Governing schooling through ‘what works’: the OECD’s PISA for Schools
Journal article
Lewis, Steven. (2017). Governing schooling through ‘what works’: the OECD’s PISA for Schools. Journal of Education Policy. 32(3), pp. 281-302. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2016.1252855
Authors | Lewis, Steven |
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Abstract | This paper explores Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Schools, a local variant of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD’s) influential PISA that not only assesses an individual school’s performance in reading, mathematics and science against international schooling systems, but also promotes 17 identical examples of ‘best practice’ from ‘world class’ schooling systems (e.g. Shanghai-China, Singapore). Informed by 33 semi-structured interviews with actors across the PISA for Schools policy cycle, and supplemented by the analysis of relevant documents, the paper provides an account of how these concrete examples of best practice are represented in the report received by participating schools. Drawing upon thinking around processes of commensuration and the notion of ‘governing by examples’, the paper argues that PISA for Schools discursively positions participating schools as somehow being commensurable with successful schooling systems, eliding any sense that certain cultural and historical factors – or ‘out of school’ factors – are inexorably linked to student performance. Beyond encouraging the problematic school-level borrowing of policies and practices from contextually distinct schooling systems, I argue that this positions the OECD as both the global expert on education policy and now, with PISA for Schools, the local expert on ‘what works’. |
Keywords | PISA for Schools; governing by examples; commensuration; evidencebased policy-making; comparison; OECD; data |
Year | 2017 |
Journal | Journal of Education Policy |
Journal citation | 32 (3), pp. 281-302 |
Publisher | Routledge |
ISSN | 0268-0939 |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2016.1252855 |
Scopus EID | 2-s2.0-84994152101 |
Research or scholarly | Research |
Funder | Australian Research Council (ARC) |
Publisher's version | License All rights reserved File Access Level Controlled |
Output status | Published |
Publication dates | |
Online | 04 Nov 2016 |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 21 Oct 2016 |
Deposited | 11 Jun 2021 |
ARC Funded Research | This output has been funded, wholly or partially, under the Australian Research Council Act 2001 |
Grant ID | ARC/DP1094850 |
https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/item/8w397/governing-schooling-through-what-works-the-oecd-s-pisa-for-schools
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