Worlds of Educational Standards: Complex Interplays between Sociologies of Education

Standards are core aspects of the construction of European education policy space (Lawn 2011; Lawn and Grek 2012). They concern in complex ways education practice and policy-making, and develop in extended regulatory and conventional regimes. The extension and the relevance of standardization, and of standards, have been related to the dominance of neo-liberal discourse and policy-making all over the world, and to the emergence of a new governance in education characterized by the substitution of politics with subtle forms of governance relying on apparently neutral, abstract conventions, technical led instruments and tools and new circles of expertise, and knowledge-making.