This article argues that the worlds which comparative education has explored and is exploring are characterised by three main political patterns. The first and oldest is the competitive nation-state as the starting point of the comparison, an educationalised nation-state, one whose relative global strength in economy and military prowess is…

The OECD is extending the participation of low- and middle-income nations in its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). To explore how PISA can be made more relevant to these contexts, a pilot study, PISA for Development (PISA-D), was launched. Translating PISA into PISA-D required the development of instruments that had relevance…

We examine the disparities in educational outcomes for high-income countries as they are reported by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), with a specific emphasis on a more nuanced exploration of SES-based achievement gaps. To explore differences in the educational inequality and disadvantages associated with SES-based…

Low completion rate in upper secondary education is seen as a big problem in the Nordic countries. School failure has shown to dramatically increase the risks for unemployment and labour market exclusion with severe consequences for both society and the young person. This paper analyses national policy measures to combat low upper secondary…

The development of the modern nation-state was an inherently centralising process. Education policy and the institutionalisation of mass public schooling played a key role in this process, facilitating industrialisation and the generation of mass loyalty toward the state. In almost all federal systems, however, education policy remained an…

International organisations facilitated the spread of competency-based reforms around the world. Accepting at face value correlations between students' performance on international assessments, such as PISA, and nations' economic development, reformers in different countries began to adopt competency-based standards to improve the quality of…

This paper explores the quality of school life (QSL) of two 'model pupils' in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, Finland and Korea, and investigates students' views on the central aspects of QSL ("general satisfaction," "peer relations" and "teacher-student relations") using PISA 2012 data.…

In 2013 Spain introduced a series of educational reforms explicitly inspired by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 results. These reforms were mainly implemented in secondary education--based upon the assumption that this is where Spain's educational problems lie. This paper questions this assumption by attempting to…

The article compares how the success of the "Asian Tiger" countries in PISA, especially PISA 2009, was depicted in the media discussion in Australia, Germany and South Korea. It argues that even in the times of today's "globalised education policy field", local factors are important in determining whether or not a country…

Several recent, highly influential comparative studies have made strong statistical claims that improvements on global learning assessments such as PISA will lead to higher GDP growth rates. These claims have provided the primary source of legitimation for policy reforms championed by leading international organisations, most notably the World…

In the current context of intensified moves towards educational deregulation, the configuration of the Italian middle school and its relationship to education governance is an interesting case. Historically, it represents a unique example of the successful "decision-making" model of the welfarist era. Despite some internal constraints,…

School tracking is usually criticised as a mechanism for social and cultural reproduction. Evidence from the literature shows a significant effect of early tracking on social inequality. Some studies also show that early tracking has a negative effect on the probability of completing higher education. This study uses PISA 2009 data and the…

Comparative research on education in small states has attracted international attention since the mid-1980s when the Commonwealth sponsored a number of seminal meetings and publications, and became a key advocate for the advancement of such work. This article considers the place of different dimensions of scale in comparative research; re-examines…

Comparative international tests of students' achievements have become increasingly popular over the past decade. An outcome of this widespread practice is the tendency of various countries to evaluate their national status according to their pupils' international ranking in such achievement tests, partly due to the common belief that high ranking…

This paper outlines the iterative processes by which a multinational team of researchers developed a low-inference framework for the analysis of video recordings of mathematics lessons drawn from Flemish Belgium, England, Finland, Hungary and Spain. Located within a theoretical framework concerning learning as the negotiation of meaning, we…