Assessing students’ holistic development in China: managerialism, market, and performativity as policy technologies

Abstract

With the rise of accountability measures in education, many policymakers have also argued the need to record, assess, and certify students’ holistic development. However, using China as a case, we caution how a policy-driven reform on the assessment of holistic development might fall into the pitfall of performativity. Borrowing from Ball’s (Ball, Journal of Education Policy 18:215–228, 2003) seminal work on policy technologies, we investigate the ways in which management cultures, market logic, and performance indicators have figured in China’s assessment policies on students’ holistic development. Using the findings as a base, we further discuss and problematize how these policies could have rendered students “managed,” “marketized,” and “performative,” influencing what it means to become a “holistic” student.