Paper short abstract:

The paper aims to investigate the constitution of data in education at international level and analyze how different configurations, articulations and extensions of the two macro-actors, IEA and OECD, contribute to create living or dead data.

Paper long abstract:

This paper intends to investigate, in the STS perspective, the constitution of big data in education and aims to explore the different actor-net emerging through data collection, dissemination, assemblage and analysis at international level. The relevance of international space of education has grown over the years thanks to the many devices, network and sociomaterial infrastructure produced by Large Scale Assessment (LSA) that have become the new socio-technical actors at European and global level. In LSA the two most important networks in the world are IEA and OECD. The first includes the most important LSA as PIRLS (reading literacy), TIMSS (math and science) and CIVED (civicness). The OECD education network produces various recursive LSA among which: PISA (math) and PIACC (adult literacy and numeracy). The paper aims to achieve a reflection on the effects produced by the two major networks in terms of life or death of data. LSA data product values, labels, conceptions, allies and enemies. They are neo-liberist government devices but also producers of alignments and participation. The paper aims to analyze how different configurations, articulations, extensions, artefacts, knowledges of the two main marco-actors (IEA and OECD) contribute to co-create living data (open and public, visible and usable by scholars, media, governments, lobby groups and institutions around the world) or dead data (produced by narrow networks, used only by academics without becoming live, public sociomaterial objects).