Projecting images of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad school’: top scorers in educational large-scale assessments as reference societies

Abstract

Researchers interested in the global flow of educational ideas and programmes have long been interested in the role of so-called ‘reference societies’. The article investigates how top scorers in large-scale assessments are framed as positive or negative reference societies in the education policy-making debate in German mass media and which functions they fulfil. Top scores in large-scale assessments do not automatically promote a country to the status of a positive reference society. Whether top scorers are perceived as positive or as negative reference societies depends largely on stereotyped prior perceptions that determine how success in these assessments is framed. Among the functions positive and negative reference societies fulfil are making educational reform agendas more plausible and serving as projection screens for conceptions of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ school.

Keywords:

• Reference society
• framing
• projection
• Germany
• mass media
• stereotypes
• country of origin effects

Notes

1. The political scientist David Wilsford (1985, 370) mentions in a footnote that reference societies could potentially also function as negative models, but does not elaborate this in detail.

2. I am indebted to Franziska Primus for invaluable help with compiling the database and coding the articles.

3. By focusing on quality papers, the analysis only captures one part of the media debate, albeit an important one in the context of the policy process (Eilders 2000). While it would undoubtedly have been interesting to include a tabloid paper or indeed other media such as Internet news sites or television programmes in the analysis, this would have increased the complexity of the analysis considerably as different ‘genres’ would have had to be taken into account.

4. Geographically, Finland is not part of Scandinavia, but nevertheless it is often included in this group of countries due to cultural and political similarities.

5. Full information on which countries took part in which round of PISA can be obtained from OECD (n.d.).

6. The article’s main topic is repetition of grades, which is common in the German school system and currently a hotly contested issue.

7. However, only two days later, page 1 of the same newspaper featured a squib poking fun at the British scheme of ‘importing’ teachers from Shanghai to the UK and sending British teachers to Shanghai on study visits (SZ 2014b).