Open international conference on admissions to higher education
NEWS
The 13th international SweSAT conference will be held in Umeå on 15-17 June 2010 and features an entirely new concept. For the first ever, the conference with the theme “Selection to Higher Education - Fairness, Efficiency, and Consequences” will be an open event rather than for invited researchers and representatives only.
SweSAT, or The Swedish Scholastic Assessment Test, is the English term for the admission test used for selection to higher education in Sweden. Since 1993, the test has had an international advisory panel consisting of researchers from Umeå, Gothenburg, the Netherlands, United States and Israel. In recent years, the panel has gathered in Umeå biannually. SweSAT is largely developed by the Department of Educational Measurement at Umeå University.
"Past conferences have usually been quite small meetings, including only the advisory panel, staff from the Educational Measurement at Umeå and some representatives from the National Agency of Higher Education," says Professor Christina Stage, scientific supervisor for SweSAT and chairperson of the advisory panel.
Expanded conference
Several of the researchers who are recent PhD graduates suggested that a large conference should be organised, with the idea that distinguished advisors should be able to attract more participants: researchers, education officials and others who are interested in how the selection and admission process functions.
"We are hoping for over 100 participants, with most being from outside of Sweden. We have already received applications from Chile, Georgia and Azerbaijan," says Christina Stage.
Fairness, Efficiency, and Consequences
The exact topics to be addressed at the conference have yet to be determined, as the call for paper presentations has a deadline of 15 February, but they will mostly likely focus on prequestiies for higher education.
"It is often difficult to compare the criteria of different systems, and it’s a problem that has become increasingly common with the increasing mobility and internationalization," explains Christina Stage.
The keynote presenters currently include members of the advisory panel: Prof. Michal Beller, National Authority for Educational Measurement and Evaluation (RAMA), Israel; Prof. Wim van der Linden, Netherlands (employed at CBT/McGraw-Hill, United States; Prof. Ronald K. Hambleton, University of Massachusetts, United States; and Prof. Jan-Erik Gustafsson from University of Gothenburg. All are distinguished and internationally well known scholars in educational assessment and measurement.
