ABSTRACT
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) may well be represented as large-scale international assessment oriented by the desideratum of creating knowledge for policy—briefly, a knowledge generated in order to assist policymaking and to provide policymakers with steering tools. PISA has been constantly presented as an expert-based knowledge answer to the government's needs of trustworthy data about the performance of their education systems. As a 'knowledge for policy' project, PISA has a trajectory and an institutional environment in which it draws and operates. The 'new subject' was generated within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indicators project but certainly build on the experiences and reflections on the experiences of many of the promoters in previous large-scale assessments. In sum, it can be said that around the PISA project the OECD circumscribes a precise area of knowledge, around a single object—and, thus, builds a monopoly of expertise on a specific subject of assessment—the so-called competencies of literacy.
