Session Information
ERG SES H 09, Policies of Education
Paper Session
Contribution
PISA is an international comparative study conducted regularly to assess the state of education systems. This programme is increasingly considered not only as a performance evaluator but also as an instrument to understand the social impact of education systems. The results of PISA have a substantial impact on the educational policy of the participating countries (Bieber, 2011 and Breakspear, 2012). However, studies about the impact of PISA on national reforms in education are scarce, and those that exist – trying to establish a relationship between the ability of OECD initiatives to influence national reforms with the PISA programme – are not deep enough and insightful (Grek, 2009).
This study aims at examining to what extent the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) can be an important tool in the definition of public policies in education in Portugal. Also to what extent this international program does have oriented deep political reforms of education systems (Pepin , 2011).
The major challenge of this study is to demonstrate in which aspects PISA can be a way to stimulate, regulate and guide the discussion and action about education policy for quality and school effectiveness – a result tobe achieved by promoting the debate and decision making on educational policies aimed at improving teaching and conditions of student learning.
International studies such as PISA have been used as indicators of educational performance at national and international levels. For this reason, policy makers have to take into account the results obtained by their country in each PISA cycle. However, it is not yet clear what is the impact of PISA in the reorganization of national education systems or the OECD influence on the discussion of public education policies. It seems therefore important to understand what is the impact of the PISA as an instrument developed and applied for this purpose.
PISA is in fact, on the one hand, an international monitoring program of education systems through evaluation of student performance, and on the other hand, an important instrument provinding key policy recommendations for political dialogue on education (Alasuutari, 2011).
Portugal participates in PISA since its first assessment cycle in 2000, but never thoroughly studied what impact this international program has had on public policy making in education in the last 10 years, especially in the promotion of education policies to improve the quality and efficacy of the Portuguese education system.
Between 2000 and 2009 PISA, Portuguese results showed a decrease of about 8% of students with low reading literacy performance, from about 52% of total students to 44%. For instance, to understand what underlies this results, it is important to identify (i) which measures to reduce student failure were implemented during this period and that have a relationship with PISA, and, (i) what characterizes this group of students in order to understand what differentiates students with moderate to high levels of performance.
The questions which are intended to respond to this study are:
•What changes in educational policies and practices have been made in the light of PISA results?
•What is the impact of PISA results in educational policy as student failure?
•How do policy makers interpret the PISA results in order to justify decisions in national educational policy in the past? And what about new areas of development related to education?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Alasuutari, Pertti (2011), “The Governmentality of Consultancy and Competition: The Influence of the OECD”, in Germán Solinís and Nicholas Baya-Laffite (eds.), Mapping out the Research-Policy Matrix: Highlights from the First International Forum on the Social Science-Policy Nexus, Paris: Unesco Publishing, 147-165 Antunes, F. (2005), Globalização e europeização das políticas educativas, Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas, 47, 125-143 Ball, Stephen J. (2008), The education debate, Bristol: The Policy Press Bieber, T. e Kerstin Martens (2011), “The OECD PISA Study as a Soft Power in Education? Lessons from Switzerland and the US” in European Journal of Education, Vol. 46, No. 1, 2011, Part I Breakspear, S. (2012), “The Policy Impact of PISA: An Exploration of the Normative Effects of International Benchmarking in School System Performance”, OECD Education Working Papers, No. 71, OECD Publishing. Carvalho, L. (coord.) (2011), O espelho do perito. Inquéritos internacionais, conhecimento e política em educação – o caso do PISA. Vila Nova de Gaia: Fundação Manuel Leão Demeuse, M. et al. (2001), Efficiency and Equity, In W. Hutmacher, D. Cochrane & N. Bottani (eds), In Pursuit of Equity in Education, Dordrecht: Kluwer Grek, S. (2009), Governing by numbers: the PISA ‘effect’ in Europe, Journal of Education Policy, 24, pp. 23–37 OECD (2005), School factors related to quality and equity: results from PISA 2000, Paris: OECD OECD (2007), No More Failures: ten steps to equity in education, Paris: OECD. OECD (2011), Equity and Quality in Education - Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools, Paris: OECD Papadopoulos, G. (2011), The OECD approach to education in retrospect: 1960-1990, European Journal of Education, 46, 1 Schriewer, J. (1996), Sistema mundial y redes de interrelacion: la internacionalizacion de la educacion y el papel de la investigacion comparada, In M. Pereyra, J. Minguez, & M. Beas (orgs), Globalizacion y descentralizacion de los sistemas educativos. Barcelona: Ediciones Pomares-Corredor Teodoro, A. (2003), Educação e políticas educativas no Portugal contemporâneo, Revista Lusófona de Educação, 1, 127-144
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.