Platforming PISA : The OECD as a mobile governance actor in global education

This chapter addresses how new spaces and relations of digital education governance are being constituted through recent developments in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA): (i) the school-focused PISA for Schools test and (ii) the teacher-focused PISA4U online professional learning platform. Informed by an emerging critical literature of digital education platforms and the relational (or ‘topological’) spaces associated with globalisation, the chapter considers in detail how education policy, digital platforms, school assessment and teacher professional learning have been enfolded together through OECD policy networks. Specifically, I critically explore how PISA for Schools and PISA4U forge new market- and platform-based relations between otherwise unconnected schooling spaces and actors, and in ways that spill over the prefigured territorial boundaries of the nation-state. I bring together recent thinking around digital platforms and the process of platformisation to explore how these programmes create new opportunities for the OECD and its partner organisations to mediate the creation, circulation and consumption of teacher professional knowledge. I conclude by drawing out the implications of these changes for new modes of digital education governance and platform-based markets, as well as how these PISA-derived programmes help consolidate the seductive powers of the OECD.

© 2024 selection and editorial matter, Ben Williamson, Janja Komljenovic and Kalervo N. Gulson; individual chapters, the contributors.

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