Malaysia’s Post-PISA2012 Direction

Abstract—The programme for international student assessment (PISA) is a 3-year assessment for students aged 15 and 16 years old on the subject of Mathematics, Science and Reading. Its aim is generally to PISA stands in a tradition of international school studies by the International Association for the evaluation of educational achievement (IEA). The global world has seen the participation of OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) member countries and partner countries, and this programme is to stress that what is communicated by the international assessment organizations is just a tip of the iceberg, but participating countries are advised not to overly interpret the PISA results. Malaysia is one of the countries that subscribed to the assessment with a benchmarking of its education system. In the past 2 sessions that Malaysia had participated namely 2009 and 2012, the results were welcomed with mixed reaction. To resolve the mixed reactions of the Malaysian society, the society’s perception of PISA, particularly students aged 15 and 16 years old is necessary. A qualitative case study on the stakeholders’ concepts behind PISA showed differences. The differences were detected, and the impact of the differences was discussed.

Index Terms—Awareness, education system, ranking.

Amnah Abdullah is with the Faculty of Education (Science Education) Universiti Teknologi MARA, Selangor, Malaysia (e-mail: amnahaaa@yahoo.com).
Robert Francis Peters is with the Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Sabah, Malaysia (e-mail: rfpeters@ums.edu.my).

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Cite: Amnah Abdullah and Robert Francis Peters, "Malaysia’s Post-PISA2012 Direction," International Journal of Culture and History vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 15-20, 2015.