The spectacle of global tests in the Arabian Gulf: a comparison of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates^*

ABSTRACT

Although scholars have examined the effects of global tests on national and regional educational governance, few researchers have studied their impact on education in the Arabian Gulf. This research fills the knowledge gap by studying the international spectacle of PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS results in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – two small rich states at the periphery of knowledge production processes. I argue that an analysis of these narratives reveals how global accountability discourses are translated into the Arabian Gulf context as truth claims that performance in league tables is an accurate and objective representation of educational quality. Four themes emerge from the analysis: integration of test results into national visions; measurement of educational progress based on test results; ranking of student performance; and policy changes to improve test results. In conclusion, I suggest that the over-dependence on global tests in defining educational quality in Qatar and the UAE erodes educational sovereignty and restricts the capacity of small states to develop and nurture alternative, indigenous and localised solutions for guiding educational reforms.

KEYWORDS:

• PISA
• TIMSS
• PIRLS
• international student assessments
• Qatar
• UAE
• educational quality
• education policy

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Comparative Education’s reviewers for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Clara Morgan is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at UAE University. Her research interests include education and labour market policy and the global governance of education. Her current research focuses on educational developments in the Arab region. She has published in the Journal of Education Policy, Policy Futures in Education and the British Journal of Sociology of Education.

ORCID

Clara Morgan http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7204-5417

Notes

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Gulf Studies Forum, December 5–7, 2015, Doha, Qatar.

1. See, for example, Abi-Mershed (2010), Akkary (2014), Alayan, Rohde, and Dhouib (2012), Ibrahim (2010), and Mazawi and Sultana (2010).

2. Examples of scholars who have examined educational policy transfer in the Arabian Gulf include Burden-Leahy (2009), Bashshur (2010), and Hayes (2017).

3. According to the World Bank’s 2015 GDP rankings, Qatar ranked 55 (US$165 million) and the UAE ranked 30 (US$370 million) out of 195 countries. http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP.pdf.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by UAE University’s Start-Up Grant (2015–2017).