Drawing on Kane's argument-based approach to validity and Toulmin's later work on cosmopolitanism and diversity, this paper asks whose validity arguments and evidence are being presented in International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs), where and when. With a case study of the OECD's PISA for Development, we demonstrate that validity arguments are…

Accurate measurement of metacognitive knowledge in reading is important. Different instruments and scoring methods have been proposed but not systematically compared for their measurement comparability across cultures and validity. Given student data from 34 OECD countries in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2009, we…

In this article I advocate for a new discussion in the field of international large-scale assessments; one that calls for a reexamination of international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) and their use. Expanding on the high-quality work in this special issue I focus on three inherent limitations to international large-scale assessments noted by…

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…

In response to Barry McGaw's article "The role of the OECD in international comparative studies of achievement", this contribution explores two issues which the author considers closely interrelated. The first issue concerns the quality of the items produced to assess reading skills in the OECD-PISA and OECD-SIALS studies and the…