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Cited by 1,623

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 37 of the 37 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Good education in an age of measurement: on the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education

Open access
Biesta, Gert·2009·Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability
DOI 10.1007/s11092-008-9064-9
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Abstract

In this paper I argue that there is a need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education, particularly in the light of a recent tendency to focus discussions about education almost exclusively on the measurement and comparison of educational outcomes. I first discuss why the question of purpose should always have a place in our educational discussion. I then explore some reasons why this question seems to have disappeared from the educational agenda. The central part of the paper is a proposal for addressing the question of purpose in education—the question as to what constitutes good education—in a systematic manner. I argue that the question of purpose is a composite question and that in deliberating about the purpose of education we should make a distinction between three functions of education to which I refer as qualification, socialisation and subjectification. In the final section of the paper I provide examples of how this proposal can help in asking more precise questions about the purpose and direction of educational processes and practices.

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Metadata

Authors
Biesta, G.
Venue
Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2008-12-02
Volume
21
Issue
1
Pages
33-46
ISSN
  • 1874-8597 (ISSN-L)
  • 1874-8600
DOI
10.1007/s11092-008-9064-9
OpenAlex
W2056286806
Cited by
1,623
References
37
FWCI
191.10
Type
book chapter
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Good education in an age of measurement: on the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1007/s11092-008-9064-9
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Biesta, G. (2009). Good education in an age of measurement: on the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-008-9064-9

Data sources

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.