PISA-based Test for Schools and Global Governance of Education: New Scales, Networks and Spaces

Author(s):

Steven Lewis(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

23 SES 03 A, The Impact of PISA on National Education Policy

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-02

17:15-18:45

Room:

B331 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Anne Larson

Contribution

The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and broader education policy work has exerted a significant influence upon education policy internationally, contributing to the emergence of global governance of education (Meyer & Benavot, 2013). While acknowledging its international comparative element, academic research around PISA has mostly addressed the impact of such technologies of governance within national spaces. There is limited evidence to suggest how the effects of the OECD’s policy dispositif (Bailey, 2013) are experienced at the regional or school level, with PISA data used primarily in relation to national policy making. To this end, the research examines the recent development of the PISA-based Test for Schools (‘Test for Schools’) – a nascent assessment instrument of the OECD that enables an individual school’s performance to be evaluated against globally comparative PISA benchmarks, and high-performing international schooling systems, to facilitate school-level reform. Specifically, it will investigate (1) how the emergent Test for Schools programme discursively constructs ‘global’ notions of school performance and accountability, and (2) how these discursive and material elements are articulated within a European schooling system that participated in the Test for Schools. Drawing upon these findings in conjunction with other theoretical resources, the research will then examine (3) how the Test for Schools facilitates the creation of new and rescaled policy spaces and networks for the governance of education.

This research locates the development of the Test for Schools in relation to the expanding scope and scale of the OECD’s educational policy work (Sellar & Lingard, 2013), and how this has facilitated the emergence of new modes of educational governance. It acknowledges the growing importance of the ‘global’ in education policy production, dissemination and enactment, with these developments contributing to a conception of education policy that is increasingly networked, rescaled and re-spatialized in nature (Ball, 2012, 2013; Ball & Junemann, 2012). The study is also informed by what has been described as the ‘becoming topological’ of the modern cultural and political world (Lury, Parisi, & Terranova, 2012). These understandings help to theorize the shifting landscape of modern power relations (Allen, 2011), and the constitution of new topological globalized spaces that disrupt the ‘traditional [scalar] distinction between place and space as in-here versus out-there boundaries’ (Amin, 2002, p. 392). Lastly, the research is framed by the notion that comparison, especially of and by numeric data, has become fundamental to modern forms of governance. This in effect constitutes a ‘governance by comparison’ (Novoa & Yariv-Mashal, 2003) that occurs not only within traditional national boundaries and spaces, but also increasingly across them on a global scale. The research deploys these collective approaches as a theoretical lens through which to investigate the historical and cultural development of the Test for Schools, the resultant policy effects within a European school system, and the networks and spaces of governance that are constituted by, and constitutive of, the Test for Schools. Given the international comparative nature of the Test for Schools instrument and the historical global significance of PISA more broadly, combined with its current (or forthcoming) availability in the US and Europe, investigating the Test for Schools provides valuable insights into the broader implications of a global and networked governance of education.

Method

The research methodology employed in this investigation is informed by the policy sociology approach of Stephen Ball, especially his more recent attempts to understand the increasingly global, networked and re-spatialized nature of contemporary education policy via a topological analytics (Ball, 2012, 2013; Ball & Junemann, 2012). Earlier policy sociology analyses sought to explicate the policy cycle across the contexts of influence, text production and practice (Ball, 1994; Bowe, Ball, & Gold, 1992), or alternatively ‘contexts, texts and consequences’ (Taylor, Rizvi, Lingard, & Henry, 1997). However, the national focus of such methodologies ultimately limits their usefulness for understanding contemporary policy processes that are immanently global and complex. In contrast to the positioning of education policy as solely the work of government within the confines of the nation-state, recent approaches seek to account for the ‘ever-changing global spaces and globalized actors of policy production and practice’ (Lingard & Sellar, 2013, p. 277). This includes acknowledging the rescaling of policy production across national, subnational and regional boundaries, and the increasing involvement of intergovernmental organizations (e.g. the OECD), philanthropic foundations, private companies and not-for-profits in the development and dissemination of education policy (Ball, 2012; Ball & Junemann, 2012). In effect, these methodologies highlight the importance of analyzing the emergent, varied and often-transient relationships through which education policy production occurs, and the ability of these networks and their actors to form new topological policy spaces in which the governance of education can be exercised. Informed by these methodological insights, the research uses a variety of sources to examine the discourses, actors and networks that have contributed to the development of the Test for Schools, and the effects to local policy and practice induced when implemented within a European school system. The analysis draws upon data from 17 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2013 and 2014 with (a) personnel from the OECD Directorate for Education; (b) national representatives from the PISA Governing Board; (c) school-level and central office personnel from a European school system; and (d) personnel from US-based philanthropic foundations, edu-businesses, and non-for-profit organizations currently associated with the Test for Schools programme. Enriching this interview-based data are document analyses of reports, publications, websites and promotional materials related to the Test for Schools and sourced from the OECD, the European school system, and US edu-businesses, philanthropies and not-for-profits.

Expected Outcomes

Although the research findings are yet to be finalized, the expected outcomes will make extremely significant contributions to understanding not only the Test for Schools programme, but also how such an assessment tool contributes to the re-spatialization and rescaling of global education governance. The analyses provide valuable insights into the dynamics of how schools and school-systems have engaged with the OECD and its emergent Test for Schools instrument, and the specific local policy effects that have arisen from such engagements. Additionally, highlighting the historical and cultural contexts in which the Test for Schools was developed identifies how the OECD has discursively constructed school performance and accountability within its broader education policy dispositif, and how this construction dominates other possible articulations of schooling quality. However, the most significant contribution from the research is the explication of the networks and relations that are constitutive of, and constituted by, the Test for Schools. This reveals the numerous actors and organizations involved in the development and deployment of the Test for Schools, and the relationships and ‘joining up’ processes that brought such varied and spatially dispersed agents together into a topologically local space. Illuminating the re-spatialized and networked relations associated with the Test for Schools thus serves to further our understanding of how contemporary forms and spaces of educational governance are being articulated and reconstituted.

References

* Allen, J. (2011). Topological twists: Power's shifting geographies. Dialogues in Human Geography, 1(3), 283-298. doi: 10.1177/2043820611421546 * Amin, A. (2002). Spatialities of globalization. Environment and Planning A, 34(3), 385-399. doi: 10.1068/a3439 * Bailey, P. L. J. (2013). The policy dispositif: historical formation and method. Journal of Education Policy, 1-21. doi: 10.1080/02680939.2013.782512 * Ball, S. (1994). Education reform: A critical and post-structural approach. Buckingham: Open University Press. * Ball, S. (2012). Global education inc.: New policy networks and the neo-liberal imaginary. New York: Routledge. * Ball, S. (2013). Foucault, power and education. New York: Routledge. * Ball, S., & Junemann, C. (2012). Networks, new governance and education. Bristol: The Policy Press. * Bowe, R., Ball, S., & Gold, A. (1992). Reforming education and changing schools: Case studies in policy sociology. London: Routledge. * Lingard, B., & Sellar, S. (2013). Globalization, edu-business and network governance: the policy sociology of Stephen J. Ball and rethinking education policy analysis. London Review of Education, 11(3), 265-280. doi: 10.1080/14748460.2013.840986 * Lury, C., Parisi, L., & Terranova, T. (2012). Introduction: The Becoming Topological of Culture. Theory, Culture & Society, 29(4-5), 3-35. doi: 10.1177/0263276412454552 * Meyer, H.-D., & Benavot, A. (Eds.). (2013). PISA, power and policy: The emergence of global educational governance. Oxford: Symposium Books. * Novoa, A., & Yariv-Mashal, T. (2003). Comparative research in education: A mode of governance or a historical journey? Comparative Education, 39(4), 423-438. * Sellar, S., & Lingard, B. (2013). The OECD and the expansion of PISA: new global modes of governance in education. British Educational Research Journal, n/a-n/a. doi: 10.1002/berj.3120 * Taylor, S., Rizvi, F., Lingard, B., & Henry, M. (1997). Educational policy and the politics of change. London: Routledge.

Author Information

Steven Lewis (presenting / submitting)

The University of Queensland

School of Education

Brisbane

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