Reclaiming Education in the Age of PISA
Challenging OECD's Educational Order
Theorizing Education Series

Reclaiming Education in the Age of PISA provides a critical analysis of the OECD?s educational agenda and its main tool, namely, PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment). Based on an analysis of the OECD?s public documents, including publications, webpages, and videos, d?Agnese argues that PISA is not just an assessment tool, but rather an all-encompassing framework that intends to govern education, schooling, living and society worldwide. This creation of what d?Agnese calls a life-brand raises concerns that education and learning are becoming wares and that, consequently, we run the risk of transforming schools into providers and teachers into agents of preconceived learning packages.

In pursuing only one concept of education, and a very narrow one at that, d?Agnese argues that OECD not only narrows down education to a mere reproductive process, but that such an approach also erases the basic rules by which living develops and evolves. In this sense PISA is but another form of authoritarian teaching, authoritarian teaching being understood as any and every educational project which sets aims and purposes of education without giving the possibility to discuss and challenge such aims and purposes.

Reclaiming Education in the Age of PISA suggests a different educational logic, emphasizing that schooling is not just a place to produce the correct skills, but is also a matter of experimentation, hesitation and wait, one in which teachers and students attempt to dwell in pure potentiality for growth.

Providing a strong argument that a different way to conceive of schooling deserves our attention, this book will be essential reading for academics, researchers and postgraduates in the fields of educational philosophy and theory, inclusive education and social justice. It should also be of interest to policymakers and educational activists.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Section I

Chapter 1. OECD’s Educational Agenda: Neoliberalism, Workforce and Testing Regime

Chapter 2. Unravelling PISA’s Value Square: Money, Success, Evidence and Competition

Chapter 3. The PISA-based Test for Schools: Ethical Disengagement, Lack of Courage and the Impoverishment of Teaching

Chapter 4. Standardization and Atomisation of Educational Practices: Why PISA is but Another Form of Authoritarian Teaching

Section II

Chapter 5. Shifting Perspective: Deweyan Account of Thinking, Knowledge and Subject

Chapter 6. Engaging in Life: The Need for Courage and Imagination

Chapter 7. A Different Value Square. Bringing Back Schooling to What Schooling is About

Chapter 8. Newness and Radical Possibility: Education as Dwelling in the Not-yet

Index

Vasco d’Agnese, PhD, is associate professor of Education at the Department of Psychology, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, with interests in educational theory, Dewey, Heidegger, postmodernism and educational policies.