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.
| Preface |
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viii | |
| Acknowledgments |
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x | |
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1 Getting the Numbers Right: An Introduction |
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1 | (20) |
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SECTION I Numbers: A History of a Style of Reasoning |
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21 | (52) |
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2 Politics by the Numbers |
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23 | (12) |
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3 On the Contest of Lists and Their Governing Capacities: How `Tax Havens' Became `Secrecy Jurisdictions' |
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35 | (18) |
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4 Time, Drawing, Testing: The Making Up of the Developmental Child and the Measuring of the Nation's Development |
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53 | (15) |
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5 And the World Has Finally Been Made to Measure |
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68 | (5) |
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SECTION II The Field of Making of Data: Problematics of Assessment |
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73 | (74) |
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6 Producing the `Right Kind of People': The OECD Education Indicators in the 1960s |
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75 | (17) |
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7 Standards: Normative, Interpretative, and Performative |
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92 | (18) |
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8 International Assessments and Its Expertise Fabricating Expert Knowledge for Policy |
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110 | (17) |
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9 The Implications of Understanding That PISA Is Simply Another Standardized Achievement Test |
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127 | (20) |
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SECTION III Large-Scale Assessment as the Production of Numbers |
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147 | |
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10 PISA as a Social Media Event: Powering the `Logics of Competition' |
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149 | (17) |
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11 Who Governs the Numbers?: The Framing of Educational Knowledge by TIMSS Research |
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166 | (19) |
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12 OECD as a Site of Coproduction: The European Education Governance and the New Politics of `Policy Mobilization' |
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185 | |
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Sverker Lindblad is Professor of Education and Special Education at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Daniel Pettersson is Associate Professor at the University of Gävle and Uppsala University, Sweden.
Thomas S. Popkewitz is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of WisconsinMadison, USA.
