Constructing a Crisis: Inside the "Black Box" of a Large-Scale Educational Assessment

• In Event: Cultivating Equitable Education Through Challenging the Status Quo of Curriculum

Abstract

Data from large-scale educational assessments such as PISA and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are often used to highlight various kinds of educational ‘crises’ and drive subsequent reform. Through a close examination of one such assessment of learning in India, this paper demonstrates how these crises are not ‘discovered’, but ‘constructed’. Drawing on concepts from the sociology of quantification and Science and Technology Studies, it draws attention to how selective choices about metrics, vocabulary, and data representation strengthen the ‘crisis’ narratives that assessments propagate. Amid increasing claims of educational crises across the globe such as the ‘learning loss’ due to the Covid-19 pandemic, implications and questions for current research and practice are discussed.

Author

• Abhinav Ghosh, Harvard University