This paper sets out to explore the different uses made of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Program for International Student Assessment (OECD-PISA) tests and data in mathematics education research. Through a comprehensive literature review of journals and conference papers, we show that although a large variety of topics is…

Descriptive analyses of socially important or theoretically interesting phenomena and trends are a vital component of research in the behavioral, social, economic, and health sciences. Such analyses yield reliable results when using representative individual participant data (IPD) from studies with complex survey designs, including educational…

One major challenge of longitudinal data analysis is to find an appropriate statistical model that corresponds to the theory of change and the research questions at hand. In the present article, we argue that "continuous-time models" are well suited to study the continuously developing constructs of primary interest in the education…

Data analysis is a significant methodological component when conducting quantitative education studies. Guidelines for conducting data analyses in quantitative education studies are common but often underemphasize four important methodological components impacting the validity of inferences: quality of constructed measures, proper handling of…

Two separate data searches underlie this analysis of how references to educational research and to PISA are used in the Swedish education debate. The data consist of 380 newspaper articles from the eight largest print media outlets in Sweden and 200 protocols from parliamentary debates (2000 to 2016) that made explicit reference to 'PISA' and/or…

Educational data mining (EDM) has been a rapidly growing research field over the last decade and enabled researchers to discover patterns and trends in education with more sophisticated methods. EDM offers promising solutions to complex educational problems. Given the rapid increase in the availability of big data in education and software…

IES is the primary research, evaluation, and statistics arm of the U.S. Department of Education. Established through the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA), the Institute's mission is to expand fundamental knowledge and understanding of education and to provide education leaders and practitioners, parents and students, researchers, and…

The 2012 edition of the "Digest of Education Statistics" is the 48th in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The "Digest" has been issued annually except for combined editions for the years 1977-78, 1983-84, and 1985-86. Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field…

This article considers the role played by policy makers, government organisations, and research institutes (sometimes labelled "think tanks") in the analysis, use and reporting of PISA data for the purposes of policy advice and advocacy. It draws on the ideas of Rizvi and Lingard (Globalizing Education Policy, 2010), Bogdandy and…

The international transfer of educational policy and practice has long been a key theme in comparative research and scholarship. Recent years have seen renewed attention to the processes of international policy transfer, with new understandings emerging from innovative theorising and analysis. This article examines the nature and implications of…

The 2011 edition of the "Digest of Education Statistics" is the 47th in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The "Digest" has been issued annually except for combined editions for the years 1977-78, 1983-84, and 1985-86. Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field…

Reports of international large-scale assessments tend to evaluate and compare education system performance based on absolute scores. And policymakers refer to high-performing and economically prosperous education systems to enhance their own systemic features. But socioeconomic differences between systems compromise the plausibility of those…

This article builds on previous research which has emphasised the role of comparisons of educational performance in creating visibility and borderlessness, and moves the argument a point further. The article claims that apart from increased visibility, what the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has brought to education systems…

The main research question of this article is concerned with the combined estimation of the effects of educational systems, school composition, track level, and country of origin on the educational achievement of 15-year-old migrant students. The authors focus specifically on the effects of socioeconomic and ethnic background on achievement scores…

We estimated the invariance of educational achievement (EA) and learning attitudes (LA) measures across nations. A multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to estimate the invariance of educational achievement and learning attitudes across 55 nations (Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA] 2006 data, N = 354,203). The…