Introduction. An Atlantic Crossing? The Work of the International Examinations Inquiry, its Researchers, Methods and Influence, 7-37
Martin Lawn Blowing up the Citadel of Examinations: the English Committee and the Carnegie Corporation, 39-59
Florian Waldow Awkward Knowledge: the German delegation to the International Examinations Inquiry, 61-82
Rita Hofstetter, Bernard Schneuwly Bovet's Dilemma - examinations or no examinations: the Swiss contribution to the Carnegie initiative, 83-98
Marc Zarrouati The Battle of the Baccalaureat: the long forgotten story of a divided committee, 99-118
Martin Lawn, Ian Deary, David Bartholomew Naive, Expert and Willing Partners: the Scottish Council for Research in Education in the International Examinations Inquiry, 119-136
Minna Vourio-Lehti, Annukka Jauhiainen Laurin Zilliacus and the 'War' against the Finnish Matriculation Examination, 137-156
Christian Lundahl Inter/national Assessments as National Curriculum: the case of Sweden, 157-179
Harold Jarning, Gro Hanne Aas Between Common Schooling and the Academe: the International Examinations Inquiry in Norway, 1935-1961, 181-202
Notes on Contributors, 205-206
Introduction. An Atlantic Crossing? The Work of the International Examinations Inquiry, its Researchers, Methods and Influence
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Blowing up the Citadel of Examinations: the English Committee and the Carnegie Corporation
Martin Lawn
The English Committee of the International Examinations Inquiry comprised some of the most well-known educationists and psychologists of education in England. It was London based and driven by Sir Philip Hartog, a close ally of the Chair, Sir Michael Sadler. It published a range of books including a bibliography and essays on the subject of examinations, and a close study entitled The Marks of Examiners, a controversial book. In the late 1930s, it was allowed to develop, with Carnegie funding, into a project for a national research institute, and its close ally, Sir Fred Clarke, worked with Hartog in the war years to this purpose.
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Awkward Knowledge: the German delegation to the International Examinations Inquiry
Florian Waldow
This chapter locates the position of the German delegation to the International Examinations Inquiry (IEI) both within German educational discourse at the time and within the context of the IEI. During its short period of activity, the German delegation produced some remarkable research that was quite unusual and ground-breaking in the German context, where empirical approaches to education and testing were rapidly being marginalised by a more philosophical orientation of education as an academic subject at the time. At the same time, the German delegation’s position was of course formed by academic culture and educational discourse in Germany, especially by the idea of education as radically individualistic self-cultivation (Bildung). Conceiving of education as Bildung, however, potentially stood in conflict to applying psychometric testing methods. Thus, the German delegation’s position was somewhat ‘awkward’ both in relation to the dominant pedagogical discourse in Germany at the time and to what might be termed the psychometric ‘mainstream’ at the Eastbourne conference.
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Bovet's Dilemma - examinations or no examinations: the Swiss contribution to the Carnegie initiative
Rita Hofstetter, Bernard Schneuwly
At the Eastbourne conference on examinations organised by the Carnegie Foundation, Bovet asks a fundamental question: what are the effects of examinations on the school system and on teachers’ work. This question is the expression of a dilemma he has: as an experimental pedagogue, he is in favour of scientific examinations; as a militant for New Education, he defends teachers’ freedom, which can be hampered by examinations. In order to provide some answers to his questions, he analyses the origin and effects of large-scale examinations of army recruits in Switzerland (1854 1914) and the reasons for their suppression; among others, the action of the New Education influenced teacher trade union. The analysis of this Swiss historical experiment allows him to formulate his dilemma in a more sophisticated way, but it remains.
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The Battle of the Baccalaureat: the long forgotten story of a divided committee
Marc Zarrouati
The French Committee attended the three general conferences of International Examinations Inquiry (IEI) at Eastbourne, Folkestone and Dinard, while its chairman, Auguste Desclos, also attended all intermediate meetings. France even hosted the last general meeting of 1938, at Dinard. This committee should have played a key role in this international inquiry. However, this committee failed in sustaining the international efforts to improve European countries’ way of examining. It did not contribute to releasing any French innovative methods or ideas abroad, nor did it convince French educational circles to adopt the modern views on examinations discussed at these conferences. Although it had carried out seminal studies on the baccalauréat examination, the Committee disappeared at the dawn of the Second World War and its work sank in the deep waters of indifference and oblivion. Considering the history of the French Committee is nevertheless of great interest to understand why and how French leading teachers, namely secondary school teachers, were predominantly opposed to new methods of examination in the 1930s, while these methods were broadly released and experimented with in many other European countries. We see that the French Committee was divided between those who promoted ‘Culture générale’ based education and traditional examinations and those who wished to introduce testing within French primary and secondary schools. The latter carried out the scientific work, while the interpretations and discussions of the results were led by the former, during the Carnegie conferences. This latent conflict was detrimental both to scientific exchanges between French experimental psychologists and foreign scholars and to the introduction of experimental methods and psychometric views on examination within the French education system, as well.
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Naive, Expert and Willing Partners: the Scottish Council for Research in Education in the International Examinations Inquiry
Martin Lawn, Ian Deary, David Bartholomew
The Scottish presence in the International Examinations Inquiry (IEI) is substantial and fully involved. The IEI creates a strong international, financial and scientific opportunity for the embryo Scottish research network, the Scottish Council for Research in Education (SCRE). The power of the network is harnessed to a series of quantitative studies including wide school population testing. Carnegie recognised and strengthened the independent thinking of the Scottish network and SCRE formed itself within an American school of thought on educational research.
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Laurin Zilliacus and the 'War' against the Finnish Matriculation Examination
Minna Vourio-Lehti, Annukka Jauhiainen
In this chapter the activities of the Finnish Carnegie Committee are reviewed. The first part establishes the social and educational context within which Zilliacus and the Carnegie Committee operated in Finland in the 1930s. In the second part the Finnish secondary school system (oppikoulu) is reviewed and Zilliacus’s experimental secondary school is described. The chapter then examines the members of the Finnish Carnegie Committee and the outcomes of the enquiry. The last section evaluates the impact of the Committee for Finnish educational policy.
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Inter/national Assessments as National Curriculum: the case of Sweden
Christian Lundahl
The use of assessments and the use of the international scene are two strategies to change the national curriculum that are typical in modern educational systems. This chapter illustrates how a progressive movement in Sweden used participation in the International Examinations Inquiry to promote and establish a very specific institute in Sweden: the State Psychological Pedagogical Institute (SPPI). By the realisation of the SPPI the progressive movement won an important position on the Swedish educational field, from which they could distribute discourses on and for comprehensive schooling. These discourses became, contrary to the intentions, more and more psychology laden over the years to come.
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Between Common Schooling and the Academe: the International Examinations Inquiry in Norway, 1935-1961
Harold Jarning, Gro Hanne Aas
The major report from the International Examinations Inquiry in Norway was published in 1961. The last of the two books from the project was based on data and investigations from the second half of the 1930s. The Norwegian Carnegie Committee started its work in 1935 and managed to initiate a number of investigations done by a group of younger educational researchers, before the German occupation from 1940 to 1945. After the war the committee was re-established for some years. The investigations focused mainly on upper secondary general education. The main areas of concern were related to the pressure from a newly unified common basic school on post-compulsory education. Key investigations focused on the validity of marking and the national examinations as well as on the impact of examinations on pedagogy and everyday student life. Results were published in Norwegian, and with a delay of a decade or more. Documentation from the project would support the more general impression in the decades after the war that the national examinations had acceptable validity. Also important was a concern for national assessment as a main institution and caretaker of control of educational quality. In this respect the investigations did not support attempts to introduce test-based systems on a broad scale and as an alternative to the established system based on mandatory national examinations.
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Notes on Contributors
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