Few numbers command as much power as PISA scores, not even the number of Olympic medals or Nobel Prize winners in the world today. It is utterly shocking and embarrassing to see some otherwise rational and well-educated people (or at least they should be) in powerful positions believe that three test scores show the quality of their education systems, the effectiveness of their teachers, the ability of their students, and the future prosperity of their society.
PISA has become the star-maker in the education universe because of its bold claim to …

authoritarian: of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
authoritarianism: principle of blind submission to authority, as opposed to individual freedom of thought and action (Encyclopedia Britannica)
PISA’s glorification of educational authoritarianism goes beyond its romanticization of the misery children suffer in authoritarian education systems as discussed in my last post. Because some authoritarian education systems seem to generate better PISA rankings, it has been concluded that educational authoritarianism, the systemic arrangements designed to enforce government-prescribed, uniform standards upon all children, should be emulated by the rest of the world. …

PISA, the OECD’s triennial international assessment of 15 year olds in math, reading, and science, has become one of the most destructive forces in education today. It creates illusory models of excellence, romanticizes misery, glorifies educational authoritarianism, and most serious, directs the world’s attention to the past instead of pointing to the future. In the coming weeks, I will publish five blog posts detailing each of my “charges,” adapted from parts of my book Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon: Why China has the Best (and Worst) Education.
Part One: …

“Finland Fell from the Tip of PISA,” says the headline of a story in the largest subscription newspaper Helsingin Sanomat in Finland, according to Google Translate (I think it should be
Finland Falls from the Top of PISA). I don’t know Finnish but thanks to Google Translate, I was able to understand most of the story. The gist is that Finland has fallen from the top in the current round of PISA.
This is big news, with significant implications not only for the Finns but also for the rest of the world …

“America’s Woeful Public Schools: TIMSS Sheds Light on the Need for Systemic Reform”[1]
“Competitors Still Beat U.S. in Tests”[2]
“U.S. students continue to trail Asian students in math, reading, science”[3]
These are a few of the thousands of headlines generated by the release of the 2011 TIMSS and PIRLS results today. Although the results are hardly surprising or news worthy, judging from the headlines, we can expect another global wave of handwringing, soul searching, and calls for reform. But before we do, we should ask how meaningful these scores and rankings are.
“Numbers don’t …

Education has been given the task to turn our children into globally competitive workforce. It is thus no surprise that results of international assessments such as the PISA and TIMSS are closely watched by policy makers and the media as an indication a nation’s education quality and their future competitiveness. While I have serious reservations about making “global competitiveness” as an honorable purpose of education and the reduction of complex phenomenon such as education and human capacity into simplistic numbers, I am unable to resist the seduction of numbers and …

Big news! China has become the best education nation, or at least according to some experts and politicians. Chinese students (a sample from Shanghai) outscored 64 countries/education systems on the most recent PISA, OECD’s international academic assessment for 15 year olds in math, reading, and science.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sees this as a “wake-up call” and Chester Finn, an influential education expert who served in the Reagan’s Department of Education, likens it to “sputnik,” the man-made satellite launched by the former Soviet Union in 1957 that startled America. …

About five years ago, all schools embraced the idea of global competence. Governments wanted their students to be globally competent; organizations such as the Asia Society led the development of the content of global competences, and international tests such the PISA even administered an assessment of global competence of 15 years old students in different countries in 2018.  International study tours, global exchange of students and teachers online and offline, joint global projects in teaching and research, as well as publications and conferences on global competence were all on the …

Improbable Probabilities: The Unlikely Journey of Yong Zhao
G. Williamson McDiarmid and Yong Zhao
Published by Solution Tree, 2023 
Williamson McDiarmid is the Dean and Alumni Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Distinguished Chair of Education at East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Yong Zhao is Foundation Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Kansas, Kansas, and Professor of Educational Leadership at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, Australia.
 
Introduction
Too often, the lives of people who have climbed out of dire circumstances and subsequently left their mark on the …

This is the draft of my chapter on creativity in the book Creative Provocations: Speculations on the Future of Creativity, Technology & Learning co-edited by Danah Henriksen and Punya Mishra that is recently published online. Read the published article here.
 
How Not to Kill Creativity?
Yong Zhao
University of Kansas
University of Melbourne
People in education have a very bad habit. Whenever something is said to be important, we try to teach it. Social and emotional learning (SEL) has gained importance so there are programs to teach it. Computational thinking is now considered important, so schools should teach. …