Academic Events
Power, Conflict and Change in World Society: The Case of International Assessment of Student Achievement: International Education Symposium (No.89)
Publish Date:2016-01-04
 On Dec. 29, 2015, Assistant Professor Oren Pizmony-Levy from the Department of International and Transcultural Studies, Teachers College, Columbia University, USA, delivered a lecture entitled “Power, Conflict and Change in World Society: The Case of International Assessment of Student Achievement” for IICE’s International Education Podium. The lecture was chaired by IICE Associate Professor TENG Jun and attended by faculty and graduate students.

 

Prof. Pizmony-Levy’s research interests center on the socio-political analysis of educational policy movements, including accountability (e.g. international assessment of student achievement), environmental and sustainability education, and sexuality education. He examines these cases through comparative and cross-national research design, using quantitative and qualitative methods and social network analysis.

 

He began by discussing why international assessment is important and, by looking into the results of International Education Association (IEA), discussing how the research function of international assessment, with more government participation, will transform into an assessment in which political function outweighs research function. Prof. Pizmony-Levy argues that as different countries have different policies and cultural values, international assessment in the initial stage is nothing more than just research. Nevertheless, if such assessment was conducted first in countries with higher growth of GDP, policy backgrounds and cultural values of various components of the world society (governments, NGOs), shaped by implied values of international assessment, would converge in the process of power conflicts and games, with the assessment thus evolving from research into one involving government participation.

 

At the end of the lecture, Professor Pizmony-Levy had discussions and exchanges with all of the attendees.