IEA INSIDER 2025
The Successful LaNA Linking Study and New International Benchmarks
BY MATTHIAS VON DAVIER & LALE KHORRAMDEL
IEA’s Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (LaNA) is a newly established international assessment designed to monitor emerging reading and mathematics skills at the end of primary school. Following pilot administrations and a linking study in 2023, which linked LaNA to the TIMSS and PIRLS scales, the LaNA assessment is now available for countries and subnational education systems seeking to measure and monitor proficiency in reading and mathematics. LANA ASSESSMENT DESIGN LaNA is a paper-based assessment combining reading and mathematics items in a rotated booklet design. Each achievement booklet contains two 40-minute subject blocks—reading and mathematics. The achievement items are presented in a multiple-choice format to support ease of administration and scoring consistency. Each student completes a single achievement booklet (80 minutes in total) and a 30-minute student background questionnaire. An additional school questionnaire is administered to principals to gather data on the learning environment and institutional context. The five LaNA reading blocks are based on the PIRLS 2016 reading framework; each block includes a short passage accompanied by comprehension items focused on reading for literary experience or reading to acquire and use information and the four PIRLS processes of comprehension. Compared to PIRLS, LaNA places greater emphasis on the reading purpose of reading to acquire and use information and the comprehension process of focusing on retrieving explicitly stated information. The four LaNA mathematics blocks are based on the TIMSS 2015 mathematics framework and cover key content domains, including whole numbers, fractions, geometry, and data representation. They also cover the three TIMSS
cognitive domains: knowing, applying, and reasoning. Each mathematics block includes 40 items with targeted coverage across the content and cognitive domains. Compared to TIMSS mathematics, LaNA places greater emphasis on the whole numbers content domain and the knowing and applying cognitive domains. LINKING LANA TO TIMSS AND PIRLS In 2023, the LaNA 2023 Linking Study was conducted in Burkina Faso, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Palestinian National Authority, and Senegal to establish a statistically robust link between LaNA and the internationally recognized TIMSS and PIRLS scales. The LaNA 2023 Linking Study provided the first opportunity to generate reliable and internationally comparable results on emerging reading comprehension and mathematics skills at the end of primary school for these countries. The linking procedure enabled LaNA results to be interpreted in relation to global learning standards, making it possible for participating countries to contextualize national achievement profiles within a broader international framework and report student “The LaNA 2023 Linking Study provided the first opportunity to generate reliable and internationally comparable results on emerging reading comprehension and mathematics skills at the end of primary school for these countries.”
26
Made with FlippingBook - PDF hosting