Path Dependence and Policy Steering in the Social Sciences: The Varied Impact of International Large Scale Student Assessment on the Educational Sciences in Four European Countries

(Re)shaping educational research through ‘programmification’: Institutional expansion, change, and translation in Norway

“…An interviewed RCN official stated flatly that 'PISA is not a thing we are interested in' (A X). This resembles the trajectory of The Netherlands where PISA was largely ignored by the research community and contrasts with Sweden and Switzerland where international assessments had a major impact by strengthening their limited quantitative research traditions before participation (Gläser et al, 2014). Such a mediated impact of PISA contrasts starkly with Germany where the first PISA round in 2000 sparked widespread public outcry and political action, opening a window of opportunity for a new (empirical, quantitative and applied) methodological paradigm to emerge, also supported by public investments in capacity-building and thematic funding programmes in educational research (Zapp & Powell, 2016.…”

“…We argue that educational research that often has a national orientation has become increasingly prone to exogenous influences in recent decades. Notably, international organisations have exerted considerable cognitive and normative influence on diverse arenas of educational research, particularly with the proliferation of international large‐scale assessments (ILSAs) (Gläser et al, ; Sellar & Lingard, ; Zapp & Powell, ). States, in their quest for evidence upon which to base policymaking decisions, channel funds into large‐scale programmes, establish new and rebrand old research organisations and, increasingly, launch comprehensive and controversial research evaluation systems that reshape scientific activities, from preferred publication formats to choice of topic (Marques, Powell, Zapp, & Biesta, ).…”

Governing Science

“…above) have altered authority relations concerning research content, and asked how these changes have modified the conditions for scientific innovations. The comparison of the development of innovations in physics [Bose-Einstein condensation, Laudel et al 2014b], biology [evolutionary developmental biology, Laudel et al 2014a], education research (international large-scale student assessments, Gläser et al 2014) and linguistics (computerised corpus linguistics, Engwall et al 2014) in four countries demonstrated the varied impact of changing authority relations [Whitley 2014]. In particular, it turned out that, while changes in authority relations might have led to more flexibility at the level of national science systems, many rigidities remained in place and new ones (such as the short-termism of funding) have emerged.…”