PISA For Development Research Articles

Measuring and misrepresenting the missing millions: the OECD’s assessment of out-of-school youth in PISA for Development

ABSTRACT PISA for Development (PISA-D) was a pioneering pilot project designed to make PISA, which compares the performance of 15-year-olds in school, more suitable for low- and middle-income countries. This would allow the OECD to move beyond its traditional focus on more affluent nations and to play a central role in monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals. PISA-D was declared a success by the OECD, and its most innovative feature was that, unlike PISA, its assessment included out-of-school youth (OOSY). We analyse that strand of the assessment focussing on who was assessed. We argue that the inclusion of OOSY has been misrepresented by the OECD. Building on the literature on the OECD’s sources of legitimacy and applying Suchman’s framework for analysing organisational legitimacy, we portray its shifting definitions of OOSY as a tactical move that allowed it to ensure the project’s success and resolve problems that challenged its sources of legitimacy.

Piloting PISA for development to success: an analysis of its findings, framework and recommendations

ABSTRACT In 2018 the OECD published the findings of its PISA for Development (PISA-D) pilot project which was undertaken to make the regular PISA framework more accessible and relevant to low- and middle-income nations. This would encourage such nations to join PISA as part of the OECD’s Learning Framework 2030 and provide them with ‘contextualised’ policy recommendations. In 2019 the OECD declared the project a success. We analyse and compare the PISA-D reports as well as its portrayal as a success. We suggest that, whilst PISA-D clearly made technical adjustments relating to the longstanding challenges which face low-income nations engaging in comparative assessments it replicates rather than addresses those challenges. Drawing on literature on organisational legitimacy and the politics of expertise, we interpret the PISA-D pilot as a political strategy primarily deployed to legitimate and extend rather than evaluate the project.

Assembled validity: rethinking Kane’s argument-based approach in the context of International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs)

ABSTRACT Drawing on Kane’s argument-based approach to validity and Toulmin’s later work on cosmopolitanism and diversity, this paper asks whose validity arguments and evidence are being presented in International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs), where and when. With a case study of the OECD’s PISA for Development, we demonstrate that validity arguments are assembled, negotiated and transformed by the network of actors. We claim that the challenge of ILSAs is not to establish a single authoritative argument through the displacement of plural interpretations and uses. Instead, the tasks of an argument-based approach should be to create a democratic space in which legitimately diverse arguments and intentions can be recognized, considered, assembled and displayed.

A historical perspective on the OECD’s ‘humanitarian turn’: PISA for Development and the Learning Framework 2030

ABSTRACT This paper identifies OECD's shifting agendas and approaches to education since inception and distinguishes three time periods. Each of these periods reflects shifting geopolitical and economic realities that shaped OECD's priorities and modes of operation. They also demonstrate the adaptive capacity and expansionist nature of OECD's education work as it successfully innovates, finds market niches and adds new dimensions to its datasets. These have culminated in its recent strategic initiatives, namely: PISA for Development and the Learning Framework 2030. The former aims to adapt PISA to fit into low- and middle-income countries and serve as the global learning metric; and the latter aims to incorporate non-cognitive competencies into its main tests. Together they are designed to expand and consolidate the Organisation's influence in the context of the SDGs. By adopting a historical perspective, we provide a critical understanding of OECD's shifting role in global education governance and its ‘humanitarian turn.

The appeal of PISA for Development in Ecuador and Paraguay: theorising and applying the global ritual of belonging

ABSTRACT 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 lending theory. The paper draws on ethnographic observations and interviews carried out with high level policy actors in Ecuador and Paraguay during their first implementation of an OECD education programme to understand how global policy tools resonate locally. Beyond demonstrating global accountability, mobilizing resources, acquiring technical capacity, attracting investors, and accessing the transnational accreditation PISA provides educational systems, it emerges that PISA-D is valued for the global stage it provides and the relationship it entails with the OECD. In the era of ILSAs, having a relationship with the OECD and appearing on the OECD maps provides governments with a form of legitimization and denotes states as modern and responsible.

PISA for Development: how the OECD and World Bank shaped education governance post-2015

ABSTRACTThe year 2015 was significant for the arena of international development, as UNESCO’s Education for All agenda was replaced by Education 2030, which would identify minimum standards of education quality. The OECD had been working on extending its existing PISA assessment into low- and middle-income countries through PISA for Development (PISA-D) and positioned the new assessment as a means of tracking progress on the post-2015 goals. The organisation maintains that PISA-D was introduced primarily in response to the demands of the international community, especially low- and middle-income countries, and that the assessment was developed in partnership with them. This paper investigates those claims through an analysis of the arrival of PISA-D in Cambodia, situating the analysis within UNESCO’s shifting agenda and the strategic visions of the OECD and World Bank that first emerged in the 1990s. The result is a very different picture to the portrayals of local agency, demand, consensus and partnership that adorn the official websites and pamphlets of global agencies and much academic research, raising serious doubts about education governance post-2015.

The cross-Atlantic knowledge divide, or PISA for Development: Should one size ever fit all?

ABSTRACTIn traditional conceptions, the Atlantic divides the New World from the Old, as well as geographically dividing the Americas from the continents of Africa and Europe; it is suggested here that beyond being at the centre of such divisions, the Atlantic itself is a divided space that can act as a microcosm in the analysis of global inequities. This article argues that the Brandt Line as a conceptual division of the Atlantic can help trace global epistemological inequities indicative of a current North-South knowledge divide. The knowledge divide between the Global North and the Global South will be discussed in the context of PISA for Development (PISA-D), an international student assessment developed and implemented by the OECD, which aims to assess education systems, and inform education policies and school curricula in developing countries. It will be suggested that the OECD gives precedence to the epistemological systems of the Global North over those of the Global South, by not including the respective developing countries more closely in the development process of the assessment material, and by failing to incorporate local and indigenous knowledges in the test. A sample question will be discussed in order to highlight some of the epistemological difficulties in developing a universally applicable student assessment. Additionally, it will be argued that the translation of PISA-Development as an assessment instrument plays a key role in the perpetuation of global epistemological inequities, and has therefore arguably the potential to contribute to epistemicide.

PISA for Development

ZEP : Zeitschrift fur internationale Bildungsforschung und Entwicklungspadagogik 38 (2015) 4, S. 21-25 Padagogische Teildisziplin: Empirische Bildungsforschung; Bildungsorganisation, Bildungsplanung und Bildungsrecht;

Globalization and the Growth of International Educational Testing and National Assessment

Education has long been characterized as a central requirement for national economic development and political democratization in the contemporary world. Moreover, international benchmarking has been identified as the “basis for improvement. . . . It is only through such benchmarking that countries can understand relative strengths and weaknesses of their education systems and identify best practices and ways forward” (OECD 2006, 18). Statements such as this example signal an international consensus that has emerged— at least among “developed” countries—about the legitimacy and, even more so, the necessity of international testing and national assessment. As David P. Baker and Gerald K. LeTendre (2005) observe, both international testing and national assessment are linked to efforts to reform educational systems and are often themselves stimuli for further cycles of reform. The results of international testing, they note, will fuel further interest in national assessment. Here we develop an argument about the global forces that have led to the explosive growth of national educational assessment and international testing. In particular, we argue that the international acceptance of testing comes from key ideological forces in the world polity that are associated with the accelerating globalization of national and international cultural, economic, and political structures. As we develop and warrant this argument, we also qualify it by pointing out that national adaptations to this larger world culture may vary depending on the presence and capacities of international organizations and regional associations that act to mediate and adapt these changes to conditions in individual countries. In addition, we consider the effects of subnational movements in introducing pressures for change that may favor more national assessment.

How Effective Are Private Schools in Latin America?

Using multilevel modelling and data from 10 Latin American countries, this paper provides new evidence on the relative effectiveness of public and private schools. There are substantial differences in the achievement of private and public schools, usually around one-half a standard deviation. A small portion of these differences is accounted for by the higher socioeconomic status of students in private schools. A quite substantial portion is explained by the varying peer group characteristics in private and public schools. After accounting for peer characteristics, the average private school effect across all 10 countries is zero, though with some variance around this mean (the effects range between -0.2 and 0.2 standard deviations). Evidence on selection bias is inconclusive, but the paper argues that these effects may constitute an upper bound to the true effects.

How Effective Are Private Schools in Latin America?

How Effective Are Private Schools in Latin America?