This volume offers a critical examination of the Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA), focusing on its origins and implementation, relationship to other international large-scale assessments, and its impacts on educational policy and reform at national and cross-national levels. Using empirical data gathered from a research…

This paper seeks to further conceptualise participation in International Large-Scale Assessment (ILSA) as a global ritual of belonging and apply it to understand the appeal of PISA for Development (PISA-D) in Ecuador and Paraguay. The paper develops the theoretical underpinnings of the global ritual of belonging through policy borrowing and…

Public-school students in the world's largest city, Shanghai, China, are academically outperforming their counterparts across the globe and becoming the talk and envy of education experts worldwide. Using an innovative partnering approach that matches successful schools with low-performing schools, Shanghai has valuable lessons to teach on turning…

Much has been written about the education policies and practices that countries and schools are putting in place. At the other end of the spectrum, accountability systems and assessments such as the Program for International Student Assessment shed light on the results that are achieved. Much less is known, however, about how policies and…

Despite the breadth of coverage and collaboration, few empirical studies have concerned educational background and its implementation in order for scrutinising the reasons for students' high scientific literacy in Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 at international level. Rather, many report the data as evidence of successful…

As revealed by the mean scores of the countries participating in the Performance Improvement through Strategy Analysis (PISA) assessment of reading literacy, Finland shows the highest reading literacy performance in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD) Finland's performance is significantly higher than that of any other…