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Educational Measurement in the Norwegian Context

How do we assess children's abilities? This project will look into the Norwegian assessment system. Photo: Colourbox

About the project

This is an evolving portfolio of research relating to assessment in the context of Norwegian primary and secondary school. The portfolio will be built up gradually over the next years. In 2017 the first two PhDs were employed with specific sub-projects. Over the next years our ambition is to seek external funding for other sub-projects.

Objectives

There are a number of completed or ongoing research activities where assessment in Norway is the object. However, with the exception of research in the field of special needs education, research framed within the field of educational measurement is scarce or non-existent. The overarching aim of the project is to contribute with research targeting a range of the system-wide assessments used to measure students’ knowledge, skills or competencies in Norwegian schools.

Background

The Norwegian assessment system is based on a long tradition with two main components: teacher-made tests throughout the year and end-of-term centrally administered exams (secondary school). In addition, during the last decade other forms of centrally developed and administered tests have been established with the purpose of monitoring the quality of the educational system at all levels (national assessments in grades 5 and 8 of basic skills in reading, numeracy and EFL).

As stated above, the field of assessment in Norway is today not well-informed by research. There exist little or no knowledge about teachers’ own assessment practices, the centrally developed exams are not systematically evaluated, and we lack information about score use and validity of all kind of assessments. Several of the assessments are developed by professional test developers, and they have reported core features of the psychometric properties of the instruments in reports, but these are typically not peer-reviewed or published in the public domain.

Sub-projects

Financing

Until external funding is secured, the project is financed by CEMOs own budget. Internal resources are used for the two PhD-positions and the work for the two PI’s.

Cooperation

Several of the projects are linked to existing assessments. We are therefore seeking to establish a firm relationship with the Directorate for Teaching and Training (Utdanningsdirektoratet), municipalities and the centers developing the various national assessments. We already have an active cooperation with the Norwegian Centre for Mathematics Education.

Published May 12, 2017 3:38 PM - Last modified Sep. 21, 2023 3:02 PM