Although most of the interviewees believed that PISA’s impact is closely related to the changes of the process of teaching and learning, they also perceived that PISA and the related initiatives are not the only factors that brought these perceived changes in Fangshan education. For example,
SchL3 said “These changes of understanding of teaching on the one hand is influenced by national policies, on the other hand, they are definitely affected by PISA”. This indicates that factors of national context also play an
important role. According to interviewees, we could identify that these factors are mainly from national curriculum and high-stakes examinations such as Zhongkao and Gaokao. For instance, ML stated:
Now all mathematics teachers have had big changes. Through the lead of our project in addition to the implementation of the new curriculum, the changes of teachers are considerable, indeed considerable. The curriculum has been implemented in Beijing for 10 years. It started to be used in Beijing in 2007. (ML, turn48)
This indicates that besides the local PISA-motivated initiatives, the
implementation of the new curriculum is also perceived to be influential for the changes of teaching practices.
The reforms of high-stakes examinations also moderate the impact of PISA and PISA-motivated initiatives. In recent reforms, domestic high-stakes examinations for students in secondary education tend to include more texts in mathematics problems, which was widely perceived and stated by
interviewees. The local educational official said:
For example, in the exam papers of Beijing Zhongkao and Gaokao, reading demands in mathematical and scientific problems have been considerably increasing. Previously, mathematics and science problems demand relatively small amount of reading, and problem stems are usually concise. If you’ve used all the information given in one problem, you are basically solving this problem in the right way. However, now problems include a lot of redundant information. They firstly assess students’ ability of information retrieval, and also assess their ability of processing information. That is, after retrieving the information, what specific methods shall be used to process it for solving the problem. Now both Zhongkao and Gaokao in Beijing are changing. (Local education official, turn9)
This quote shows the perceived reform trend of Zhongkao and Gaokao in terms of requiring the reading ability of information retrieval. Because these examinations have this trend while the local PISA-motivated reading project has been working on promoting reading, the local educational official
attributed Fangshan’s initiatives of promoting reading to students’ improvement in Zhongkao and Gaokao. He said:
Just because we have been working on emphasising reading. Due to the exposure to PISA, the initiatives are made one step ahead of other areas. (Local educational official, turn10)
SchL1 gave another example indicating the demands of reading ability in mathematics examinations.
Since 2015, the Academic Achievement Test has required a lot of reading. There even was one mathematics problem including more than 200 words. At that time, this was quite sensational. Everyone immediately felt that reading is very important. (SchL1, turn69)
“More than 200 words” included in one problem in this high-stakes test clearly shows the growing importance of reading in mathematical problem solving, and aroused the attention of people in the field of mathematical education. This suggests that besides the PISA-motivated reading project, even mathematical teachers have been paying attention to developing students’ reading ability in mathematical teaching. Like SchL1 said, “I think (high-stakes) examinations still act as a director. How they assess (students) determines how teachers teach.” The requirements of high-stakes
examinations are still the dominant factors influencing teaching at school level.
In addition, some interviewees perceived that domestic examinations also have had other trends such as highlighting the employment of real-life contexts in problems. For example, when explaining the change in his teaching which tends to employ real-life contexts, Zhushan said:
Previously we just focused on solving mathematics problems. Students can attain a high score as long as they are good at solving problems. But, now, on the one hand, under the context of (the influence of) PISA which employs a lot of applied problems, on the other hand, examinations in Beijing also have such a trend. Actually, the change in our teaching must be caused by the
direction of examinations, by the change of examinations. (Zhushan, turn56)
From this we see that Zhushan perceived that this change in his teaching was brought by the influence of PISA as well as domestic examinations, both of which feature real-life contexts. As perceived by Zhushan, although both PISA and domestic examinations are influencing his teaching, the latter plays the decisive part in the influence. This convergence between PISA and domestic examinations was considered as a factor accounting for students’ improved performance in the subjects such as mathematics in domestic examinations. The local educational official stated:
Domestic examinations have been gradually influenced by this kind of international assessments and have valued reading and information retrieval highly. They are changing. Therefore we have benefited from the exposure to PISA. (Local educational official, turn8)