ZIB’s scientific work focuses on conducting the PISA study in Germany. The research institute also addresses further aspects related to PISA and carrying out research projects with a general interest in ensuring the quality of the educational system.
To sum up, the ZIB’s current research programme can be divided into three areas, each covering different educational research aspects, which nonetheless are closely intertwined:
Educational monitoring
This programme area includes the implementation and evaluation of PISA studies in Germany. The ZIB also participates at international level in the preparation of PISA and enhances the study with national extensions like PISA Plus.
Work is currently underway in this area on the follow-up to PISA 2018➚ and the preparation of PISA 2022. In addition, ZIB is currently participating in the preparation of the international PISA questionnaires under the leadership of DIPF.
School and teaching research
This area is aimed at identifying the framework conditions of schools and teaching with a positive effect on students’ learning success.
These currently include an investigation of school conditions and their effects on student performance, as well as the PISA-Ceco project, which examines teaching with regard to various quality characteristics. Furthermore, secondary analyses of various data sets are being used to investigate the effects of teacher competence on pupils.
Methodological research
This programme area is devoted to the question of how the collection and evaluation of data from international comparative assessments can be optimised to achieve the best possible analysis. It may well be that these methodological issues relate to all other research areas.
Currently, this includes studies on mode effects in PISA 2018, on the handling of missing data, on processes in the processing of distributed information, and on methodological challenges in estimating trends and cross-sectional country comparisons in school achievement studies.