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Policy makers tend to deal with future risks by increasing the standardisation of national educational systems, a process supported by global educational policy ideas, quality assurance mechanisms and governing instruments and practices. This book presents the reader with tools to challenge accepted ideas about the standardising forces transforming educational reality, by discussing standards and standardisation from a range of different theoretical perspectives and contexts and posing questions such as: Why do we think about education through the lenses of standards? What are the assumed conditions underpinning the idea of standards?

Organised into three sections, the historical, theoretical, and philosophical discussions in the first and third sections of the book underscore how educational standards as a phenomenon can be understood in a variety of ways, giving readers insight in to the ambiguous and situated aspects of the phenomenon. Six case studies in the middle section provide an international approach to the study of standards, illuminating how standards simultaneously represent a global and a context specific phenomenon.

Across the diversity of theoretical and empirical writings, the book not only provide readers with insight but also broadens the scope of future empirical analyses of the historical, political, and social embeddedness of standards in education.