The Big Improvement in PISA 2009 Reading Achievements in Serbia - Improvement of the Quality of Education or Something Else?

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by jay

PISA 2009 results in Serbia show a substantial rise in reading literacy versus 2006, with an average gain of 41 points and an effect comparable to a full year of OECD schooling; the improvement ranks among the highest recorded in PISA. The paper examines likely explanations using cross-country analysis, emphasizing lower-achieving levels and suggesting traditional classroom methods focused on knowledge acquisition and reproduction. Evidence points to contextual drivers, including higher student motivation and strong official support for the PISA study, rather than broad gains in education quality.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages22

Reading Time55 min

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PISA 2009 reading improvement in Serbia

Magnitude and cross-country comparison

Teaching approach and achievement levels

Contextual factors behind the change

Reading as an educational outcome

Operationalisation and measurement approaches

Historical perspectives: behaviourism to information processing

Cognitive and metacognitive approaches

Test construction and measurement principles

Paradigm shift in educational achievement research

The Big Improvement in PISA 2009 Reading Achievements in Serbia: Improvement of the Quality of Education or Something Else? Dragica Pavlović Babić*1 and Aleksandar Baucal2 • The PISA 2009 results in Serbia show a big improvement in reading literacy compared to 2006 – the average score is 41 points higher, which is equal to the effect of a whole year of schooling in OECD countries and represents the second highest improvement ever recorded in a PISA study. In the present paper, we discuss potential reasons for such a big improvement based on analysis of the PISA 2009 reading achievements in different countries, with a special focus on countries from the same region (Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania) . The analysis shows that the largest part of the improvement was realised at lower achieving levels, suggesting that the dominant method of teaching in schools is a traditional method oriented towards the acquisition and reproduction of academic knowledge. Findings of data analysis support the conclusion that the improvement is mainly the result of certain contextual factors, such as higher student motivation and a high level of official support for the PISA study in Serbia, rather than representing areal improvement in the quality of education. Keywords: PISA, Quality of education, Reading literacy 1 Corresponding author. Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade [dpavlovi@f.bg.ac.rs](dpavlovi@f.bg.ac.rs) 2 Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade [abaucal@gmail.com](abaucal@gmail.com) Reading as an educational outcome: operationalisation and possible approaches to measurement Measurement of reading as an important educational outcome has a tradition as long as the testing of knowledge itself, having been part of school and research practice since the beginning of the twentieth century. In parallel with changes in society, the economy and culture, as well as with more intensive research into the nature of reading processes, the definition of reading has changed. Consequently, the instruments used to measure this concept have also changed and developed. In the middle of the last century, under the influence of behaviourism and later of information processing theory, the belief that reading comprehension ability is a series of discrete mental abilities that form a hierarchy was predominant. However, the research focuses of these two approaches were different: behaviourists were more involved in the structural aspects of reading (trying to answer the question as to which activities participate in reading), while the cognitive approach dealt with the functional aspects of reading processes (how activities are coordinated) . Thanks to research that originated under the influence of ideas from information processing theory (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974), we gained a plausible explanation of the role of attention in fluent reading, as well as a definition of the process of text understanding asa structure of meanings built through a series of hypotheses that the reader formulates, verifies, adopts or discards while reading. For these researchers, reading is “uncertainty” that exists in the reader, not on the page, and hypotheses are formulated in order to reduce this uncertainty. Efficiency in reading increases with the number of confirmed hypotheses and with more sub-skills being brought to the level of automation. Understanding educational outcomes, including reading, in line with these conceptions means that knowledge and skills can be broken down into components, with each component always behaving in the same way, regardless of contextual factors. In this case, in the construction of test sets there is a strict requirement that tests should be one-dimensional, i.e., that all items in a subtest measure the same characteristic, ensuring that the score has essentially the same meaning for all individuals (the assumption of universality) . Reading is seen as the

FAQs

How large was Serbia’s improvement in reading literacy from PISA 2006 to PISA 2009?

Serbia’s average reading literacy score increased by 41 points, described as equal to the effect of a whole year of schooling in OECD countries.

What do the authors suggest about the teaching method behind the improvement?

The analysis indicates that the largest share of improvement occurred at lower achieving levels, suggesting a dominant traditional teaching approach oriented toward acquisition and reproduction of academic knowledge.

What explanation does the paper favor for the PISA gains in Serbia?

The improvement is mainly attributed to contextual factors, such as higher student motivation and strong official support for the PISA study, rather than a broad improvement in overall education quality.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by jay