The science education of the East Asian regions

In PISA 2006, scientific literacy is defined as an individual’s:

scientific knowledge and use of that knowledge to identify questions, acquire new knowledge, explain scientific phenomena and draw evidence-based conclusions about science-related issues
understanding of the characteristic features of science as a form of human knowledge and enquiry
awareness of how science and technology shape our material, intellectual and cultural environments
willingness to engage in science-related issues, and with the ideas of science, as a reflective citizen

According to the above definition, scientific literacy is assessed in two domains of knowledge: knowledge of science (knowledge about the natural world) and knowledge about science (knowledge about science itself), and three kinds of scientific competency: identifying scientific issues, explaining phenomena scientifically, and using scientific evidence. The domains of knowledge and the competencies are related; each competency draws on either students’ knowledge of science or knowledge about science, or both.

Cognitive Performance of East Asian regions in scientific literacy

Five East Asian regions, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Taipei and Macao, participated in PISA assessment since 2006 where science was the major domain, whereas Shanghai, Singapore and Vietnam joined the test in 2009 and 2012. Among these East Asian regions, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Shanghai, Singapore have consistently ranked top in scientific literacy in two or more cycles of assessment (Table 1). Particularly noteworthy is Shanghai - it stands firmly at the top with nearly 30 points higher than the second region since she first took the assessment in 2009. Vietnam took part in 2012 for the first time and was ranked eighth. Macao and Taipei, though not as top as other East Asian regions, were still among the good performers in PISA. On the whole, the PISA science performance of the East Asian regions as a group is extraordinarily good among the 67 countries/economies, which even holds true when compared with the western OECD countries - all have their scores above the OECD averages. More importantly, many of these East Asian regions: Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Korea, have been steadily improving in their scores over successive assessment cycles.

Table 1. Rank and scaled score of scientific literacy of the East Asian regions in all the PISA assessments.

	*Rank (scaled scores)**
Country/Region	PISA 2012	PISA 2009	PISA 2006	PISA 2003	PISA 2000+
Shanghai-China	1 (580)	1 (575)	-	-	-
Hong Kong	2 (555)	3 (549)	2 (542)	3 (539)	3 (541)
Singapore	3 (551)	4 (542)	-	-	-
Japan	4 (547)	5 (539)	6 (531)	2 (548)	2 (550)
Korea	7 (538)	6 (538)	11 (522)	4 (538)	1 (552)
Vietnam	8 (528)	-	-	-	-
Chinese Taipei	13 (523)	12 (520)	4 (532)	-	-
Macao-China	17 (521)	18 (511)	17 (511)	7 (525)	-

* The OECD average of the scaled score is set to be 500.

The East Asian regions not only have high average scores, but also high proportion of top performers - Shanghai, Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong have more than twice the top performers (at levels 5 & 6) of the OECD average (Table 2). Their proportions of students who have not attained basic scientific literacy (below level 2) are also substantially lower than the OECD average.

Table 2. Proportions of low and top performers in scientific literacy of the East Asian regions in PISA 2012

Regions	Students at levels 5 and 6 (%)	Students below level 2 (%)
Shanghai-China	27.2	2.7
Singapore	22.7	9.6
Japan	18.2	8.5
Hong Kong	16.7	5.6
Korea	11.7	6.6
Vietnam	8.1	6.7
Chinese Taipei	8.3	9.8
Macao-China	6.7	8.8
OECD average	8.3	17.8

Regarding the performances in different knowledge domains, it was found that these East Asian regions are not different from other OECD countries (Table 3). Some attribute the good performance of East Asian students to memorization of science contents, but this notion is not supported by the data. The East Asian students outperformed their OECD counterparts on knowledge about science, identifying scientific issues and using scientific evidence, which all call for understandings of scientific inquiry and nature of science rather than science contents. Moreover, with regard to the relative performance in the three competencies, the scores in explaining phenomena scientifically, a competency calling for understanding of science contents, are similar to or even lower than the other two competencies in most regions except Vietnam.

Table 3. The performance of the East Asian regions on different domains of knowledge in PISA 2012

	% correct of the items in the domain
	Shanghai	HK	Taipei	Macao	Singapore	Japan	Korea	Vietnam	OCED average
	580	555	523	521	551	547	538	528
Knowledge of science
Earth and space systems	66.9	61.9	61.0	56.9	58.0	66.7	64.7	59.6	55.8
Living systems	60.0	59.9	52.1	51.4	55.7	52.2	49.6	59.5	46.4
Physical systems	77.6	69.5	64.0	63.3	67.7	68.2	64.4	66.1	60.2
Technology systems	80.2	73.2	73.7	66.8	70.6	73.5	74.2	72.2	63.7
Knowledge about science
Scientific enquiry	69.2	64.2	53.9	55.6	61.8	59.9	58.7	56.3	53.1
Scientific explanation	70.1	65.6	57.5	58.7	66.7	64.6	62.9	55.1	53.3
Competency
Explaining phenomena scientifically	67.0	63.2	58.2	56.4	59.7	61.2	58.4	61.3	53.1
Identifying scientific issues	70.4	66.7	56.2	58.1	62.6	62.3	61.4	57.4	54.9
Using scientific evidence	71.4	65.4	59.3	58.5	66.7	64.5	63.3	58.2	54.3

Despite the common belief that East Asian regions are patriarchal and boys are likely favored in education, there found no significant differences in the science performances between boys and girls for most East Asian regions except Japan (OECD, 2014a).