This article is about the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and its actors. It analyses the development and role of PISA as a "cultural product" from the perspective of Bourdieu's field theory. The authors attempt to answer the following questions: Of which field is PISA the product? In which field and by whom is PISA…

A particular trait of the educational system under socialist reign was accountability at the input side--appropriate facilities, centrally decided curriculum, approved text-books, and uniformly trained teachers--but no control on the output. It was simply assumed that it met the agreed standards, which was, in turn, proven by the statistics…

The task seemed straightforward enough: Students taking part in a recent international test were asked to review drawings of five triangles with varying angles and midpoints. Then those teenagers were to read over a paragraph describing the characteristics of a particular triangle and, finally, choose the triangle that fit the description. Of the…