Educational Standardisation in a Complex World

Policy makers tend to deal with future risks by increasing the standardisation of national educational systems, a process supported by global educational policy ideas, quality assurance mechanisms and governing instruments and practices. This book presents the reader with tools to challenge accepted ideas about the standardising forces transforming educational reality, by discussing standards and standardisation from a range of different theoretical perspectives and contexts and posing questions such as: Why do we think about education through the lenses of standards? What are the assumed conditions underpinning the idea of standards? Organised into three sections, the historical, theoretical, and philosophical discussions in the first and third sections of the book underscore how educational standards as a phenomenon can be understood in a variety of ways, giving readers insight in to the ambiguous and situated aspects of the phenomenon. Six case studies in the