Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Background/Context

In the United States and abroad, public education is changing as the rhetoric of “accountability” is becoming accepted as the self-evident and self-explanatory rationale for momentous policy shifts. Epitomized by the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the U.S. government's Race to the Top, accountability is becoming a pervasive normalizing discourse, legitimizing historical shifts in educational policy from a social and cultural project of facilitating democratic citizenship to an economic project of engendering usable skills and “competences.”

Purpose

The purpose of this special issue is to provide context and perspective on these momentous shifts.

Research Design

The papers point to historic antecedents, highlight core ideas, and identify changes in the balance of power between domestic and global policy makers. The authors are interested in understanding the process by which the new policy frameworks have been constructed and legitimized and how they have changed the accepted “definition of the situation.”

Conclusions/Recommendations

An important aspect of these changes are three long-term trends: homogenizing the heterogeneous reality of education; shifting power from locally embedded education professionals to a global elite of economists and statisticians; and the move from soft guidance to hard mandates in an increasingly centralized system of governance.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Apple

M. W.

(2005). Education, markets, and an audit culture. Critical Quarterly 47(1–2), 11–29.

Ball

S. J.

(2012). Global Education Inc: New Policy Networks and the Neo-liberal Imaginary. London: Routledge.

Berlin

(2002). Liberty: 26. Edited by Hardy

Henry

. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Berliner

D. C.

& Biddle

B. J.

(1995). The Manufactured Crisis. New York: Addison-Wesley.

Bourdieu

(1998). Acts of Resistance against the New Myths of our Time. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Breakspear

(2012). “The Policy Impact of PISA.” OECD Education Working Paper 71. Paris: OECD.

Ertl

(2006). “Educational Standards and the Changing Discourse on Education: The Reception and Consequences of the PISA Study in Germany.” Oxford Review of Education 32(5), 619–634.

Harvey

(2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Herbst

(2002). Requiem for a German Past: A Boyhood among the Nazis. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

10.

Held

(1995). Democracy and the Global Order. New York: Polity Press.

11.

Kamens

(2012). Beyond the Nation State: The Reconstruction of Nationhood and Citizenship. London: Emerald Publishing.

12.

Mahon

and McBride

, eds. (2008). The OECD and Transnational Governance. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

13.

Martens

and Jakobi

A. J.

(2010). “Expanding and Intensifying Governance: The OECD in Education Policy.” In Mechanisms of OECD Governance: International Incentives for National Policy-making?, edited by Martens

and Jakobi

A. P.

, 163–179. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

14.

Meyer

H-D

and Benavot

, eds. (2013). PISA, Power, and Policy. The Emergence of Global Educational Governance. Oxford, UK: Symposium.

15.

Rizvi

and Lingard

(2010). Globalizing Education Policy. London: Routledge.

16.

Scott

J. C.

(1998). Seeing like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

17.

Steiner-Khamsi

(2003). “The Politics of League Tables.” Journal of Social Science 1, 1–6.

18.

Strange

(1996). The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

19.

Takayama

(2008). “The Politics of International League Tables: PISA in Japan's Achievement Crisis Debate.” Comparative Education 44(4), 387–407.

20.

Torrance

(2006). “Globalizing Empiricism: What, if Anything, Can Be Learned from International Comparisons of Educational Achievement.” In Education, Globalization and Social Change, edited by Lauder

Hugh

, Brown

Phillip

, Dillabough

Jo-Anne

and Halsey

A. H.

, 824–834. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

21.

Tröhler

(2010). “Harmonizing the Educational Globe: World Polity, Cultural Features, and the Challenges to Educational Research.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 29(1), 7–29.

22.

Weber

(1946). From Max Weber. Edited by Gerth

Hans

and Wright Mills

. New York: Free Press.

Accountability: Antecedents,Power,and Processes