In this presentation, we address and explore the intimate relations between educational research and its social and political embedding. Our case is communication in international comparisons at the education agora. More broadly, and referring to changes in science systems and scientific knowledge production, these intimate relations have been recognized as being radically transformed and new kinds of regulations and forms of knowledge production arising (Funtowitcz & Ravetz, 1993; Gibbons et al, 1994; Etzokowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000; Nowotny et. al. 2003; Rip, 2004). Generally speaking, despite differences in scholars’ perspectives and foci and the known and debated doubts over the scope and generality of such re-arrangements, there is a strong support for the idea of “re-thinking” science-society relations. Additionally, there is equally strong support for the idea that this re-thinking has taken place in science systems around the globe, making us believe that what we have observed has also been performed. In our search for the social and scientific rationalities of educational research (Foss Lindblad & Lindblad, 2016), we analyze how the re-thinking of science-society relations has been actioned in the Swedish context. Our case of international comparisons and the governing of education goes back to the 1960s and expands rapidly at the education agora during the last decade. We show that this is a dual process, in which educational research responds to governing problematics, e.g. in terms of globalization and incomplete decision-making (Ahrne & Brunson, 2004), and that research results are selectively transformed into policy agendas and political action. The concept of agora – public spaces in which science meets society – is important, as is ‘the society speaks back’ metaphor, which is central for explaining the consequences of the new arrangements (Nowotny, et al., 2005). The metaphor has given voice to warnings about the effects of science on society and nature and has opened up for discourses supporting ideas about scientific knowledge becoming more rigorous if the problems addressed and the solutions presented have been socially and politically negotiated. These discourses are now deeply embedded in education- and educational research policies. Our paper reveals a complex and differentiated picture of the social and scientific rationality of educational research and shows that the “society speaks back” metaphor has meanings that radically differ from those in the natural sciences. In our view, these differences need to be critically discussed.

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