Canadian and United States Students’ Performances on the OECD’s PISA 2012 Problem-Solving Assessment

This article presents an overview of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 Problem-Solving assessment. The assessment examined the capabilities of 15-year-olds in 40 nations and four large international cities, as well as the Canadian Provinces, to solve a set of 16 problem units presented in contextualized situations. These units each had two or three tasks for students to solve. Students’ performances on these items served as a basis for developing the PISA score scale and the associated proficiency levels for each of the participating entities. Student performances on the PISA 2012 mathematics, reading, and science assessments provided an avenue to estimating student performances on the problem-solving assessment for students having similar score backgrounds in the three content areas. Student performances were also examined by item types and by differing problem situations. These latter two analyses provide interesting perspectives for comparing problem solving profiles across the participating entities. Finally, some conclusions are drawn concerning the study as a whole.