by Alexandre Borges Sugiyama, PhD

How to find Canadian data on literacy as well as OECD PISA and PIAAC data.

I came across some Canadian data on adult literacy. Here is the link to the Statistics Canada webpage.

I came across this webpage while looking at the OECD (The Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development) Survey of Adult Skills public data webpage. The OECD Survey of Adult Skills or PIAAC was a survey conducted in 33 countries designed to determine the quality of a country’s labor force. The initial results were released in 2013.

The OECD to many educators is known for an assessment of education known as the PISA. It evaluates students at age of 15 in various participating countries.

Many researchers use the PISA data to evaluate educational policies and practices.

What is cool to those who like to play with data is many organizations like the OECD or Statistics Canada make public versions of their files available.

I often use these data sets in my undergraduate teaching, either for homework assignments or longer course projects.

The reports generated from the PIAAC survey are useful for those thinking about their relative competitiveness on the job market. I too often share these reports with my students so they see life beyond college.

by Alexandre Borges Sugiyama, PhD

Math Anxiety Passes Down from Parents?

I often run into college students who aren’t as math proficient as they like, at worst they become anxious. Math anxiety is apparently very common in the US and culturally many people in the US are willing to say that they are “bad at math”. This is strange since people don’t tend to say “I am bad at writing” with such frequency.

A NY Times article discusses how parents may pass on their own math anxieties to their children in an articled called The Square Root of Kids Math Anxiety. It was published online yesterday Aug 24, 2015 and in print on Aug 25, 2015.

It is worth reading for anyone who helps their child with math homework.