PISA Under Examination: Bob Cowan's Closing Speech

Bob Cowan closed the Symposium with a speech called, "Currencies, contexts, and Cassandra: whose truths are true and where do we go from here?"

The notes:

Currency - what counts as good exchange value
Cassandra - following (not) what seems to be good policy

PISA - an attractive topic:

• We have positioned ourselves in PISA in a number of roles
• error in curriculum thought
• political science problem
• a comparison of political power into forms of governance
• state-of-the-art empirical work
• media event

PISA - loosely speaking, is "comparative education"

• it compares one with the other
• 50 tears out of date - comparative education is not doing that anymore
• is Big Science -- asks a question and makes it as powerful as it can
• costs money
• politics of the birth of PISA -- what are they?
• politics of its death
  

Jullien (1817) - A [positivist] Science of Comparative Education

• PISA part of the trajectory of comparative education
• the motif of the diffusion of best practice

Rashomon PISA:

• Japanese fable of two different stories of a death in the woods
• admiring the technical skills of PISA
• historical perspective and connections and disconnection with Sputnik, Cold War, politics of governance
• disciplinary technology of PISA -- Foucault
• Weber -- rationalization of the world
• upsetting quality of PISA e.g. Gerry Mac Ruiarc
  
• issues of immigration -- why are the Turks not improving?
• "result riddles" -- e.g. deciphering the Finnish result riddle
• political positioning by Education Ministries of PISA as irrelevant as a GPS
• positioning of PISA by identity politics
• PISA as an ideology (at the international level)
  

The scientification of policy

• Jullien's motif
• the motif from the political plea (in neo-liberal discourses) e.g. USA, Australia

The politicization of science

• numbers
• cultural significance and magic of numbers
  
• as political resistance
• as victory