Session Information
23 SES 12 B, Politics of International Assessments and Tests
Paper Session
Contribution
OECD’s PIAAC, with its first run in 2011, builds on earlier international surveys (IALS and ALL). It aims to survey adult ‘competencies’ considered basic for performing skilled work in competitive economies: literacy, numeracy, and ‘problem solving in technology rich environments’. PIAAC’s development marks a significant departure from PISA, and TIMSS.
PIAAC has been designed to avoid several problems experienced in the earlier surveys’ measurement and sampling (PIAAC, 2009). Nevertheless, many educational researchers question the validity of international comparisons of performance outcomes, and develop critical accounts of their role in an increasingly globalised world. Such test-based comparisons posit ‘an education that fits the needs of a global capitalism, and the “need” for international competitiveness’ (Stronach, 2010). Others discuss how, under globalisation, educational values are interpreted through neo-liberal imperatives (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010), and how this has reconfigured the discursive terrain where educational policy, especially on curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation, as well as testing for accountability purposes, develops world-wide.
Others emphasise the role that international organisations especially OECD are playing in disseminating ideas and practices that strongly influence national policy making around the world, as well as in the EU (Dale & Robertson, 2009). They describe new forms of ‘soft governance’ of national educational systems, based on the OECD and EU promotion of ‘technical expertise in creating comparable data sets, where countries can potentially measure the success of their education systems against others and shift their policy orientations accordingly’ (Grek, 2010).
We find the discussion has so far largely neglected the influence of international comparisons on issues of educational knowledge and institutions – despite attention to the role of OECD and EU policy in constructing ‘the skills and competencies agenda’ (Grek, 2010). However, the assumption seems to be that PISA and PIAAC are doing the same kind of work. We consider that the differences and discontinuities are equally important to theorise.
To understand the nature and the significance of PIAAC as an international assessment regime we utilise Bernstein’s (2001) notion of the Totally Pedagogised Society (TPS). Bernstein has argued that ‘knowledge society’ is a TPS, where governments provide the agents, and university departments provide the discourses. Young people must be able to be re-positioned whenever and wherever external change requires; and the world of work translates pedagogically into lifelong learning (LLL), which is key to, and legitimates, TPS. Under these new conditions trainability, ‘the ability to be taught, to respond effectively to concurrent, subsequent or intermittent pedagogies’, becomes vital. Bernstein thus distinguishes between specialised identity, which ‘arises out of a particular social order, through relations which the identity enters into with other identities of reciprocal recognition, support and legitimation, and finally through a negotiated collective purpose’ – and the mode of socialisation into TPS through trainability as the key to LLL, that ‘erodes commitment, dedications, and coherent time, and is therefore socially empty’ (Bernstein, 2001, 366).
Young (2010) describes a process of ‘de-differentiation’ of institutions, knowledge and sites and types of learning, so that ‘historically distinct institutions and activities are becoming more alike’.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bernstein, B. (2001) From Pedagogies to Knowledges; in A. Morais, I. Neves, B. Davies & H. Daniels (eds) Towards a Sociology of Pedagogy. The contribution of Basil Bernstein to research. New York: Peter Lang. Dale R. & Robertson S. (2009) Globalisation & Europeanisation in Education. U.K.: Symposium Books. Grek, S. (2010) International Organisations and the shared construction of policy ‘problems’: problematisation and change in education governance in Europe. European Educational Research Journal, 9(3), 396-406. PIAAC (2009) [Numeracy Expert Group: Gal, I. (Chair), Alatorre, S., Close, S., Evans. J., Johansen, L., Maguire, T., Manly, M., Tout, D.], PIAAC Numeracy Framework, OECD Education Working Paper no. 35 (24-nov-2009), OECD Publishing . [Online: http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/displaydocumentpdf/?cote=EDU/WKP(2009)14&doclanguage=en (accessed 20 Jan. 2011)] PISA (2006) Assessing scientific, reading and mathematical Literacy: A framework for PISA 2006. Paris: OECD. [www.pisa.oecd.org] Rizvi, F. & Lingard, B. (2010) Globalizing education policy. London: Routledge. Stronach, I. (2010) Globalizing education, educating the local. How method made us mad. London: Routledge. Tyler, W. (2010) Towering TIMSS or Leaning PISA? Vertical and horizontal models of international testing regimes; in P. Singh, A. Sadovnik & S. Semel (eds) Toolkits, translation devices and conceptual accounts. Essays on Basil Bernstein sociology of knowledge. New York: Peter Lang. Walker, J. (2009) The inclusion and construction of the worthy citizen through lifelong learning: a focus on the OECD, Journal of Education Policy, 24, 3, May, 335-351. Young, M. (2010) Alternative educational futures for a knowledge society. European Educational Research Journal, 9(1), 1-12.
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