PISA 2015 Assessment and Analytical Framework

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), created in 1997, represents a commitment by the governments of OECD countries to monitor the outcomes of education systems, in terms of student achievement, within a common, internationally agreed framework.PISA is a collaborative effort, bringing together scientific expertise from the participating countries/economies and steered jointly by their governments on the basis of shared policy interests.Experts from participating countries also serve on working groups that are charged with linking the PISA policy objectives with the best available substantive and technical expertise in the field of internationally comparable assessments.Through involvement in these expert groups, countries ensure that the PISA assessment instruments are internationally valid and take into account the cultural and curricular context of the PISA-participating countries and economies.PISA 2015 is the sixth cycle of the triennial assessment.For the first time, PISA 2015 delivers the assessments of all subjectsscience, reading, mathematics, financial literacy and the additional domain, collaborative problem solving -via computer.However a paper-based assessment instrument, consisting only of trend items, is provided for countries/economies that choose not to test their students on computer.As in 2006, scientific literacy is the main focus of this survey.The framework for assessing science was fully revised for the PISA 2015 assessment and introduces a refined notion of "knowledge about science" that has been split into two components -procedural knowledge and epistemic knowledge.In addition, the construct "Support for scientific 8