ABSTRACT

Seldom have comparative studies of educational assessment systems been undertaken, especially regarding their standard setting procedures. This study examines the effects of governance structures on the power relations in standard setting in the dominant school-leaving or university-entrance examinations. We present acritical analysis of the published research and policy documents, including sense-checking with senior assessment practitioners from 22 jurisdictions. The nature of standard setting systems in three cases of Ireland, the USA and India are described in detail to showcase the differences between the following three models of governance systems: nationalised, commercial market and quasi-market. The contribution of this article, then, is to describe the three models of governance systems, to classify the 22 jurisdictions using the three models, and to generate propositions inductively. Thus, the article provides aconceptual basis for extension of this work to other cases to advance the literature cumulatively by theory-building.

摘要

很少进行教育评估系统的比较研究，尤其是在其标准制定程序方面。本研究在占主导地位的离校考试或大学入学考试中考察了治理结构对权力关系的影响。我们对已发表的研究和政策文件进行了批判性分析，包括与来自22个辖区的高级评估从业人员进行了意识检查。详细描述了爱尔兰，美国和印度三个案例中的标准制定体系的性质，以展示以下三种治理体系模型之间的差异：国有化，商业市场和准市场。那么，本文的贡献就是描述三种治理系统模型，使用这三种模型对22个辖区进行分类，并归纳得出命题。因此，本文为将这一工作扩展到其他案例提供了理论基础，以通过理论构建来累积地推进文献的发展。