Drawing on a network ethnography, this paper presents a mapping and an analysis of the actors which develop International Large-Scale Assessments (i.e. PISA, TIMSS) for the OECD and IEA. ILSA contractors emerged from a small, informal IEA network where capitals were accumulated and then used to stabilize the current network of contractors. In seeking to understand the rationales of ILSA contractors to carry out ILSA contracts, the paper drew on a key CE theory, policy borrowing and lending theory. Despite it traditionally making sense of state actors, the theory did prove useful in understanding non-state actors but suffered from ‘educationalism’. To visualise this network, ILSA contractor differences (i.e. size and tasks of each contractor) had to be done away with and commensurability had to be imposed. Imposing categories on the actors (i.e. public/private) was problematic. Comparing differences between IEA and OECD ILSA contracting put the emphasis on IOs rather than the contractors. Mapping and analysing this global network through comparison appeared to create more problems than it provided analytical insights. Questions arose such as: When is network ethnography a comparative education methodology? How can the study of a global network be comparative? Comparative Education (CE) assumes some kind of comparison. Historically, comparisons were made between and amongst educational systems (Bereday 1964; Bray et al. 2007). The main CE theories seek to understand how global theories travel and are adopted; how contexts shape the way policies are translated; how educational systems converge and diverge (Philips & Schweisfurth 2014). But what does CE offer when what is being studied does away with context (i.e. ILSAs treat context as noise) and the unit of analysis is a single global network? How can we understand market logics in education without the contribution of theories that explain business behaviour? Ultimately, this paper is an invitation to discuss the opportunities and limitations of CE methods and theories when studying a global network and business dynamics in education.

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