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There has been a notable growth in the number, participants, and frequency of international assessments of student academic performance over the past 50 years. This chapter provides a structure for the perspectives that could be used to analyze this rise. This chapter highlights case study examples of specific countries' choices to participate in particular assessments. It further describes the utility of three analytic frameworks in understanding the decision factors, diffusion mechanisms, and environmental dynamics that relate to international testing. Factors such as the cost of testing, the cultural connections between nations participating, and the temporal relevance of testing to today's focus on accountability arise in illustrations of the transmission mechanism for international achievement tests. This chapter organizes large and diverse amounts of important testing sampling frame information in a unique way. The questions we ask are driven by the framework we begin analyzing with. Organizations conducting these tests can better understand the touchpoints for nations deciding whether or not to participate. Concerns about developing country participation, for example, can be better addressed.

This chapter discusses the influence of international educational studies on knowledge in a general sense. In a theoretical framework, a split between realistic and constructivist theories of knowledge with special regards to global and local knowledge is discussed.

Since Slovenia is a country that is included in a number of different international comparative educational studies and assessments, even more so, it has been participating in these studies continually for the last two decades, the focus is on Slovenian educational policymaking (PM). The chapter for the first time analyzes the impacts on national PM of different international studies and predicts the future Slovenian participation in these studies; therefore, the chapter could be interesting for national and international audiences involved in comparative education research. For the estimation of existing impacts on national PM, semi-structured interviews were used. The findings suggest that international results represent an argumentation for some directly and indirectly curricular and syllabus changes over the years. Furthermore, some of the argumentations for changing the national educational system regarding the international findings are still more declarative; irrespective of experts and policymakers estimations of how great impacts these studies have in Slovenia. Future research on the topic for Slovenian PM in education will need more secondary analysis of collected data from both national and international assessments.

Participation in cross-national assessment is becoming a global phenomenon. While there were only 43 countries that participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2000, the number of participating countries/economies has increased to 65 in 2009. To understand this global trend, this chapter seeks to answer the following research questions: What are the real incentives for developing countries to participate in cross-national assessments? What do they gain from actual participation in cross-national assessments, given that there are many constraints and barriers associated with test participation? It employs country-level fixed effects to test the hypothesis that there is a positive association between participation in cross-national assessments and foreign aid to education. This study shows that countries that participate in major cross-national assessments receive, on average, 37 percent more foreign aid to education than countries that do not participate in major cross-national assessments, while holding all other variables constant. Although further research is necessary to make a causal warrant of the association between participation in cross-national assessment and education aid, the results of this study have great implications for developing countries that are considering participating in cross-national assessments.

This paper presents a moderated discussion on popular misconceptions, benefits and limitations of International Large-Scale Assessment (ILSA) programs, clarifying how ILSA results could be more appropriately interpreted and used in public policy contexts in the USA and elsewhere in the world.

To bring key issues, points-of-view and recommendations on the theme to light, the method used is a “moderated policy discussion”. Nine commentaries were invited to represent voices of leading ILSA scholars/researchers and measurement experts, juxtaposed against views of prominent leaders of education systems in the USA that participate in ILSA programs. The discussion is excerpted from a recent blog published by Education Week. It is moderated with introductory remarks from the guest editor and concluding recommendations from an ILSA researcher who did not participate in the original blog. References and author biographies are presented at the end of the article.

Together, the commentaries address historical, methodological, socio-political and policy issues surrounding ILSA programs vis-à-vis the major goals of education and larger societal concerns. Authors offer recommendations for improving the international studies themselves and for making reports more transparent for educators and the public to facilitate greater understanding of their purposes, meanings and policy implications.

When assessment policies are implemented from the top down, as is often the case with ILSA program participation, educators and leaders in school systems tend to be left out of the conversation. This article is intended to foster a productive two-way dialogue among key ILSA actors that can serve as a stepping-stone to more concerted policy actions within and across national education systems.

Although high-quality comparative data from international assessments are now more widely available, to what extent is that data being used to trigger, inform, and direct educational change in non-Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries? The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework to guide a case analysis of Trinidad and Tobago's system response to international assessment data.

This is a single-nation explanatory case study using data from policy documents and elite interviews. Findings are generated through inductive thematic analysis.

The four emerging themes were: first, weaknesses in the national evaluation system; second, policy-making practices not attuned to data; third, lack of collaboration and stakeholder involvement; and fourth, challenges in accessing and using data. Findings suggested that data rarely acted alone to trigger system change. Critical to initiating and sustaining effective data use for system reform were policy-making contexts and mental maps of system leaders, which in this context acted as barriers. Respondents believed that greater strategic leadership from politicians and technocrats could ensure data-informed systemic change.

The study focuses upon data use and data-driven decision making for whole system reform within a single country context. However, it advances theory that might be applied to other non-OECD cases.

The findings contribute to the refinement of a conceptual model explaining data-driven system reform applicable to non-OECD contexts. The role of system leaders when using international assessment data is clarified.

This chapter discusses some of the criticisms of standardized assessments by doing a document analysis of mainly Mexico's and Argentina's ministries of education's web sites and exploring the theoretical work of diverse authors, mainly critical pedagogues and culturalists. This chapter argues that the process of assessment using standardized tests is a highly political and even commercial process, but the challenge to compete globally, still perform locally, collaborate in solidarity, and decide collectively whose knowledge is of most worth is still before us. As exemplified in Mexico's test ENLACE, standardized tests tend to show a negative bias against minorities and tendency to highlight certain values and knowledge. Countries should seek for as many partnership opportunities with teachers and communities to be able to assess learning collectively and even consider not adopting policies passively, as opposed to having an international organization or policy dictating what is worth knowing and testing. This way, assessment will still help countries compete globally, still perform locally, and collaborate in solidarity.

This research paper tries to look into the issues of achievement gaps in education in Gulf countries. The paper sets forth an idea that the international projects such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Trends in International Mathematics and Science (TIMSS), and Progress in Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) could serve not only as means of setting and checking quality standards in education but also as mediators in closing achievement gaps and in helping increase the accountability of schools toward the wider public. The paper also makes an attempt to look at the relative standing of Arab Gulf countries in the international projects such as TIMSS, PISA, and PIRLS. The research assumes that the large-scale international data might appear useful for benchmarking the progress made in any individual country. The paper suggests that the arrows of influence move and operate in both directions, implying that while setting global standards, international projects base their judgments on identified local challenges in education systems of individual countries. Most importantly, they could be used in influencing national policies to make education systems more transparent and comparable to international standards.

First, the paper states that in order to carry out the benchmarking process efficiently and obtain meaningful results for policy making on an international level, assessment procedures such as testing and questionnaire reporting should be conducted on a local level prior to moving to international level. The paper draws experiences from high-performing countries such as Chinese Taipei, South Korea, and Japan. These countries go through intensive local testing practices at early schooling stages before moving on to participating in TIMSS, PISA, and PIRLS projects. Consequently, school children, schools, school districts, and entire countries show high academic readiness and performance at the fourth and eighth grades on an international level.

Second, the paper hypothesizes that discrepancies between teaching methodologies of items covered by individual country curricula, a variety of approaches toward explanation and delivery of various concepts to students, and teacher-specific implementation of theory and practice balance during classes could all potentially contribute to wide gaps and discrepancies between TIMSS, PISA, and PIRLS scores of separate countries no matter how similar their national curricula might look. Strategies for narrowing down examination and questionnaire issues to the items covered in the curricula of all countries have been offered on several occasions; however, this procedure causes oversimplification of teaching and items, and leads to considerable lowering of standards. Therefore, this issue has been presenting a substantial dilemma in TIMSS, PISA, and PIRLS projects’ success across countries.

A thematic analysis of teachers’ experiences in implementing the Annual National Assessments (ANAs) policy in South Africa was presented in this chapter. Describing the lack of preparation and capacity building on behalf of policy makers, this chapter argued that teachers’ roles in the policy formulation of the ANAs positioned them as only policy implementers without agency. Two broad categories described the experiences. The first was concerned with the preparation process of assessments. The second was concerned with the implications of assessments, outlining the worry and fear in the use of results for teacher blaming culminating in a standoff between teacher unions and the ministry. The shift in the policy mandate expressed through increased reporting and monitoring requirements for poor performing schools reveals that the assessments deviated from being a diagnostic tool to testing for teacher accountability. Finally, the chapter concluded with a reflection on how the National Assessment Framework, set to replace the ANA policy, could be strengthened based on the opportunities revealed by the ANA policy implementation process.