Imagining globally competent learners: experts and education policy-making beyond the nation-state

This paper examines competency-based educational policy-making in a global context. Specifically, it explores how the thinking around competency, spearheaded by international organisations and experts, has led to the development and deployment of a particular notion of global competency. Drawing on critical policy research, I examine three international policy events in which experts convened to discuss, debate, and co-construct ideas related to competencies in education. I argue that by structuring the assessment of knowledge and fixing meanings, the OECD, along with networks of experts, has created and diffused a particular social imaginary of a globally competent learner. Given the complexity and uncertainty of the world today, increasing the global and intercultural knowledge and awareness of the world’s students is vitally important. Yet, with so much at stake, researchers must critically examine the processes through which educational futures are being imagined while at the same time, pursuing more equitable and inclusive education policy-making within and beyond the nation-state.