The rise of evaluation and data in education and education policy is a trend manifesting across a wide variety of policy contexts, holding in its grip national and global policies, with impacts that reach the level of individual children, teachers, and their subjectivities. Earlier research has mainly focused on the phenomenon in neoliberal…

Assessment in music is of considerable importance in the context of higher music education, with major projects focusing on assessment principles and practices in a number of locations, including the European community and Australia. This instrumental case study explores assessment practices in two higher music education contexts, namely within…

In recent years there has been a global call for more scientific knowledge about education as a basis of governance. This means that exact descriptions of the reality of schooling should inform decisions about what works in education. In this article, evaluation and testing are analysed as cartography, the art of mapping educational spaces, which…

This paper examines the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which has become a major and influential component of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) educational work. This measure of comparative performance of educational systems of member and other nations is based on tests commissioned by the…

Ensuring quality in and through teaching and learning has become a fundamental global concern. Emanating from a colloquium on "Quality Assurance and Teacher Education" hosted by University College Dublin in 2010 and funded by the European Educational Research Association, this book interrogates how quality cultures can be fostered in the…

In November 2007, a delegation from the Consortium for School Networking visited three Scandinavian countries to examine best practices. The delegates were motivated by their desire to understand the high achievement levels of students in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. For several years, students in these countries have been outperforming their…

This article presents the methodology used by the Finnish Education Evaluation Council in the national evaluation of social and communication skills in vocational education and training. The evaluation concentrates on key competences such as learning-to-learn skills, communication skills, social skills and entrepreneurship (Implementation of…

With the failure of the No Child Left Behind policies of the 1990's, educational reformers wished to establish a "new and improved" set of standards for the United States to follow. However, since their inception in 2006-2007, the new Common Core State Standards have become increasingly unpopular due to the fact that they remain largely…

Using 3 waves of the TIMSS data, this study investigates the relationship between 8th-graders' mathematics and science achievement and their self-perceptions on these 2 subjects. For within-country data, there is generally a positive relationship between students' achievement and the following 3 measures of their self-perception: how much they…

Since the start of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) thematic review of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Policy in 1998, some 20 countries across the world have been involved in the project. Recently the OECD has had a very successful launch of the report from the second round--Starting Strong II. This…

This report summarizes responses to a public opinion survey designed to reveal attitudes towards secondary education in other countries and compares these with attitudes in the United States. The survey was conducted in the United States and 11 other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED). The other…

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has strongly influenced European education policy and the entire global neo-liberally toned discourse that nowadays prevails in the implementation of national education policy and educational reforms. The educational policy governance of the OECD is based on overall and supranational…

A 1976-78 Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development, Centre of Educational Research and Innovation, Sparsely-Populated Areas project produced 14 case studies from 11 member countries. Fifteen basic conclusions of international relevance were identified. Conclusions were as follows: there is no single definition of rural or sparsely…

Summaries of classroom research studies conducted in Finland on the development of educational aims are presented. Papers in this document deal with: (1) an overview of the purposes of the research project; (2) cognitive processes in classroom verbal interaction; (3) taxonomy of physical education; (4) objectives of religious education; (5)…