Golden relics & historical standards: how the OECD is expanding global education governance through PISA for Development

ABSTRACT

Setting this paper against the backdrop of scholarly research on recent changes in the OECD’s approach and workings in education, I analyse how the OECD has reinforced its infrastructural and epistemological global governance through the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Development (PISA-D). Drawing on qualitative data, this paper makes three arguments. First, there has been a reinforced effort at the OECD to align national and international large-scale assessments; second, the OECD-ensured PISA-D was enhanced only in so far as it remained comparable with PISA, with a view to joining up lower- and middle-income data infrastructures with the global PISA infrastructure; and third, the OECD has bound together the aims of PISA, PISA-D, the Education and Skills Directorate, the Organisation’s Strategy on Development and the global education agenda (Sustainable Development Goals), thus strengthening its global education governance potential. With a note of concern, I suggest these recent changes in the OECD’s work in education may be spreading a very narrow framework of educational values, which does not sufficiently recognise the complexity of learning and teaching.

KEYWORDS:

• Global data infrastructure
• global education governance
• international large-scale assessments
• OECD
• PISA for Development
• SDGs

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to Radhika Gorur, Bryan Maddox, Sam Sellar and anonymous reviewers for excellent feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. ‘Enhance’ is the word that the OECD documents use to describe the redevelopment of PISA.

2. The skills tested were in three domains: prose, document and quantitative literacy.

3. Until then, education had been under the Directorate of Education, Employment, Labour and Social Affairs.

4. Supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.

5. During PISA activities (i.e. PISA-D Advisory Group meetings), the OECD refers to countries which take part in PISA as Zedlands. The transformation of all countries into standardised Zedlands through ILSA tests suggests that all countries can be measured and compared and taking the focus off their rich diversity.

6. Universalising level 2 and reaching level 3 or higher on average in its National Development Plan 2030 (Gobierno Nacional Paraguay 2014: 44).

7. PISA-D working documents: Initial Technical Meeting, 27 June 2013, power points, slide 9.

8. In other words, both PISA and PISA-D countries can be placed on the same PISA metric.

9. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg4.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Camilla Addey

Dr Camilla Addey is a researcher at Humboldt University in Berlin. She researches international large-scale assessments and global educational policy. She previously researched adult literacy and the rationales for participation in international literacy assessments in Mongolia and Laos. Her current research enquires into PISA for Development from a governance perspective in lower- and middle-income countries. As of September 2018, Camilla will join Teachers College, Columbia University (US), to lecture on the Masters in Comparative  & International Education. She previously worked at UNESCO in the Literacy and Non-Formal Education section. She is the author of Readers and Non-Readers and co-editor of Literacy as Numbers.