Session Information
23 SES 02 A, Europeanisation and Education Governance: Comparative Analysis
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper will utilise a political sociology approach for the analysis of the processes and impact of international comparative assessment in the field of education governance in the European Union.
Despite, or perhaps because of ‘subsidiarity’ (the exclusion of education from any harmonization of the laws and regulations of the Member states) (Pepin, 2006), education policy has become the primary field of action assisting in crafting the narrative of Europe, and thus the commonalities of its cultures and its market. This ‘field’ in the Bourdieusian sense, is significant, as it has been one of the prime engines in the project of Europeanisation, albeit lacking the usual descriptors that EU government of other, more mainstream, policy areas would entail. It is a field, where actors compete for power and persuasion –actors that assume different identities and technologies depending on their place, position, professional career, educational background and socialisation. Ultimately, their movement between places, which are real and physical, creates a new space, a ‘European’ education policy field, inhabited by the emergence of a European class of (education) actors.
The paper will focus on an analysis of this ‘field’, by exploring the development of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The OECD has been a prime mover of education governance in Europe, mobilizing a number of policy makers, experts, research agencies and ‘users’ in the building of international comparative assessments with an explicit objective to inform new policy directions in the OECD countries/ EU member states. Although the European Commission has been endorsing the OECD work in the past, the development of PIAAC has seen a far more enthusiastic collaboration between the two international organizations, translated in both substantial financial backing but also the sharing of expertise. How has this come about and what does it mean for the analysis of Europeanisation?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Pépin, L. (2006) The history of European cooperation in education and training: Europe in the making –an example. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.
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