How a European ‘Fear of Falling Behind’ Discourse Co-produces Global Standards: Exploring the Inbound and Outbound Performativity of the Transnational Turn in European Education Policy

Abstract

We can learn much by exploring how dominant Northern nations, in their fear of falling behind other ‘global knowledge economies’, produce imaginaries that affect how global standards are construed. The transnational turn in European education policy represents a narrative in which a nation will fall behind if it does not optimize its human capital, a narrative about moving ahead toward shared truth regimes that transform school, education, and educational research. Comparative surveys (e.g. PISA, Teaching & Learning International Survey (TALIS), Trends in International Mathematics & Science Study (TIMSS), and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)), country reports, and performance indicators are employed. Usually this transnational turn is observed from an inward-looking perspective that emphasizes the effects on European integration. The important effects of these processes, however, produce formats that travel globally as well. The OECD, the European Union, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, and the Bologna Process all include a network of partner countries and economies whereby nations outside Europe adopt the discourse and political technologies of organizations of Western European and US origin and dominance. This produces a global language of achievement, competition, and ranking. Drawing on post-Foucauldian governmentality theory, this study is based on discourse analysis of policy documents and literature on policy reform. It adds to research on the traveling of policy between dominant and less dominant regions in the world, questioning how and by what parameters they become comparable.