Open Society Foundation for Albania announces call for participant selection for the Workshop:

SDG-4Education 2030 Agenda’s Measurement Challenges: Learning Outcomes and Educational Equality - Devising a national indicator framework to better recognise local context and differences within countries, the case of PISA

To be held November 24-25, 2016 in Tirana, Albania.

Objective of the workshop

The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goal for Education (SDG 4) by the UN Assembly in 2015 opened a new era for global, regional and national action to advance sustainable development for all. The current workshop aims to create the space for a dialogue on ways to best make use of international comparative studies (i.e., mirror, monitoring, decision-making, research, and enlightenment) in Albania, but also to discuss the development of research capacity, collecting baseline data in certain subject areas where previously there was a vacuum, heightened awareness of what other countries around the world are doing, and highlighting priorities for policymakers in particular.

The workshop will primarily focus on possible ways to use internationally-comparative, large-scale datasets in the new Sustainable Development Goals, such as TIMSS, PIRLS, PISA and other similar instruments in the context of the development of national indicator framework to better recognise local context and differences within countries.

The workshop will provide a forum for Albanian scholars and policymakers to identify how large-scale data studies can be used to inform policymaking at all levels of education, and how these data can be used to better understand specific country- and international-level challenges in the framework of SDG-4Education 2030 Agenda’s Measurement Challenges: Learning Outcomes and Educational Equality.

Moreover, the workshop will provide the opportunity for the Albanian scholars/researchers to discuss potential research interest in this field which will be considered further for professional and financial support from Education Support Program (https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/programs/education-support-...) 

Selection of participants

A number of up to 20 participants with relevant expertise and experience in the topic of the workshop from government institutions, universities, and civil society organisations will be selected to attend. If interested to attend, please submit the following:

A professional CV;
A motivation letter of up to 500 words detailing the reasons why would you like to participate to the workshop; (no specific template is needed)
If the case, relevant list of publications
Documents should be sent to ESPworkshop@osfa.al .

Final deadline of submission is 5 pm local time, November 13.

Participant selection results will be published by November 18.

Travel expenses and accommodation are not covered by the organizers. For all participants coffee breaks and lunch will be offered for both days of the workshop. Working language: English.

Invited key speakers:

William C. Smith who has recently accepted a position as the Senior Project Officer for Research with UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report team where he will be responsible for the development of the thematic section of the 2017 Report on Accountability in Education. William’s research focuses on education’s role in economic and social development with special interests in national testing policies, educator based accountability, population health, and equity in educational inputs and outcomes. Prior to joining the GEM Report team William helped develop and pilot the Right the Education Index as a Senior Associate at RESULTS Educational Fund, was a Thomas J. Alexander Fellow at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and spent six years teaching secondary social studies. William holds a dual-title Ph.D. in Education Theory & Policy and Comparative International Education from the Pennsylvania State University, a Masters degree in International Development from the University of Denver, a Masters degree in Teaching from Western Oregon University, and a Bachelors degree in Sociology from Portland State University. His research has resulted in over 20 academic and policy publications, including his recently published edited volume The Global Testing Culture: Shaping Education Policy, Perceptions, and Practice. 

Maciej Jakubowski works as a consultant for the Public Education Evaluation Commission in Saudi Arabia and as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, Warsaw University. He served as an under-secretary of state (deputy minister) at the Polish Ministry of National Education between 2012 and 2014, where he was responsible for the ministry’s budget and school funding, international cooperation, research and building the long-term education strategy. Before joining the government, he worked in the OECD PISA team in Paris (between 2008 and 2012) and as a consultant for the World Bank, UNDP, OECD and the Polish government. He has PhD in economics and MA in sociology from the University of Warsaw. Dr. Jakubowski conducted research at the University of Pittsburgh, Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, and the European University Institute in Florence. Recently, his research has focused on an analysis of how policy changes relate to international trends in student performance. He also works on the methodological problems in evaluating educational policies. Dr. Jakubowski was involved in implementing a value-added system to evaluate teaching quality of lower secondary schools in Poland, a project that covered all schools in Poland and now serves as the basis of school evaluation using standardized test tools. He authored and co-authored several policy reports, academic papers and book chapters in the area of education policy, public choice and labor economics.