A chain of mutual-surveillance practices: how the OECD's PISA interacts with the Europeanization of education

Author(s):

Estela Costa(presenting / submitting)Luis Miguel Carvalho

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

28. Sociologies of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

28 SES 02, Commensurable Fields of Education

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-23

15:15-16:45

Room:

NM-B101

Chair:

Emiliano Grimaldi

Contribution

The paper addresses the uses and effects of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in the imagination and the scrutiny of educational problems and solutions in Europe and, concomitantly, its participation on the creation of a European policy space in education (Lawn and Grek 2012).

The paper builds on previous work which approaches PISA as a knowledge-policy instrument (Carvalho 2012, Carvalho and Costa, 2015) that combines sophisticated comparative assessment techniques with a set of representations about education and a philosophy of (transnational and national) regulation of education policies and practices. Consequently, PISA is here understood as a device that plays a part in the coordination of education policies and public action. Moreover, PISA exemplifies the presence, in the contemporary policy processes, of soft forms of regulation that favour information and persuasion, and acting through the actors’ reflexivity, instead of command and control (Lascoumes and Le Galès 2007, Ozga, 2008).

Additionally, the paper draws on previous literature that depicts comparability as a mode of European governance (Nóvoa 2002, 2012), and the OECD as an indirect strong agent of the Europeanization in education (Lawn and Grek 2012; Grek 2014). Comparability was one of the “main tenets” of the European educational policy emergent since the mid-1990s (Nóvoa 2002); and the comparability associated to the dissemination of best practices, and the boosting of activities aimed at the creation and adoption of indicators and benchmarks that are likely to be monitored, still is a main tenet of European education policy, as the ET 2020 program relies deeply on the rational followed in its ‘predecessor’ – ET 2010 (Nóvoa 2012). The four action verbs that circumscribe the intervention of the EC characterize this form of soft regulation that has been set in motion: “identifying (common goals); spreading (good practices); measuring (the results); comparing (the developments and policies)” (Nóvoa, Carvalho and Yanez 2014: 275). Parallel to the importance of comparability comes the close collaboration with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), developed along the last ten years (Grek 2014). Putting in different terms, the monopoly of competence developed by OECD on the competencies of literacy found a favourable ecology (Carvalho, 2012) at the EC. The interdependence between the EU and the OECD fosters the creation of the European education space as a governable space of comparison and commensurability (Nóvoa & Lawn 2002, Lawn & Grek 2012).

It is therefore based on these contributions that we propose to discuss the active reception and the political uses of PISA data/information/knowledge, at national and supranational policy arenas. Our main goal is to enrich the understandings about the role of knowledge-based-oriented regulation instruments in the structuring of the European policy space.

Method

The study builds on two approaches. In order to analyse the active reception and the political uses of PISA data/information/knowledge at national arenas, the study builds on a literature review on PISA receptions and effects in European contexts, more precisely of numerous papers on the national’ receptions and effects of PISA in European countries, published in English language academic journals between 2000 and 2014. In order to order to grasp the active reception and the political uses of PISA data/information/knowledge at a supranational level, an interpretative analysis of the European documents of references to the OECD and PISA was made. Thus, to clear up and identify the main ideas conveyed in data that highlight the intensification of relations between the OECD and the EU, we proceed to the analysis of multiple sources: the European legislation (Official Journal of the European Union) and other EU documents (memorandums, press releases, executive summaries and disseminating brochures); public speeches from members of the DG EAC; reports published by the EC (elaborated within the framework of the ET 2020 monitoring procedures, and those resulting from the European policy networks and working group); and in new European instruments and initiatives documentation/websites.

Expected Outcomes

The findings are twofold: at a national level (European countries) and at a supranational level (European Union). The analysis associated with the use of PISA at a national policy-making level allows us to identify, describe and discuss transversal phenomena – or ‘crossing effects’ – patent in PISA reception, such as the fabrication/legitimation of new governing modes, the naturalization of mutual-surveillance as a way of governing, and the redefinition of reference societies. The analysis related to the reception of PISA at an European Union level, which was focused on the relationship that is being built between the EU and the OECD and on the mobilization and/or integration of PISA in the EU political processes, allows us to consolidate the idea that the intensification of ties between the two bodies (EU/OECD) is a growing up reality, which can be seen from two key aspects: the adoption of the framework of literacy to discuss education in Europe and the use of PISA (rationale or data) as a source for new European monitoring devices. Therefore, it has been possible to depict the fabrication of chains of “mutual-surveillance practices”: the development at a national and European level of policies regulated by a comparative logic, and supported by data resulting from the OECD’s PISA.

References

Carvalho, L.M. (2012) ‘The fabrications and travels of a knowledge-policy instrument’, European Educational Research Journal, 11(2), 172–188. Carvalho, L.M. and Costa, E. (2014) ‘Seeing education with one’s own’ eyes and through PISA lenses’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 36(4), 1-9. Grek, S. (2010) ‘International organisations and the shared construction of policy “problems”’, European Educational Research Journal, 9(3), 396–406. Grek, S. (2014) ‘OECD as a site of coproduction: European education governance and the new politics of “policy mobilization”’, Critical Policy Studies, 8(3): 266–281. Lascoumes, P. and Le Galès, P. (2007) ‘Understanding public policy through its instruments’, Governance, 20(1), 1–21. Lawn, M. and Grek, S. (2012) Europeanizing Education. Oxford: Symposium Books. Nóvoa, A. (2012) ‘The blindness of Europe’, Sisyphus – Journal of Education, 1(1): 104-123. Nóvoa, A., Carvalho, L.M. and Yanes, C. (2014) ‘La comparaison comme politique’, Revue Suisse des Sciences de l’Éducation, 36(2), 265–282. Nóvoa, A. and Lawn, M. (2002) ‘Fabricating Europe’, In A. Nóvoa and M. Lawn (eds.), Fabricating Europe: The formation of an education space (1-13). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Nóvoa, A. and Yariv-Mashal, T. (2003) ‘Comparative research in education: a mode of governance or a historical journey’, Comparative Education, 39(4): 423–438. Ozga, J. (2008) ‘Governing knowledge: research steering and research quality’, European Educational Research Journal, 7(3), 261–272. Sellar, B. and Lingard, B. (2014) ‘The OECD and the expansion of PISA’, British Educational Research Journal, 40(6), 917–936 Van Zanten, A. (2011) ‘Knowledge-oriented instruments and the regulation of educational systems’, In H. Ramsdal and A. van Zanten, Knowledge Based Regulation Tools in Education and Health, KNOWandPOL Integrative report. Online. Available www.knowandpol.eu

Author Information

Estela Costa (presenting / submitting)

Universidade de Lisboa

Instituto de Educação,

Lisboa

Luis Miguel Carvalho

Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal

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