Conference Agenda

This paper investigates the entanglements between educational and sociotechnical imaginaries in global education governance. Sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff, 2015) refer to visions of futures in which science and technology play a central role, and educational imaginaries (Rahm, 2023) refer to educational visions, policies, and projects. Both concepts are relevant to understanding knowledge production and power relations in education policy discourse because they capture and represent what is possible and acceptable to imagine and formulate for our futures. In the context of datafication and digitalisation efforts in close entanglement with marketisation processes in education, as well as technological advances such as generative artificial intelligence (AI), sociotechnical imaginaries appear essential for present ideas of the future in general and in education in particular.

The Covid-19 pandemic represents a pivotal moment in time, serving as both an accelerator for and a catalyst for debates about technological solutions in education. However, the post-World War II era is already a fascinating period, marked by varying degrees of reasoning with science and technology (Hof & Müggenburg, 2021). Especially in the early period until the beginning of the 1970s, this reasoning was grounded in firm trust in science, technology, and progress (e.g., International Commission on the Development of Education, 1972, p. 90). However, the early 1970s also marked a turning point. While marked by growing prosperity, especially for ‘Western societies’, signs of pending crises began to be palpable (Elfert, 2018, p. 119), as the debate surrounding The Limits to Growth report (Meadows et al., 1972) illustrates. Either way, during the Cold War, the relevance of science and technology was persistent, and education was “a major ideological battleground” (Elfert & Ydesen, 2023). The political tension and technological competition promoted educational perspectives that emphasised the reliance on scientific expertise, objective data, and new technologies. International organisations (IOs) with different ideological foundations, such as the OECD, the World Bank, and UNESCO, were crucial promoters and contesters of these educational ideas in the post-World War II era. Sociotechnical and educational imaginaries are embedded in global governance frameworks. IOs participate in the co-production of programmatic ideas and education policy concerning central themes such as digital transformation strategies and data infrastructures, shaping expectations about knowledge, evidence and data regimes.

Comparing a contemporary and historical period, I examine how sociotechnical and educational imaginaries in global education governance are co-produced, justified, entangled, and manifested in a network of heterogeneous actants from education policy and practice, research, engineering, and industry, posing the following research questions:

1) Which actors (actants) are involved in these processes?

2) How have these actants manifested and affected sociotechnical and educational imaginaries?

3) How have these sociotechnical imaginaries and educational imaginaries affected each other?

Over the last couple of decades, (trans)national policy has increasingly linked Vocational Education (VET) to global competitiveness (e.g. Cedefop, 2019), turning it into a site where a particular type of workforce must be produced. For example, the OECD (2023) advocates for updated VET systems by “re-engineer[in] certain parts of [them] …to be future-ready, with a focus on responsiveness, flexibility, supporting transitions, and innovation” (p. 3).

One of OECD’s recommendations for securing this “future-readiness” is to engage social partners (organisations, trade unions and other labour market actors) in the design of (trans)national VET policies (OECD, 2023, p. 28).

Inviting social partners into policy making implies that private labour market agendas must be combined with public ones. Embedded in the OECD agenda is a social engineering logic that instrumentalises lifelong learning as a means of producing a qualified, future orientated, and loyal labour (market) force that is highly skilled, productive, and competitive (Heck et al., 2025).

Like other Nordic countries, Denmark is highlighted by OECD as doing VET policy effectively – both on national and institutional level (OECD) – because partnerships have been deeply incorporated. However, this is not an OECD‑born idea, but a long‑standing Nordic tradition rooted in the corporatist organisation of the labour market (Jørgensen, 2018), which the Danish VET system originates from (Nielsen, 2000). In the Danish VET context, which is the focus of this paper, the high level of social partner involvement has shaped a policy agenda aimed at attracting academically strong students to vocational pathways (Danish Ministry of Education, 2014). At the same time, another of OECD’s recommendations is to use VET as a pathway for “low-skilled” learners, offering them social inclusion and lifelong learning opportunities (OECD, 2023, p. 66). As we argue, OECD unknowingly contradicts itself by promoting these different agendas. This contradiction becomes evident in Danish VET policy, which oscillates between two opposing goals: to be ‘special’ and exclusive and to be ‘ordinary’ and inclusive (Cort, 2025).

Within this fluctuating educational landscape, Denmark has introduced a new practical upper-secondary education programme (EPX), which merges a range of former vocational programmes. This is presented as a radical shift in the architecture of upper-secondary education in Denmark (Danish Ministry of Education, 2025). EPX is presented as a hybrid between vocational and academic tracks, carrying promise of a good and enjoyable “youth life”, permeability, and smooth transitions from vocational education to further studies. On the one hand, this promise reflects an OECD ideal in terms of flexibility, transition, and lifelong learning (OECD, 2023). On the other hand, the promise conceals narrow and opaque pathways, placing responsibility on students to carefully plan their educational pathways while structurally, their real options are limited or even non-existing. One of the reasons is that EPX does not qualify students for university programmes. Thus, referring to EPX as ‘upper-secondary school’ is misleading and might be interpreted as a persuasive and tactical strategy to enrol – and engineer – students into VET programmes.

Our policy (Foucault, 2020; Ball, 2012) and psychoanalytic (Heck et al. 2025, Clarke, 2019) informed analysis of OECD and Danish VET policy demonstrates that competing policy agendas multiply complexity, hierarchies, and paradoxes. These dynamics leave future EPX students to bear the uncertainty of promises that may not materialise as real educational opportunities. Rather than providing clear pathways, such policies may place students in frustrating and complicated positions from which it is difficult for them to interpret what future possibilities for further education are accessible to them and what their future role in an accelerated labour market actually is and can be.

Educonomic thinking (ie. thinking that enacts education as an instrument for the economy) has dominated education policy since the beginning of the Cold War, in particular through the development of human capital theory by economists (Becker, 1962, 1976; Schultz, 1959, 1963) and its promotion by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and its predecessor OEEC (Brøgger & Ydesen, 2025; Grek, 2024). Meanwhile, in recent years, new educonomic thinking beyond mere economic growth has been emerging, for example under the headline of wellbeing economy. Wellbeing economy is promoted by think tanks and NGO’s; several countries such as the Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGo), including New Zealand, Wales, Scotland, Finland, Iceland, and Canada; and international organizations, including the OECD among others. The OECD frames education policy within its wellbeing economy framework through a new education policy concept called ‘Education for human flourishing’, including a set of ‘Education for human flourishing competencies’ and an indicator framework called the ‘Better Life Index’.

This paper asks in what ways the concept of human flourishing and the ‘Better Life Index’ represent novelties compared to previous OECD education policy by analyzing continuities and discontinuities in educonomic ideas from human capital thinking and performance indicators to these new policy frameworks. The policy phenomenon of wellbeing economy, understood both as an idea and as specific material frameworks, has not yet been analyzed conceptually in education policy research. However, this analysis is important due to the growing impact of wellbeing economy on various policy areas, including education, across the world. Otherwise, economic policy agendas may be overlooked in the midst of the idealist and convincing rhetoric of wellbeing and flourishing.