How a European ‘Fear of Falling Behind’ Strategy Turned Global: Exploring performativity of the transnational turn in European school policy

• In Event: The OECD’s Defining Role in Education: Its Historical Rise, Global Impact and Comparative Perspectives

Proposal

This paper argues that we can learn much about what becomes a global dominant discourse by ex-ploring how dominant Northern nations in their fears of falling behind among ‘global knowledge economies’ become a hotbed for producing imaginaries of best practice that affect how global standards are construed. Thus, European-grown struggles involve globally defining mediators in the form of transnational organizations such as the OECD, the European Union and IEA that make these ideas travel globally (Steiner-Khamsi, 2012; Robertson, 2016). The driving discursive force consists in telling the story about fierce global competition where a nation will fall behind if it does not optimize its human capital (Gibbons et al., 1994; Krejsler, 2018; Meyer & Benavot, 2013; OECD, 1996; Rizvi & Lingard 2010).
The transnational turn in European school policy represents a narrative about moving ahead in struggles between transnational and national power, towards shared truth regimes, by engaging in voluntary yet compelling processes, which, over time, sediment in increasing collaboration that transform school, teacher education and educational research. Political technologies like compara-tive surveys (PISA, TALIS, TIMSS & PIRLS), country reports and performance indicators are employed. The Open Method of Coordination and Multilateral Surveillance signify the master templates of a consensus-advancing truth regime where mutual peer pressure and invitation to become compara-ble ensure that nation states integrate according to the European motto of ‘unity in diversity’ (No-voa & Lawn,2002; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Hopmann, 2008; Pereyra, 2011; Zeitlin et al.; 2005).
It is common to observe this transnational turn with an inward-looking perspective that emphasizes effects on European nation states and on European integration. This study, however, shows the effects of these processes in producing formats that travel globally. The historically instituted authority surrounding the OECD represents a narrative that countries in the South aspire to join as a sign of their level of development (Mexico, Chile, Turkey, Russia, Columbia and Costa Rica acceded or are on the roadmap for accession). OECD’s agenda-setting PISA surveys include a network of ‘partner countries and economies’ (including most Latin-American and South East Asian countries, Algeria, UAE and others). Consequently, the latter adopt the discourse and political technologies of an organization whose origin and dominance is Western European and American. The IEA adopts similar approaches and expands from its Northern base to include increasingly the South in TIMSS, PIRLS and ICCS, thus producing a global language of achievement, competition and ranking.
This paper draws on governmentality studies (Dean, 1999; Popkewitz & Brennan, 1998). Empirically it conducts discourse analysis of policy documents and draws on literature on policy reform. It adds to research that stresses the importance of understanding the travelling of policy between dominant and less dominant regions in the world: how and by what parameters they become comparable and what ideas of public good that represents.

Author

• John Benedicto Krejsler, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University