Kathleen Graves will advise on new international foreign language assessment
Clinical Professor Kathleen Graves has been invited to participate in a technical advisory group for the new PISA Foreign Language Assessment. PISA is the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment. Every three years it tests students from all over the world to gauge how well the students master key subjects. PISA publishes the results of the tests a year after the students are tested to help governments shape their education policy. With the creation of PISA’s new foreign language assessment, policy makers and educators will be able to compare results of student foreign language competencies and study the ways in which students learn languages around the globe.
The assessment will have three components: a framework for the assessment of foreign languages; a test to assess foreign language competency; and a set of questionnaires for teachers, students, schools, and parents as well as a country-level questionnaire.
Graves is one of only six international experts on a specialized team that will advise the PISA team on items for the background questionnaires that accompany the new assessment. These questionnaires will provide background and context for the assessment results.
The PISA foreign language assessment is designed to examine 15-year-olds and it will be implemented for the first time in 2024. It will diagnose strengths and weaknesses in the mastery of foreign languages, expose achievement gaps, and make it possible to analyze trends that could affect public policy. The assessment will evaluate the key language competencies that are needed to study and work in an increasingly globalized world.