Session Information
28 SES 12 A, The Interplay of Actors in the Production of Education Metrics: Examining empirical cases and theoretical assumptions Part 1
Symposium to be continued in 28 SES 13 A
Contribution
Some of the most important agents in terms of shaping a global education space in the 21st century are the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). As argued by several authors, data, numbers and statistics stand central in the modes of governance in global education today (e.g. Addey 2018; Grek 2009; Nordin & Sundberg 2014; Ozga 2011). The main argument is that the selected variables, underlying assumptions, concepts, categories, logarithms and modes of counting, constituting the backbone of seemingly objective education data, form a governing complex with the power of setting standards for what education is in general and what good education is in particular. Historically, the forming of this governing complex has been the subject of both collaboration and struggles between various agents. Drawing on a database of historical documents collected in the UNESCO and OECD archives in Paris, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the negotiations, resistances, inertias and modifications in evidence in the UNESCO-OECD relations in terms of education statistics. The paper covers some five decades going back to the early 1960s when the formation of the OECD first challenged the position of UNESCO in education.
References
Addey, C. (2018) The Assessment Culture of International Organizations: “From Philosophical Doubt to Statistical Certainty” through the Appearance and Growth of International Large-scale Assessments, In: Lawn, M. & Alarcon, C.Student Assessment Cultures in Historical Perspective, Berlin: Peter Lang, pp. 379-408. Grek, S. (2009). Governing by numbers: the PISA “effect” in Europe.Journal of Education Policy,24(1), 23–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680930802412669 Nordin, A., & Sundberg, D. (Eds.). (2014).Transnational policy flows in European education: the making and governing of knowledge in the education policy field. Oxford: Symposium Books. Ozga, J. (2011). Governing Narratives: “local” meanings and globalising education policy.Education Inquiry,2(2), 305–318. https://doi.org/10.3402/edui.v2i2.21982
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