Examining Turkish Students' Views on the Reading Literacy Tasks of PISA 2018 in Terms of Different Variables

Abstract

The study investigates possible factors affecting Turkish students' perception of task difficulty in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018. The research data consist of the survey responses of the students who participated in the PISA 2018. The participants include 6679 15-yearold Turkish students. The dependent variable of this study is the students' views of the reading task difficulty in the PISA 2018. Independent variables are divided into two as student-level and schoollevel variables. The student-level variables include strategy use, reading format preference, time spent reading, perceived difficulty, and frequency of being online. The school-related variable is schools' digital capacity. Since the PISA sample has a nested structure, the data were analyzed using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). The analysis showed that the differences among schools predicted approximately 9.8% of the variation in students' perception of the difficulty of reading literacy tasks in PISA while the rest of the percentage was due to the differences among students. In the regression model, student-level and school-level variables as groups appeared to predict the dependent variable significantly. In the final interactive regression model, the interactions of student and school-level variables were examined, and the interaction appeared not to be a significant predictor of the dependent variable. Based on the HLM analysis, it can be argued that PISA tasks are perceived as easier in cases where schools' digital capacity increases, students find the use of strategy useful, the use of digital spaces in reading increases, the difficulty in reading and comprehension decreases, the time spent reading increases, and the frequency of being online increases.

Investigating Factors that Affect Reading Literacy Skills in PISA Turkey Sample

“…Yet another study used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to investigate variables affecting reading literacy at both student and school levels and thereby revealed the effect of classroom climate (Ertem, 2020). Another study using HLM analysis revealed that the increase in school digital capacities makes it easier to perceive reading literacy tasks (Arı & Keskin, 2021). Ma, Luo, and Xiao (2021), who employed academic self-concept and academic enjoyment as mediating variables, revealed that perceived teacher support together with these variables affected reading literacy.…”