The Knowledge Society can be thought of as a floating signifier continually filled with different social and cultural meanings. At least three related foci are embodied in European Union policy. First, the Knowledge Society identifies a new historical epoch: Europe is in a transitional world dominated by a knowledge economy where citizens/workers require new ways of living in an uncertain future. Policy and research name that new individuality “The lifelong learner”, a cultural thesis about cosmopolitan citizens and workers whose mode of living is one of continuous innovation (Popkewitz, 2008; Masschelein, Simons, Bröckling, & Pongratz, 2007). Second, the Knowledge Society embodies a narrative of a new utopianism expressed as a inclusive society where people build social capital and well-being. And third, the optimism of the Knowledge Society brings forth calls for better planning. How are notions of a knowledge society translated into education and training? Here we need to analyse the governing of education. First, in a traditional way of governing education we relate this to the formulation and realisation of educational policy and how notions of a knowledge society are translated into the system of education and life long learning as another floating signifier. Second, education organisation is increasingly based on instruments and judgements derived from other organisations (such as the OECD or the Thomson/Reuters Inc.), providing benchmarking, standards, monitoring and sanctioning and changing the decision order (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2006). Based on such instruments an information system is identifying positions and steps towards a knowledge society. Analysing and identifying such navigation tools as well as the lives and uses of floating signifiers such as those mentioned could give us new insights on how governance take shape, as well as on the governmenentalization of learning more generally (Simons & Masschelein,2008). The intention of this symposium is to present and discuss the making of a Knowledge Society by means of information systems and navigation tools. Our project then is to examine the concrete range of phenomena through which The Knowledge Society functions as governing/governmental practices. The problems dealt with in different contexts are: • How are the symbolic landscapes of a European knowledge society constructed and what signifiers are used to map education and life long learning in this landscape? • Which tools are used to govern policy and subjectivities in navigating in towards a Knowledge Society landscape and how are these tools used by different actors?

This symposium combines sameness in problems and variation in contexts. This combination serve as a differentiated basis for examining governing practices founded on floating signifiers such as the knowledge society and the making and uses of information systems and navigation tools with different implications in different contexts. Notions on politics of knowledge are presented as “system of reason” (Popkewitz) and of “cosmopolitanism” (Muller). Supranational discourses and their translations in different contexts are analysed in comparative studies of the Bologna process (Palomba) and in policy analyses of EU programmes (Nóvoa) related to employability and life long learning. Monitoring by means of international comparisons (Foss Lindblad & Lindblad) and instructional governance (Hogan) are parts in the making of information systems, while navigation tools of life long learners are conceptualised in terms of knowledge differentiation (Keiner) and governmentality (Simons).

The symposium is expected to produce new insights concerning education policy and politics in education focussing on governance practices based on floating signifiers such as the making of a knowledge society inhabited by life-long-learners. We will show how such floating signifiers are translated into information systems and how these are providing feedback on performances for different agents and in the construction of navigation tools for self-governance and reasonable practices. On the basis of these contributions this symposium will summarize current research on governing practices in different contexts and provide frameworks for developing and designing new comparative research on current governing regimes in education.