PISA allows for comparisons and contributes to the distribution of certain types of capital among countries, which is converted into soft power. Education has been considered an important pillar of the increased status and power China holds globally. However, Chinese participation in PISA differs from other countries, whereby only some of China's…

In 2018, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) added to their PISA regime the assessment of "global competence". Given this novel, data-driven approach to governing the internationalisation of K-12 education, this study compares this recent intervention to a longer-standing mode of governing for the pedagogical…

This paper offers insights into the referencing of Singapore within the US Obama Administration educational discourse, underscoring the political-material-discursive nexus of international educational benchmarking. Using critical discourse analysis, we find that an objectified Singapore functions as a rhetorical tool of US policymaker agendas,…

PISA test data from 2000 to today have shown Germany's education system is one of the most inequitable within the OECD, with high correlations between student background and achievement outcomes. Scholars have identified the highly differentiated school structure, which tracks students as young as 10 years old, as a central cause. This scholarship…

Background: PISA results appear to have a large impact upon government policy. The phenomenon is growing, with more countries taking part in PISA testing and politicians pointing to PISA results as reasons for their reforms. Purpose: The aims of this research were to depict the policy reactions to PISA across a number of jurisdictions, to see…

The aim of this article is to examine how transnational concepts within educational policies influence national curricula in the reconceptualisation of educational policy into concrete curriculum texts. Based on a critical discourse analysis and the concepts of recontextualisation, convergence and divergence, a third wave of European policy…

One of the most basic and obvious sources of data for education policy analysis is text. This article discusses content analysis as an important part of the methodological toolbox for elucidating patterns and trends about education policy. Focusing specifically on media, I show how media content analysis can produce nuanced insights about the ways…

This paper seeks to contribute to recent comparative discussions about the shift of traditional referential points as a result of new global governance by the OECD through PISA. In doing so, the authors investigate whether the lower PISA rankings of the US have resulted in the shifting of its referential status in South Korea. For the purposes of…

Drawing on the conceptual work of externalisation in comparative education and multi-accentual signs in cultural studies, this article examines how the print news media accentuate "Finnish education" in the process of inserting this external reference into the domestic political discourses around education reform in Australia, Germany…

Late and limited organisational differentiation is a characteristic which has, until now, distinguished the structure of education -- including teacher education - in the Nordic countries from that of the rest of Europe. However, this tradition is now challenged by utilitarian ideologies, supported by international comparison tests such as PISA…

Education reform is increasingly portrayed as a quest to achieve a "world class" education system through a process of identifying and adopting the practices of those systems whose pupils perform best in league tables of achievement. This is the rationale for the range of new policies proposed by the coalition government in the schools…

Drawing on a critical theoretical paradigm and critically engaging with the externalization thesis that Gita Steiner-Khamsi and Jurgen Schriewer have developed, this article examines the politics of "Finnish education" in the ongoing Japanese education reform debate. More specifically, it examines the various discursive uses of…