Lancaster Seminar

The Politics of Reception – Media, Policy, Public Knowledge and Opinion, convened by Professor Mary Hamilton, at Lancaster University, UK.

The fifth seminar in the series was held at Lancaster University on 20th (afternoon from 2-6pm) and 21st April (all day until 4.30pm) 2016.

Videos of presentations at the seminar are available on the VIDEOS tab above.

The seminar was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council UK with additional support from the Higher Education Research Centre in the Department of Educational Research. The seminar focused on the ways that findings from international assessments enter into media and public discourse in participating countries, how these are articulated within existing national preoccupations and the implications of these interventions for policy.  It began with a plenary event on the afternoon of April 20th. The full-day seminar on 21st April included presentations from academics and media specialists involved with processes of reception of international assessment results as well as parallel group discussions and workshops.

ESRC Seminar 5 programme

For further information about the seminar please contact  Mary Hamilton [m.hamilton@lancaster.ac.uk] or Kathryn Doherty  [kathryn.doherty@lancaster.ac.uk]

Speakers

Plenary Presenters at this event were:

Professor Oren Pizmony-Levy (Columbia Teachers College) Compare Globally, Interpret Locally: International Assessments and the Public

 Dr Sarah Richardson (Research Director of ACER India, Australian Council for Educational Research)   National Responses to the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes: the AHELO feasibility project

 Dr Aspa Baroutsis (Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane)/Professor Bob Lingard, University of Queensland, AU Analysis of media portrayals of PISA in Australia, 2000-2014: counts, comparisons, criticisms and contexts  

Our panel included a representative from the Unesco Institute for Statistics in Montreal talking about the strategic approach of an international agency; Dr Megan Knight, University of Hertfordshire, discussing the changing professionalism of media workers and the rise of “data journalism”; Dr Petra Javrh, Slovenian Institute for Adult Education, details the approach of a government advocacy agency working with journalists to prepare for the release of the PIAAC findings; Dr Cormac O’Keefe, YES N’YOU, Paris, discusses the role of PIAAC workshops in shaping statistical interpretation of the survey findings; Professor Heinz-Dieter Meyer, University of Albany, reflects on the value and effectiveness of academic activism from his experience of intervening in the public discourse of PISA through an open letter to Andreas Schleicher.