Abstract

The PISA(Program for International Student Assessment), an international comparative study supervised by OECD, is aimed at producing reliable and internationally comparab1e indicators of students' literacy in reading, mathematics, and science. In mathematical literacy, Korean students ranked the 2nd out of the 32 participating countries in PISA. This result is very encouraging in the sense that the scores in the mathematical literacy is the forecasting indicator for the mathematical level of future citizens who are supposed to lead their countries in every fields. In contrast to the high performance in mathematics, Korean students possess extremely low level of interest in mathematics. On the other hand, Korea's highest top 5% students are not on a par with the best students in New Zealand, Japan, Swiss, Australia, and England. This finding urges Korean education to put serious efforts to pursue academic excellence. Overall, PISA results suggest that Korean mathematics education has been effective and efficient. Korean education system should set goals to meet the world standard and the challenges of the lifelong teaming society.

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