FreshEd #16 - Rethinking the PISA Debate (Keita Takayama)

The FreshEd team is going on summer holidays. We’ll be back in a few weeks with new episodes. In the meantime, we’ll air some old episodes for you to enjoy. Today, Keita Takayama provides a critical reading of the so-called “PISA debate.” This debate started in May 2014 when a group of scholars published an open letter in the Guardian newspaper to Andreas Schleicher, the head of OECD’s education and skills division, criticizing PISA. Two subsequent response letters were published in the Wall Street Journal responding to the open letter and critiquing PISA in ways left out of the original letter. Keita Takayama, a professor at the University of New England in Australia, takes us through the arguments in these various letters. By looking at who wrote the letters, Prof. Takayama scratches the surface of the arguments to locate hidden agendas. In the end, he sees the so-called “PISA debate” as provincial. www.freshedpodcast.com/keitatakayama