Two international agendas are shaping current scientific discourses around diversity in education. On the one hand, debates and research activities on achievement, competencies, and output orientation have gained importance, strengthened in particular by large-scale assessments (e.g., Pereyra et al., 2011). On the other hand, in particular, concerning international normative frames (United Nations 2015), a stronger focus on inclusion and the reduction of educational inequity has been put into focus (Seitz, Auer & Bellacicco, in press). Linked to both discourses, the role of schools in replicating and reinforcing educational inequities has been the subject of many debates at the international level (Florian et al., 2016). 

According to theoretical assumptions on education governance (Wilkins & Olmedo, 2018) it can be assumed that the varying structures of the different educational systems regarding tracking and inclusion are influential for interpretations of these international agendas at different levels. Of particular interest in that context are concepts of achievement and giftedness, as well as achievement differences that can be seen as emerging in assessment-related interactions between students and teachers but are also dependent on specific structural orders (Falkenberg 2020).

Thus, a crucial presumption of the symposium is that achievement and giftedness are central and powerful constructs of schooling related to assessment. Seen as a social practice between teachers and students, assessment links tohabitual assignment problems and hegemonies and the production and negotiation of social differences (Gomolla, 2012). These relations are discussed differently in different countries. With a focus on stratified systems, assessment is partly understood as a regulation of individual educational pathways, recurring to a structural-functionalist perspective, which receives criticism as reinforcing educational inequity by one-sidedly attributing (in specific low or inadequate) achievement to the individual (Pfeffer, 2008; Berkemeyer, 2018).

Based on these considerations, the symposium asks for the varying meanings of achievement and giftedness in assessment-related practices in differently structured educational systems and on different levels of them. In concrete, we bring (1) together the voices of primary school children on assessment in an inclusive educational system (Italy) with (2) a study on views of teenagers (Spain/ Mexico) on assessment and (3) those of parents on achievement and giftedness, located in a highly segregated educational system (Germany). The findings from (4) an international discourse analysis on the scientific discourse around giftedness, achievement, and inclusion may function as a parenthesis between the different studies so that the final discussion will allow us to reflect on possible theory-related conclusions and research-related implications in a broader frame.

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