Policy,philanthropy and profit: the OECD’s PISA for Schools and new modes of heterarchical educational governance

This paper examines the development and administration of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Schools – a new testing instrument of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – to demonstrate the relevance of heterarchical processes to educational governance. Drawing suggestively across new ‘relational’ thinking around policy networks, and new spatialities associated with globalisation, the research shows how PISA for Schools helps constitute new spaces and relations of, and for, educational governance. Informed by policy documents and interviews conducted with 33 key actors across the PISA for Schools policy cycle, I show how PISA for Schools typifies contemporary educational policy-making and governance via the export of ‘statework’ to private actors and agencies, including intergovernmental organisations, philanthropic foundations and edu-businesses. I conclude by considering how treating PISA for Schools, and other similar education services, as a ‘product’ produces a potentially dangerous blurring of public and private benefits, with the potential that (private) profit might ultimately trump (public) education.     

‘Becoming European’? Respatialising the European Schools System through PISA for Schools

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) PISA for Schools, a local variant of the more-renowned ‘main PISA’ test that measures and compares individual school performance on reading, mathematics and science against international schooling systems. Here, I address the governance implications of how PISA for Schools data has been taken up by the transnational European Schools System (ESS). Drawing suggestively across new ‘relational’ thinking around data-driven modes of governance, as well as interviews with key policy actors within the ESS, I show how PISA for Schools reflects contradictory logics within the ESS, in which the inherently context-based goal of ‘becoming European’ is juxtaposed with the desire to employ decontextualised international evidence. I conclude by exploring how the perceived need for such data, associated with the global authority of the OECD, can produce a problematic focus on data-driven practices.     

Toward an international measure of global competence? A critical look at the PISA 2018 framework

This paper focuses on the OECD’s PISA 2018 international framework for global competence. Given the growing national and international attention on educating for global competence, and absent of other measures, there is a need to scrutinise this framework. Our critical analysis is conceptually framed by academic literature related to (a) the OECD’s influential role in facilitating neoliberal education policy trends, (b) disjuncture and debate surrounding global competence, and (c) how influence is garnered through measurement technologies. We conclude by encouraging the OECD to be transparent in the reporting of results and educational stakeholders to be cautious interpreters of forthcoming results and rankings.     

Governing schooling through ‘what works’: the OECD’s PISA for Schools

This paper explores Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Schools, a local variant of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD’s) influential PISA that not only assesses an individual school’s performance in reading, mathematics and science against international schooling systems, but also promotes 17 identical examples of ‘best practice’ from ‘world class’ schooling systems (e.g. Shanghai-China, Singapore). Informed by 33 semi-structured interviews with actors across the PISA for Schools policy cycle, and supplemented by the analysis of relevant documents, the paper provides an account of how these concrete examples of best practice are represented in the report received by participating schools. Drawing upon thinking around processes of commensuration and the notion of ‘governing by examples’, the paper argues that PISA for Schools discursively positions participating schools as somehow being commensurable with successful schooling systems, eliding any sense that certain cultural and historical factors – or ‘out of school’ factors – are inexorably linked to student performance. Beyond encouraging the problematic school-level borrowing of policies and practices from contextually distinct schooling systems, I argue that this positions the OECD as both the global expert on education policy and now, with PISA for Schools, the local expert on ‘what works’.     

PISA: multiple ‘truths’ and mediatised global governance

The OECD’s PISA programme has been portrayed as central to the emergence of a regime of global educational governance and the subsequent convergence of policies towards a standardised model. Whilst there is an extensive literature describing PISA’s impact on education policies, there is a paucity of analysis of how PISA data is presented to the public within nations by three main actors which interpret the results; namely the OECD itself, politicians, and the media. This study analyses how England’s 2012 PISA results were interpreted by those actors, focusing particularly on the role of the media. We demonstrate that the OECD’s original messages were significantly distorted by the UK Government and show how the media, driven by its own logic, framed the results in terms of a narrative of decline, crisis and the need for urgent reform, while, significantly, giving little coverage to either the recommended policy actions or the contrasting interpretations of the PISA results by politicians and the OECD. We argue that a form of ‘mediatised governance’ shaped and limited the overall frame within which the results were debated and had a powerful influence on how local politicians represented the PISA results and advocated their own policy actions.     

The OECD PISA Study as a Soft Power in Education? Lessons from Switzerland and the US

Although originally created for economic purposes, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) has increasingly gained weight in education policy in recent years and is now regarded as an international authority in the field, particularly through its ‘Programme for International Student Assessment’ (PISA), which was highly esteemed in many countries and enabled diverse domestic education reforms. OECD derived a variety of policy recommendations from the PISA results. However, which of these were implemented at the national level and how OECD was able to achieve an impact on its member states have not yet been analysed in sufficient depth. To answer these questions, we analyse which OECD recommendations were reflected in Switzerland and the US. As their reception differs across countries, we assess under which conditions policy convergence towards the OECD ‘model’ took place. Then we elaborate on the governance mechanisms that caused policy convergence. We show that in Switzerland PISA's platform for transnational communication enabled policy learning at the expert level, thus leading to a rather high degree of policy convergence. This was not the case in the US, where PISA was regarded only as one of many studies assessing the performance of education systems.     

PISA ‘Yet To Come’: governing schooling through time,difference and potential

This article examines emerging techniques of educational governance – based on time, difference and potential – enabled by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s PISA-based Test for Schools (‘PISA for Schools’). I show how PISA for Schools facilitates the production of difference through comparative test data, allowing educators to imagine, and bring about, different potential futures. Drawing on Deleuze’s thinking around forms of difference, and the governance function of potentiality, and informed by interviews with key PISA for Schools policy actors, I illustrate how the visualisation of difference produces a local desire amongst schools and educators to become other than they currently are across multiple temporalities, and how this ‘impetus to action’ makes new actions and futures possible. This constitutes what I theorise as ‘governing through difference and potential’, where the underlying logic is for teachers to work on themselves in the present to continually improve the future.     

学生基础能力国际研究项目（PISA）的教育启示

PISA评价作为大规模的学生基础能力国际比较研究,是目前世界上最有影响力的国际学生评价项目之一。PISA应用了一系列目前世界上先进的教育测量理论和成熟的操作模式来评价15岁在校生进入未来社会所必需的知识、技能的获得情况,其评价结果具有高度的可比性、可信性和有效性,受到了各国政府的重视,被视为检验各国教育体制和未来人才竞争的重要指标。PISA项目为教育改革与发展提供了有益的启示,被誉为“教育界的世界杯”,是国际比较教育研究的重要成果。     

PISA在教育政策趋同中的作用：来自瑞士的经验

本文通过阐述教育政策趋同发生的维度与因果机制,提出国际组织在教育政策趋同过程中的特殊作用。在实证上,本文研究了经合组织通过PISA在瑞士中等教育政策制定过程中的作用,透视了跨国交流、规制竞争以及独立问题解决等机制在其中的作用。此外,教育政策趋同可能会冲击发展中国家的教育政策主权和价值,需要辩证看待。     

职校生素养水平及职校资源投入状况的国际比较*--基于经合组织国际学生评估项目（PISA）2009的数据结果分析

在国内职校生被认为是学业不良的“问题学生”,但PISA2009数据结果却显示职校生的学业成绩并不差,甚至还优于经合组织国家（简称OECD）的平均水平。本文利用PISA2009已有数据样本及结果,单独把主要国家“职校生”,这一群体抽离出来进行职校生素养水平的国际比较。本文从经合组织（OECD）成员国及伙伴国中挑选出了12个具有代表性的国家（地区）的职校生作为数据样本,包括中国上海,通过分析、比较各国或地区职校生成绩、评估职业学校管理、资源使用状况,从而综合反映目前我国职校生及职业学校所具备的优势及面临的挑战。