Assessment of Reading in International Studies

This book brings together contributions from different scholarly contexts that address a diverse range of focused topics, as well as empirical and conceptual perspectives, on research with international studies.

Some chapters focus on technical aspects, exploring opportunities for drawing causal inferences from the data, and investigating biases originating in distributional scale properties. Others are of a more conceptual nature, addressing changes in the relevance of socio-economic indicators across time and countries, examining the exposure of mother-tongue and English instruction on performance and investigating the effects of test construction on gender difference.

The discussion takes a much-needed meta-perspective on the usefulness of international large-scale assessments for educational research and allows reflection upon possibilities and opportunities for their improvement. This book was originally published as a special issue of Assessment in Education.

Jenny Lenkeit works at Potsdam University, Germany, and conducts research concerned with Educational Effectiveness, International Large-Scale Assessments, and Inclusive Education.

Knut Schwippert is Full Professor for Educational Empirical Research at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He works in the context of large-scale school comparison studies, in which he deals especially with issues concerning the relationship between migration background, social status, and educational success.