Acceso usuarios
Colombia
Las pruebas internacionales de aplicación masiva permiten evaluar los aportes de los factores individuales, familiares, institucionales y nacionales al logro educativo de los estudiantes expresado en su desempeño. En este contexto, el propósito de este estudio fue proponer y evaluar un modelo de efectos centrado en el procesamiento cognitivo esencial e incidental de las actividades académicas, de acuerdo con el desempeño en las pruebas de matemáticas en estudiantes de sexto grado de 15 países (y el estado de Nuevo León de México) que participaron en el Tercer Estudio Regional Comparativo y Explicativo (TERCE). Se formuló un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales en el que se calcularon índices de procesamiento esencial (control atencional, memoria de trabajo y supervisión familiar) y procesamiento incidental (violencia percibida, uso de ocio de la computadora -videojuegos, redes sociales, reproducción de contenidos, etcétera), con base en los ítems o preguntas utilizados en el TERCE.
Los índices se diseñaron y obtuvieron según el Modelo de Rasch de la Teoría de Respuesta al Ítem (TRI). El modelo planteado afecta el desempeño en la prueba en 24 puntos. La variable con mayor tamaño de efecto es el uso de ocio de computadoras en el hogar. Los resultados se discuten a la luz de las hipótesis cognitivas sobre la distribución de recursos de atención y la de entrenamiento para entender el rol de las tecnologías de la información en el proceso formativo.
International tests of massive application allow evaluating how individual, institutional, national, and family factors contribute to students’ educational achievement through their performance. Consequently, education evaluation is based on the paradigm of general and specific competencies for life. One of these general competencies is the capacity to solve mathematical problems and apply logical thinking to problem-solving. In order to evaluate this general competence, standardized tests have been developed. Among these tests, the Third Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (TERCE) in 2013 evaluated the mathematical and other areas’ academic performance of children in the third and sixth grade.
The TERCE Mathematics evaluation allows researchers to capture the students’ academic performance in five domains:
numeric, geometric, measurement, statistics, and variation, as well as their cognitive performance in objects and elements recognition and simple and complex problem-solving. In addition, to evaluate these eight dimensions, the TERCE test also asks for information regarding academic context, family environment, and teachers, among others.
Despite this information, in Colombia and in general, the evaluation of the socioeconomic context over academic performance has been studied mainly considering the schools’ characteristics, families’ economic levels, and public expenses. Therefore, there is little evidence of the effects of psycho-pedagogical and psychological factors on academic performance.
Psycho-pedagogical models emphasize the dependence of the superior processes on perceptual and attentional processes and the need for activities that demand deep processing and active involvement with information before, during, and after classes. Thus, attending simultaneously to different elements affects the development of cognitive control functions, which leads to low academic achievement and performance. Frequently, students face academic activities in different scenarios where the attentional system should divide its resources between several stimulus sources. Activities in which the attentional system focuses are “essential processing”, and those not related to the main academic activity are called “incidental processing”.
Consequently, increasing the sources of incidental processing would decrease the attentional resources devoted to the essential processing of educational activities producing low academic performance.
In this context, the study proposes and evaluates an effects model focused on essential and incidental cognitive processing of academic activities. The information was captured on the mathematics performance of sixth-grade students from 15 countries (and the state of Nuevo León de México) participating in the Third Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (TERCE). A Structural Equations model was formulated using indices of Essential Processing (Attentional Control, Working Memory, and Family Supervision) and Incidental Processing (Perceived Violence, Leisure use of the computer, and incidental processing) based on the items or questions used in the TERCE. The indices were designed based on the Item Response Theory (IRT) model.
Findings show that the proposed model affects the performance in the test by 24 points.
Higher scores in essential processing produce higher scores in the mathematics component of the TERCE test. Family supervision of academic activity is the single element with the highest impact on academic performance (3.020); on the other hand, attentional control (7.48) and working memory (4.295) also impact academic performance positively.
Regarding the incidental processing variables, lower levels of perceived violence (1.680), less noise and distractor in class (2.130), and higher use of computers at home for leisure activities (5.851) have the most significant impacts on academic performance.
The results are discussed considering the cognitive hypotheses on the distribution of attention resources and the training hypothesis to understand information technologies’ role in the academic processes.
Suggestions for further research focus on the inclusion of items with a higher theoretical background that allows researchers to evaluate the impact of essential and incidental processing on academic performance using items specially designed with that goal to get more conclusive and robust results.
