Third International Mathematics and Science Study: International Curriculum Analysis, 1992-1995

The International Curriculum Analysis (ICA) study provided curricular and textbook information from each country participating in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). TIMSS was a comparative study of education in mathematics and the sciences conducted in over 40 countries on five continents. The goal of TIMSS was to measure student achievement in mathematics and science in participating countries and to assess some of the curricular and classroom factors that are related to student learning in these subjects. The study was intended to provide educators and policy makers with an unparalleled and multidimensional perspective on mathematics and science curricula; their implementation; the nature of student performance in mathematics and science; and the social, economic, and educational context in which these occur. Below is a description of each of the types of data files found in this study. The Textbook Specific and Curriculum Guide Specific data files contain overall characteristic information, the number of pages, size of book, publisher, etc. pertaining to material used within a country for all countries involved in the study. The General Topic Trace Mapping data files contain questionnaire responses for each specific science and mathematics topic for each grade. The Document Description data file contains document ID, name, subject, publisher and publishing data for each document provided by each country in the study. The Unit Level data files contain information describing a specific unit within a document, used for both textbooks and curriculum guides. The Block Level data files contain specific curricular information about the blocks contained within each unit. The Textbook Coverage data files contain summaries of context coverage for each country's textbooks and the performance expectation codes of those textbooks, both Mathematics and Science. The coverage rate for each content topic is expressed as the average percent that particular topic is mentioned in each of the country's textbooks. The Textbook Characteristics data file contains derived variables from 400 textbooks used in 45 countries. The variables captures the frequency with which content material such as activities, exercise or question sets, instructional narratives and other instructional tools, as well as performance expectation related material are found within these textbooks.