Education reform efforts stemming from the Programme in International Student Achievement have strengthened in recent years, particularly in response to the growth of global references societies -- high achieving educational jurisdictions such as Finland, Hong Kong-China, and more recently Estonia and Singapore. Despite political rhetoric,…

The purpose of this article is to reexamine the decision-making process on Portugal's entry into PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment). The analysis indicates that the decision, which was not unanimous among the government members with responsibilities in the education field, was made in a context of normative emulation, with the…

This paper examines how the policy process around initial teacher education (ITE) during the pandemic of 2020 was experienced by the leaders of ITE programmes across England. Education policies, it is argued, are solutions to perceived problems, revealing latent values that drive action. Group interviews with leaders of ITE programmes across the…

There is now an extensive body of research concerning the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and its recent additions and variations. Despite this, we argue that there is a paucity of theory-informed empirical research on the ways in which the PISA results about a nation's education system both circulate within, and are…

This paper investigated a policy-making debate in Chile, by examining the construction of the Netherlands as a new "reference society". It focused on a reform agenda that aimed at a transformation of the neo-liberal school governance model. Based on the analysis of government documents, parliamentary debates, and media materials, the…

Many factors influence students' experiences in upper secondary education and beyond, including upper secondary curricula, programme design and support for students. But a good transition from earlier levels of education is the first, essential step in a successful journey through upper secondary education and into further education and/or…

This study examines the influence of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 results on mathematics education policy in Israel. Analyzing various documents, the study shows how these results transformed policymakers' discourse regarding mathematics education. In order to achieve improvement in Israel's ranking, the…

In this article we carry out a preliminary reconstitution of the genealogy of the political decision to integrate Portugal in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), promoted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, made in 1999 and implemented in 2000. For this we used a comprehensive analysis of newspaper…

Although cross-national evidence suggests that decentralization of educational governance is positively related to student achievement, related research often fails to recognize the separate roles and influences of governments, school boards, principals, and teachers. We use data from the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment to…

In recent years, exclusion rates in PISA have risen in many countries, including a sharper-than-average rise in Norway. This article focuses on Norway's experience with exclusion rates in PISA, including an analysis tracking this increase between 2000 and 2018. Through interviews with key stakeholders, this article explores several ideas that…

Research conducted in England over the last decade has documented sustained, significant decreases in children's wellbeing. While recent changes to curriculum policy promoting children's wellbeing have been introduced, a notable feature of the discourse surrounding the promotion of children's wellbeing is that wellbeing is regarded as opposed to,…

Prepared for a Strategic Education Governance learning seminar, this working paper analyses the ways in which the Dutch government tried to reach overarching goals in education, in a system characterised by a high degree of distributed autonomy of education institutions and the participation of multiple actors, and consequently a government highly…

This article explains how the Program for International Student Initiative for Development (PISA-D) initiative aims to make PISA more accessible to middle- and low-income countries. A key component of PISA-D is building capacity in the participating countries for managing large-scale student learning assessments and using the results to support…

Every teacher's classroom practice is embedded in a system of overlapping contexts that interact with their day-to-day decisions. In this paper, I focus on sociocultural context and how it interacts with teachers' subjective responses to accountability instruments. Drawing on interviews with secondary school teachers in Finland and Singapore --…

This paper analyses how the impact of international student achievement studies and the recent economic crisis in Europe are influencing the development of educational policy transfer and borrowing, from East to West. This is contrasted with education reform movements in East Asia, which have long legacies of borrowing from so-called…