This study examines the relationship between student immigrant status and opportunity to learn using the 2015 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The guiding research question of the quantitative study was, “To what extent do first generation, second generation, and native students experience differing amounts of learning time in France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States?”  Secondly, researchers considered, “What is the relationship between family academic resources and in-school learning time?” This allowed researchers to explore the extent to which poverty is related to opportunity to learn when considering first generation, second generation, and native students together. A third question, “Does out-of-school learning time differ by immigrant status?” explored the extent to which learning out-of-school can mitigate or exacerbate differences in in-school learning opportunity. To conduct this quantitative study, researchers analyzed the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) student-questionnaire data file.  

Opportunity to learn (OTL) is a framework for connecting teacher practice to student achievement. The term was possibly first coined by John B. Carroll (1963) to describe the amount of time devoted to student learning (cited in Schmidt et al., 2013). More recently, researchers (e.g. Wang, 1998) have determined through hierarchical linear modeling that OTL is a multidimensional construct and suggest it should be measured at different levels, for example, the classroom and individual student levels. This group of research (e.g., Schmidt et al., 1999; Schmidt et al. 2001) has used OTL to encompass both time and exposure to relevant pedagogical content (cited in Schmidt et al., 2013). This builds on earlier research, such as that of Gamoran and Berends (1987), which explored the relationships between student achievement and exposure to challenging content through academic tracking. Other research, including the paper by USAID, “Opportunity to Learn: A high impact strategy for improving educational outcomes in developing countries,” emphasize that OTL can include instructional time, student-teacher ratio, and access to educational resources such as qualified teachers (EQUIP, 2008). In a study by Smith, Roderick, and Degener (2005), the effects of the extended learning time on student achievement were examined. The researchers collected survey and field study data to generate a hierarchical linear model to estimate the effects of the program. Results of the study suggest that in elementary grades, extended time in school and on-task create a positive impact on academic achievement.

The PISA also includes information about a construct that researchers have termed family academic resources (FAR). Particularly since the (1996) Coleman Report, researchers have recognized that family background measures have significant relationships to student achievement. FAR provides more detailed information than the typical socioeconomic and cultural and ethnic information used from the perspective of educational policy. While some research (Chudgar & Luschei, 2009) provides strong support that the relative influence of FAR upon student achievement varies by country context, including overall levels of poverty and inquality, other research (e.g., Carnoy, et al., 2013) continues to support that FAR is second only to previous learning and achievement in predicting student achievement. In other words, FAR can have a stronger relationship with academic outcomes than what takes place during the school day.

To conduct this quantitative study, researchers obtained the 2015 PISA datasets, codebooks, and questionnaires directly from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) website, located at http://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/2015database/. The researchers analyzed the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) student-questionnaire Statistical Program for the Social Sciences (SPSS) data file. Researchers split the SPSS file by country, resulting in a sample of over 30,000 students across the five countries of study. Opportunity to learn was measured by learning time (minutes per week) in mathematics, the dominant language, science, and overall. Out-of-school learning time was a fifth variable measured in minutes per week. Family academic resources (FAR) were indicated by the PISA index measure of family economic, social and cultural status. To explore the relationship between FAR and OTL, researchers calculated Pearson correlation coefficients to determine the relationship between the FAR and overall learning time and out-of-school learning time variables. The 2015 PISA includes a variable on family immigrant status, which includes the options of first-generation, second-generation, and native. This was used as a grouping variable to conduct one-way analyses of variance on the OTL variables, both in school and out-of school.

To conduct this quantitative study, the researchers analyzed the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) the student-questionnaire data file. The results suggest that family academic resources continue to have a stronger relationship with academic achievement than opportunity to learn within the school day. While the relationships between OTL and achievement was weak to moderate across the countries, FAR had a stronger relationship with OTL than anticipated. Across the five countries, there were a number of significant differences in both in-school and out-of school opportunity to learn. While recently immigrated students tended to experience lower levels of OTL during the school day, they tended to spend significantly more time learning out-of-school. This research supports prior work by Carnoy et al. (2013) who found that family academic resources (FAR) is second only to previous learning and achievement in predicting student achievement using international data. Future work with the PISA 2015 dataset and other sources of information should examine the differences between countries that have a particularly low relationship between instructional time and academic achievement. While there is no place in which OTL has a stronger relationship with achievement than FAR, perhaps there is something to be learned from countries in which the OTL/achievement relationship is moderate so that schools can become places of opportunity for disadvantaged students.

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