FOREWORD PAPERS FROM THE IEA STUDY

in 1959 for the purpose of conducting international comparative studies of achievement of school students. The IEA’s aim is to study achievement against he wide background of school, classroom, home, student, and societal factors in order to enhance learning within and across systems of education. The IEA has grown over the years to a cooperative of 45 research institutes, whose studies have covered a wide range of subject matter areas [l]. The IEA decided in 1985 to start the ‘Computers in Education ’ (Comped) study as a two-stage study with data collection in 1989 and 1992. The main data from stage 1 was collected in 22 educational systems. The results of this stage are (or will be) reported in a first report [2] , in a research volume [3] and in articles in scholarly journals [4]. The second stage of the study will be a follow-up of stage 1 and will also include measures of student outcomes in the domain of computer use in schools (functional computer knowledge and skills). IEA studies provide participating countries with an onportunity to study nationally relevant questions by adding to the international instruments ome national options. These national options are usually only reported on a national level. We think that it is worthwhile to report internationally these kinds of results also, as we expect that many lessons can be learned from specific nationa