Achievement in Content and Cognitive Domains

TIMSS Advanced 2015 provides achievement results for the three TIMSS Advanced physics cognitive domains—knowing, applying, and reasoning. To enable TIMSS Advanced countries to examine relative performance in the cognitive domains, IRT scaling was used to place achievement in each of the three domains on the TIMSS Advanced physics achievement scale. The average scale score for each cognitive domain is shown, together with the difference between physics achievement overall and achievement in the cognitive domain. Up and down arrows are used to indicate whether a country’s average cognitive domain score is significantly higher or lower than its overall physics average score.

Generally, the highest performing countries overall had the highest achievement in the cognitive domains, and lower performing countries had lower achievement in the cognitive domains. However, most of the countries demonstrated at least one relative strength compared to overall achievement, and at least one weakness.