PISA Under Examination: Clara Morgan's Keynote Speech

Clara Morgan gave a speech entitled "The OECD's PISA: Unravelling a Knowledge Network"

The notes are as follows:

This gives a public policy and political science perspective on the matter.

Introduction

• intelligence testing
• international testing
• PISA in the Canadian context
• PISA in the knowledge network
• analysis of education in the international context
• transnational governance - a web of transnational networks - operating at different scales
• "scientization" takes out politics
• political interests
• circulation of ideas
• PISA - active implementation on all levels, e.g. ideas of how schools should be run, boomerang pattern of networks

Rise of Education at the OECD

• 1990s - central to OECD work
• renewed interest in human capital theory - the necessary skills to compete in society
• 2002 - Directorate of Education
• educational governance - neo-liberal policies, e.g. competition, parental choice, testing (high-stakes)
• American influence - focus on the indicators of quality of education, e.g. A Nation at Risk, wanted a comparison with similar economies
• link with adult literacy and human capital, e.g. Statistics Canada and ETS adopted by PISA
• creation of PISA
• OECD replaced UNESCO and IEA as leader of education
• 1995 - Lahti, Finland - "strategy of student achievement analysis"

Constructing the PISA Knowledge Network

• PISA an exclusive network, e.g. OECD - exclusive economies, educational experts and researchers, governing board and policy makers
• 1990s trend towards large scale assessments
• cultural bias
• OECD needed to get educational expertise: tendering process with Borgogne, ACER, and IEA. ACER won, turned into International Consortium
• PISA creators - advocating a different outcome of education, but not prescribing what to teach

Governing Education Through PISA

• PISA infrastructure - administration, analysis, and dissemination of results
• Media coverage - "naming and shaming"
• "naming and shaming" - rankings, league tables
• results inform OECD reports
• domestic policy influence

Canadian Context

• Federal government - little control over compulsory education
• Federal interest - learning, development skills for a knowledge-based economy, transition from school to work supports PISA, not IEA tests
• Provincial interest - performance of compulsory education systems, curricular outcomes

Student Achievement Testing in Canada

• Provinces/Territories
• National - SAIP, PCAP
• International - PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS
• international benchmarking
• linkages across assessments - promise of improving provincial assessments
• international tests cannot capture the complexities of learning

Conclusion

• PISA - reinforces a scientific and technical approach to politics of education
• grown to inform educational policy
• has stopped public debate use international testing as a basis for education policy
• democratic vision of school can come from the ordinary