Report on the participation in IAEA 2012 conference made by the researchers of the International Laboratory for Educational Policy Research HSE

The 38th conference IAEA 2012 took place in Astana (Kazakhstan) from 16 till 21 September 2012. This conference is held yearly by The International Association for Educational Assessment. This structure is compiled by the universities, centers, research organizations from more than 50 countries all over the world. The representatives of such famous organizations as ETS (Educational Testing Service, USA), Cito (Netherlands), Cambridge Assessment (UK) participate in this event every year.

Each time the conference is centered on some specific direction. This year attention was drawn to Designing the assessment of learning outcomes to make positive impact on individuals and institutions.

The International Laboratory for Educational Policy Research HSE members were also among the participants of this significant international event.

Junior researcher of the Laboratory Tatyana Khavenson reported on “Master Program “Measurement in Psychology and Education: Outcomes and Plans”. Oleg Podolskiy, Laboratory researcher, spoke about «Competence of adults: for success one need to access».

Tatyana Khavenson’s report was devoted to a unique Russian experience – launching of Measurement in Psychology and Education master program. It is the first experience of such kind in the Commonwealth of Independent States. The perquisites for creation, launching process basic educational principles, a talk on the first graduates 2012 were covered there. Plans for the future and further perspectives were mentioned as well.

Oleg Podolsky’s report was dedicated to a new international project ‘Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, PIAAC’ in which Russia has currently been taking part since the year 2009. The evaluation of adult population’s competencies, which is a rare though highly important topic, was touched upon in his speech, as well as the goals, tasks, local peculiarities of carrying the project in Russia and further prospects for research. Participation in such project is a new experience for our country and the results obtained will definitely contribute into developing essential recommendations in the sphere of education and labour.

Elena Kardanova, the Institute for Educational Studies HSE associate professor, made a report on ‘School Achievements Monitoring Toolkit: Validation Study’. School Achievements Monitoring Toolkit or briefly SAM is an assessment instrument for school achievements of the primary school pupils. It was designed by a group of Russian experts. Both theoretical and practical sides of the model were demonstrated to the audience.

All reports drew a vivid attention of the listeners.

Various seminars and workshops were held in the framework of the conference besides the participants’ reports. A seminar ‘Considerations in Setting Performance Standards’, carried out by Mary Pitoniak (ETS) attracted a lot of attention this year. She is a well-known professional in this sphere and at the conference she performed some classic and innovative (based on IRT) methods of a threshold score establishment.

The next 39^th  IAEA 2013 conference will take place in Israel and will be focused on Educational assessment 2.0: Technology in Educational Assessment.