This paper presents an approach to standard setting that combines the prototype group method (PGM; Eckes, 2012) with a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. The combined PGM-ROC approach is applied to setting cut scores on a placement test of English as a foreign language (EFL). To implement the PGM, experts first named learners whom…

This article presents the results of an interpretive policy analysis of China's Ministry of Education Standards (2013) for the professional practice of principals. In addition to revealing the evolution of the evaluation of principals in China and the processes by which this policy is formulated, a comparative analysis was conducted to compare it…

Despite decades of dependence on sessional teaching staff, universities in Australia and internationally still find it difficult to support the teaching work of this large, casual workforce. A significant consequence of casually-employed teaching staff is risk; sessional academics' professional identity is compromised, quality assurance of…

This paper is concerned with the role of standards and standard setting in shaping the expansion of post school education in highly unequal society. It draws on an account of the debates and policies on standards in the UK from the 1980's to today and the wider lessons that can be learned from them. It argues that relying on any type of standards…

The ways in which examination standards are conceptualised and operationalised differently across nations has not been given sufficient attention. The international literature on standard-setting has been dominated by the psychometrics tradition. Broader conceptualisations of examination standards have been discussed in the literature in England,…

The article dwells upon the methodological and technological aspects of the project to develop a framework of qualifications of the Ural region, which concerned with some of the features of the procedure of doing research, as well as the development of diagnostic tools. The work presents the methods of the processing of data collected during the…

Innovation has become an increasingly important concept for Australian businesses in enabling them to continue to compete in an international market, but where does vocational education and training (VET) sit in this? To date, VET has been largely overlooked by the National Innovation and Science Agenda as a potential contributor in this field.…

In Sino-foreign cooperative education, high-quality introduced educational resources must benefit the growth and development of students, facilitate the school's capacity building and the improvement of overall educational standards, and promote national socioeconomic development. It is necessary to establish and perfect the various working…

Within the scope of educational testing and assessment, setting standards and creating guidelines as a code of practice provide more prolific and sustainable outcomes. In this sense, internationally accepted and regionally accredited principles are suggested for standardization in language testing and assessment practices. Herein, ILTA guidelines…

The Office for Standards in Education's most recently published criteria for "outstanding" teaching are scrutinised and found wanting. They are seen as unrealistic for teachers to meet and equally unrealistic as criteria for use by inspectors. An explanation is offered as to why they are framed as they are and an alternative, more…

Measurement and evaluation of students' achievement are an important aspect to make sure that students really understand the course content and monitor students' achievement level. Performance is not only reflected from the numbers of high achievers of the students, but also on quality of the grade obtained; does the grade "A" truly…

This paper intends to construct an analytical framework for understanding quality assurance in international joint programmes and to test it in a case analysis of a European--Chinese joint doctoral degree programme. The development of a quality assurance system for an international joint programme is understood as an institutionalization process…

During the last two decades, a number of successive policy initiatives have attempted to professionalise the further education sector in England: professional qualifications have been rewritten, made compulsory and then returned to voluntary status; professional bodies have been established, briefly promoted, and then neglected; professional…

Ethical and legal objections to learning analytics are barriers to development of the field, thus potentially denying students the benefits of predictive analytics and adaptive learning. Jisc, a charitable organization that champions the use of digital technologies in UK education and research, has attempted to address this with the development of…

Background/Context: Based on archival material, the following paper analyzes the political strategies of the early OECD stakeholders in transforming schooling from a cultural to a technological system and how they were in need of standardizing different existing patterns of thoughts or institutional behaviors in the member countries. The European…