Quality of Education, Comparability, and Assessment Choice in Developing Countries

Autor/in	Wagner, Daniel A.
Titel	Quality of Education, Comparability, and Assessment Choice in Developing Countries
Quelle	In: Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 40 (2010) 6, S.741-760 (20 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0305-7925
Schlagwörter	Developing Nations; Foreign Countries; Educational Quality; Educational Assessment; Credibility; Validity; Sampling; Scaling + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Developing country; Developing countries; Entwicklungsland; Ausland; Quality of education; Bildungsqualität; Education; assessment; Bewertungssystem; Glaubwürdigkeit; Gültigkeit; Scale construction; Skalenkonstruktion
Abstract	Over the past decade, international development agencies have begun to emphasize the improvement of the quality (rather than simply quantity) of education in developing countries. This new focus has been paralleled by a significant increase in the use of educational assessments as a way to measure gains and losses in quality. As this interest in assessment has grown, low-income countries have begun to adopt and adapt international and other assessments for a variety of uses, including the comparability of national quality with other countries, improved ways of measuring reading achievement and further attempts to reach marginalized populations within a country. The present paper reviews a number of international, national and "hybrid" assessments, and considers their merits in terms of how learning is measured, as well as their credibility, sampling and scaling methodologies. The new hybrid assessments, for example, provide innovative opportunities for early intervention for children in their local languages. They also put a premium on local validity over international comparability. The review concludes that there is no single assessment with a dominant scientific superiority, nor is strict comparability across populations or nations a requirement. Rather, different assessments have different policy and practical purposes, and can be used in important and differing ways to improve educational quality. Educational decision makers working in developing countries have important assessment needs and priorities, and will have to choose carefully in order to address them. (Contains 1 table, 2 figures, and 61 notes.) (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10