Educational Assessment Evaluation and Accountability

Abstract Bibliometric reviews have proliferated across academic disciplines in recent years. This unprecedented publication trajectory has prompted concerns about quality and the contributions of these reviews to knowledge. This systematic review used descriptive statistics and content analysis to review 1,873 bibliometric reviews of educational research published in Scopus-indexed journals throu…

In Sweden, the principal is tasked with ensuring fair and equitable grading, yet the discretion and mandate for the act of grading are entrusted to the teacher. This situation entails a potential teacher-principal conflict, and principals must thus determine how they will exercise leadership in terms of grading and assessment practices. To investigate this dynamic, we employ a critical approach t…

Non-standardised oral exams are used in many educational contexts; however, little is known about the differences in how non-standardised oral exams are conducted and how variations in practices affect the exams’ validity. To provide insight into this topic, the current study investigates the questions teachers pose during non-standardised oral exams and discusses how teachers’ questioning may ha…

Self-selection bias in voluntary questionnaire surveys poses a threat to the validity of research findings, particularly when studies address sensitive topics. This paper reports on an unexpected case of self-selection bias encountered in research on teachers’ grading beliefs and practices in Austria. Originally designed to examine the relationship between teachers’ grading beliefs and their actu…

High-stakes testing (HST) of entire student cohorts, in which students undertake compulsory tests with an uncertain outcome but a potential benefit, is increasingly used as a policy tool by countries seeking to improve achievement. Long established in the United States, high-stakes testing programs have become prominent features of the accountability landscape in many countries. Researchers have …

Self-efficacy for classroom assessment, which targets teachers’ beliefs about their ability to deliver such high-quality assessments, predicts teachers’ assessment repertoire and use of policy documents. The link between self-efficacy for classroom assessment and use of policy documents is particularly interesting in low-accountability systems, where teachers interpret and enact policies at their…

Abstract The study investigates how teachers’ working conditions – specifically workload and perceptions of a safe and orderly school climate – relate to teachers’ job satisfaction and student achievement in Swedish Grade 4 classrooms. Drawing on data from two international large-scale assessments, PIRLS (2016 and 2021) and TIMSS (2019 and 2023), the study applies parallel mediation structural eq…

Abstract Many countries are grappling with the long shadow that COVID has cast over their education systems, including dramatic increases in absence from school. This paper presents new insights into this issue by investigating how the proportion of teenagers skipping school has changed following the COVID-19 pandemic across the developed world. We find that this problem is mainly confined to ind…

This article is a systematic scoping review of research literature on organisation and implementation of final assessments or examinations in the Nordic countries. We identified 4,068 research contributions through systematic and strategic literature searches. A total of 58 studies were included in the review, of which 16 were assessed as being of high relevance to our research question. The rema…

Abstract The role of grades in shaping students’ futures has intensified in ‘metric societies’ where human lives are increasingly rendered into numbers, scores, metrics, and rankings. It is almost impossible to imagine university education without grades, and indeed, gradeless programs remain at the margins of higher education. This study asks university students to imagine the unimaginable: what…

Abstract Early identification of schools with a high percentage of students at risk of learning poverty is crucial for effective and targeted interventions. This study investigates the use of an innovative combination of large-scale administrative datasets and advanced statistical techniques to predict schools at risk of learning poverty in Italy in the 2018–2019 academic year. The aim is to iden…

Abstract Schools must continuously improve their practices to address today’s societal challenges. To advance school improvement, educational accountability systems have been implemented in many parts of the world; they vary significantly in the levels of pressure they exert on schools. Given that school improvement is inherently a social and complex collaborative process, this paper delves deepe…