The 2010 report from the National Research Council on teacher education programs in the United States, "Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy," reported that "the empirical evidence on effective teacher preparation [is] nearly nonexistent" (p. 99). The publication later that year of two major studies, one on…

The Afterschool Alliance, in partnership with MetLife Foundation, is proud to present the first in their latest series of four issue briefs examining critical issues facing middle school youth and the vital role afterschool programs play in addressing these issues. This series explores afterschool and: the Common Core State Standards, students…

This study investigated the relationship between policies related to the recruitment, selection, preparation, and certification of new teachers and (a) the quality of future teachers as measured by their mathematics content and pedagogy content knowledge and (b) student achievement in mathematics at the national level. The study used data…

This volume includes four sections of the 2020 NORDSCI international conference proceedings: (1) Education and Educational Research; (2) Language and Linguistics; (3) Philosophy; and (4) Sociology and Healthcare. Education and Educational Research includes 15 papers covering the full spectrum of education, including history, sociology and economy…

In recent years, the global community has developed a range of initiatives to inform the post-2015 global development agenda. In the education community, International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) have an important role to play in advancing a global shift in focus to access plus learning. However, there are a number of other assessment tools…

The Council of the European Union has set the goal of reducing low achievement in reading, mathematics and science among 15-year-olds to less than 15 % by 2020. How are European countries going to achieve this? One of the key elements in the learning process is the instruction time available to students. In fact, not only the quality of…

Over the past century, technological development and better access to services has resulted in significant improvements to quality of life. Despite this, however, levels of stress, anxiety and depression are rising. Education can play a role in supporting well-being during and beyond schooling. Schools are increasingly concerned not only with…

The results of PISA studies over recent years have revealed the social selectivity of the scholastic education system. Based on my empirical research on families with mentally ill parents, I show how, for the children involved, social exclusion begins before they even start school. I also show how parents' mental illness is seen to affect…

This paper examines the re-articulation of social justice as equity in schooling policy through national and global testing and data infrastructures. It focuses on the Australian National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We analyse the discursive reconstitution…

The Economic Actions in Education training module (EAE) teaches how to handle, use and judge external standardized tests in schools. The EAE programme was implemented in teacher training at the University of Kiel, because teachers are increasingly under external scrutiny and are being held accountable for student and school achievements. The EAE…

The results of large-scale international assessments such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have attracted a considerable attention worldwide and are often used by policy-makers to support educational policies. To ensure that the published results represent the actual population, these surveys go through a thorough scrutiny…

This Data Point uses data from the 2012 administration of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) financial literacy assessment. PISA is an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy and, in 2012, general problem solving and financial literacy. PISA is coordinated by the…

Although originally created for economic purposes, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) has increasingly gained weight in education policy in recent years and is now regarded as an international authority in the field, particularly through its "Programme for International Student Assessment" (PISA), which was…

In the twenty-first century, the use of standardized tests as the primary means to evaluate schools and teachers in the United States has contributed to severe dilemmas, including misleading information on what students know, lower-level instruction, cheating, less collaboration, unfair treatment of teachers, and biased teaching. This article…

In this paper we explore the views and opinions of four secondary education science teachers regarding the teaching of scientific competences. Their views were gathered in the context of a training programme in which they had to design, implement, and assess their own teaching unit for developing students' scientific competences by means of…