On the Use of Educational Numbers: Comparative Constructions of Hierarchies by Means of Large-Scale Assessments

Autori

  • Daniel Pettersson University of Gävle. Sweden Autore
  • Thomas S. Popkewitz University of Wisconsin-Madison. United States Autore
  • Sverker Lindblad University of Gothenburg. Sweden Autore

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14516/ete.2016.003.001.10

Parole chiave:

Education by the numbers, meritocracy, assessments, educational comparisons, modernity

Abstract

Our text is focusing on two central knowledge problematics. First, the relation between education and a specific technology, framed by ideologies on modernity and meritocracy, understood as a selection to different and hierarchical positions in society by means of education performances. Second, the development and expansion of national, regional and international assessments and the increasing use of them within educational practice, policy and bureaucracy is acknowledged. In doing so we note that an historical tradition within education to compare and use data evolved into a specific technology for framing education with a centrality of numbers. Educational numbers came as such to be transformed from representations of education into education per se. This could happen due to societal historical connections to reasoning about modernity and meritocracy, which were considered as central in the development of the state and society. Porter (1995) is making an argument about that the reason that numbers came to be central in the development of society had to do with that numbers are perceived as «objective» and as such «neutral», but in reality this is in many respect false, and even contradictory. Instead, numbers should be perceived as a technology of steering and managing society and the state, a technology based on connotations of «objectivity», but also as a technology of distance and neutrality. What we are making an argument about is connected to Porters statements. We state that comparisons and the use of numbered data for describing education dependent on parallel societal processes, in science, society and state, came to be transformed into that numbered data on education came to be perceived as education per se. This development can be described in several aspects, but we are primarily describing it through emphasizing some historical comparative and data aggregative collaborations within science and governmental organizations and later the growing importance of transnational agencies and international, regional and national assessments.

Riferimenti bibliografici

Baker, D., & LeTendre, G. K. (2005). National differences, global similarities: World culture and the future of schooling. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Ball, S. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy, 18(2), 215-228.

Bell, D. (1972). On meritocracy and equality. The Public Interest, 29(48), 30-68.

Bernstein, B. (1975). Class, Code and Control. Volume 3. Towards a Theory of Educational Transmissions. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Bloom, B. (1969). Cross-National Study of Educational Attainment: Stage I of the IEA Investigation in Six Subject Areas. Final Report. Volume I. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Bourdieu, P. (1971). Systems of education and systems of thought. In Young, M. F. D. (Ed.), Knowledge and Control: New Directions in the Sociology of Education. London: Collier-Macmillan.

Brickman, W. W. (1966) Ten Years of the Comparative Education Society. Comparative Education Review, 10(1), 4-15.

Brickman, W. W. (2010). Comparative Education in the Nineteenth Century. European Education, 42(2), 46-56.

Desrosières, A. (1991). How to make things which hold together: Social science, statistics and the state. In Discourses on society (pp. 195-218). Springer Netherlands.

Encinas-Martin, M. (2006). A Global Survey of Educational Evaluation: International, Regional, and National Assessments of Student Learning. Paper commissioned for the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2007. Strong Foundations: Early Childhood Care and Education.

Foshay, A. W., Thorndike, R. L., Hotyat, F., Pidgeon, D. A., & Walker, D. A. (1962). Educational Achievements of 13 Year Olds in Twelve Countries. Hamburg: UNESCO Institute of Education.

Forsberg, E. (2006). International tests, national assessment cultures and reform history. Research project. Stockholm: The Swedish research council.

Forsberg, E., & Pettersson, D. (2014). European Educational Transfer and Curriculum Displacement: The Swedish Case. In Nordin, A., & Sundberg, D. (Eds.), Transnational policy-flows in European education: Conceptualizing and governing knowledge. Oxford Studies in Comparative Education. East Greenwich: Symposium Books.

Forsberg, E., & Pettersson, D. (2015). Meritokratin och jämförande kunskapsmätningar. In Wärvik, G-B., Runesdotter, C., Forsberg, E., Hasselgren, B., & Sahlström, F. (Red.), Skola Lärare Samhälle: en vänbok till Sverker Lindblad. Göteborg: Göteborgs universitet.

Fox, A. (1956). Class and Equity. Socialist Commentary, 11(13).

Gautherin, J. (1993). Marc-Antoine Jullien (Jullien de Paris) (1775-1848). In Prospects: the quarterly review of comparative education. Vol. XXIII, No. 3/4 (pp. 757-73). Paris: UNESCO.

Grek, S. (2009). Governing by numbers: The PISA ‘effect’in Europe. Journal of education policy, 24(1), 23-37.

Hacking, I. (1983). Representing and intervening: Introductory topics in the philosophy of natural science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hacking, I. (1992a). «Style» for historians and philosophers. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 23(1), 1-20.

Hacking, I. (1992b). Statistical language, statistical truth, and statistical reason: The selfauthentification of a style of scientific reasoning. The social dimensions of science 3, 130-157.

Hanushek, E. A, & Woessmann, L. (2012). Schooling, educational achievement, and the Latin American growth puzzle. Journal of Development Economics, 99(2), 497-512.

Holmes, B. (1981). Comparative Education: some consideration of method. London: Allen & Unwin.

Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (1948). Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente. Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag.

Hultin, M. (1968). Skolans produktivitet. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.

Husén, T. (Ed.). (1967). International study of educational achievement in mathematics: A comparison of twelve countries. Volume I and II. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Hutchinson, D., & Schagen, I. (2007). Comparisons Between PISA and TIMSS – Are We the Man with Two Watches? (http://www.iea.nl/fileadmin/user_upload/IRC/IRC_2006/Papers/IRC2006_Hutchison_Scha en.pdf)

Igo, S. E. (2007). The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of Mass Public. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Kamens, D. H., & Benavot, A. (2011). National, regional and international learning assessments: trends among developing countries 1960-2009. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 9(2), 285-300.

Kandel, I. L. (1933). Comparative Education. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Kellaghan, T., Greaney, V., & Murray, S. (2009). Using the results of a national assessment of educational achievement (Vol. 5). World Bank Publications.

Kett, J. F. (2013). The History of a Founding Ideal from the American Revolution to the Twenty-First Century (American Institutions and Society). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Keeves, J. P. (1968). Variation in Mathematics Education in Australia. Sydney: ACER.

Kuusinen, J. (1967). School Systems and Level of Achievement: Some Notions on the Basis of the IEA Study in Mathematics. Helsinki: University of Finland.

Lagemann, E. C. (2000). An elusive science. The troubling history of education research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Landahl, J., & Lundahl, C. (2013). (Mis-)Trust in Numbers: shape shifting and directions in the modern history of data in Swedish educational reform. In Lawn, M. (Ed.), The Rise of Data in Education Systems: collection, visualization and use. Oxford: Comparative Histories of Education, Symposium Books.

Lawn, M. (2013). The Internationalization of Education Data: exhibitions, tests, standards and associations. In Lawn, M. (Ed.), The Rise of Data in Education Systems: collection, visualization and use. Oxford: Comparative Histories of Education, Symposium Books.

Lemann, N. (1999). The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Levinson, D., Cookson, P. W., & Sadovnik, A. R. (2002). Education and Sociology: An Encyvlopedia. London: Taylor & Francis.

Lindblad, S., & Popkewitz, T. S. (2001). Education governance and social integration and exclusion: Studies in the powers of reason and the reasons of power. A report from the EGSIE project. Uppsala: Uppsala Reports of Education 39, Department of Education, Uppsala University.

Lindblad, S., Pettersson, D., & Popkewitz, T. (2015). International Comparisons of School Results: A Systematic Review of Research on Large Scale Assessments in Education. Stockholm: Vetenskapsrådets rapporter.

Littler. (2013). Meritocracy as Plutocracy: Marketising of Equality! Under Neolibealism. New formations: a journal of culture/theory/politics, 80(81), 52-72.

Lussi Borer, V., & Lawn, M. (2013). Governing Education Systems by Shaping Data: from the past to the present, from national to international perspectives. European Educational Research Journal, 12(1), 48-52.

Mann, H. (1844). Seventh Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board. Boston: Dutton & Wentworth.

Martens, K. (2007). How to become an influential actor – The «comparative turn» in OECD education policy In. Martens, K., Rusconi, A., & Lutz, K. (Eds.), Transformations of the state and global governance. London: Routledge.

McCall, W. (1922). How to measure in education? New York: The Macmillian Company.

Neves, L. M. P. (2000). Putting Meritocracy in its Place. The Logic of Performance in the United States, Brazil and Japan. Critique of Anthropology, 20(4), 333-358.

Noah, H., & Eckstein, M. (1969). Toward a Science of Comparative Education. London: Macmillan.

Nóvoa, A., & Lord, M. (Ed.). (2002). Fabricating Europe: The formation of an education space. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Nóvoa, A., & Yariv-Mashal, T. (2003). Comparative Research in Education: a mode of governance or ahistorical journey? Comparative Education, 39(4), 423-438.

OECD. (2001). Knowledge and skills for life: First results of Programme for International Student Assessment. Paris: OECD.

OECD. (2006). OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). 2006. Education at a Glance, 2006. Paris: OECD.

Owens, T. L. (2013). Thinking Beyond League Tables: a review of key PISA research questions. In Meyer, H-D., & Benavot, A. (Eds.), PISA, Power and Policy: the emergence of global educational governance. Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, 23:1. Oxford: Symposium Books.

Pettersson, D. (2008). Internationell kunskapsbedömning som inslag i nationell styrning av skolan. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Uppsala Studies in Education, 120. Uppsala: Uppsala universitet.

Pettersson, D. (2014). Three Narratives: National Interpretations of PISA. Knowledge Cultures, 2(4).

Pidgeon, D. A. (1967). Achievement in Mathematics: A National Study in Secondary Schools. NFER: Upton Park.

Popkewitz, T. (2008). Cosmopolitanism and the age of school reform: Science, education, and making society by making the child. New York: Routledge.

Porter, T. M. (1995). Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Poovey, M. (1998). A history of the modern fact: Problems of knowledge in the sciences of wealth and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Postlethwaite, N., & Ross, K. N. (1992). Effective schools in reading: implications for educational planners. An exploratory study. IEA: The Hague

Purves, A. C. (1987). The Evolution of the IEA: A Memoir. Comparative Education Review, 31(1), 10-28.

Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2006). Globalisation and the changing nature of the OECD’s educational work. In Lauder, H., Brown, P., Dillabough, J., & Halsey, A. H. (Eds.), Education, globalization and social change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rosenkvist, M. A. (2010). Using students test results for accountability and improvement: a literature review. OECD Education Working Paper No.54. Paris: OECD.

Sapin, S. (1994). A social history of truth. Civility and science in seventeenth-century England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Smyers, P., & Depaepe, M. (2010). Representation or Hard Evidence? The Use of Statistics in Education and Educational Research. In Smyers, P., & Depaepe, M. (Eds.), Educational Research: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics. Educational Research 5. New York: Springer.

Smyth. (2008). The Origins of the International Standard Classification of Education. Peabody Journal of Education, 83(1), 5-40.

Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2004). The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending. New York & London: Teachers College. Columbia University.

Stigler, S. M. (1992). A Historical View of Statistical Concepts in Psychology and Educational Research. American Journal of Education, 101.

World Bank. (2005). Expanding opportunities and building competencies for young people. Washington DC: World Bank.

Wu, M. (2009). A Critical Comparison of the Contents of PISA and TIMSS Mathematics Assessments.(https://edsurveys.rti.org/PISA/documents/WuA_Critical_Comparison_of_the_Contents_of_PISA_and_TIM SS_psg_WU_06.1.pdf)

Pubblicato

2016-01-01