Science by streetlight and the OECD’s measure of global competence: A new yardstick for internationalisation?

Educational institutions have been among the most active social organisations responding to and facilitating processes associated with globalisation. This has primarily been undertaken through the attempts of schools and universities to ‘internationalise’ their student intake, staffing, curricula, research, and assessment systems. Amongst the many benefits associated with the promotion of ‘internationalisation’ is that it will provide students with attributes such as global citizenship, skills or competencies that will contribute to improving tolerance, respect and harmony between nations and cultures. Various nations and global agencies actively promote such goals and global citizenship is included in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Positioned as a response to the Sustainable Development Goals, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has developed a metric to compare the ‘global competency’ of 15-year-old pupils, which was incorporated into the Programme for International Student Assessment 2018. We analyse the rationales for this decision, the conception of ‘global competence’ adopted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and how these have changed since its inception in 2013. We also explore how it will be measured and how the organisation deals with what it describes as ‘the most salient challenge affecting PISA’. We argue: (i) the official conception of ‘global competence’ finally adopted was strongly influenced by the organisation’s quest to position itself as the agency responsible for monitoring progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, and then amended to match what could be easily measured; and (ii) although the organisation presents its global competencies using a humanitarian discourse, it is framed by its economic mission.