Adult numeracy and the totally pedagogised society: PIAAC and other international surveys in the context of global educational policy on lifelong learning

Abstract

Copyright and moral rights to this thesis/research project are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. The work is supplied on the understanding that any use for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. A copy may be downloaded for personal, non-commercial, research or study without prior permission and without charge. Any use of the thesis/research project for private study or research must be properly acknowledged with reference to the work's full bibliographic details.This thesis/research project may not be reproduced in any format or medium, or extensive quotations taken from it, or its content changed in any way, without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s).If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Middlesex University via the following email address:eprints@mdx.ac.ukThe item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated. AbstractThis paper aims to discuss the emergence, form and likely effects of international surveys of adults' skills by locating them in the global context of policies on education and Life Long Learning (LLL). It focuses on adults' numeracy and discusses its conceptualisation and assessment in PIAAC (Project for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies), which is the most recent survey. Drawing on critical theoretical resources about new forms of governance in education and transformations in the pedagogic discourse, the paper further substantiates existing critiques of global policy trends, namely that they are motivated by human capital approaches to education and LLL. In particular, we show that the apparently commonsensical appeal of evaluative instruments like PISA and PIAAC is based on a competency model of knowledge, which embodies an exceedingly narrow notion of competence. Relatedly, the notional curricula promoted by such surveys potentially articulate a more radical idea of LLL, captured by Bernstein's conception of trainability as the mode of socialisation into a Totally Pedagogised Society. The paper presents a dual approach to understanding international adult performance surveys in general -in that, besides deploying the theoretical resources already indicated, it also raises a number of methodological issues relevant to the valid interpretation of these studies' results. Ultimately, it argues for the importance of mobilising resources from critical educational perspectives to support the development of potentially powerful knowledge like numeracy and to prevent its being reduced to a narrow competency.

Symbolising the real of mathematics education

“…The fields of ethnomathematics, critical mathematics education and, more generally, what have been known as the social, cultural and political perspectives in mathematics education have shown how mathematics is involved in processes of social selection, in excluding groups of people considered to be disadvantaged, or in providing a clear social mechanism of accountability and accreditation. A recent special issue on social theory published in this journal contemplates research where it is shown how mathematics is used as an economic measure (Tsatsaroni & Evans, 2013), a technology of subjectification (Kanes, Morgan & Tsatsaroni, in press) or as a mechanism of social selection (Jorgensen, Gates & Roper, 2013). These studies compel us to think about the importance of mathematics not in terms of object mathematicsas valuable knowledge and competencebut in terms of the role it plays and its attendant submissions to political as well as economic criteria and goals.…”

A comparative analysis of national media responses to the OECD Survey of Adult Skills: policy making from the global to the local?

“…The specific psychometric methodology developed to measure these skills determines which aspects of adult activities are accountable and noteworthy, within a framework that postulates universal (i.e. transnational) skills (Sellar and Lingard 2014;Tsatsaroni and Evans 2013). Thus the predominant interpretations of proficiencies in the PIAAC survey within the media appear to reflect a decontextualized skills-based approach rather than one that sees them as part of situated social and cultural practices (cf.…”

Pedagogising the university: on higher education policy implementation and its effects on social relations

“…The TPS has mostly been addressed by critical policy studies, for analysis of global policy discourses on lifelong learning and knowledge society (Gewirtz 2008;Ball 2009), of pedagogic discourses entailed in international evaluative surveys such as the Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (Tsatsaroni and Evans 2014), as well as for analysis of social policy discourses for fighting poverty in Argentina and Chile (Rambla and Veger 2009) and homelessness policies in Australia (Gerrard 2015). More rarely, it has been used for analysing consequences of the implementation of such policy discourses on local agents' practices and identities (Bonal and Rambla 2003), on social relations between agents and agencies, in the field of higher education (Stavrou 2012) and ageing (Loffeier 2015).…”