Worlds of Educational Standards

Standards are core aspects of the construction of European education policy space (Lawn & Grek, 2012; Lawn, 2011). 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 has 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. Moreover, the extension has been sometimes highly criticized for being overtly instrumental to economic discourse (Ball, 2009; Edwards, 1997) and for offering a simplistic and reductionist description of education practice, now assimilated to a mere technical endeavour (Biesta, 2007). Is standardization an unavoidable aspect of everyday life, and of the field of education ? To what extent standardization has effects of uniformity in education practice and policy ? How standards are enacted out in education practice and policy ? Are standards a neutral device ? Have standards and standardization always negative effects in educational practice and policy ? Is there a way to articulate a critique to standardization without assuming an a priori contrast between standards and education ? To try do develop some replies to these questions this paper intends to explore a promising and non-deterministic route for investigating the complex interplays between the extension of European standards in education and the local regimes of practice. To offer this view, the paper will rely on a socio-material approach to educational standards (Fenwick, Edwards, & Sawchuck, 2011; Fenwick & Edwards, 2010; Fenwick & Landri, 2012) that problematises the conceptualization of standard as matter of fact capable of producing predictable effect, and proposes to consider standards as matter of concern mobilising, in that case, complex, and some in case competing sociologies of education.