ABSTRACT
The concept of “big science”, which emerged for the first time in the United States (USA) in 1961, refers to large-scale scientific research, with significant budgets, sizeable teams, large instruments and laboratories, producing a copious amount of data, albeit often of little relevance. The aim of this chapter is to analyse the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), carried out by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We explored the hypothesis that PISA can be integrated in the concept of “big science”. To this end, we resorted to a qualitative and quantitative methodology, based on the documents and technical reports produced by this organization. The findings indicate that PISA has emerged as an extremely expressive programme in this way of doing science, in the field of social and human sciences. Conducting this global study involves an increasingly number of countries and a fortiori more institutions, social actors and more consumable educational products in national programmes.
