ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the uses and effects of programme for international student assessment (PISA) in the imagination and the scrutiny of educational problems and solutions in Europe and, concomitantly, its participation in the creation of a European policy space in education. It builds on previous work that shows PISA as a knowledge-policy instrument; that is, as a tool that combines sophisticated comparative assessment techniques with a set of representations about education and a philosophy of regulation of education policies and practices. The evidence-based trend of the EU nourishes the OECDs image as a knowledge provider. Operating at the level of principles of action and representations, PISA can be perceived as a promoter and as a resource of a cognitive Europeanisation of education: it defines an educational cooperative-competitive space, and the ongoing demand for better results and progresses around a common subject; naturalises mutual surveillance as a specific way of doing policy and politics; fosters the commitment to data-based policies.
