Scripting solutions for the future: the OECD’s advocacy of happiness and well-being

Abstract

ABSTRACT Over the past decade, the OECD has gradually shifted its governing mechanism from promoting ‘best practices’ based on comparative data on pupils’ cognitive skills to actively advocating for individual and collective well-being as an alternative and ideal future. This article focuses on the OECD’s use of ‘techno-scientific fictive scripts’ as a strategy to promote happiness and well-being as solutions to anticipated crises, despite their conceptual ambiguity and token usage. It analyses how the OECD’s recent ‘Future of Education’ projects have sought to steer its audience towards shared concerns and expectations of the future, while simultaneously asserting its technical expertise in future studies methodologies. It argues that by returning from endorsing data-driven policies to making futuristic claims using future studies methodologies, the OECD endeavours to redefine itself as both a pathfinder and a problem solver, simultaneously blending its human capital imperatives with technological inevitability in its vision of the future.