More than 20 years after the first round of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), it has become one of the most important large-scale international assessments, at a global level and in particular in Europe. Thus, a growing number of scholars have examined or discussed its research design. Nonetheless, a key feature of…

Worldwide, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has emerged as a valid and reliable benchmark for assessing students' performance and for gaining significant influence over educational policy and decision-making. Since 2001, Qatar has engaged in massive educational reform, with high expectations for improving students'…

This paper considers the inclusion of creative thinking as an innovative domain within the OECD's PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) and offers a series of reflections on the opportunities and limitations that follow from this. Although this recognition of the importance of creative thinking represents a step forward, the current…

This issue of Snapshots explores how student effort may vary depending on the perceived stakes of the assessment. We revisit the self-reported levels of effort that students invested in the PISA test and compare them with the effort they indicated they would have made if the results counted towards their school marks. Australia's results are…

Background: In the context of large-scale educational assessments, the effort required to code open-ended text responses is considerably more expensive and time-consuming than the evaluation of multiple-choice responses because it requires trained personnel and long manual coding sessions. Aim: Our semi-supervised coding method eco (exploring…

The advancement of technology has led to a growing interest in assessing scientific inquiry within digital platforms. This shift towards dynamic and interactive inquiry assessments enables researchers to investigate not only the accuracy of student responses ("product data") but also their steps and actions leading to those responses…

In 2014, the OECD-PISA's Governing Board approved the addition of a set of global competence measures to its Programme of Student Assessment. In our paper, we explore whether and how there are discursive shifts between the two framing papers (2016/2018) and what the outcomes are for policy-shaping. To this end, we employ Network Text Analysis to…

Empirical research on teachers' professional knowledge is mostly conducted worldwide with reference to the construct 'pedagogical content knowledge' (PCK) introduced by Lee S. Shulman. In the 'Consensus Model' (CM) and the 'Refined Consensus Model' (RCM), PCK was further developed and differentiated. Nevertheless, neither PCK nor CM and RCM…

The most recent OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey enables educators, policymakers and the wider community to compare Australian students with each other, as well as with their counterparts across the world. PISA measures the extent to which 15-year-old students near the end of compulsory education have acquired the…

In the 21st century, international interaction in social, economic, cultural, and educational fields has increased. Consequently, international standards have become essential in national education policies, reforms, and practices. As an international assessment, PISA has started to function as a prominent tool in this regard. However, the impact…

Why are contractors keen to develop, implement, and analyse International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) when they appear to make no financial gains? What, if not monetary profit, makes ILSA contracts so attractive? Almost all ILSA contractors interviewed as part of this project state that their ILSA work is an investment, either in the form of a…

This paper identifies and analyses the legitimation strategies used by the OECD as it expanded its role in global educational governance. Whilst the literature recognises the mainly discursive sources of legitimacy which the OECD derives from its testing regime, especially PISA, what remains unexplored is how exactly it has created the legitimacy…

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) introduced creative thinking as an innovative domain in 2022. This paper examines the unique methodological issues in international assessments and the implications of measuring creative thinking within PISA's framework, including stratified sampling, rotated form designs, and a distinct…

Reducing the socio-economic achievement gap is a key goal of education policy internationally. Since 2017, the stated intention in Ireland is to use the Pobal HP Deprivation Index to identify schools serving high proportions of disadvantaged students. In spite of this, little published research has compared the performance of the HP index to…

Since 2000, the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, has tested 15-years-olds throughout the world in reading, math, and science. Developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, and administered every three years, PISA is designed to yield evidence for governments on which education policies…