Contextual Effects acting on Mathematical Achievement of 8th Elementary School Students at the Biobío Region, Chile

Abstract

Contextual effects were a serious problem for the educational sociology from the sixties, but from the eighties by applying to this area a new method of multilevel analysis which analyses data hierarchically structured in level-one units of analysis (individual students) nested in level-two clusters (schools) this problem has been controlled. Following this analytical framework, this research - based on random effects covariance analysis - focused on Mathematical SIMCE scores of 35,179 students from 772 schools. The main goal was to establish the extent in which total variation of the outcome fluctuates at the individual level between schools or within schools. Moreover, another specific purpose was to elucidate significant factors operating between schools as different from those acting within schools.