In the sixth and final paper in this special issue, Professors Beaton, Martin, and Mullis address the topic of educational reform and the role of international assessments. In order to make effective educational decisions for the 21st century, policy-makers need information of a wide variety of kinds, for example, comparative performance data and curriculum information from other nations. They argue that international assessments can be valuable, and describe the goals of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study and the steps being followed to insure that the results from the study will meet the diverse informational needs of policy-makers. Past, Current, and Emerging Practices Thomas Oakland University of Florida, USA Keywords School psychology, assessment practice, test use Current test use with children and youth, principally by school or educational psychologists, is reviewed. Issues discussed include the status of the specialty of school psychology, a brief history of educational and psychological testing, traditional purposes of and common problems associated with test use, and emerging trends.
Emphasis is placed on conditions within Europe when possible.
More often too, those assessments are offered without empirical support. The goal of the current paper is to reflect on the diagnostic assessment of learning disabilities. A distinction can be made between assessments which focus on performance and those which focus on competence. Competence-based diagnostic assessments provide more useful information to practitioners to understand learning disabilities and to organize special education. Historically, the Piagetian theory opened the way to assessments of competence.