Problem-Solving as a Governing Knowledge: “Skills”-Testing in PISA and PIAAC

Abstract

This article scrutinizes critically a pervasive knowledge shaping contemporary sociopolitical relations and spaces-"problem-solving knowledge". It develops the argument that, as a governing knowledge, "problem-solving" is increasing in intensity and scope, with a range of negative and potentially dangerous effects. As a case study, the article examines how problem-solving knowledge operates in the OECD "skills" assessment programs PISA and PIAAC, with a particularly worrying connection between so-called "cognitive abilities" and labour market performance. It considers how this "turn to cognition", with its associated moralism, divides "citizens" into those who either can or who cannot solve "problems", producing "more productive" and "less productive" categories of people. More broadly, these programs illustrate how treating "problems" as self-evident referents is deeply depoliticizing, highlighting the importance of examining how governing takes place through problematization. Through tracing the emergence and functioning of "problem-solving" as a knowledge practice, the article encourages reflection on how problem-solving knowledge has come to be taken-for-granted as "truth" and on how it operates to limit political debate and to regulate political subjects.

What are we saving? Tracing governing knowledge and truth discourse in global COVID-19 policy responses

“…Michel Foucault’s concept of governing knowledges (Foucault 1980 ) draws attention to how society comes to be administered through practices of organising – not through conscious intent, but rather through governmental technologies. Political scientist Carol Bacchi explains that in governmentality theory , “technologies comprise the means by which governing becomes practicable” (Bacchi 2020 , p. 90), such as the means by which performance data or evidence-based policies become technologies that govern the way in which education is practised. Coined by Foucault ( 2009 [1978] ), gouvernementalité [governmentality] – a contraction of “gouvernement” and “mentalité” – concerns the techniques and strategies through which society is governed.…”

“…The shape given to problems is made visible here by noting how other knowledges are subjugated and relegated to the margins of the reality in which policies are practised. This Foucauldian influence in Bacchi’s WPR seeks to demonstrate how some knowledge practices are valued while others remain invisible, and to bring forth into practice the possibilities for how we might “think otherwise” (Bacchi 2020 , p. 22).…”

“…From its position as a global education problem-solver, “a key governing logic of our age” (Bacchi 2020 , p. 84), the OECD formulated its response to the pandemic as a checklist for reform. Andreas Schleicher, director of the OECD’s Directorate of Education and Skills, and Fernando Reimers, of the Global Education Innovation Initiative at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, launched the OECD’s 40-page policy guide, A Framework to Guide an Education Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020 (OECD 2020 ), at the end of March 2020 and distributed it online to governments and public, private and non-profit education stakeholders.…”

“…Bacchi’s ( 2020 ) study showed how the OECD has played a key role in producing a dominating technocratic problem-solving model of education while, at the same time, producing “passive and divided subjects” (ibid., p. 98) without agency, rather than citizens actively engaged in education-related decisions and programme development. Our own analysis showcases that the solutions offered by the OECD articulate a similar technocratic solution, exemplifying what Tania Li ( 2007 ) indicates is a process of rendering a problem technical within policy.…”

“…The checklist draws on data from PISA and the survey as technologies of “governance by numbers” to represent the problem as rational, technical and, consequently, conquerable through a rationalised checklist for action. The checklist calls on educators, governments and ministries of education to be guided by it, and to embrace private-sector partnerships in the technocratic problem-solving model of education (Bacchi 2020 ). In this way, the Framework – as a technology of saving – constitutes the problems of the pandemic as technical ones, in which the pervading logic is that edu-tech is a logical and necessary partner.…”