Standards are playing a key role in the complex transformation of educational landscape. Increasing investments in standards and standardization reveal an effort to change education governance and practice, by clarifying educational objectives, means and practices, reaching ‘optimal’, or ‘good’ performance levels, and establishing the best conditions for the many ingredients of the ecology of education practice. The attention to standards suggests a tendency to the objectification of education practice, i.e. a shift towards what is measurable in education practice, and to translate many aspects of education practice often considered ‘tacit’, or left it as ‘implicit’ in scientific evidence to support the policy-making in the field. Schools and educational organizations are expected to be more accountable, and to display a compliance to the ‘best practice’, or to increase their capacity to meet predefined educational goals.

Standard-based reforms are accordingly widespread all over the world. Yet,  the standard-based reform may reveal different translation in practice. In Europe, the fabrication of the European Education Space is occurring through the introduction of standards that are intended to to govern a panoply of educational differences still under national legislation (at the least in principle). In that case,  standardization concerns the use of common benchmarks and indicators (from the Lisbon Strategy); the development of infrastructure, like ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) in higher education, or the EQF (European Qualification Framework aimed at enhancing the transparency, the portability, and the mobility of knowledges and competences in EU; the adoption of platforms in the field of new educational technologies (Lawn, 2011).

Once the investment on standards is almost a ‘universal belief’ (Stobart, 2008) several questions can be raised.In particular, we are interested in understanding: a) How does this ‘indisputable truth’ emerge ? How the focus on standards and standardization of education practice comes to be the dominant trends in education policy-making, and inspired education reform? b) How current standardization are enacted in practice, and what aspects of education practice is focused on ? In other words, there is a need to understanding the emergence of a convergent belief, and at the same time the development of its situated translations in practice. To provide some responses to these questions, the paper: 1) will propose to trace back some of theoretical thinking supporting the standardization of education practice and  reflecting in policy documents triggering standard based reform, and 2) will try to analyse the blackboxing of a standard. Here, we will consider the usefulness of developing a sociology of standards, drawing on the contribution of sociomaterial approaches to education that may account for the repetition and the difference of a standard over time (Fenwick, Edwards, & Sawchuck, 2011; Fenwick & Edwards, 2010; Fenwick & Landri, 2012; Fenwick, 2010).

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