PISA has become the “world’s premier yardstick” against which the “quality, equity and efficiency” of national education systems are evaluated (Gurría in OECD, 2018a, p. 2). PISA claims to be able to compare, on a single scale, the performance of education systems around the globe. These comparative measures have “contributed to the constituting of a global commensurate space of educational performance” (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010, p. 135), regardless of the varying political, economic, social, and cultural contexts of participating nations. Data from PISA are being used by countries to identify “gaps” in their education systems and to develop policies to “move up” on the league tables (Meyer & Benavot, 2013; Wiseman, 2013). A recent development in this space has been the OECD’s development of an internationally comparable measure of Global Competence.

The use of PISA measures as benchmarks for shaping global policies and governing education makes it important to examine the process of how “PISA knowledge” is arrived at. Developing a set of measures requires normative decisions about what the concept encompasses. The assessment of global competence provides a useful example of examining the development of this particular form of global knowledge. Given the multifaceted definitions and understandings of this term, this paper empirically examines the challenges such efforts at stabilising the definition faced, and the ways in which these were negotiated. Locating our study in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), and deploying the concept of tinkering (Knorr Cetina, 1981), we attend to the practices that stabilised the assessment of Global Competence in PISA 2018.

To make globally acceptable knowledge, various epistemic, cultural and political perspectives are brought together in relations of mutual learning and construction, and through iterative processes of expert consultation, country feedback, committee endorsement, etc. These encounters, where diverse perspectives are brought together, have the potential to be hijacked by more outspoken or forceful participants. Moreover, these processes typically take several months during which a range of unexpected events may occur or challenges posed to the successful completion of the endeavour. Tinkering is the way in which actors and events are managed – through cajoling, placating, compromising, modifying, etc. to ensure that the project does not collapse.

Drawing on empirical data relating to the development of the assessment of global competencies, we provide examples tinkering in the development of PISA’s tests of global competency.  We highlight three key tinkering moves by the OECD during the process of developing the assessment. In the first move, the OECD replaced the initial Global Competence Expert Group with another group of experts to placate the PISA Governing Board, which objected to the heave economic slant of the first expert presentation. In the second tinkering move, the OECD retrospectively aligned the PISA assessments of global competency with the global competence framework with the UN SDGs. This enabled the OECD to gather more (of the right) allies to support its efforts, and provided “a moral legitimacy the OECD has not enjoyed with the traditional PISA initiative and its narrow economic focus” (Auld & Morris 2019b. p.11). A third tinkering move was the push by the OECD to administer the assessment even when only a minority of the countries decided to participate, arguing that more nations might join subsequent rounds.

This paper offers data from publicly available documents as well as semi-structured interviews with key OECD officials and members of PISA 2018’s Global Competence Expert Group, to highlight three tinkering moves. By tracing the practices of the assessment development, this study aims to understand how a particular ontology of global competence was stabilised in PISA 2018.

By enrolling experts and considering feedback from countries, PISA can be said to be a collaborative and democratic global process. However, a closer examination reveals that in spaces when there is uncertainty, and when stalemates develop between different groups, decision making lies with the OECD which tinkers to steer actors in ways that primarily benefit the organisation’s pre-determined agenda. Tracing this process of making global knowledge of global competence allows for an exploration of “which kind of society and which idea of humanity is pursued and enacted” (d'Agnese, 2018, p. 16) in the OECD’s assessments of global competence – and more generally the PISA project. As the OECD attempts to develop other “global” measures of literacies (OECD, 2018b), it is important to open up the politics of their production. By putting centre-stage the controversies and negotiations, the processes that stabilise these assessments can be opened up to critical scrutiny.

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