Understanding PISA's Attractiveness

<i>Understanding PISA's Attractiveness</i>examines how policy makers and the media interpret the results of PISA league-leaders losers and slippers in ways that suit their own reform agendas. As a result a myriad of explanations exist as to why an educational system is high or low performing. The chapters written by leading scholars from Australia Austria Denmark Finland Germany Norway Singapore South Korea Spain Sweden Taiwan the UK and the USA provide a fascinating account of why results from PISA and other international large-scale assessments are interpreted and translated differently in the various countries. The analyses in this book bring to light the wide array of idiosyncratic projections into these international tests. In some countries these tests are also used to scandalise one's own educational system and to generate quasi-external reform pressure. Compiled by two leading scholars in comparative education Florian Waldow and Gita Steiner-Khamsi this book offers a truly global perspective on the uses and abuses of PISA and will be of great interest to students and academics working in educational policy comparative education and political science and those working on large-scale data sets.