Classroom Practices and Students’ Literacy in a High and a Low Achieving Country: A Comparative Analysis of PISA Data from Finland and Israel

The purposes of this study are to investigate the structural relationship of classroom practices and students’ literacy; and to compare the structural relationship of a higher and a lower achieving country (Finland and Israel). Factor Analysis and Smallest Space Analysis (SSA) techniques are applied to the PISA (OECD-UNESCO, 2003) data for Finnish and Israeli students. The SSA shows a structural difference between the two countries: in Finland the regions Pressure to Achieve and Teacher Support are adjacent, whereas in Israel they are in opposition. This is interpreted as suggesting that the combination of supportive yet demanding classroom practices may be related to stronger academic achievement.