IEA INSIDER 2024
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A Vision for the TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Center BY MATTHIAS VON DAVIER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE TIMSS & PIRLS INTERNATIONAL STUDY CENTER AT BOSTON COLLEGE
The TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Center, based at Boston College, plays a pivotal role in driving innovation in international large-scale student assessment and provides leadership in assessing educational achievement globally.
A LONG AND DISTINGUISHED HISTORY The center’s origins date back to the mid-1990s, when Professor Al Beaton, a faculty member at the Lynch School of Education, brought the TIMSS project to Boston College. Soon, Dr. Ina V.S. Mullis, an energetic force in large-scale assessment, spearheaded the TIMSS initiative with Dr. Michael (Mick) Martin. They laid the foundation for a world- renowned international assessment center and the driving force behind many developments around TIMSS and PIRLS. Initially, the center operated as a modest two-person team, with Ina Mullis and Mick Martin leading the charge, helped by a few assistants and graduate students. Over the next two decades, TIMSS, conducted every four years, and PIRLS, added in 2001 and conducted every five years, evolved and grew steadily. With this, the number of staff grew as well, and under direction of Mick and Ina—who continued to lead many of aspects of the study while collaborating with IEA and sampling partners, as well as helping national centers succeed—the studies grew steadily. From the very beginning, the center was part of the Lynch School of Education and
Human Development at Boston College. To this date, this has been very beneficial for all parties involved, as it has led to many gifted students joining the center first as graduate students and often later as full-time staff. TIMSS and PIRLS data gained recognition worldwide. UNESCO lists them as valuable data sources for monitoring progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 4—providing quality education for all. JOINING THE TIMSS AND PIRLS LEADERSHIP When I joined Boston College as part of the full-time faculty in the Measurement, Evaluation, Assessment, and Statistics (MESA) group in 2020, my history with the International Study Center already covered almost 20 years. As a research scientist and later a research director at Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, NJ, I was serving the TIMSS and PIRLS center as the ETS consultant on call for the psychometric and statistical analysis team, and I was a member of the International Study Center’s project management team (PMT) since 2001, besides research on
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