The Lending Power of PISA: League Tables and Best Practice in International Education (CERC Monograph Series in Comparative and International Education and Development) - Softcover

Andere, Eduardo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9881785219 ISBN 13: 9789881785213

Publisher: Hong Kong University Press, 2008

Synopsis

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a project of the Organization for Economic operation and Development (OECD) designed to provide policy-oriented international indicators of the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students. In this book, Eduardo Andere suggests that the 'lending power' of international studies such as PISA is limited. PISA might be a good instrument for measuring and comparing some educational inputs and outputs, but, suggests Andere, this is not enough for translation across contexts. He finds that PISA is not a very powerful instrument for explaining causal relationships in educational achievement, nor for making claims about models or directions of education systems across the world. Basing his arguments on a qualitative study in 19 countries around the world and on a review of the centralization/decentralization and policy borrowing/lending literatures, Andere presents some of the conflicting evidence about the different meanings of education policies and ideas in different contexts. He suggests that it is problematic to compare policies, processes and practices across the different contexts of school education, thus rendering transferability across educational jurisdictions even more challenging. To understand the reasons behind performance or underperformance in school education, we have to construct, he concludes, a coherent narrative of a particular school and of the model of education in which the school is embedded.

About this title

About the Author:

Eduardo Andere is a part-time researcher at the Mexican Autonomous Institute of Technology (ITAM). He is a lecturer at or adviser to universities and schools in Mexico, and an adviser to the Mexican government. He is a member of the Mexican National Researcher System, and holds a PhD in Political Science from Boston College and Masters degrees in Economics and Public Administration from Boston University and Harvard University respectively. He received his Law degree from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. He is the author of four books about education policy, world schooling and school education in Mexico, and has published papers in both Mexican and international journals. He is an op-ed writer and columnist.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 9881785219
• ISBN 13: 9789881785213
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 156