International civic and citizenship education study - iccs - IEA

RQ 4 What are adolescents’ perceptions of the impact of recent threats to civil society and of responses to
these threats on the future development of that society?
Analysis is based on student comprehensions of the relationship between securing
societies and safeguarding civil liberties, and on student attitudes toward citizenship
rights. Factors located at the country level (recent developments, liberal traditions) might
be of particular importance for the analysis.
RQ 5 What aspects of schools and education systems are related to achievement in and attitudes to civics
and citizenship, including:
(a) general approach to civic and citizenship education, curriculum, and/or program content
structure and delivery?
The analysis requires additional data to be collected at the national level on curriculum
and programs as well as from reports from the school and teacher questionnaires.
Both background variables and factors related to the process of civic and citizenship
learning at the country level and the school/classroom level are therefore of particular
importance for the analysis.
(b) teaching practices, such as those that encourage higher order thinking and analysis in relation to
civics and citizenship?
Analysis will be based on data about student perceptions of and teacher reports on
instructional practices and will involve variables related to the learning process collected
from schools, teachers, and individual students.
(c) aspects of school organization, including opportunities to contribute to conflict resolution,
participate in governance processes, and be involved in decisionmaking?
The analysis requires data on student perceptions of school governance and reports
from school principals or teachers. It involves variables that relate to the opportunities
students have to participate within school and that are collected from students, teachers,
and schools.
RQ 6 What aspects of student personal and social background, such as gender, socioeconomic background,
and language background, are related to student achievement in and attitudes toward civic and
citizenship education?
The analysis will rely on student background variables, collected through the student
questionnaire and related to the individual students and the home environment. These
factors will be used to explain variation in outcome variables assessed in the test and the
student perceptions questionnaire.
The research questions played an important role in shaping the design of the study and its
instrumentation and in guiding the development of the assessment framework.
The student population surveyed includes students in Grade 8 (on average including students
who are approximately 14 years of age), provided that the average age of students in Grade 8 is
13.5 years or above. Where the average age of students in Grade 8 is under 13.5 years, Grade 9
is defined as the target population. 1 In each sampled school, intact classrooms are selected, and
all students in a class are assessed for the ICCS survey.
The population for the ICCS teacher survey is defined as all teachers teaching regular
school subjects to the students in the target grade at each sampled school. It includes only
those teachers teaching Grade 8 during the testing period and employed at school from
the beginning of the school year. Fifteen teachers are randomly selected from each school
participating in the ICCS survey.
1 An option to include Grade 9 as an additional year level is offered to countries that participated in CIVED using their
Grade 9 population and who are assessing Grade 8 in ICCS.
10 ICCS ASSeSSment FrAmework