Globalizing Educational Accountabilities

Globalizing Educational Accountabilities analyzes the influence that international and national testing and accountability regimes have on educational policy reform efforts in schooling systems around the world. Tracing the evolution of those regimes, with an emphasis on the OECD’s PISA, it reveals the multiple effects of policy as numbers in countries with different types of government and different education systems. From the effect of Shanghai’s PISA success on nations trying to compete economically to the perverse effects of linking funding to performance targets in Australia, the analysis links testing and accountability to new modes of network governance, new spatialities, and the significance of data infrastructures. This highly illustrative text offers scholars and policy makers a critical policy sociology framework for doing education policy analysis today.

Chapter 1: Introduction. Chapter 2: Global educational accountabilities. Chapter 3: Politics of mutual accountability. Chapter 4: Catalyst data. Chapter 5: PISA and the invisibility of race. Chapter 6: PISA and the politics of “failing boys”. Chapter 7: Conclusion.

Bob Lingard is a Professorial Research Fellow in the School of Education at the University of Queensland, Australia. Wayne Martino is a Professor of Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Goli Rezai-Rashti is a Professor of Education at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Sam Sellar is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Education at the University of Queensland, Australia.