Socioeconomic Inequality between Schools and Junior School Students’ Non-academic Behavior:

A Comparative Investigation of Compulsory Education Systems Using TIMSS 2007

抄録

  While the relationship between school composition (i.e., school’s socioeconomic status) and student achievement has been investigated, these studies (e.g., Willms, 2010) focus to explain the association by addressing how school composition relates to school characteristics (e.g. classroom learning environments). To offer an additional explanation of how school composition is associated with the achievement gap, this study examines whether school composition differentiates students’ behavior, which could impact their academic achievement. For this purpose, the study compares two educational systems, the United States and Japan, since these two systems contrast with one another in terms of the degree of socioeconomic inequality between schools at the level of compulsory education; comparing these two different systems could help clarify the relationship between school-level socioeconomic disparities and students’ behavior. Given that there are large socioeconomic disparities between schools in the United States (e.g., Kozol, 2005), it could be hypothesized that there are socioeconomic compositional effect on students’ behavior, while a relatively weaker effect might be observed in Japan. Additionally, as attending private junior high schools increases the likelihood of gaining admission to competitive universities (Kariya, 2011), there would be a school-type effect on students’ behavior; those attending private schools are likely to be more engaged in schoolwork. This study therefore assesses how the different degrees of inequality between schools are related to students’ behavior in the two compulsory education systems, and if there is any difference between public and non-public sectors in terms of shaping students’ behavior in Japan.

  The data upon which the present study is based is from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2007 implemented by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). It includes a nationally representative sample of each educational system: 7377 eighth grade students in 239 schools in the United States and 4312 counterparts in 146 schools in Japan. The study creates a dependent variable which identifies who spends more than four hours watching television and videos in a normal school day, as this non-academic behavior should negatively relate to students’ engagement in schoolwork and academic performance by taking time away from academic activities. To test if this behavior is under the influence of school-level factors, four multilevel logistic regression models were constructed and analyzed for each compulsory education system, respectively.

  The results of the multilevel analyses indicate (1) School SES (socioeconomic status) influences if eighth grade students spend a substantial amount of time watching television/videos in the United States, (2) higher SES students in higher SES schools are less likely to demonstrate the non-academic behavior in the U.S., and (3) eighth grade students who attend private or national junior high schools are less likely to watch television and videos for long hours in Japan, implying the existence of a distinctive academic orientation in these privately or nationally run schools. These comparative findings suggest how socioeconomic disparities between schools and school types lead to the achievement gap at the level of compulsory education.