tomporowski, P., Collins, A., Jacobs, R., Bilett, S. Lippman, L., & Schonert-Reichl, K.A. (2016). Preliminary reflections and research on Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes and Values necessary for 2030. World Bank. 2015. Incheon declaration: education 2030 - towards inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all (English). Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group.