The OECD and epistemic (de)colonisation: Globalising visions for knowledge in the Learning Compass 2030

Abstract

Much attention has been given in recent years to how the OECD promotes a neoliberal, marketised vision of education. There has been less focus, however, on how the OECD also offers a neocolonial vision of education, which promotes the epistemologies of the Global North at the expense of those of the Global South. This article contributes to this latter kind of critique through a decolonial analysis of the OECD’s new policy framework for the compulsory schooling sector–the Learning Compass 2030. Drawing on the work of the Latin American Grupo Modernidad/Colonialidad and that of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, it argues the Learning Compass’s drive to ‘modernise’ education worldwide unavoidably exists alongside a colonising impulse which denies the viability of non-western epistemological positions. This will be shown through an analysis of those parts of the Learning Compass which are focused on what knowledge students should acquire in the 21st century.