‘Better policies for better lives’?: constructive critique of the OECD’s (mis)measure of student well-being

ABSTRACT

Facing increasing critique that PISA focuses too narrowly on cognitive achievement and human/knowledge capital, the OECD has recently shifted some of its focus to student happiness. The 2017 Students’ Well-Being report distinguishes between ‘happy schools’ and ‘unhappy schools’, showing that among students who combined high performance and life satisfaction, northern European countries topped the charts. Meanwhile, students in East Asian countries including Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Korea registered the lowest ‘life satisfaction’ scores among all participating countries. This piece points out some of the problems inherent in the OECD’s recent turn to happiness, problematizing the OECD yardstick of life satisfaction. Attempting to keep the critique constructive, we suggest that the OECD may want to consider using alternative metrics, then briefly highlight one developed in East Asia from different first assumptions: the Interdependent Happiness Scale. In conclusion we flag, but cannot answer, some related educational questions concerning policy, pedagogy, and priorities for the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Subjective well-being
• PISA
• self
• interdependent happiness
• East Asia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. A reviewer pressed us to answer why the UK does not fit the general pattern for both life satisfaction and achievement levels despite the high-levels of individualism. Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of our analysis to answer that question. As for the absence of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (which has often topped the World Happiness Report), we are unclear why these were excluded despite participating in PISA 2015.

2. The report also lists ‘interacting with heterogeneous groups’ as Competency Category 2 but rather than focusing on fostering interdependent outlooks, the focus is still very much on what is ‘required for individuals’ (OECD 2005, 12).

3. That is, the countries included in the consultation did not include the entire OECD sample but only Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.

4. We are well aware of the dangers inherent in drawing such a distinction and cognizant that it will provoke resistance among some. We are also aware of reviews such as Voronov and Singer (2002) who write: ‘When a whole culture or society is pigeonholed in dichotomous categories (e.g. masculine-feminine, active-passive, or loose-tight), subtle differences and qualitative nuances that are more characteristic of that social entity may be glossed over. Such descriptive labels evoke unduly fixed and caricature-like mental impressions of cultures or societies rather than representative pictures of their complexities.’ Nonetheless, we feel that such sentiments are founded on an implicit methodological nationalism, i.e. that our role as researchers should be to nuance the homogenizing category of, say, ‘national’ identity. But the rise of PISA and the OECD’s work now means that the homogenization is taking place at the global level. To refuse to draw distinctions for fear of ‘pigeonholing’, differences that – we must remember – can be empirically substantiated in favour of a ‘diversity’ and ‘multiplicity’ argument is to give away the critical resources necessary to engage at the global level. It is also important to underscore that even Voronov and Singer admit that these distinctions do capture something important and therefore should not be discarded, but only further nuanced. Again, we recognize that not everyone in a given society shares these views but we believe that there are differences in means (relative distribution) and that highlighting those differences for pragmatic ends is important as this policy juncture. That said, one must be vigilant that these differences do not become reified (‘unduly fixed’) and function as easy substitutes for the effort of continuing to explore, engage, and elaborate these differences in worldview.

5. For those more inclined to think in terms of philosophy and history rather than psychology, Sakabe’s insights on self in Japan are representative and insightful: ‘The concept of an autonomous individual subject possessed of the kinds of fundamental and inalienable rights that took shape in the modern civil societies of the West under the influence of Stoicism and Christianity is likewise fundamentally different from what is found in traditional Japanese thought. This is because…[within] an ancient tradition of thought shaped by Daoist and Buddhist influences….the idea of the autonomous individual subject was never to any significant degree assimilated into Japanese society. It is also because in Japan, even since modern times, intersubjective or interpersonal relations are to some extent cast in the mold of the kind of “unitive sociality”…and these also tend to blur the boundaries that demarcate the self as subject from others as subject’ (Sakabe 1987, 981). For the story told from within the Western perspective, see Taylor’s (2007) discussion of the ‘great disembedding’ and the rise of ‘buffered selves’. See also Eric Voeglin’s concept of the ‘egophanic revolt’ (see Auld, forthcoming).

6. Among psychological definitions, people also frequently mentioned ‘positive emotions’, ‘optimism’, ‘meaning’, ‘awareness’ and ‘autonomy’.

7. One reviewer asked us whether this portrayal was still valid, i.e. whether or not the last 50 years have seen the breakdown of collectivism due to factors ranging from urbanization to online gaming. We do not feel that we are on the cusp of Western style individualism, particularly given that changing social conditions are still mediated by self-understandings of mutual interdependence. We find empirical confirmation in Minkov et al. (2017) who collected data from 2014–2016 that shows that East Asian countries are still not so individualistic, confirming what Hofstede found a half-century earlier.

8. It is worth noting here that exactly 100 years ago, Kilpatrick’s The Project Method (1918) proclaimed this self ‘pro-jection’ was to be the key to progressive pedagogy, a pedagogical model that came to dominate Western pedagogy (particularly in the United States) in the twentieth century, a time when social progress appeared infinite and tracked the ‘release’ of individuals from the embeddedness of tradition (see also Bower 1987).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jeremy Rappleye

Jeremy Rappleye is an associate professor in Kyoto University, Graduate School of Education. His recent work has focused on building the basis for a transcultural and transdisciplinary conversation on education policy, pedagogy, and priorities.

Hikaru Komatsu

Hikaru Komatsu is a research associate in Kyoto University. He is interested in the cultural and ontological foundations of education and their impacts on environmental sustainability.

Yukiko Uchida

Yukiko Uchida is an associate professor in Kyoto University, Kokoro Research Center. She has published widely on cultural constructions of happiness.

Kuba Krys

Kuba Krys is a research associate in Kyoto University, Kokoro Research Center and Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. He has published on how culture shapes judgements of intelligence.

Hazel Markus

Hazel Markus is a professor in Stanford University and co-Director of the new ‘do tank’ called Social Psychological Answers to Real-world Questions (SPARQ).