Investigation of socio-cultural and socioeconomic factors affecting the academic achievement of the PISA 2018 Turkey sample

Academic achievement is one of the indicators that reveal the effectiveness of countries' education systems. As well as knowing about the level of academic achievement, it is also necessary to know about the individual factors, school factors and socioeconomic-sociocultural factors that affect this achievement. PISA, an international test administered by the OECD, enables the measurement of the effect of these factors on academic achievement. In this study, the factors affecting the academic achievement of students are discussed in the light of PISA 2018 results. The purpose of the study is to determine whether the academic achievement of the PISA 2018 Turkey sample in the fields of reading skill, mathematical literacy and science literacy differs according to student's gender, education level of student's parents, opportunities provided to student in the home environment, the number of books student has at home and the indexes created by PISA. The study includes 6890 students studying in 186 schools from different types (secondary school, Anatolian high school, science high school, social sciences high school, Anatolian fine arts high school, vocational and technical Anatolian high school, multi-program Anatolian high school and Anatolian imam hatip high school) in 12 regions of Turkey, which were determined by random sampling for PISA exam. In the study, PISA 2018 databese that is available on the internet by OECD is used. In PISA 2018, after students answered the reading, science and mathematics tests, they answered the survey questions that reveal their demographic characteristics, socioeconomic and sociocultural status. In the study, the answers given by the students to the tests and surveys are used. In PISA 2018, ten plausible values (PVMATH1-PVMATH10, PVREAD1-PVREAD10, PVSCIE1-PVSCIE10) were created for each domain instead of showing each student's mathematical literacy, science literacy and reading skill with a single score. Analyzes were performed by taking the average of these values created by PISA. The data was analyzed by using the SPSS packaged software. In the analysis of the data, Independent Samples t-Test analysis was conducted to determine whether academic achievement differs according to the gender of the students and the opportunities provided to student in the home environment. One-way ANOVA for Independent Samples was conducted to determine whether an academic achievement differs according to the education level of the student's parents and the number of the books that student has at home. Pearson Correlation Coefficient was used to determine the relationship betweeen the indexes created by PISA and the success scores. Stepwise Regression Analysis was conducted to determine which indexes predict success scores. As a result of the analyzes done, it is determined that female students are more successful than male students in the fields of reading literacy and science literacy; male students are more successful in the field of mathematical literacy. It is determined that parents of the students with the highest achievement are graduates/postgraduates and general secondary education graduates. The success of the students whose mother is a vocational and technical high school graduate is lower than the students whose mother has not completed primary school, primary school graduate and secondary school graduate. Except for the variable of having educational software, all opportunities provided to student in the home environment affect success positively. Home opportunities that contribute the most to the success are the variables of having literary works, having computer-internet and having supplementary textbooks. As the number of books that student has at home increases, student success increases . The variable that predicts the success the most is the Economic, Social and Cultural Status Index, which is based on the highest education level of the parents, the highest occupational status of the parents, the items owned at home and the number of books in the house. As the number of information and communication technology devices at home increases, student success decreases.