DOI 10.30926/ecnuroe2018010106
Calculating the Future: The Historical Assemblage of Empirical Evidence, Benchmarks & PISA
Thomas S. Popkewitz, Jingying Feng, and Lei Zheng
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Corresponding Author: Thomas S. Popkewitz thomas.popkewitz@wisc.edu
Abstract
Purpose- Prominent at the intersections of national educational agencies, higher education, and international educational performance assessments are two reform standards: “benchmarks” determining optimal student performance, and “empirical evidence” for determining the quality of reforms practices. These two notions are often taken as connecting policy and research to effective changes in many countries. The article examines the historical and cultural principles about educational change and its sciences embedded in these standards through examining OECD’s PISA and the McKinsey & Company reports that draw on PISA’s data.
Findings/Originality/Value- First, the reports express salvation themes associated with modernity; that is, the promise of a better future through governing the present. The promise is to provide nations with data and models to achieve social equality, economic prosperity, and a participatory democracy. Second, the promise of the future isnot descriptive of some present reality but to fabricate the universal characteristics about society and individuals. The numbers embody social and psychological categories about a desired unity of all students. The models of change are about the future. Third, the “empirical evidence” of the international assessment entails a particular notion of science and “evidence”; one that paradoxically uses the universals in comparing and creating divisions.
Notes on Contributors
Thomas S. Popkewitz, Professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is interested in ‘how we think”, focusing on the historical condition that order the way education is thought of, acted on and talked about in current school reforms, research and teacher education.
Jingying Feng, Ph.D student in the doctoral program of Curriculum Studies & Global Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is currently participating as a researcher in the program “International Comparisons and Re-modelling of Welfare State Education.”
Lei Zheng, Ph.D candidate in the doctoral program of Curriculum Studies & Global Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is currently writing her dissertation project on historicizing the discourse about STEM crisis in education reforms.
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