TIMSS in Perspective: Lessons Learned from IEA’s Four Decades of International Mathematics Assessments DRAFT

International comparative studies of educational achievement had their origins in what is now known as the First International Mathematics Study (FIMS). FIMS was the first venture of the fledgling International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), the organization that pioneered international assessments of student achievement. Although FIMS was conducted principally between 1961 and 1965, its origins may be traced to a plan for a large-scale cross-national study of mathematics presented by the late Professor Benjamin S. Bloom in 1958 to colleagues in England and Germany (Husén, 1967). The 1950s were a time of great educational development and expansion in many countries, with excellent descriptive studies of countries ’ educational systems conducted under the auspices of, for example, UNESCO and the OECD. However, the absence of any way of comparing the productivity or outputs of educational systems was keenly felt. Although the methodology for measuring student achievement through national surveys was established in many countries, it had not been implemented in a cross-national study. In FIMS, this methodology was applied for the first time in an international study o