Research engagement in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study: A systematic review

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) is the world's largest international assessment of primary-aged students' reading comprehension. However, PIRLS has previously been found to be scarcely used for reading-related research. This systematic review aimed to investigate how PIRLS has been used as a tool for educational research and critique, utilising an existing catalogue and a further article search exploiting five digital databases. A total of 221 articles published in academic journals between January 2004 and May 2022 were analysed. Results show the changing engagement in PIRLS throughout the lifetime of the study and across different countries and research disciplines. We also discuss the findings and implications of PIRLS-related research in three of the most frequent topics of these articles; teacher characteristics and instruction practices as predictors of reading performance, socioeconomic predictors of reading performance, and critiques of the psychometric scaling approaches used in PIRLS. Avenues we believe to have untapped potential, particularly in the context of reading-related research, are also discussed.