One can not help but notice that the education community's professional fear-mongers focus heavily on PISA (Program of International Student Assessment) and rarely mention TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) or PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Study) in their discussion of the state of education in the United…

Finnish students' opinions about the frequency of learning activities and communication in the Finnish science classroom, their interest in science and science studies and careers, their sense of self-efficacy, and their beliefs about their own competence as well as their performance in science are analyzed based on PISA 2006 Scientific Literacy…

In 1958, a group of international scholars met in Hamburg, Germany, and hatched an idea for a huge study to measure student learning around the globe. They saw the world as one big educational laboratory, with each country acting as its own naturally occurring experiment. If tests could gauge the effects of those experiments, the researchers…

For decades Japan has remained at or near the top of international assessments of student learning; and in the past decade, students in Japan have become more engaged in learning. However, the government aspires to improve learning outcomes even further. "Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons from PISA for…

This technical report and user's guide is designed to provide researchers with an overview of the design and implementation of the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), as well as with information on how to access the PISA 2009 data. This information is meant to supplement that presented in Organization for Economic Cooperation…

This report has a simple aim: to present results from international assessments so readers can judge for themselves how American students stack up globally. It's intended to be a stand-alone supplement to the "Education Olympics" web event held between August 8th and August 22nd, 2008 (see edolympics.net). It shows how the U.S. has…

This research report builds on the results of the CATCH project (Webb and Dekker, 2002). The CATCH project is an effort to apply and scale up previous results and design a professional development program to bring about fundamental changes in teachers' instruction to support change in teachers' formative assessment practices. In this report we…

There is a growing consensus among educators and the general public that technology should play a more integral role in students' education. However, the question of whether the introduction of technology into the classroom has a positive impact on teaching and learning is still under intense debate within the educational community. This…

Since 1969, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has been the common yardstick for measuring the progress of students' education over time across the country. Teachers, principals, parents, policymakers, and researchers all use NAEP results to assess progress and develop ways to improve education in America. To make the…

This report presents the findings of a study conducted to explore the feasibility of developing and delivering an assessment of information and communication technology (ICT) literacy for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The study was conducted at the request of an expert panel convened by Network A and was funded in…

Results from the 2000 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Assessment (PISA) indicated that inequalities in performance associated with students' family background were relatively large in Switzerland compared to other participating countries. The study upon which this article is based examines…

This paper examines the ways in which the results of the OECD Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) have influenced educational discourse in Germany. It argues that the results caused shockwaves in the educational landscape and led to a re-evaluation of other international comparisons which had presented an unfavourable picture of…

This article reports the performance of 15-year-old Hong Kong students in mathematical literacy in an international study called PISA 2000, in which Hong Kong has topped the list of 41 participating countries/regions, with a mean score significantly higher than all other countries except Japan and Korea. With the conceptual framework developed by…

Background: Educational differentiation, or the allocation of students to different types of school or different locations within schools, is a common feature of modern education systems. In most countries, student outcomes vary considerably, both by school and academic location within schools. Purpose: The purpose is to ascertain the extent that…

The growing interest in assessing the quality of education outcomes can be seen in the ever-increasing frequency of use of international and national surveys (e.g., Program for International Student Assessment [PISA], the Progress in Reading and Literacy Study [PIRLS], or the Third International Mathematics and Science Study [TIMSS]). These…