Bob Lingard
Professorial Fellow in the Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education at Australian Catholic University and Emeritus Professor at the University of Queensland. Bob has published widely in the sociology of education and policy sociology in education. His most recent books include: Global-National Networks in Education: Primary Education, Social Enterprises and ‘Teach for Bangladesh’ (Bloomsbury, 2022), Reimagining Globalization and Education (Routledge, 2022), Globalisation and Education (Routledge, 2021), Digital Disruption in Teaching and Testing (Routledge, 2021), and Globalizing Educational Accountabilities (Routledge, 2016).
Discipline and Control: Emergent developments and effects of international and national testing in Australia
Since the turn of the century the policy significance of International Large-Scale Assessments (e.g., PISA) has increased, as has their scale, scope and explanatory power. These Assessments have in many nations been complemented by national testing (e.g., in Australia, the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy). These complementary testing regimes have had real policy impact and their representations of the performance of systems and schools used for accountability purposes with reductive effects in both. The presentation will assess emergent developments in these domains: real time continuous data collection and use of big data. Appadurai’s tensions between an ‘ethics of possibilities’ and an ‘ethics of probabilities’ will be used to interrogate these.