Student and School Characteristics' Relation to Turkish Achievement in Student Achievement Determination Exam

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to specify how student and school characteristics are related to students’ Turkish achievement in Student Achievement Determination Exam (ÖBBS) of 2005 and 2008. For data analysis two level hierarchical linear model (HLM) was conducted. The participants of the study involved 30154 students who took ÖBBS in 2005 and 5931 students who took ÖBBS in 2008. According to the findings, in both 2005 and 2008, student-level variables related to Turkish achievement are student’s gender, father’s education, books owned, time spared for reading and studying Turkish, student’s self-monitoring his/her achievement in Turkish course, taking private Turkish tutorial, and teaching method in the Turkish course. School-level variables related to Turkish achievement are ratio of female students in school, average classroom size, and school district.