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EDUCATION BY THE NUMBERS AND THE MAKING OF SOCIETY : The Expertise of International Assessments
- 2018
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Samlingsverk (redaktörskap) (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- International statistical comparisons of nations have become commonplace in the contemporary landscape of education policy and social science. This book discusses the emergence of these international comparisons as a particular style of reasoning about education, society and science. By examining how international educational assessments have come to dominate much of contemporary policymaking concerning school system performance, the authors provide concrete case studies highlighting the preeminent role of numbers in furthering neoliberal education reform. Demonstrating how numbers serve as ‘rationales’ to shape and fashion social issues, this text opens new avenues for thinking about institutional and epistemological factors that produce and shape educational policy, research and schooling in transnational contexts.
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| 2. |
- Lindblad, Sverker, 1946, et al.
(författare)
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Educational knowledge and policy discourses in tandem: International comparisons at the education agora : A contribution to the international symposium "Intellectualizing and Organizing Knowledge: The Construction of Educational Facts"
- 2016
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Ingår i: European Educational Resarch Association Annual Meeting 2016 online program.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Relations between science and society are vital for capturing preconditions and social significance of educational research. Historically, there has been a strong relationship in networks and cultural/social principles within national contexts and social science (e.g. Heilbron, 2015; Nye, 1999; Levine, 1995; Wagner et al. 1991). This condition has changed with the creation of new international agencies concerned with comparative strategies to standardize and measure various societal sectors, which is a development tended to function under the radar of science studies. To explore relations of science and society, our analyses focuses on the concept of dynamic tandem processes in science and society as dealing with production and use of knowledge (Nowotny et al. 2003). We note several strategies to utilize educational research for political and professional action that emerge in the changes in which international agencies function with national institutions and science. We also note support for different kinds of educational research in order to improve or reform education on national as well as international levels. In this paper we present an analysis based on three specific fields. We start with (a) current policy discourses in Sweden, based on a selection of policy documents 1948-2015 (e.g. Erikson & Jonsson, 1996; Husén, 1962) and analyses of the history of ILSA research (Pettersson, 2014; Lawn et al. 2008), dominated by statements on school performances and social segregation as measured by international assessments and translated by international experts into national contexts and problems (Lindblad, Pettersson & Popkewitz, 2015) Further, we carry out up-stream analyses on (b) policy articulations on the problematics of educational qualities and social segregation, and (c) developments of international large scale assessments, and (d) the exploration of the epistemic principles that intersect among policy, international assessments, and research. We identified a changing education agora (Nowotny et al. 2003) populated by agents with different relations to each other. During the studied period the articulations of educational problematics were redesigned - from political to economical legitimations. In parallel, the emphasis in rationalities (Weber, 1971) changed from value rationalities (e.g. in terms of democracy) to technical rationalities (efficiency, international competitiveness). In addition, there were replacements and additions of national and international agents at the education agora. Further, entrepreneurial agencies increased arguing in terms of technical rationalities. Stated otherwise, our analyses are significant for an improved understanding of education policy in a changing educational landscape more activated through greyzone activities (Lindblad, Pettersson & Popkewitz, 2015).
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| 3. |
- Lindblad, Sverker, 1946, et al.
(författare)
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International Comparisons of School Results: A Systematic Review of Research on Large Scale Assessments in Education
- 2015
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Avsikten med denna systematiska forskningsöversikt är att beskriva och analysera forskning om internationella jämförelser av skolresultat genom storskaliga studier (International Large Scale Assessments, ILSA). Hur är kunskapsläget och vad kännetecknar forskningsfältet? Vilken relevans har forskningen? Vad betyder systematiska forskningsöversikter för kunskapsutveckling och expertis inom utbildningsområdet? Vår genomgång inriktades på OECDs forskningsprogram PISA (Programme for Individual Study Assessment), och IEAs (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement ) två program TIMSS ( Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) och CIVED/ICCS ( International Civic and Citizenship Education Study) till vilka sammanlagt närmare 9000 publikationer kunde knytas. I olika steg filtrerades publikationerna så att vi slutligen erhöll studier som kunde klassificeras som primärforskning av internationell komparativt slag i ”peer reviewade” vetenskapliga tidskrifter. Dessa studier kodades med fokus på argument och belägg. Det kartlagda forskningsfältet syntetiserades sedan inom avgränsade fområden. Vi identifierade vissa sätt att resonera inom forskningsfältet - som resonemangs-stilar där vissa slutledningar är giltiga men inte andra. Möjligheter och begränsningar att översätta den aktuella forskningen till praktisk verksamhet undersöktes dels med avseende på vad som skrevs i de aktuella publikationerna, dels genom specialundersökning av den betydelsefulla gråzon där PISA-resultat översattes till ranking av utbildningsystem och strategier för förbättringar av dessa system. Slutsatser drogs om hur den valda modellen för forskningsgenomgångar fungerade. Vidare diskuterades premisser och konsekvenser av systematiska forskningsgenomgångar och hur de kan utnyttjas.
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| 4. |
- Lindblad, Sverker, 1946, et al.
(författare)
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Numbers: A history of a style of reasoning
- 2018
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Ingår i: Education by the Numbers and the Making of Society. - New York : Routledge. - 9781138295834
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This section brings together historical discussions that intersect philosophy and history of science and ‘the state’ to think about how numbers become a way of thinking about reality and change. This scholarship often seen in other places then explicitly educational. By including this scholarship, our intent is to think about educational phenomena as part of larger social, cultural and political formations and changes in knowledge production and governing. By doing so, we are able to highlight ILSA as something ‘new’ in the contemporary in producing educational knowledge in the governing of education. We believe that this historicizing is important for comprehending and discussing the implications of international large-scale assessments to the meaning and making of educational knowledge in contemporary society.
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| 5. |
- Lindblad, Sverker, 1946, et al.
(författare)
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On the Use of Educational Numbers: Comparative Constructions of Hierarchies by Means of Large-Scale Assessments
- 2016
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Ingår i: Espacio, Tiemp y Educación. - : FahrenHouse. - 2340-7263. ; 3:1, s. 177-202
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)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.
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| 6. |
- Lindblad, Sverker, 1946, et al.
(författare)
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Systemic Review of Research on International Comparisons of School Results : Contribution to the EERA symposium: On Systemic Research Reviews and the Politics of Knowledge in Education
- 2015
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Ingår i: EERA 2015 Online Program: http://www.eera-ecer.de/ecer-programmes/search-programmes.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Gough (2012) put forwards a distinction between configurative and aggregative approaches to systematic reviews. Where the first is conceived of as interpretative of different kinds of studies, the second is based on aggregated collection of data from different studies. The distinction is of a heuristic kind and is constructed in order to identify choices and potential combinations in review problematics and designs based on a set of dimensions concerning aims, approach and breadth and width, as well as structure of the review work. The kind of research that we are dealing with is not fitting within the aggregative approach. However, we have the ambition to identify research publications with a similar focus in order to analyze the possibilities for capturing research results and conclusions given this focus. In a way we are designing a review corresponding to mixed methods approach, trying to deal with configurative as well as aggregative approaches to systematic reviews. However, our ambition is not to configure the state of the art of knowledge in relation to specific interventions or possible decisions. Instead, our intention is to identify and define the potential – or the constraints and opportunities – that ILSA research offers as a research field and in translations to educational decision-making and action. It is our ambition in this systematic review containing more than 11.000 articles presenting data from international large-scale assessments (e.g. TIMSS and PISA) to analyse how the existing corpus of research constructs its objects as well as results; what are the rules and standards that are being used to identify and measure school performances, differing ways to capture effectiveness and efficiency as well as ways of ordering and classifying students and their schools and educational systems. It is our hope that this reviewing will be clarifying and of importance in order to capture results and impact of international comparisons of school results. By conducting a systematic review on international comparisons of school results we illuminate some conclusions on how to organize, perform and present the results from a systematic review, and what the limitations and frames for conducting such a review are. References Glass, G. V., & Smith, M. L. (1979). Meta-analysis of research on class size and achievement. Educational evaluation and policy analysis, 1(1), 2-16. Gough D, Oliver S, Thomas J (2013) Learning from Research: Systematic Reviews for Informing Policy Decisions: A Quick Guide. A paper for the Alliance for Useful Evidence. London: Nesta. Hacking, Ian (1992) “Style” for historians and philosophers. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science. 23(1): pp.1-20. Popkewitz, T. (2014). Social Epistemology, the Reason of “Reason” and the Curriculum Studies. Special Issue: Nuevas Perspectivas sobre el Curriculum Escolar. Education Policy Analysis Archives DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v22n22.2014 Prøitz, T. (2015) Metoder for systematiske kunnskapsoversikter – relevant, tilgjengelig og praktisk anvendbar? Vetenskapsrådets publikasjonsserie, forthcoming spring 2015 von Wright, G. H. (1983): Practical Reason. Blackwell von Wright, G. H. (2004). Explanation and understanding. Cornell University Press
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| 7. |
- Pettersson, Daniel, et al.
(författare)
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Into the Greyzone: International entrepreneurial agencies (EA) in-between governmental policy, research and practice? : A contribution to the international symposium: Data use in education policy and practice
- 2016
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Ingår i: ECER 2016 online program.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In recent years, national and international tests of students’ educational performances have gained importance in discourses on policy initiatives, curriculum change, educational research, and in media (Forsberg & Román, 2014). Furthermore, international organizations have developed a common discourse on schooling for influencing national education systems (Dobbins & Martens, 2012). In addition, renascent and new international entrepreneurial agencies (EA) have emerged in the field of edu-business (cf. Hogan, Sellar & Lingard, 2015), interpreting and producing educational data and making recommendations for educational improvements. They operate in greyzone (Lindblad, Pettersson & Popkewitz, 2015) spaces where actors interpret and mediate educational data but also fabricate (cf. Carvalho, 2012) educational “facts”. The most salient agencies are Pearson and McKinsey, but another contrasting but notable example operating outside the westernized world is Twaweza staging a range of educational activities in East Africa, at this time mostly with donor money, e.g. Uwezo, Africa’s largest annual assessment on children’s learning. Pearson is the world’s largest education company, with operations on nearly every continent. The company works with digital texts, online learning tools, virtual schools, student and teacher testing programs and services, student information systems, instructional management systems etc. Pearson is pursuing a variety of growth strategies including one that is said to revolutionize how education is delivered to students around the world. In December 2014 it was announced that Pearson won a competitive tender to develop the frameworks for OECD’s international large-scale assessment PISA 2018. Pearson’s chief executive John Fallon states in the press-release: “We are developing global benchmarks that, by assessing a wider range of skills, will help young people to prosper in the global economy”. In addition, Andreas Schleicher, the head of PISA, said: “PISA 2018 has the potential to be the start of a new phase of our international assessments”. Another EA is the McKinsey which publish reports on how educational systems can improve in relation to PISA results and labor market preparation of youth. In relation to this development, we raise questions on a shifting educational policy landscape in glonacal times (Marginson & Rhoades, 2001) when former dominating policy producers like governments and international organizations, e.g. the OECD and the EU, have reduced influence in favor of EA. In addition, we also raise questions on styles of reasoning (Hacking, 1992) embedded within EA for discussing what kind of educational knowledge and “facts” that will be produced in the future. Carvalho, L. M. (2012). The Fabrication and Travel of a Knowledge-Policy Instrument. European Educational Research journal, 11(2), 172-188. Dobbins. M. & Martens, K. (2012). Towards an education approach à la finlandaise? French education policy after PISA. Journal of Education Policy 27 (1) p. 23-43. Forsberg, E. & Román, H. (2014) The Art of Borrowing in Swedish Assessment Policies. . A. Nordin & D. Sundberg (Eds.). Transnational policy-flows in European education: Conceptualizing and governing knowledge. Oxford Studies in Comparative Education. East Greenwich: Symposium Books. Hacking, 1992 Hogan, A., Sellar, S. and Lingard, B. (2015) Commercialising comparison: Pearson puts the TLC in soft capitalism. Journal of Education Policy. (published online 16 Nov. 2015). Lindblad, S., Pettersson, D., & Popkewitz, T. S. (2015). International comparisons of school results - A systematic review of research on Large Scale Assessment in education. Stockholm, Sweden: Swedish Research Council. Marginson, S. & Rhoades, G. 2001. Conceptualising Global Relations at the Glonacal Levels. Paper presented at the annual international forum of the Conference of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Richmond, VA, November 15-18.
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