In the 1930s, a serious attempt to exchange knowledge about intelligence tests and their role in national assessment was made through the Carnegie funded International Examination Inquiry. The immediate policy problem  was access to secondary education, denoting the new importance of the shift from a mass education system to a merit based secondary schooling. As well as key professors from the  USA, the well funded Inquiry included approximately 100 psychologists, comparative educators, head teachers and quantitative researchers, drawn from across western Europe. Evidence was shared about the nature of intelligence, the construction of tests, and the use of tests in assessment. The development of the IEI was seriously disrupted by war in Europe but its knowledge  and publications become adopted in to national systems, which were organised diversely and at different stages of development. Selection by tests as part of assessment, or as the dominant element of it, grew across Europe over the next 20 years. Almost at the same time as the IEI, and as a consequence of it, teachers and pupils had to learn new roles - as testers and as testees. Classrooms were often the place of testing and began to act as test centres. So, teachers had to shift, for short periods, and pupils had to learn to be tested. Classroom rules had to change: the teacher could not be questioned during the test, and the pupil could not make any request or reference. Using the extensive instructions, which preceded the tests, and were bound within them, descriptions of required behaviours for teachers and pupils  were developed. Education systems were not only changed through political design and policy shifts, but by increasingly cosmopolitan research communities in intelligence and testing, and by a growing homogeneity created by technologies and discourses within education.  The presentation is built upon documents from the UK and from Sweden.

Lawn, M [2008] An Atlantic Crossing? The Work of the IEI, its Researchers, Methods and Influence Symposium Books {Comparative Histories of Education Series} Lawn, M and Segerholm, C [2010] ‘Europe through experts and technologies’ in Ozga, J et al Fabricating Quality in Education – data and governance in Europe’ Abingdon: Routledge Lawn, M [2014] ‘Nordic Connexions: comparative education, Zilliacus and Husen 1930 -1960’ in Transnational policy-flows in education Oxford Series in Comparative Education [Eds A.Nordin & D Sundberg] Symposium Books Lawn, M [2014] Measuring Europe: education governance and the construction of a new policy space –in Governing Europe's spaces--European Union re-imagined [Eds Caitriona Carter and Martin Lawn ]European Policy Research Unit Series, Manchester University Press Lawn, M [2015] The Rise of Data in Education Systems – collection, visualization and use. Symposium Books [Comparative Histories of Education Series]