The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international achievement measure that assesses 15-year-old student performance in the areas of reading, mathematics, and science literacy in over 70 countries and economies triennially. By presenting an in-depth examination of PISA’s role in education governance and policy discourses, this book provides the reader with a critical analysis of the educational change process within our increasingly global educational policy environment. Exploring the prominent socio-political drivers of large-scale educational reform across the globe, chapter authors examine PISA’s national and global implications from a diverse range of regional contexts. Through the presentation of cross-disciplinary viewpoints and topical issues related to the PISA international survey, this volume explains the degree to which PISA-focused research is linked to national educational policy discourses and international education agendas.

Over the past ten years the PISA assessment has risen to strategic prominence in the international education policy discourse. Sponsored, organized and administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), PISA seems well on its way to being institutionalized as the main engine in the global accountability regime. The goal of this book is to problematize this development and PISA as an institution-building force in global education. It scrutinizes the role of PISA in the emerging regime of global educational governance and questions the presumption that the quality of a nation’s school system can be evaluated through a standardized assessment that is insensitive to the world’s vast cultural and institutional diversity. The book raises the question of whether PISA’s dominance in the global educational discourse runs the risk of engendering an unprecedented process of worldwide educational standardization for the sake of hitching schools more tightly to the bandwagon of economic efficiency, while sacrificing their role to prepare students for independent thinking and civic participation.

This book explores new modes, spaces and relations of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)'s global educational governance associated with the PISA for Schools test. Adopting a theoretically-rich policy sociology approach, with an emphasis on topological understandings of spatiality and power, the book examines the entire PISA for Schools policy cycle, from its initial development, to its administration and promotion in the U.S., and its local enactment by schools and teachers. It demonstrates how PISA for Schools helps to steer how schooling is locally understood and practised through separate and yet overlapping techniques: governing by (1) heterarchy, (2) respatialisation and (3) 'best practice'. The book reveals the specific effects of PISA for Schools as an exemplar of how global educational governance is increasingly enfolded within contemporary schooling, as well as discussing how we might practise a policy sociology in which the local is acknowledged as a relevant space of concern.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international achievement measure that assesses 15-year-old student performance in the areas of reading, mathematics, and science literacy in over 70 countries and economies triennially. By presenting an in-depth examination of PISA’s role in education governance and policy discourses, this book provides the reader with a critical analysis of the educational change process within our increasingly global educational policy environment. Exploring the prominent socio-political drivers of large-scale educational reform across the globe, chapter authors examine PISA’s national and global implications from a diverse range of regional contexts. Through the presentation of cross-disciplinary viewpoints and topical issues related to the PISA international survey, this volume explains the degree to which PISA-focused research is linked to national educational policy discourses and international education agendas.

This edited volume focuses on the historical role of the OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) in shaping global education policy. In this book, contributors shed light on the present-day perspective of Comparative Education as a logical addition to current scholarship on the history of international organizations in the field of education. Doing so, the book provides a deeper understanding of contemporary developments in education that will enable us to reflect critically on the trajectories and future developments of education worldwide.

This volume offers a critical examination of the Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA), focusing on its origins and implementation, relationship to other international large-scale assessments, and its impacts on educational policy and reform at national and cross-national levels. Using empirical data gathered from a research project carried out by the CeiED at Lusofona University, Lisbon, the text highlights connections between PISA and emergent issues including the international circulation of big science, expertise and policy, and identifies its conceptual and methodological limits as a global governance project. The volume ultimately provides a novel framework for understanding how OECD priorities are manifested through a regulatory instrument based on Human and Knowledge Capital Theory, and so makes a powerful case to search for new humanistic approaches. This text will benefit researchers, academics and educators with an interest in education policy and politics, international and comparative education, and the sociology of education more broadly. Those interested in the history of education will also benefit from this volume.

A global education race now pits countries, regions, and school systems against one another. The racecourse has been created by a small number of influential international testing programs, and the popular media announces winners and losers. Fear of falling behind haunts policy-makers and shapes educational priorities around the world. But are we running in the right direction? We all have a stake in education, and as informed citizens we need to understand the increasingly influential and controversial phenomenon of international testing and what it means for students and the future of our schools. The Global Education Race provides educators, parents, and policy-makers with a lively and accessible introduction to the most influential international testing program: PISA, the Programme for International Student Assessment, operated by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The authors draw on the latest research on assessment and education policy to provide a clear account of how the test works and to investigate PISA’s influence on educational goals and practice in schools around the world. The book aims to provoke informed debate about the role of testing, data, and comparison in educational change. Includes a foreword by David C. Berliner and Pasi Sahlberg.