This is why Hungarian students are weak in problem-solving

Szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu reports that the results of the PISA international assessment of educational attainment have been revealed, and, as we have already reported, Hungarian students perform below the average not only in Mathematics, Reading Comprehension and Natural Sciences, but in the Collaborative Problem-Solving module, as well. Let’s see the test in more detail and try to figure out why the performances of the Hungarians are so weak in all of these areas.

This year, a novelty was introduced, as besides the skills measured so far, the PISA test also measured the collaboration of the students, that is, how well they are able to work together. Unfortunately, Hungarians are far below the average in this module, too. As expected, the South-East Asian, the Finnish, the Estonian and the Anglo-Saxon countries are at the forefront, most probably because students frequently need to work in groups and do problem-solving together.

Although the more well-to-do countries showed better results in the assessment, the example of the Estonians show that the countries with similar social background as that of Hungary can also achieve quite great results.

24.hu attempted to figure out what the causes of the weak results of the Hungarians are. It is likely that the poor performance is due to the fact that the exercises present in the test are far from the ones used by the Hungarian educational system. While in Hungary, the biography of poets and historical dates should be memorised, in the PISA test, students had to coordinate 2 artificial intelligence characters and answer as many questions as they could about a fantasy country, the Xandar.

Another international assessment test, called TIMSS, examines whether students know what they should have been acquired based on the teaching curriculum. In this test, Hungarians perform quite well. Still, there is a lot to improve in Hungary, as nowadays it is becoming increasingly important to solve problems together at workplaces.

The statistics of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have shown that people, having a position that requires them to work in groups and solve problems together, earn much more than their peers.

Thus, the most important skill of the employees in the 21st century is the problem-solving skill that Hungarians need to improve to be successful at the job market.

Source: szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu