Evaluation taking place within publicly funded research institutions (PRIs) has been practiced as a useful instrument to justify PRIs' public funding and to provide evidence for their internal decision-making. The role of evaluation in organizational governance is well-acknowledged as being important in PRIs' management practices. However, it has…

Many schools and school systems have been deliberately working towards full implementation of Assessment for Learning for more than a decade, yet success has been elusive. Using a leader's implementation of Assessment for Learning in one school as an illustration, this article examines eight positional leaders' experiences as they implemented both…

Purpose: To overcome the high manual effort of assessments for teaching personnel, e-assessment systems are used to assess students using information systems (IS). The purpose of this paper is to propose an extension of EASy, a system for e-assessment of exercises that require higher-order cognitive skills. The latest module allows assessing…

This article provides evidence about differences in the recent tertiary education expansion in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. Focusing on these differences, we have examined private returns to tertiary education acquired before and after the tertiary education expansion. We compare these returns as follows: Austria with…

Background/Context: Two key uses of international assessments of achievement have been (a) comparing country performances for identifying the countries with the best education systems and (2) generating insights about effective policy and practice strategies that are associated with higher learning outcomes. Do country rankings really reflect the…

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…

In 1996, a new curricular framework for vocational education in schools called "Lernfelder" (learning arenas) was implemented in Germany. In the concept of learning arenas learning situations in schools have to be related to work activity in a particular occupation. For this reason work process orientation currently plays a significant…

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…

Discusses the range and limitations of local and regional case studies based on studies of the educational history of Berlin (Germany), Jewish school systems under National Socialism, and women's education. Examines their content-related results as well as their systematic significance for research on the history of education (DSK)

States that international and national evaluations of educational achievement provide data on distributions, structures, and correlates students' competence and achievement. Argues that these cross-sectional designs do not allow any conclusions on the antecedents and consequences of students' achievement, or on educational interventions. Discusses…

Claims that the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) represent a leap forward in the quality of comparative international research on schooling. Discusses prospects of achieving a consensus among educational policy makers on the reforms suggested in both study…

Provides brief history of the German Gymnasium as a traditional European secondary school system with a preparatory function for higher education. Reviews the main goals of the gymnasium. Asks what role the gymnasium plays as a learning environment for gifted students. Discusses the politico-educational consequences and demands on the gymnasium.…

Examined how the concept of quality in the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) is concretized in pedagogical processes, in a comparison of classroom observations in Germany and Sweden. Observers from each country evaluated preschools in the other country, using the ECERS. Comparisons showed the benefits of using ECERS for facilitating…

Uses two sets of quality measures of group care to assess their predictive power for measures of the development of children in German group day care. Reports finding that measures of adult-child, child-child, and adult-adult interactions predict development levels when measured by long-term participant observation in a natural day care…

Discusses the International Survey on Reading Abilities in Primary School (IGLU) and its data on achievement in reading, mathematics, and natural science. Compares this data to that collected by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Identifies achievement relevant correlations such as gender, migration background, socioeconomic…