Chapter 1: The State of Play in Standards and Standards Reform

A renewed and passionate concern for standards in education has arisen internationally over the last two decades, and it is not unfair to say that the standards movement coalesced by this concern is currently one of the primary driving forces (maybe the primary driving force) in global education (Chalker, 1994; Cizek, 2001; Dolence & Norris, 1995). For, example, it is scarcely possible to find an web-site for any educational organization anywhere in the world that does not pay some attention to the issues relating to standards, quality, excellence, benchmarking, high-stakes testing or similar themes. For this reason, standard in education is a particularly appropriate and pertinent topic for this volume of Research on Sociocultural Influences on Motivation and Achievement.