Reforming Education: The Spaces and Places of Education Policy and Learning

Abstract

This chapter deals with the multiple scales, spaces and places of contemporary education policy reforms. The focus is on new non-state policy actors, namely, international organizations such as the OECD, and edu-businesses such as Pearson. The first case of the OECD’s PISA demonstrates the lack of policy learning in relation to international data and the processes of externalization associated with the usage of international performance data in national educational reforms. The second case illustrates the quasi-privatization of both education policy and the policy-producing community with its focus on Pearson’s research-for-policy work as evidenced in The Learning Curve. The chapter documents issues associated with these developments, including democratic deficits in policy work today, set against the new spatialities of globalization.