Lost in Translation? A Case Study of Macao in Fabricating a European Education Space in Asia

Abstract

The creation of a European education space has been extensively discussed in Europe. Many scholars are concerned about the way in which the emergence of ‘global governmentality’, such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)'s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), has produced a ‘soft governance’ in which massive numerical data are used to standardise a European education space. Some challenge whether this global development, namely the PISA data, could serve as the ‘gold standard’ in producing the global ‘script’ for national contexts. Asian countries participating in PISA, while engaging in this ‘process of Europeanisation’, have become fanatics in the area of benchmarking and international comparisons without realising the underlying agenda. They consume and are being consumed by the Europeanisation process, and the effects of this ‘global development’ led by International Organisations (IOs) are irreversible. This article is written from an Asian perspective, and is about Macao, a former European colony, and aims to interrogate and to reflect on PISA's impacts on the territory and to reveal what part the OECD has taken to shape and re-order Macao's educational landscape. The European education space was never created during colonial years before 1999. Macao's engagement in the European agenda only commenced when she joined PISA in 2003. The article queries: (1) are we aware of the ‘fabrication’ of a European education space in Macao?; and (2) how do we translate such ‘fabrication’ to our local system?