Understanding PISA’s Attractiveness by Waldow, Florian; Steiner-Khamsi, Gita;

Long description:

Understanding PISA's Attractiveness 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.

Table of Contents:

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Series Editors' Foreword
1. Introduction: Projection in Education Policy-Making, Florian Waldow
Part I: Looking from Below: Interpreting National Projections into International League Leaders
2. PISA Projections in Chile: The Selective Use of League Leaders in the Enactment of Recent Education Reforms, Lluï¿1⁄2s Parcerisa and Antoni Verger
3. Schooling Reform in Australia: Legitimation Through 'Projections' onto Shanghai and East Asian Schooling Systems, Bob Lingard and Sam Sellar
4. ""Pedagogical Paradise"" and ""Exam Hell"": PISA Top-Scorers as Projection Screens in German Print Media, Florian Waldow
5. Nordic Reference Societies in School Reforms in Norway: An Examination of Finland and the Use of International Large-Scale Assessments, Kirsten Sivesind
6. PISA Rhetoric and the ""Crisis"" of American Education, Nancy Green Saraisky
Part II: Coping with Success: International Projections and National Counter Narratives
7. The Use of PISA Results in Education Policy-Making in Finland, Piia Seppï¿1⁄2nen, Risto Rinne, Jaakko Kauko and Sonja Kosunen
8. PISA and Self-Projection in Shanghai, Vicente Reyes and Charlene Tan
9. Curse or Blessing? Chinese Academic Responses to China's PISA Performance, Barbara Schulte
10. Excellence and Envy: The Management of PISA Success in Singapore, Sï¿1⁄2ren Christensen
11. Perceptions of the East Asian Model of Education and Modeling Its Future on Finnish Success: South Korean Case, Yoonmi Lee and Youl-Kwan Sung
12. Conclusions: What Policy Makers Do with PISA, Gita Steiner-Khamsi
Index