Session Information
23 SES 05 A, Fabricating Quality in Europe: Data and Education Governance (Part 1)
Symposium, to be continued in 23 SES 06 A
Time:
2009-09-29
08:30-10:00
Room:
HG, HS 28
Chair:
Ken Jones
Discussant:
Jane Kenway
Contribution
Founded in 1961, the OECD is an intergovernmental organization (IGO) with policy influence within its member nations, mainly rich nations of the Global North, but also with increasing impact on a broader global scale (Lingard and Grek 2007). While the OECD is concerned with economic policy, education has taken on increasing importance within the mandate, especially as it has been reframed as central to national economic competitiveness within an economistic human capital framework and linked to an emerging ‘knowledge economy’.This paper will discuss the work of OECD in relation to PISA, the spread of OECD ‘expert’ knowledge, nation states as ‘good pupils’, with a particular focus on Finland (Rinne et al 2004), and the growth of technologies of measurement and comparison developed by the OECD (Kallo and Rinne 2007). It will attempt to analyse the global/European/national interface by looking at how different countries mediate and translate OECD/European demands/messages.
Method
The paper draws on the project methodology and reports on the analysis of interviews with key policy informants at European ,national and trans-national levels, along with critical discourse analysis of policy texts.
Expected Outcomes
The OECD has achieved political resonance at the highest level of decision making. Supranational influence on education policy at the national level has often been examined from the point of view of policy borrowing and lending (Steiner-Khamsi, 2002) and the emulation which is closely connected with this. Under peer pressure countries borrow education policy solutions which have been ‘proven to be good’ in order to cope with international competition. The strength of supranational organisations lies in the fact that they have at their command more funding, and therefore more scientific resources, like researchers and consultants, for agenda setting. This development is especially apparent in the smaller, so-called peripheral member countries of the EU and the OECD such as Finland, where the education policy influence of these organisations has had a positive reception and the recommendations of the organisations have been followed and legitimised.
References
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