IEA INSIDER 2024
Updating IEA’s Technical Standards
BY MICHAEL O. MARTIN & HEIKO SIBBERNS
IEA’s Technical Standards for International Large-scale Assessment is a major update to IEA’s technical standards for its studies, with a new title in recognition of how the field of IEA research has evolved. Originally published in 1999, the standards were essentially defined by the methods and procedures used in TIMSS 1995, a state-of-the-art international large-scale assessment representing current best practice in the field.
performing countries has become very large, so that over time methods and procedures have had to be developed to ensure reliable measurement even at the outer edges of the performance spectrum. While these were initially test forms tailored to sub-groups such as TIMSS Numeracy and PIRLS Literacy, which also had items in common with TIMSS and PIRLS, group-level adaptive procedures are now used. • IEA studies also have grown in complexity over the years. In ICCS, regional modules (Latin America, Europe, Asia) were introduced in addition to the international tests and questionnaires, in which topics were dealt with that were relevant for the students in the respective region. Furthermore, a Computational Thinking (CT) module was developed for ICILS as an option for countries with a special interest in this topic. • One of the biggest sources of change is certainly the constant improvement in technology, which has impacted all aspects of large-scale assessment. The most significant development, however, has been the transition from paper-based to digital assessment, which has fundamentally altered the assessment enterprise.
A lot has changed since the standards were first produced:
• In addition to TIMSS, IEA now conducts PIRLS, ICILS, and ICCS, which are also international large-scale assessments but differ from TIMSS in their orientation, subject matter focus, and design. IEA assessments now provide policymakers and educators with reliable, regular, up-to-date information on student achievement in mathematics, science, reading, civic and citizenship education, and computer and information literacy. • Whereas TIMSS 1995 was developed as a one-off stand-alone study (although a few items from earlier studies such as FIMS, SIMS, etc. were included), contemporary IEA assessments have evolved into ongoing research programs in which the generation and reporting of trend data have become the predominant task. This transition toward trend studies has had widespread repercussions in terms of assessment instrument development, assessment design, and analysis and reporting demands. • As more and more countries joined IEA assessments, the range in achievement between the highest and lowest
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