Organization of the TIMSS 2015 Encyclopedia
The TIMSS 2015 Encyclopedia comprises two major parts: the results from the TIMSS 2015 Curriculum Questionnaires completed by the countries and benchmarking participants, and the chapters they authored.
TIMSS routinely includes a curriculum questionnaire to collect background information from each country and benchmarking participant about its mathematics and science curricula, school organizational approaches, and instructional practices at the fourth and eighth grades. The curriculum questionnaire data support the encyclopedia chapters by providing some comparative information about the participants’ educational systems and curricula that can be answered in a questionnaire format.
Each chapter was written by a TIMSS 2015 country or benchmarking participant. An important purpose of the chapters is to instill an appreciation of the uniqueness of each educational setting represented in TIMSS 2015. All the countries have the common goal of teaching their students mathematics and science, yet national and regional contexts and instructional situations can differ dramatically depending on particular country characteristics, such as resources, culture, demographics, and educational philosophies.
Together with the curriculum questionnaire data, the information provided in the countries’ chapters furnishes an important vehicle for beginning to compare and contrast the common and unique features of the country contexts and curricular goals used in teaching mathematics and science around the world.