Education and nationalism in Scotland: governing a ‘learning nation’

Abstract

Nationalism is a key resource for the political work of governing Scotland, and education offers the Scottish National Party (SNP) government a policy space in which political nationalism (self determination) along with social and cultural forms of civic nationalism can be formed and propagated, through referencing ‘inwards’ to established myths and traditions that stress the ‘public’ nature of schooling/education/universities and their role in construction of ‘community’; and referencing ‘outwards’, especially to selected Nordic comparators, but also to major transnational actors such as OECD, to education’s role in economic recovery and progress. The SNP government has been very active in the education policy field, and a significant element of its activity lies in promoting a discourse of collective learning in which a ‘learning government’ is enabled to lead a ‘learning nation’ towards the goal of independence. This paper draws on recent research to explore recent and current developments in SNP government education policy, drawing on discourse analysis to highlight the political work that such policy developments seek to do, against the backdrop of continuing constitutional tensions across the UK.     

What role of education for youth? Discourse within the European Union’s Structured Dialogue

Abstract

Within the EU, answers and responses to detected issues and problems facing young people are regularly searched for within and through education and learning. The EU’s Structured Dialogue on youth is one of the consultation-based policy processes where education is often suggested as a solution and a highly relevant field of action helping to improve youth’s status and life. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, this paper examines discourse about education present in selected policy texts and statements of various stakeholders and individuals active within the EU’s Structured Dialogue on youth. As an example, the first two phases of the fifth cycle of that dialogue are considered and examined, exploring perceptions of the dialogue and education and their role. The paper aims to explore the underlying political rationalities of education via which the field is governed and programmable realities created, while young people’s specific role and conduct is suggested and framed.     

Artificial intelligence and education in China

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the political economy of artificial intelligence (AI) and education in China, through an analysis of government policy and private sector enterprise. While media and policy discourse often portray China’s AI development in terms of a unified national strategy, and a burgeoning geopolitical contestation for future global dominance, this analysis will suggest a more nuanced internal complexity, involving differing regional networks and international corporate activity. The first section considers two key policy documents published by the central Chinese government, which are shown to implicate educational institutions as influential actors in national and regional strategies for AI development, with a significant role in plans to train domestic expertise. The second section outlines three prominent private education companies: New Oriental Group, Tomorrow Advancing Life (TAL), and Squirrel AI. These companies are selected to represent important aspects of China’s development of educational AI applications, including the influence of a well-established private education sector, and a growing interest in international corporate activity. The paper concludes with the suggestion that while central government policy reserves a significant role for education in the national AI strategy, the private sector is utilising favourable political conditions to rapidly develop educational applications and markets.     

Teacher Education in Britain: a JET symposium with politicians

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on a symposium with the participation of the editor and deputy editor of the Journal of Education for Teaching and two senior British politicians on the current situation of teacher education in Britain. Topics discussed include: control and accountability, the influence of political and bureaucratic forces, the threat from unelected, non‐responsible bodies, threats to institutions, to the links of teacher education with higher education and the threat of the deskilling of the teaching professions. A concluding section considers the possibility that the policy of the Government is failing through its own structural defects and the possibility of the profession's subsequent recovery.     

A tale of two countries – forty years on: politics and teacher education in Russia and England

Abstract

The relationships between politics and teacher education have become increasingly close over recent decades in many contexts around the world, often causing significant challenges as well as some opportunities. In this article, we draw on a project on the reform of teacher education in Russia and through a comparison with the development of teacher education policy in England – especially over the last forty years – we explore how the evolution of a new politics in both contexts has affected policy on teaching and teacher education. Looking, for example, at ‘post-communism’ and ‘neoliberalism’ and their respective impacts on political systems, a number of contradictions and paradoxes are identified, when comparisons are drawn between the two systems.     

The politics of international league tables: PISA in Japan’s achievement crisis debate

Using the political‐economic analysis of globalisation and education as well as a culturalist approach to education policy borrowing, the paper analyses the role of local actors, specifically, national newspapers and the Ministry of Education, in mediating the potentially homogenising curricular policy pressure of globalisation exerted through the PISA league tables. Using the recent Japanese education policy debate as a case study, the author demonstrates how the Japanese media interpreted the PISA 2003 findings in a way that resonated with the specific cultural, political, and economic context of the time and how the Ministry used the findings to legitimise otherwise highly contentious policy measures. Questioning the conventional interpretation that the PISA 2003 shock caused the Ministry to redirect its controversial yutori (low pressure) curricular policy, the paper reconstitutes the Ministry as an active agent that capitalised on an external reference (PISA) to re‐establish its political legitimacy in a time of increasing neo‐liberal state‐restructuring.     

The Micro‐politics of Macro Reform

At a time when almost every area of social policy in the UK is undergoing a period of radical ‘top‐down’ reform, several writers have identified a key role for ethnographic research, which examines the social processes through which macro changes in structure and funding are experienced and reconstructed at the micro level. This paper presents one such study. Empirical data are used to chart the complex, interconnected processes through which national reforms helped destroy the previous balance of micro‐political power in a school, ultimately leading to fundamental changes in policy and practice in a previously ‘progressive’ comprehensive. The school's fate highlights the importance of micro‐political power, but also compels us to consider the wider forces at work on the school The teachers’ micro‐political struggles make sense only when viewed against the backdrop of sweeping conservative reform at the macro level.     

Social exclusion in EU lifelong learning policies: prevalence and definitions

ABSTRACT

The aim of the article is to analyse the concept of social exclusion in EU lifelong learning policies: how the concept has evolved from the 1990s in terms of meaning, definitions and closely connected concepts, what are the implications of this evolution, and whether there is coherence between the conceptual evolution and lifelong learning policy. Using a qualitative methodology, this article focuses on policy documents that form the European Union’s legal and political framework of reference in the lifelong learning area in the last two and a half decades. A total of 59 documents issued between 1992 and 2017 have been analysed using content analysis. The analysis of the documents has been complemented by 6 semi-structured interviews with EU lifelong learning experts. The results show that the concept is narrowly defined in terms of specific groups at risk of being socially excluded and in terms of employability, thus individualising the problem of exclusion and distracting attention from structural factors.     

The imagined subject of schooling in the logic of policy

ABSTRACT

National education policies reference a representation of an imagined subject of schooling derived from a broader social imaginary that underpins the projects of the state, in a process which I refer to here as ‘the logic of policy’. I offer an account of how this representation is derived and propose three conceptual elaborations of this view. I then consider ways in which shifts occur in this social imaginary, especially at moments of substantial social, economic and political change, and ways in which these shifts are communicated. This imagined subject is referenced in processes involving both state and non-state entities, mediated by historically specific governance instruments.

The main part of this paper offers an illustrative historical example of the working of this logic in the context of the Cape Colony and apartheid South Africa, where the instrument of governance that was central to this process was the commission of enquiry. The concluding section briefly considers whether the logic of policy works in much the same way in a contemporary policy environment, where new policy technologies have largely displaced the commission of enquiry     

The increasing role of non-State actors in education policy-making. Evidence from Uruguay

ABSTRACT

Over the last decades privatization policies have taken centre stage in many processes of educational reform globally. In Latin America, these policies have played an important role since the 1990s leading to an increasing participation of private agents in educational provision. The case of Uruguay stands out for having remained somehow apart from this privatization agenda. More recently, however, research has identified a significant shift in the discursive order especially driven by a series of new actors including think tanks and civil society organizations favourable to different forms of privatization. Building on case study methods and informed by a cultural political economy (CPE) approach this paper addresses two purposes. First, it attempts to explore possible explanations for the scarce development of the private sector in Uruguayan education. Second, it aims to characterize the discourses and strategies increasingly used by different actors to frame and promote policy ideas potentially leading to privatization policies. The study shows how a small but influential number of actors have become involved in the process of promoting ideas that seek to influence policymaking. Findings reveal how these actors frame school autonomy and accountability as policy solutions by means of different strategies of networking and knowledge mobilization.     

History at Key Stage 2: Covering 1,000 years! Still time for children's questions

This paper argues that recent English education policy has been influenced by external, economic and political factors, rather than founded on a valid understanding of how children's learning actually takes place. I will argue that the ‘performance’ model of education that has dominated the 1990s is inadequate in terms of its implied model of learning. I will review socio-cultural theory and propose it as a more valid conceptualisation. At some point in the future, I believe that the performance model will begin to collapse. An important task for researchers and practitioners is therefore to prepare a more secure alternative.     

Kairos and the time of gender equity policy in Australian schooling

ABSTRACT

Almost 20 years ago the Australian government released Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools (1997). It was adopted by all states but almost immediately disappeared from sight after a conservative change of government. This was followed by the dismantling of gender equity units in each state, and a turn to boys’ education that eclipsed the more complex strategies and theoretical underpinnings of the Framework. This paper takes up the Gender Equity Framework (1997) as a case of policy emergence, mutation and dissipation. In particular, it attends to feminist temporality, and its affective force, to begin to trouble conventional accounts of these policy shifts. Close readings of sections of the policy document and of interviews with policy actors working at that time are analysed through the notion of kairos – timeliness, or political actions that open opportunities, breaks and ruptures – in order to provide new insights into the policy moment of gender equity in Australian schooling.     

FE and skills – is the ‘UK laboratory’ open for expansive policy learning?

ABSTRACT

This article builds on the previous articles in this special issue to explore two related concepts – a ‘UK policy laboratory’ and ‘expansive policy learning’, with a specific focus on further education (FE) and skills. We argue that the potential for a UK policy laboratory in this area is based primarily on a new balance between the forces of convergence and divergence across the four countries of the UK. In this ‘goldilocks zone’ lie opportunities for policy learning. The methodology of the UK FE and Skills Inquiry, on which this article draws, attempted to model the conditions of the UK policy laboratory by involving a rich mix of social partners and highlighting the importance of national contexts and how these can inform differing approaches to common challenges. The Inquiry also identified ‘interesting practice’ that may form the basis of an initial ‘common project’ across the different systems. However, its pursuit will require shifts towards the more collaborative approach to FE and skills that characterises the three smaller countries of the UK. In this variegated political environment, we conclude by speculating on the wider conditions for the permanent development of a UK policy laboratory (or laboratories) and expansive forms of policy learning.     

Action research improves services for child sexual abuse in one Caribbean nation: An example of good practice

BackgroundChild sexual abuse (CSA) is a multi-dimensional problem. The search for best practice must consider the complexities surrounding CSA and its management in any particular society.ObjectiveData previously gathered from service providers on CSA service provision in Trinidad and Tobago identified key deficient issues in policy and practice. In this paper, researchers aimed to bridge the gaps identified, and effect changes to improve services for CSA using an action research methodology.Participants and settingService providers from all sectors in governmental and non-governmental organizations in Trinidad and Tobago, who work with children at risk of CSA were involved in the process.MethodsResearchers led the service providers into an awareness of their own practice through critical discussion of, and reflection on, the key deficient issues. The new knowledge generated, with guided input from evidenced-based best practice, led to the development of guidelines for management. Discussion of the practicability of the guidelines by service providers in multiple sectors generated more new knowledge that refined the management approach.ResultsThe contextual knowledge obtained from service providers resulted in best practice guidelines for service providers that were culturally relevant and context-sensitive, adaptive and implementable, and allowed a seamless multidisciplinary response to CSA in Trinidad and Tobago within prevailing constraints.ConclusionsAction research offers an effective approach to improve services for CSA through mobilization of service providers and changes in policy and practice. It is applicable in any setting and likely to be effective in any socio-cultural context.     

Remember people's education? Shifting alliances,state‐building and South Africa's narrowing policy agenda

Following the 1994 democratic elections, education policy in South Africa has moved from collective and transformational priorities, salient during the 1980s period of resistance, to a centrist and pro‐human capital position. While the democratic movement talked much about core reforms in the social relations inside classrooms, the new Government of National Unity is focusing on system‐wide rationalisation (including a unified qualifications scheme), developing management information and incrementally changing spending patterns. School quality is being addressed but with much less emphasis on democratising social relations and changing the character of classrooms than anticipated during die years of resistance. This paper describes this dramatic shift in education policy priorities, focusing on central government and two contrasting provinces. It employs two theoretical frameworks ‐‐ political economy and institutional theory ‐‐ to explain the causes and forms of this new set of policy priorities.

     

International HE in the UK: leveraging the policy-institution-expert nexus in uncertain times

ABSTRACT

Long-established paradigms around intensifying internationalism and ‘borderless-ness’ in the UK higher education (HE) sector are being challenged and disrupted by the nationalist drift of global political and socioeconomic forces. The UK’s international HE space is fragmented with neither a coordinated national policy nor a central agency overseeing sector-wide activity. Instead, national stakeholders interact in a ‘policymaking-sector expert nexus’ that itself engages internationally. UK institutions create structures to support ‘global engagement’ to help them to transcend national policy concerns and weather global ‘storms’, and to shape policy proactively. However, growing national policy divergence and competing policy priorities mean that enhanced coordination through a sector-level body must precede, and facilitate, the development of any UK-wide international HE strategy. A strategy will face the challenge of embracing institutional autonomy and mission diversity, recognising and value the full spectrum of international HE activities, and providing sufficient funding to leverage the implementation of institutional strategies.     

Issues and challenges regarding environmental education policy implementation

Abstract

In this article, the authors have chosen to inquire into a topic that has specific relevance to the status and inclusion of environmental education in the curriculum at a stage when the translation of policy into practice stands at the crossroads: the transition of environment as phase organiser to environment as integral to all learning areas. In education praxis, the translation of policy into practice is in the hands of educators and teachers (using the terminology as suggested in this article). The issues and challenges regarding the implementation of environmental education policy as experienced by educators and teachers are identified through examining this phenomenon as portrayed in two case studies where in-service education and training (INSET) in relation to environmental education occurs. This study is one of the first to provide a researched background that identifies issues and challenges that impact on the implementation of environmental policy in formal education contexts.     

State of rhetoric: neoliberal discourses for education in state of the state addresses and gubernatorial press releases

ABSTRACT

Policy elites use rhetoric in speeches and press releases to provide framing that is intended to influence public opinion. These rhetorical events can be treated as instances in which speech usefully promotes particular discourses. Indeed, elected officials are able to influence how individuals think about problems and solutions through speeches and press releases. Two important rhetorical events in which political elites advance frames for social issues are annual state of the state addresses (SoSA) given by U.S. governors and gubernatorial press releases that inform media reporting about state policy. This study employed policy discourse and rhetorical analyses to examine SoSAs and press releases as rhetorical events within the context of educational policy. Our findings show that governors framed the roles of state government, governors, and educational stakeholders within a discourse that perpetuates a neoliberal version of education. In this framing, governors situated education’s purpose as being workforce and economic development, ignoring its role in addressing social issues and preparing informed, engaged participants for democratic society. Given that individuals make decisions about how to address social issues and understand public institutions based on framing provided by political elites, these findings raise implications for state educational policies and the public purposes of education.     

Further education and skills in Northern Ireland: policy and practice in a post-conflict society

ABSTRACT

This paper contextualises the Further Education (FE) sector in Northern Ireland (NI). It outlines the specific political, social and economic influences that have shaped its position as a major but understated educational provider in what remains a highly divided educational system that is slowly transitioning in a post-conflict environment. Key policy frameworks underpinning sectoral development are described, showing how many policy initiatives have been both ‘borrowed’ from the English context and adapted to local need. The article proceeds to highlight a number of curricular and institutional innovations that have contributed to the development of a small-scale, but distinctive educational, social and economic model. The piece concludes by suggesting that the NI FE experience has the potential to contribute not only to its own specific conditions but, through its ‘policy and practice’ adaptations’, to positively influence FE policy and practice in other parts of the United Kingdom (UK) that require interventions around skills development economic growth and social cohesion.     

Losing the elite: Caribbean educational policy responses to the emigration of skilled labor

Abstract

The Caribbean ranks second only to Africa as the region with the highest levels of skilled emigration, which is defined as the outward migration of people holding a bachelor’s degree or extensive/equivalent experience in a given field. Based on the cost of educating their citizens, there are strong arguments supporting the view that skilled emigration comes at significant economic and social cost, especially to small island developing states of the Caribbean. This paper, therefore, explores how the emigration of skilled labor from the CARICOM Caribbean impacts education policy nationally and regionally. Drawing on data collected through questionnaires and document analysis, the research unearths four dominant educational policy responses to skilled emigration: bonding and compulsory service at the national level; regional cooperation on the movement of skilled labor through CARICOM’s Single Market and Economy (CSME); market based approaches to educating skilled professionals; and education funding policy. The paper also analyses the efficacy of each of these four policy responses and their implications. Ultimately, these policy responses coalesce to highlight the national and regional complexities of educational policy-making under globalization, and the limitations of Caribbean national and regional educational policies aimed at controlling skilled emigration in the context of globalization’s market forces.