Knowledge Actors and the Construction of New Governing Panoramas: The Case of the European Commission's Directorate General Education and Culture

• In Event: Numbers, Education, and the Making of Society: International Assessments and Their Expertise

Abstract

This paper presentation will focus on an analysis of the internal and external dynamics of the European Commission’s Directorate General (DG) Education and Culture (EAC). The paper will discuss the role of the organisation from the mid -1990s until very recently in the construction of the European education policy space; it will focus on the politics of monitoring of national education systems either through the Open Method of Coordination or DG EAC’s support of the OECD international assessment studies, such as PISA. The presentation will discuss the ways that DG EAC built on alliances within the Commission itself, as well as outside of it (with the most notable relationship the one with the OECD) in order to establish itself as a significant actor both within the hierarchy and structure of the Commission itself, as well as with national education systems and global actors. Through the examination of DG EAC as a case study, the paper will conclude with a discussion of the role of knowledge (in both its numerical and discursive forms) in constructing the new education governing panoramas in Europe and globally.

Author

• Sotiria Grek, University of Edinburgh