12: PISA and the constitution of East Asia as a counter-reference society: a decolonial intervention

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This chapter examines the dismissive characterization of East Asian Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) success – or its constitution as a negative reference society – in Australian media coverage and in international education research. The Australian case is used to critically engage with the existing scholarship on policy learning/referencing, reference societies and projection in the field of comparative and international education. By bringing to the fore the constitutive roles of racialization and colonial difference in the discursive constitution of East Asian education, I expose the limits of the current conceptualization of East Asia as a negative reference society, in particular its exclusive focus on the role of stereotyping in the negative framing. I argue that the discussion of East Asian education as a negative reference society must be placed within a long and global history of colonial difference and racialization of Asians in Eurocentric imaginaries.

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