A Classification Analysis of the High and Low Levels of Global Competence of Secondary Students: Insights from 25 Countries/Regions

Xiaoyue Hu and Jie Hu
Additional contact information
Xiaoyue Hu: Department of Linguistics, School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Jie Hu: Department of Linguistics, School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 19, 1-17

Abstract: The reinforcement of global competence is vital for students to thrive in a rapidly changing world. This study explores the synergistic effects of both student and school factors on the classification of secondary students with high and low levels of global competence. Data are selected based on 208,556 secondary students from 6902 schools in 25 countries/regions and extracted from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 datasets. Different from previous research, in this study, data science techniques, i.e., decision trees (DTs) and random forests (RFs), are adopted. Classification models are built to discriminate high achievers from low achievers and to discover the optimal set of factors with the most powerful impact on the discrimination of these two groups of achievers. The results show that both models have satisfactory classification abilities. According to the factor importance rankings in terms of discriminating global competence disparities, student factors play a major role. They especially emphasize students’ capacities to examine global issues, students’ awareness of intercultural communication, and teachers’ attitudes toward different cultural groups.

Keywords: global competence; classification; decision trees; random forests; PISA 2018 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/19/11053/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/19/11053/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:19:p:11053-:d:650714

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().