This joint symposium by Network 9 (Assessment) and Network 13 (Philosophy of Education) will explore the possibilities and the tensions that arise in efforts to capture advances in achieving educational goals through  large scale measurement instruments.  Examples of such instruments include those used by PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) PIRLS (Progress in Reading Literacy Study).  The PISA programme is the most well-known one and is the focus of this symposium.  

Key questions to be addressed by the symposium include: 

(a) To what extent is it possible to tailor and adapt such instruments to capture the deeper and more inclusive and goals of education? 

(b) Are there some goals of education that are, by their nature, beyond measure?  If so, does that mean they are beyond appraisal?

(c) To what extent can qualitative forms of assessment play a meaningful role in review and development of national educational policies?

(d) Does a reliance on instruments such as PISA  serve to recast the question of quality in education as a question of  indexed quantity (e.g. of scores and grades)?  

In the fifteen years since its first assessments in 2000 PISA has grown to be a high-profile international competition involving 65 “countries and economies.” In his Foreword to the report presenting the results for the 2012 assessments (OECD, 2013, p.2) the  Secretary-General of OECD, Mr. Angel Gurría, describes the central preoccupation  of educational policymakers as:

"equipping young people with the skills to achieve their full potential, participate in an increasingly interconnected global economy, and ultimately convert better jobs into better lives."

To this he adds:

 "Over the past decade, the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), has become the world’s premier yardstick for evaluating the quality, equity and efficiency of school systems in providing young people with these skills."

This predominance makes it difficult for educational policymakers at national level to ignore PISA, even if they wanted to. If their country’s educational system isn’t included in PISA  the country is likely to be seen in a poor light where education is concerned; a non-league club as it were.  

Among educational researchers there are divided views on PISA. On the one hand the PISA assessment strategies are themselves the outcome of ongoing research on  assessment. For instance, the continually-expanding PISA range now includes assessment measures for Creative Problem Solving.  On the other hand, there are misgivings among many educational researchers about what is seen as an inherent bias in the PISA instruments – in favour of those educational goals that can be readily quantified and indexed.  Controversy arose in May 2014 when  80 academics from different countries (Meyer, Zahedi et al. 2014) wrote an Open Letter to  Andreas Schleicher, Director of PISA, expressing concerns about restrictive effects of PISA on educational practices and policies internationally.  The OECD responded with a point-by point refutation of the arguments made in the Open Letter.

This symposium is intended as a forum to raise and pursue  the central issues in this debate in an exploratory and  research-informed context.  It will contain three contributions from members of Network 13:  Prof Gert Biesta, Netherlands; Dr Francesca Lorenzi & Dr Andrew O’Shea Ireland; Dr Andrew Davis, United Kingdom.

The  Discussant who will respond to the contributions is Dr Eugenio Gonzalez (Network 9, ) Director of the IEA-ETS Research Institute, Germany. The Symposium will be chaired by Dr Pádraig Hogan (Network  13). 

Meyer, H-D, Zahedi, K. et al. (2014) Open Letter to Andreas Schleicher, OECD, Paris; available at: http://bildung-wissen.eu/fachbeitraege/basistexte/open-letter-to-andreas-schleicher-oecd-paris.html OECD (2013) PISA 2012 Results in Focus: What 15-year-olds know and what they cn do with what they know, available at: http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf OECD (2014) Response to Points Raised in Heinz-Dieter Meyer ‘Open Letter’ ; available at: http://www.oecd.org/pisa/aboutpisa/OECD-response-to-Heinz-Dieter-Meyer-Open-Letter.pdf