The PISA 2000 Technical Report now describes the complex methodology underlying PISA 2000, along with additional features related to the implementation of the project at a level of detail that allows researchers to understand and replicate its analyses.

Traveling from Zimbabwe to New Zealand and on to Ghana and the United States, the voices of higher education are presented in a way only scholars from these regions can fully articulate and understand. The changing world of higher education challenges all of those involved in very unique ways. In Global Voices in Higher Education, scholars from 10 different countries share their work, describing not only their research but also the context in which their work exists. This book allows the reader to travel with these scholars to their colleges and universities and discover areas of concern in higher education from around the globe.

This compelling book chronicles a remarkable American educational undertaking that spanned two continents and survived three wars. William McGrew recounts the challenges faced by Anatolia College’s leaders and the solutions they found to achieve their goals within the often-turbulent social, religious, and political environments of their host countries. McGrew begins with Anatolia’s nineteenth-century Boston-based founders, who initially hoped to bring Calvinist Christianity to the diverse peoples of the Ottoman Empire and gradually shifted their emphasis to educational goals. While seeking to enrich the lives of the inhabitants of Asia Minor and beyond from the College’s campus south of the Black Sea, Protestant educators also encountered rampant ethnic strife and the loss of many students and staff. Most memorable was the pursuit on horseback across Turkey’s plains by two American women to save some fifty girls otherwise destined to perish at the hands of Turks. Renewed violence following World War I forced Anatolia to relocate from Turkey to Thessaloniki, the major city of northern Greece. The book follows Anatolia over the subsequent decades as it embraced a society experiencing an often-violent trajectory, including the Nazi occupation followed by civil war. Nonetheless, the College succeeded in developing a spacious campus and in drawing able students from all parts of Greece through generous scholarships. Close collaboration between Greek and American educators in merging the Hellenic cultural legacy with the strongest features of American instruction enabled Anatolia to become today one of Greece’s most outstanding institutions at both the school and college levels. Its rich history provides a unique window on the American missionary movement, the Armenian genocides, the Greek-Turkish conflict, two world wars and ongoing achievements in international education through the prism of the survival and growth of an American college caught in near-perpetual upheaval.

Based on twenty case studies of universities worldwide, and on a survey administered to leaders in 101 universities, this open access book shows that, amidst the significant challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, universities found ways to engage with schools to support them in sustaining educational opportunity. In doing so, they generated considerable innovation, which reinforced the integration of the research and outreach functions of the university. The evidence suggests that universities are indeed open systems, in interaction with their environment, able to discover changes that can influence them and to change in response to those changes. They are also able, in the success of their efforts to mitigate the educational impact of the pandemic, to create better futures, as the result of the innovations they can generate. This challenges the view of universities as "ivory towers" being isolated from the surrounding environment and detached from local problems. As they reached out to schools, universities not only generated clear and valuable innovations to sustain educational opportunity and to improve it, this process also contributed to transform internal university processes in ways that enhanced their own ability to deliver on the third mission of outreach

In a changing world that demands new skills, a vital concern of public education is the gap in academic performance between low- and high-achieving students. There is no excuse for the achievement gaps that persist among poor and minority students in schools today. All students can succeed at high levels, regardless of race, ethnicity and economic background. Several countries have successfully confronted inequities in achievement, demonstrating that any school can close achievement gaps regardless of the community they serve, and that all students can achieve at high levels when they are provided with the right opportunities. This book is about understanding what factors selected countries have applied to promote progress and what factors contribute to progress in the closing of achievement gaps. It is about creating opportunities for all students. Closing the Achievement Gap from an International Perspective: Transforming STEM for Effective Education is written in response to rising concern for the improvement of quality education – especially in mathematics and science – provided to all students. The contributors take a systematic view of the subject, beginning with a cross-national analysis of teacher qualifications and the achievement gap that spans 50 countries. The content of the book is organized in sections describing education around the globe: North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Individual chapters offer close-up analysis of efforts to close achievement gaps in the U.S. and Canada, Mexico, England, Turkey, China, South Africa and Australia among many others. The contributors provide information on the achievement gap in mathematics and science, review current research, and present strategies for fostering improvement and raising performance with a focus on school-related variables that adversely affect educational outcomes among poor and minority students. The authors of the various chapters looked at how students’ data correlated with classroom practices, teacher instruction and academic programming, as part of their efforts to measure student growth. Qualitative and quantitative data are provided to provide evidence not only of the problem, but also for the solution. The book concludes with a chapter on promoting equality and equity to shrink the achievement gap worldwide.

Discusses the uses of international achievement study results as a tool for national progress as well as an obstacle. This title provides recommendations for ways that international achievement data can be used in real-world policymaking situations. It also discusses what the future of international achievement studies holds.

Introduction - Education and National State Building in Turkey - The Secular State and the National Education - Post World War Turkey and Education Realities - Kemalism, Islam and Nation in a Changing World - Changing the State, Changing Education- Combining Islam with the National State - Conclusions.