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ERIC Number: EJ1131011
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0268-0939
EISSN: N/A
Governing Schooling through "What Works": The OECD's PISA for Schools
Lewis, Steven
Journal of Education Policy, v32 n3 p281-302 2017
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."
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: New York; Virginia; Texas
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Program for International Student Assessment
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A