PISA, the "Global Mathematics Regime," and the "New Mental Hygiene"

• In Event: Paradoxes of Inclusion in STEM Education: Making Up Cultural Others Through “Natural” and “Neutral” Spaces

Abstract

How has a “global regime” of school mathematics become entangled in “global” discourses about social and environmental risks (Kanes, Morgan, & Tsatsaroni, 2014; Harouni, 2015)? To unpack this question, I historicize frameworks from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2016), and related policy, research, and archival documents. The paper builds on scholarship examining how PISA reports appear as a legitimating discourse in (inter)national policy decisions (Akiba, 2017; Pons, 2012; Sellar & Lindgard, 2013), including efforts to promote socio-emotional pedagogy (Lindholm, 2017). My primary concern is how school mathematics—when combined with calls for measuring constructs involving noncognitive skills (e.g., motivation, positive self-beliefs, perseverance, and self-control), dispositional factors (e.g., competitiveness, workmastery, and fear of failure), and physiological metrics (e.g., Body Mass Index, or BMI)—may advance particular cultural theses about inclusion/exclusion that appear neutral and transparent.

Of course, pairings of school mathematics with other social, emotional, and physical objectives are not new. The paper builds on previous scholarship to consider how school mathematics has long functioned to “render the thought of a child visible and amenable to governing” through “distinctions that classify and order a child’s conduct, action, and participation” (Popkewitz, 2004, p. 4; see also Danziger, 1997). Specifically, I sketch a “history of the present” (Foucault, 1991) to examine how psychological and physical metrics (such as the IQ test and BMI) have emerged, traveled, and transformed in relation with school subjects like mathematics. The PISA 2018 Frameworks (OECD, 2016) are explored as an inscription of contemporary “global” efforts to design the child (and teachers, schools, and nations) by combining school mathematics with what can be considered a “new mental hygiene” through the discourses and metrics of socio-emotional pedagogy.

Given that mathematical performance has a history of being linked with fears of national degeneration and measures of intelligence such as reasoning ability (Gutiérrez, 2013), and current school reform efforts are arguably embedded in fears of national decline from immigration and increased “diversity,” I hope to make visible the present constellation with respect to several related histories. For example, the PISA frameworks can be understood as part of a larger racist “global” education project that echoes the “new eugenics” movement (Baker, 2002; Leonardo, 2002). Or, it can be considered as indicative of a “new mental hygiene” reform movement informed by socio-emotional pedagogies and related efforts to locate the mind (Lindholm, 2017; Rose & Abi-Rached, 2014). Wherever the newness, I argue PISA embodies logics that social problems can be solved by measuring biological, affective, and cognitive differences (e.g., “readiness” to learn), and where those underperforming can be “fixed” through positive psychology interventions, brain-mappings, and pedagogical technologies such as “mindfulness.” The analysis highlights how, despite intentions to improve equity, opportunity, and inclusion, plans to link mathematical performances with a wide array of physical and psychological constructs may produce paradoxical effects.

Author

• Ryan Ziols, University of Wisconsin - Madison