Knowing education in Thailand like a global expert organisation: Politics, context and data

Abstract

Global expert organisations play increasingly significant roles in the way that education is understood and governed internationally, including by influencing the discourses through which education is conceptualised and shaping norms of what counts as success, failure, progress and the most desirable visions for the future. By constructing understandings of education in multiple countries globally over extended periods of time, often through large‐scale data generation, they create highly authoritative spaces of knowledge about education. Part of this influence is exerted through regular and substantial written reports about country‐specific issues, progress and futures. This paper examines how education in Thailand comes to be known through global expert organisations by critically analysing a selection of reports on education in Thailand from 1999 to 2024. We argue that these reports produce distinctive ways of knowing that are de‐politicised, de‐contextualised and heavily shaped by large‐scale international comparative data. We examine these knowledge practices through the conceptual lenses of time, scale and certainty. We conclude with a set of practical recommendations for enhancing reflexivity in the production of global expert organisation reports, including suggestions to: name underlying assumptions, situate claims in local contexts, critically reflect on classifications and categories and communicate uncertainty more openly. We call for a more transparent, situated and critically engaged approach to knowledge production about education in Thailand that supports more just and contextually grounded forms of global education governance.