Understanding the Policy Influence of International Large-Scale Assessments in Education

Abstract

International large-scale assessments (ILSAs) require national governments to invest significant resources in both time and money. With such investment national governments expect the results of ILSAs to provide policy and research communities with evaluative information on their educational system. Armed with this evaluative information, policymakers in many participating countries have used the results to stimulate reform. However, systematically tracking this influence and judging the validity of the claims has proven difficult for both the policy and research communities. There can be an erroneous expectation in the wider education community, and sometimes amongst policymakers themselves, that ILSA data automatically suggests policy solutions. Because of this error, a means for better systematizing the policymaking process responding to ILSA results is required. The model developed here can assist the policy and research community to better understand whether ILSAs are providing valid evidence to support their use in policy formation enactment and can be used to analyze ongoing consequences of that influence. Two worked examples demonstrate the utility of the model.