Despite Italy's extensive participation in most large-scale assessments, their actual influence on Italian educational policies is less easy to identify. The present contribution aims at highlighting and explaining reasons for the weak and often inconsistent relationship between international surveys and policy-making processes in Italy.…

This article investigates how state authorities in Norway and Finland design national curriculum to provide different policy conditions for local curriculum work in municipalities and schools. The topic is explored by comparing how national authorities in Norway and Finland create a scope for local curriculum. The data consist of interviews with…

This article interrogates the extent to which the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) through its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) influenced the development of Project Maths, a new second-level mathematics education policy in Ireland. It argues that the Irish government, in its revision of mathematics…

Since the 1990s, Chile has participated in all major international large-scale assessment studies (ILSAs) of the IEA and OECD, as well as the regional ones conducted by UNESCO in Latin America, after it had been involved in the very first international Science Study in 1970-1971. This article examines the various ways in which these studies have…

In this article we provide a critique of the interpretation and utilization of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results by the National Education Authorities in Turkey. First, we define and explain what OECD's PISA is. Second, we make an overview of the media coverage in Turkey of the PISA 2003 and 2006 results. Third, we…