Most research until now done with the PISA data is restricted to educational research. Interesting as that educational question is, the focus of this proposed European Forum is different. We will use these PISA data and other relevant cross-national data to analyse more profoundly the relationship between education and the various forms of inequality in European and other modern societies (including economy, legal systems, historical background).
This means research at least in two directions:
Analysing how and in which degree different characteristics of societies, their economies, and their educational systems influence the average educational achievements of (specific groups of) the pupils in those societies. The dependent variable in this perspective is the educational achievement of pupils and the independent variables are macro variables of those societies. In order to avoid error of aggregation, in these analyses individual characteristics of pupils, parents and schools will be intermediary variables that are being influenced, via offering opportunities and posing constraints to behaviour, by these macro-variables. Having the data of so many countries and of more than one measurement year offers the possibility of a simultaneous multi-level analysis with data of various levels (macro, meso, micro).
Analysing how and in which degree characteristics of schools and educational system deepens and softens differences in educational outcomes for various groups of pupils. The dependent variable in this perspective is the variances in educational achievement between pupils and the independent variables are the school- and parental characteristics, while the macro variables of those societies act as possible explanations of the variance between these school- and parental characteristics.
The list of possible research topics can be very long. Examples of possible testable hypotheses include:
Educational systems with a high level of parental choice (freedom of choosing a school instead of being forced to go to an assigned school in the neighbourhood) will promote competition between schools and so increase their quality and the average educational achievement, but the freedom of school choice will also be used more by highly educated parents and so increase the social composition differences between schools and deepen the differences in educational outcomes between social classes.
Pupils in ethnically more homogenous schools have higher average educational achievements than comparable pupils in ethnically less homogenous schools, because of the stronger social network among their parents and because the higher actual time spend on teaching/learning due to the lower level of non-academic problems. This is true for both native and migrant pupils.
Pupils from lower social classes and comparable migrant children are relatively better in sciences and mathematics than in reading while children from higher social classes and comparable natives are relatively better in reading than in sciences and mathematics. This relative difference in achievement in reading, sciences and mathematics related to parental social class can explain differences between countries in the percentage of university students choosing sciences and mathematics.
There exist a gap in academic achievement between children who live in the four family-forms (married, single-mother, parents and grandparents; mother & guardian), which varies cross-nationally. These academic differences between children from these four family-forms and also the cross-national variance of these differences persist after family resources and characteristics are taken into account. These countries differences in the achievement gap between children from the four family-forms can be explained by demographic characteristics (level of divorce) and national family policies (maternal and paternal leave).
Although sociological questions and economic questions will be important in this European Forum, there must be also place for analysing educational policies and the legal forms of educational systems. This is necessary, because these policies and legal forms mark the opportunities and constrain of the various educational systems. This is relevant because, as a consequence of this international benchmarking by the OECD (PISA, but also their regular reviews of the national educational systems and the annual publication ‘Education at a glance’), OECD has become an international and independent policy learning centre that confronts the national governments with their responsibility for their educational system. The EU and its institutions (for instance CEDEFOP) have not developed extensively this policy learning role, partly due to the very restricted role of the Union in educational affairs, and partly because the methodology of policy benchmaking and learning within the EU is not yet a well established technique.
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