Using administrative data to examine global citizenship education

Its relevance to the analysis should be assessed against the affected jurisdiction, learner population and form of provision. For global citizenship education, any consequential application should rest on evidence suited to the affected scope, not on the existence of an international development alone.

Application to global citizenship education

Review of administrative data to examine global citizenship education should address both system-level conditions and institutional practice.

In examining using administrative data to examine global citizenship education, a proxy is useful only where its relationship with the intended outcome is sufficiently understood. Participation, activity and expenditure may support learning, but none constitutes direct evidence of learning without an explicit and tested connection.

The principal risks in relation to the issue are proxy measures treated as direct outcomes, data revisions not carried through to published conclusions, averages concealing distribution, and incomplete coverage. When examining global citizenship education, the risks are interdependent; failure of one control may conceal or disable another.

Controls for global citizenship education

The evidential record for administrative data to examine global citizenship education should permit a reviewer to trace the matter from decision to outcome. This may require population and sampling information, uncertainty estimates where relevant, coverage and missingness analysis, and indicator definitions and metadata, supported by disaggregated results and revision and comparability records.

For decisions concerning global citizenship education, decisions concerning the measure should remain traceable to the information available for the stated reference period.

• Test comparability.
• Define the decision the indicator will inform.
• Report uncertainty and revisions.
• Avoid causal claims unsupported by the design, with responsibility, scope and timing recorded.
• Disaggregate material results before using it to determine a learner or provider outcome.

Review of global citizenship education

In examining using administrative data to examine global citizenship education, across the defined scope, escalation should follow whenever the available record cannot support a safe conclusion for the affected learners.

Authorities and providers reviewing the analysis should proceed in a defined sequence. The method for the analysis is to state the construct to be measured, explain why the proxy is expected to represent it, test that relationship against direct evidence and identify circumstances in which the proxy may fail. Do not allow convenience to determine the measure.

For global citizenship education, decision-makers using evidence on the comparison should be told what the data cannot establish as clearly as what it can. The nature of the result and its applicable unit—system, institution, programme or learner group—should be explicit.

Implications for global citizenship education

Proportionality in relation to administrative data to examine global citizenship education does not mean reduced protection for learners exposed to greater risk. For the measure, measurement can reveal where outcomes differ; it does not by itself establish why they differ or which intervention will work.