Use and Impact of TIMSS

Jordan has participated in all TIMSS cycles since 1999, with the principal goals of evaluating the curriculum with reference to international benchmarks and assessing the capabilities of Jordanian students compared to their international peers. Policymakers have used the international results, particularly the international rankings in achievement, to compare Jordan with the world’s best performers, such as Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Korea, Japan, and Finland.

As a direct result of participation in TIMSS assessments, committees have been formed to revise the mathematics and science curricula. Released TIMSS items from previous cycles (1995, 1999, 2003, 2007, and 2011) have been used in the development of new textbooks for mathematics and science.

Following TIMSS analyses, the Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the National Center for Human Resources Development, developed teacher guides and initiated nationwide discussions and teacher training to raise awareness of the importance of the TIMSS assessment and its results. Student responses from TIMSS 1999, 2003, 2007, and 2011 were studied thoroughly and informed the preparation of teacher guides in mathematics and science. These teacher guides are being used in teacher education programs and appear to have had a positive effect on student achievement in science. These teacher guides include the following topics:

Identification of student errors on assessments, types of errors, and how errors occur
Suggested questions and tasks that may help students become aware of how errors occur
Suggested learning strategies, such as remedial tasks, that might help students deal with errors

TIMSS has played a vital role in the development of the Education Reform for the Knowledge Economy project. The results of TIMSS 2003 were used as a baseline for the project, and TIMSS 2007, 2011, and 2015 provided sets of data that helped measure changes in student achievement. TIMSS will continue providing valid and reliable data for monitoring and evaluating reform projects across time. TIMSS results have elicited a great deal of interest in Jordan from educators, policymakers, and the media and have prompted the National Center for Human Resources Development (NCHRD) to produce a series of reports related to TIMSS, which include the following:¹⁵

Performance Levels of Jordanian Eighth Grade Students in Mathematics and Science with Respect to the Availability of Educational Resources: A Comparative Study
Mathematics Teachers’ Guide Manual
Science Teachers’ Guide Manual
An Analysis of Students’ Errors in the Context of TIMSS 1999: The Case of Jordan
An Analysis of the Obstacles to Science Teaching that Affected Jordanian Students’ Performance in TIMSS 1999
A Comparison of Jordanian Educational Policies with High Achieving Countries: Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan
Personal and Family Factors Discriminating Between High- and Low-Achieving Eighth Grade Jordanian Students in TIMSS 1999
Jordanian National Report on the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study TIMSS 2011