Formative Assessment: the CERI context Tom Schuller Paris, January 2005

Directorate For Financial Directorate for Fiscal and Trade Employment Enterprise Affairs Directorate for Employment Labour and Social Affairs Trade Directorate Economics Department Directorate for Education COUNCIL Directorate for Public Management and Territorial Development SECRETARIAT Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) COMMITTEES Statistics Directorate Directorate for Food Agriculture and Fisheries Environment Directorate Directorate for Science Technology and Industry Development Co-operation Directorate

Directorate for Education Education and Training Policy Division Indicators and Analysis Division Directorate for Education Centre for Education Research and Innovation IMHE/PEB

CERI’s goals: To enrich international knowledge and understanding of trends and issues in lifelong learning, ie across all sectors and modes To encourage better links between research, policy innovation and practice.

We do this by: Promoting research and policy debate through publications, electronic discussion and conferences. Carrying out studies of key educational issues, using a combination of our own staff and outside experts from around the world. Developing tools, indicators and frameworks for international analyses of education systems and practices.

Our programme: Lifelong learning provides the overarching context. Within that our key themes are: Innovation and knowledge management. Human and social capital. A futures focus. Learning and teaching.

OECD/CERI contextual factors Growing preoccupation with outcomes, as well as inputs and participation rates; outcomes are more than qualifications achieved. The returns to education cannot be understood in terms of individual performance alone CERI interest in ‘evidence’; and in causal mechanisms. Data availability and appropriate measurement: the need for mixed methodologies

EDU/CERI: related projects PISA Teachers Schooling for Tomorrow/University Futures: what works in futures thinking Learning Science – the brain project: effective learning at different points in the lifecourse Evidence-based Policy Research: matching methods to issues

Key issues Asking the right questions: relevant, significant and (partly) answerable Maintaining trust: valuing experience, but combined with accountability Accumulating evidence – including on evidence…

Conference goals Share, examine and extend the findings of the CERI study Critique/confirm the model and the evidence Scaling up: how to implement FA on wider basis Link to next WW study, on adult basic skills

“It is hardly possible to over-rate the value … “It is hardly possible to over-rate the value ….of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar…Such communication has always been, and is peculiarly in the present age, one of the primary sources of progress.” JS Mill, Principles of Political Economy