Comparative Reasoning in the Making of Competitive Educational Systems: On International Assessments, Policy, and Society

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Background and purpose:
A predominant development in current educational discourses concerns the making of competitive educational systems that are positioning themselves in a world economy (c.f. Anonymous). Here, international large scale assessments, such as the OECD PISA studies, play a vital part as indicators in an international race. Indicators re-presenting problems the making of solutions for educational systems, theorizing and formulating the distinctions, categories and modes of thinking for comparing different national designs of education and their results (e.g. Carvalho & Costa, 2015).
Our concern is with the comparativistic qualities that organize large scale international assessments that are central to comparative education research (se e.g. Novóa & Yariv-Mashal, 2003) and policy borrowing and lending (such as Steiner Khamsi, 2019). The development of what we here name a comparativistic education policy in different contexts is now well documented (e.g. Authors , 2015, 2018; Biesta, 2009; Ozga, 2012; Maartens & Niemann, 2013; Seller & Lingard, 2013;Suter et al, 2019). These studies direct in different ways attention to the hierarchizing and ranking to design and govern education. However, there are less of analyses of developments in the pre-conditions or the conditions of possibility that enable, constrain and facilitate such comparative processes in educational research and policy.
This panel explores what we name as a comparativistic turn in education research and its relation to policy discourses and society. We are firstly, describing and explaining the developments of comparativistic reasoning as based on an interplay in tandem between science, society, and policy at an agora (Nowotny et al, 2003) – as a metaphor for their interaction in fabricating the objects of reflection, measurement and change; and secondly, analyzing the implications of the changing contours of these science in the agora for policy discourses and design of educational systems in global and national contexts.
The panel combines international inquiries with analyses of national case studies. The study of the agora as a tandem process is discussed as well in its implications for international educational comparative studies. The following questions will be addressed in the panel:
- How did a comparativistic turn came into being and emerging in educational policy and research? What are the cultural/social histories of education on one side and the sciences of education on the other side? How do these histories interact – over time, their agents, and positions?
- What are the implications of a comparativistic turn for reasoning and decision-making in education policy and in the design of educational systems? What is made (im)possible and desirable? What are the arguments and positions pro and con in this process by different agents?
The organizing idea is that each paper will present retrodictions (von Wright, 1983) concerning the logic of events in the development into a comparativistic turn in their respective fields of study, plus recent scholarship in science studies (such as Fuller, 2018) to understand research as an “agent” that does not merely describe what is “real”, but whose epistemic and institutional practices are productive elements in shaping and fashioning what is made into the problems and solutions of change through comparativistic principles and technologies (the visual cultures produced by graphs, charts, ranking) as they work in supranational organizations and in tandem with national education policy: How was it possible that this turn emerged, and when turned this possibility into a necessity in actions at the education agora? Are there any counter-tendencies in this development? And what are the reasonings in the prospects of educational futures (Authors, 2018)?
Session organization:
The panel session is based on four papers based on a combination of international and national inquiries which are commented by European and American scholars. A specific case is the development in a Nordic welfare state. Each paper will be based on research of different aspects of the education agora will present answers to the same questions presented above, but the papers are:
1. Educational policy and international large scale assessments in tandem: towards a comparativistic turn
2. A history of educational research in relation to large scale measurement and the new post-war “kids” on the block: international large scale assessments.
3. A history of educational policy-making and referencing to international large scale assessments.
4. Supranational assessments, its organizations and the making of educational systems through indicators and comparativistic reasoning on progress and “decay” in education systems as nations, society, and populations.
The paper presentation will be followed by comments from the discussants and the audience.
On the significance of the panel.
This panel’s contributions are: (1) to understanding the changing relations of the agora and thus to the study of science; (2) to comparative education through the study of the comparativistic principles of the interplay of international comparative educational research and policy making; and (3) to capture tendencies in current educational policy discourses and research policy in local as well as transnational contexts.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Sverker S:son Lindblad, University of Gothenburg

Individual Presentations

• Educational policy and international large scale assessments in tandem: towards a comparativistic turn - Sverker S:son Lindblad, University of Gothenburg

• A history of educational research in relation to large-scale measurement and the new post-war “kids” on the block: international large-scale assessments - Daniel Pettersson, University of Gävle; Gun-Britt Wärvik, University of Gothenburg

• A history of educational policy-making and referencing to international large scale assessments - Gun-Britt Wärvik, University of Gothenburg; Daniel Pettersson, University of Gävle

Discussants

• Luis Miguel Carvalho, University of Lisbon, Portugal

• Gita Steiner-Khamsi, Teachers College, Columbia University & NORRAG