How International Large-Scale Skills Assessments engage with national actors: mobilising networks through policy, media and public knowledge. Issue 3 (2nd September 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hamilton, Mary
• Is Part Of: Critical studies in education. Volume 58:Issue 3(2017)
• Page Start: 280
• Page End: 294
• Publication Date: 2017-09-02
• Subjects: International skills assessments -- media -- policy formation -- public knowledge; Education -- Periodicals; 370.5
• DOI: 10.1080/17508487.2017.1330761
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1750-8487

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This paper examines how international, large-scale skills assessments (ILSAs) engage with the broader societies they seek to serve and improve. It looks particularly at the discursive work that is done by different interest groups and the media through which the findings become part of public conversations and are translated into usable form in policy arenas. The paper discusses how individual countries are mobilised to participate in international surveys, how the public release of findings is managed and what is known from current research about how the findings are reported and interpreted in the media. Research in this area shows that international and national actors engage actively and strategically with ILSAs, to influence the interpretation of findings and subsequent policy outcomes. However, these efforts are indeterminate and this paper argues that it is at the more profound level of the public imagination of education outcomes and of the evidence needed to know about these that ILSAs achieve their most totalising effects.