Japanese classrooms scored higher—and were less variable—than US
or German classrooms.
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Distribution of Mathematics
Achievement Scores among the Videotaped Classrooms
The graphs at the left show the results of the TIMSS mathematics achievement
test for the eighth-grade classrooms included in the video study. Bars
indicate the percentage of classrooms whose average scores fell within
the range indicated. The top panel shows the distribution of German scores,
the middle, Japanese, and the bottom panel, US.
The variability of scores is greater in Germany and the US than in Japan.
The overlap across countries is at the high end of the scale: the Japanese
sample does not include low achieving classrooms. And overall, the average
level of performance is significantly higher in Japan.
These results closely mirror the results from the main TIMSS samples.
The video sample was thus highly representative of the overall sample in
terms of achievement.
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