Building a Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies-Centered Research Community

• In Event: A Fresh Look at Adult Skills in the United States and Around the World: Key Findings From the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies 2012 and Their Implications

Abstract

The preceding presentations in the symposium provided overviews of some of the major international and U.S. national findings from PIAAC. This presentation will consider some of the potential processes and considerations involved in building a strong collaborative community of researchers to work with the PIAAC data. It is hoped that this multi-disciplinary research community will extend these initial PIAAC findings into other research areas and consider their implications for program design and policy development in a number of fields.

Issues in the development of such a research community will be considered with respect to three types of studies: (1) secondary analysis and modeling of existing PIAAC datasets; (2) connecting national PIAAC data sets with other datasets such as those collected by Census and other agencies; and (3) research and evaluation projects that utilize the Education and Skills Online (ESO) assessment that generates PIAAC-compatible individual test scores.

The OECD Skills Strategy (OECD 2012) will be described so that researchers from a number of disciplines and backgrounds will better understand the significance of the PIAAC assessment and the research agendas that the associated data can support. A community of practice framework will be utilized to consider the activities, resources, and tools needed to create and maintain a vital and growing collaborative network of PIAAC-focused scholars.

The suggestions offered in this presentation for some key research will be based on an analysis of the OECD assessment framework, the PIAAC instruments (literacy, numeracy, problem-solving in technology-rich environments, and reading components), the background questionnaire, technical documentation about the instruments used (and available for future research projects), and previous publications about the PIAAC assessments as well as publications based on two closely related previous assessments, the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) and the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills (ALL) survey.

Initial results in building the emerging research community will be described, including a number of community activities: workshops and training sessions; competitive commissioning of research papers to both junior and senior scholars from a number of disciplines; research conferences; and a collaborative online web environment for technical assistance, peer review, and collaboration.

PIAAC is an extraordinary scientific resource for researchers in the fields of adult, continuing and postsecondary education, employment and training, health care, digital literacy, and lifelong learning. The building of a cross-disciplinary collaborative research community will ensure that scholars and researchers in these and other fields are able to take advantage of the unique opportunities offered by the PIAAC data and associated resources and tools.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, (2012). Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives: A Strategic Approach to Skills Policies. Paris: OECD Press.

Author

• Stephen M. Reder, Portland State University