The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has instigated educational changes and reforms globally, in particular, introducing and intensifying neoliberal logic and governance in test-taking countries and beyond. PISA outcome impacted upon the educational governance of South Korea as well, however, the changes deviated from what…

To improve education performance at home, countries cross nationally policy-borrow from jurisdictions ranked highly in international league tables. This paper examines a practical example of one such instance of policy borrowing, Teaching for Mastery (TfM). Over a six year period, interviews were conducted with teachers working in primary schools…

Worldwide, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has emerged as a valid and reliable benchmark for assessing students' performance and for gaining significant influence over educational policy and decision-making. Since 2001, Qatar has engaged in massive educational reform, with high expectations for improving students'…

This paper explores how the OECD acts a broker of knowledge-making in the development of PISA, the most widely known International Large-Scale Assessment. Drawing on the work of Bandola-Gill, Grek, and Tichenor (2022) and analysing empirical data gathered through interviews with OECD staff and PISA contractors and experts, the paper analyses how…

The increasing concerns of the impact of the Programmes for International Student Assessment (PISA) on education policymaking along with its global reach call for the need of evaluating PISA's impact on student learning. However, most extant studies focus on arguing its impact at the policy level, without taking a further look into it at the local…

This book discusses national school policy reforms in a number of key European countries and shows how these are framed in transnational collaborations that meet with national particularities and contestations. It gives an overview of school policy developments that represents the diversity of Europe within a comparative framework. It takes point…

The Programme for International Student Assessment has become an important policy tool that has affected educational practices in many countries. Despite some remarkable results in PISA's global ranking tables from China's Eastern provinces, China's distinctive policy response has not been well documented or understood. We systematically examine…

The purpose of this article is to explain the construction of, and potential uses of, a conceptual framework for financial literacy education that has been constructed upon key information drawn from literature reviews of financial literacy education as presented in countries with developed or developing policies and practice in the area. The…

The aim of this article is to explore the interrelationships between a national government and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in terms of the power and legitimization of education reforms, here based on the reciprocal dependence of the two actors. Although the current case study only analyses the shifting…

Despite a growing emphasis in education policy on 'what works for whom and in what circumstances', there is still considerable attention to decontextualised 'best practices' that emerge from cross-country comparisons of student achievement. Also, while operational and even political aspects of context are increasingly incorporated into policy…

Group differences in test scores are a key metric in education policy. Response time offers novel opportunities for understanding these differences, especially in low-stakes settings. Here, we describe how observed group differences in test accuracy can be attributed to group differences in latent response speed or group differences in latent…

Since 2000, the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, has tested 15-years-olds throughout the world in reading, math, and science. Developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, and administered every three years, PISA is designed to yield evidence for governments on which education policies…

From once being synonymous with reading and writing, literacy, as a concept has expanded in the last three decades to today being associated with multiple meaning making forms and competences. Impactful, in this shift, has been the research orientation of New Literacy Studies. Besides academia, the literacy concept has also had a major influence…

With the aim of developing an assessment more appropriate for low-income countries, in 2013 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development initiated the Programme for International Student Assessment for Development (PISA-D). Designed as a one-off assessment project resulting in scores comparable to PISA, nine countries joined the…

The Programme in International Student Assessment (PISA) has become the prominent method of international comparison of the achievement of 15-year-old children in reading, mathematics, and science. Recently, the OECD, which administers PISA, has devoted a great deal of energy promoting the notion of "academic resilience"--which refers to…