A lot of data about students’ family background and attitudes towards school were collected through a questionnaire administered to students. This offers the possibilities of comparing Nordic minority students’ home backgrounds and attitudes towards school, and of studying the relation between these background variables and achievement. In the following section, differences between minority and majority students regarding some of these variables are reviewed, and the correlation between the variables and the students’ literacy achievements is analysed. Correlations between achievement and all the background variables revealed that some variables were more significantly correlated with achievement than others. The following variables showed the most significant correlation with achievement in the Nordic countries: computer facilities at home, cultural possessions at home, educational resources at home, number of books at home, and parents’ highest socio-economic status.
Resources at home
Computer facilities at home, cultural possessions at home and educational resources at homeare all composite variables with evaluation of each variable consisting of a number of single questions. The 0 level in figure 5 represents the OECD average and the standard deviation is 1. The figure shows that the level of Nordic majority students’ cultural possessions at home is moderately above or near the OECD average, except for the Icelandic students, who seem to come from very well equipped homes as far as cultural possessions are concerned. Nordic majority students also seem to have more educational resources at home than the OECD average, with the exception of Danish students who are significantly below this
average. Nordic majority students are generally well off in terms of computer facilities at home compared to the OECD average. The computer facilities of Finnish minority students seem to be nearly as good as the OECD average, and in the other four countries minority students have computer facilities even better than the OECD average. The case is different for cultural possessions and educational resources. With the exception of cultural possessions in Iceland and educational resources in Norway, Nordic minority students are below the OECD average.
Among the variables analysed, cultural possessionswas the most significantly different between majority and minority students in all Nordic countries. The composite variable cultural possessionsincluded single questions about whether the student has classical literature (e.g. Shakespeare in the English version), or collections of poems and visual art (e.g. paintings) at home. The cultural possessions mentioned in the questions are typical status symbols related to Western culture. The PISA study mainly defined “classical” culture in terms of Western elite culture. This definition did not include cultural possessions or activities highly valued among minority students and their families.
Number of books at homeis a variable that is frequently used to measure the socio-economic status of families. In the earlier Third Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) this variable showed significant correlation with achievement in science Figure 5Possessions at home among majority and minority students in each Nordic country. (OECD mean = 0, one standard deviation = 1)
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and mathematics (i.e. Lie et al., 1997, p.182). The PISA 2000 data showed a positive correlation (0.32) between number of books at home and achievement for majority students. The PISA 2003 data revealed that minority students in all the Nordic countries, have fewer books at home than majority students, as shown in figure 6. This is not surprising given the migrant situation and the socio-economic status of the minority students’ families.
Parents’ occupational status
Education and occupation are related to other home background factors: In PISA 2003 the highest family occupational index is derived from the parental
occupations given in the student questionnaire. The following questions are asked about both parents’ professions:
• What is your mother’s main job? (e.g. school teacher, nurse, sales manager). If she is not working now, please tell us her last main job. Please write in the job title.
• What does your mother do in her main job? (e.g. teaches high school students, cares for patients, manages a sales team).
• If she is not working now, please tell us her last main job. Please use a sentence to describe the kind of work she does or did in that job.
The classification of the parents’ occupations uses a system designed for
classification of occupations across countries (Ganzeboom & Treiman 1996). The Figure 6Number of books at home among majority and minority students in each Nordic country
index gives a metric for the sum of education level and income level for each occupational category. This has been quantified based on international empirical data. The scale ranges from 0 to 90, and the level of occupational status increases with increasing values.
Figure 7 shows that the parents of Nordic students’ in general have higher occupational status than the OECD average. The figure also shows a difference in the occupational status of the parents between majority and minority students in Scandinavian countries. No such difference is seen between majority and minority students in Finland and Iceland and this may be explained by the differences in immigration to Denmark, Sweden and Norway on the one hand and Finland and Iceland on the other. Immigration from remote countries in the third world to the three Scandinavian countries has been much greater than to Finland and Iceland, and the Scandinavian countries have received significantly more refugees and asylum seekers than the two other Nordic countries.