As another year is approaching, the time seems appropriate to look back and reflect on all the things that have been done, and more importantly learned during 2014. Along the same lines, and in order to offer further food for thought, the IBE is happy to share with you its latest Thematic alert on the topic of assessment in education. More…

Meta-ethnography and systematic review of qualitative research are needed but also challenged by the link to the evidence movement's models and PISA-traditions for measuring learning effects. For reflections on the perspective for meta-ethnography it means to reconstruct the methodological argument almost divided in a "Before and After…

The steepest decline in achievement in New Zealand primary schools occurs in Years 7 and 8, with the greatest decline in the subject area of mathematics. The cohort that achieves at the lowest level in New Zealand schools is Pasifika. This study considers the views of those stakeholders involved in the teaching of these children. It seeks to…

International surveys have served as agents of change for the introduction of reforms in curricula worldwide. The Israeli Ministry of Education set a goal of raising Israel's ranking in international surveys so that Israel will be among the 10 leading countries in the Program for International Student Assessment and Trends in International…

This paper reflects on the methodology used in international comparative education surveys by conducting a systematic review of the European Survey on Language Competences (ESLC). The ESLC was administered from February to March 2011, with final results released in June 2012. The survey tested approximately 55,000 students across 14 European…

Aiming to collect various concepts, approaches, and strategies for improving computer science education in K-12 schools, we edited this second special issue of the "ACM TOCE" journal. Our intention was to collect a set of case studies from different countries that would describe all relevant aspects of specific implementations of…

Introduction: Teachers in Finland are demanded to develop students' competencies in information literacy. However, they can meet this demand only by collaborating with public librarians. The aim in this case study was to explore the perspectives of teachers, librarians and students in a problem-based project and to analyse the advantages and…

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…

The need for and employment of qualified teachers have always been in the agenda since the foundation of our country. It is aimed with this study to reveal the convenience of the Content Knowledge Test for Teaching (CKTT), which was first held in 2014, in terms of the content of the classroom teaching undergraduate programs, general competencies…

This case study analyzes how and why student engagement differs across 581 classes in one diverse high school. Factor analyses of surveys with 1,132 students suggest three types of engaging teaching practices--connective instruction, academic rigor, and lively teaching. Multilevel regression analyses reveal that connective instruction predicts…

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…

The 7th International Conference on Education Data Mining held on July 4th-7th, 2014, at the Institute of Education, London, UK is the leading international forum for high-quality research that mines large data sets in order to answer educational research questions that shed light on the learning process. These data sets may come from the traces…

Using the political-economic analysis of globalisation and education as well as a culturalist approach to education policy borrowing, the paper analyses the role of local actors, specifically, national newspapers and the Ministry of Education, in mediating the potentially homogenising curricular policy pressure of globalisation exerted through the…

The first volume of the 29th annual conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education contains plenary lecture and research forum papers as listed below. Short oral communications papers, poster presentations, brief summaries of discussion groups, and working sessions are also included in the volume. The plenary…