Beyond Objectivity? Storytelling and Reflexivity as Expert Work

This chapter focuses on an analysis of the role of storytelling and reflexivity in further strengthening and legitimising quantification in global education governance. It examines two specific empirical examples that show, first, how data visualisations in education and sustainable development are changing in order to accommodate the construction of a more democratic and inclusive governing space; and second, how policy and expert actors themselves use reflexivity as a way not only to understand and think about their daily policy work, but also to create spaces of alignment and consensus. In that way, both storytelling and reflexivity can be seen as working instrumentally, enhancing and further embedding the work of ‘governing by numbers’, rather than displacing it.