Comparisons, numbers and nations: exploring national policy responses to international data via a postfoundational imagining of the policymaker

Abstract

The article seeks to refine two central concepts in scholarly accounts of national policy responses to international data: ‘selectivity’ and ‘instrumentalisation’. It does so by broadening, firstly, the empirical focus of research to include forms of international data other than the performance data of global learning metrics and international large-scale assessments, and secondly, its case-studies focus to embrace the Republic of Cyprus as an understudied and uniquely situated case within international power structures, but mostly, by reimagining the national policymaker as a postmodern subjectivity rather than a sovereign, fully cogitative and conscious individual. From this theoretical point of view, selectivity is conceptualised as an unintended consequence of the ambivalent attitudes of policymakers towards comparison and numbers, while instrumentalisation as a frequently problematic and ambiguous praxis. To test these two arguments, the article analyses why and how and to what extent statistical averages of teaching time allocations to curriculum subjects from EU and OECD countries are valued and integrated into the 2015 school timetables reform initiative of the Ministry of Education and Culture in Cyprus.