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Direction du P atrim oine d e I'edition 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 CanadaBien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. i* i Canada Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iii Abstract The dissertation examines the construction of an international student assessment, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), by the Organization for International Co-operation and Development (OECD). The PISA is analyzed within the context of the global architecture of education where various agents such as the OECD and other international organizations, states and communities of experts are reconstructing, reproducing and legitimizing the discourse and material practices of societal and economic progress and of official educational knowledge. The dissertation argues that the PISA is a fragile entity that is susceptible to contestation not only as it is located in a highly politicized setting, the OECD, but also because it is founded on the socially-constructed science of educational measurement. The dissertation draws on the Foucauldian concept of a power bloc formation in order to analyze the PISA's technical capacity, relations of communication and relationships of power. The analysis contributes to our understanding of how programs such as the PISA come to be constructed, how they work, how they attempt to order and shape our worlds, and how they are connected to global networks of power. It reveals that the international educational statistics that inform public policy decision-making are the result of a series of negotiated compromises made by communities of practice occupying various institutional structures within the global architecture of education. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iv Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without the kind and generous support of several individuals and institutions. I would like to thank my dissertation committee, Bruce Curtis, Rianne Mahon, and Lisa Mills, for their guidance, support, optimism and valuable advice during my intellectual journey.

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Given the influential role that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) plays in educational governance, we believe it is timely to provide an in-depth review of its education surveys and their associated human capital discourses. By reviewing and summarizing the OECD's suite of education surveys, this paper identifies the ways in which the OECD frames these surveys and embeds them in human capital discourses. We observe that the OECD's large-scale education surveys contribute to its growing cognitive and normative governance role in the global governance of education. The significance of our analysis lies in highlighting these surveys' truth claims as objective measures of human capital while at the same time pointing to their contested and controversial role in broader educational debates. We focus on three contested terrains: student testing, educational system improvement, and the politics of educational reform. In conclusion, we suggest that there is a need for an alternative paradigmone that values the significant role that public schools play in building socially cohesive and equitable societies.