The Impact of School Properties to Mathematics Literacy in the PISA 2012 Turkey Sample

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to examine the impact of school climate (teacher's focus and morale, student and teacher-related factors affecting school climate) and resources (quality of the school's educational resources, the quality of physical infrastructure) in the PISA 2012 mathematics literacy for 15 years-old students in Turkey and this paper was correlational research. Research group was consisted of 170 schools and 4848 students, which constitutes PISA 2012 from Turkey. The research was conducted mathematics literacy test, which was administered to 15-years-old students and school questionnaires, which was administered to school administrators in context of PISA 2012 Turkey. LISREL 8.8 computer program and path analysis method with robust maximum likelihood parameter estimation method was used in the data analysis. It was observed that the highest path coefficient was between school climate related teacher factors index and school climate related student factors index and the lowest coefficient between teachers focus index and school climate related teacher factor index was observed. All path coefficient in the model was founded positively and significantly. Thesecoefficients had been medium and high effect size. In addition, the fit indices for the model was shown that the model had perfect fit. In this context, it was concluded that school climate and school resources index was effective in mathematics literacy.