Transnational Trends and Contesting Concepts for Measuring Merit

• In Event: 47.035 - Crossing Borders: Ideas and Policies in Comparative Settings

Abstract

This paper researches American and German influences on four nations and states’ curriculum, assessment and teacher education policies in a historical perspective, and aim to substantiate how transnational research and policy deliberations shaped these constituencies’ approaches to determine what knowledge should be taught and how it should be assessed. The study explores the reception of American psychometric theories and methods throughout the twentieth century in two remote regions; Norway and Sweden in Scandinavia, and Queensland and Victoria in Australia, and its conflict with Germany influenced approaches to educational administration. As such, the study uses historical analyses to reshape current understandings of similarities and differences in how these constituencies have taken up transnational trends and contesting concepts for measuring merit.

Author

• Sverre Tveit, University of Agder