Policy makers’ rhetoric of educational change: A critical analysis

Reforms in education often fail due to insufficient time to implement them, too few charismatic leaders, the influence of the preceding culture, scarce resources or an incapacity to comprehend the complexity of the education system. Most studies dealing with the cognitive aspects of educational change investigate the meaning of change through the lens of the educators and principals and there is not as much research available on the perception and interpretation of change by policy makers and the language they use to communicate messages about policy that affect sensemaking–sensegiving during the process of learning about the changes. Guided by the premise that the language of a reform movement is shaped by its ideology, this article illustrates how press releases of the Ministry of Education in Canton Sarajevo in Bosnia–Herzegovina reflect an exploitation-oriented dominant reform logic. The results of frequency analysis, hierarchical clustering and multidimensional scaling imply that MoE is driven by a top-down perspective to educational change, with a focus on the procedural, organizational and collaborational aspects of reforms that primarily alter the structure of the education system but not its internal substance. We end this paper by suggesting that educational system as complex adaptive system cannot be controlled, but effectively managed through distribution of control and creation of few attractors, benefiting from self-organization in the technical core and making change in the official top-down rhetoric.     

Beyond Reasonable Doubt? Researching ‘race’ in educational settings

Abstract

This article is intended to highlight some of the main features about race‐related research in education as it is configured in the 1990s. More specifically, it reflects on the status of antiracist research and addresses the thorny issue of the legitimacy of research which is explicitly ‘partisan’. In offering a position statement on partisan research I am particularly concerned with addressing the question: to what extent is the term, ‘partisan research’, an oxymoron? ^{1 1}This article started life as a contribution to the Racial Equality in Initial Teacher Education project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (Reference Number F215A.E). I am grateful to Leverhulme and to colleagues on the project for their support in its initial stages. Thanks also to David Halpin, Derek Layder, Sally Tomlinson, Carol Vincent and, in particular, Martyn Denscombe for acting as ‘critical friends’ in the later phases.

     

Preparing ‘educational’ leaders in managerialist times: an Australian story

The preparation of educational leaders is a global phenomenon. Education systems have developed numerous means by which current and aspiring leaders are prepared for the role. Through the example of a large public school system in Australia, this paper argues that the doxa of school leadership establishes a particular identity of the principalship. One which constructs the principal as the deliverer of state initiated reforms. Theoretically informed by Bourdieu, this paper argues for an alternate way of thinking about leadership preparation, one based on introducing participants to the conversation of the world.     

Much Ado: ‘manpower shortages’ and educational policy reform in South Africa

This paper reviews the historical context behind the ‘manpower shortages’ argument underpinning proposed educational reform in South Africa circa 1980. It seeks to explain how such an argument became a dominant theme and ideological rationale for reform, by examining its passage through liberal reformist discourse into official state‐appointed commission reports. The paper then considers why the ‘manpower shortages’ argument was taken up at that particular time, and argues that it was part of an overall “Total Strategy’ for commodifying black labour through education in the face of the manifest failure of Bantu Education to achieve this end. The paper concludes by discussing briefly the failure of this strategy, and the disappearance of the ‘manpower shortages’ theme from arguments for educational reform.     

A critical policy analysis of ‘Teach for Bangladesh’: a travelling policy touches down

This paper provides a critical policy analysis and network ethnography of Teach for Bangladesh (TfB). We demonstrate that TfB is a localised version of a global teacher education policy – Teach for All/America (TfAll/A). Santos, Boaventura De Sousa [2002. The Processes of Globalisation. Translated by Sheena Caldmell. Eurozine: Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais and Eurozine, August, 1–48] has written about the ways some national policies travel globally. He calls these ‘globalised localisms’. When they touch down and are taken up in another national context, he calls this a ‘localised globalism’. We see TfB as a ‘localised globalism’. This paper is focused on documenting and analysing the policy network that has enabled a globalised localism, TfAll/A, to be taken up as a localised globalism in Bangladesh through TfB. We see this as the emergence of network governance in a developing world primary schooling context. The analysis shows how pivotal to TfB is the boundary spanning networking of its founder, who connects the global to the local, the private to the public, and the provision of social services to philanthropy.     

Meaning-making in religious education: a critical discourse analysis of RE departments’ web pages

This paper explores what some have described as a ‘crisis in meaning’ in religious education (RE). One region, Northern Ireland, is chosen as a focus for exploring the question of meaning-making as it provides an example of ‘agreed ambiguity’ – where a common syllabus for RE is believed to be ascribed different meanings by different schools. The web pages of RE departments were used as a data source, and a critical discourse analysis method was employed to investigate how a sample of departments construct meaning in RE. The findings identify three dominant discourses in relation to RE in the sample: Christian Community, Cultural Hegemony and Personal Quest. It is noted that when giving meaning to RE, schools show commonality and difference across three key areas: ‘stake and interest’; ‘pupil agency’; and ‘dealing with difference’. In conclusion, it is noted that, where freedom is given to schools to construct meaning in RE, it is possible to sustain a common curriculum across schools with very different views of the subject, however, this flexibility has implications for issues of power, identity, autonomy and difference which may require mitigation. It is suggested critical education may be a valuable partner in this work.     

Teachers’ work in complex times: the ‘fast policy’ of Swedish school reform

This paper analyses recent educational reforms on teachers’ work in Sweden following the 2010 Education Act, and up to the School Commission Report released in April 2017. We draw upon key policy texts and associated documents from the Ministry of Education, and the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket). We consider the background to the reforms, their relations with one another and how they have played out in the Swedish educational policy context. We argue that these reforms exhibit features of ‘fast policy’ in terms of how they have taken on an increasingly centralised and neoliberal character, and the rapid-fire way they have been directed at teachers as individuals, rather than broader schooling structures. We show how the fast policy reforms have recentralised schooling and teachers’ work—effectively de-professionalising educators.     

Shaping the educational policy field: ‘cross-field effects’ in the Chinese context

This paper theorises how politics, economy and migrant population policies influence educational policy, utilising Bourdieusian theoretical resources to analyse the Chinese context. It develops the work of Lingard and Rawolle on cross-field effects and produces an updated three-step analytical framework. Taking the policy issue of the schooling of internal migrant children as an example, it analyses how a range of fields – political, economic and public policy – ‘export’ their logics of practice into the educational policy field (as a sub-field of the public policy field) and consolidate the changes. The cross-field effects shape the state school enrolment policy and the relative positions of agents and the relative value of their capital in the educational policy field. This paper demonstrates the analytical capacity of Bourdieusian theoretical resources for policy analysis in the Chinese context, by illustrating how the inequalities experienced by migrant families have been intensified in education by cross-field effects.     

Critical perspectives in educational leadership: a new ‘theory turn’?

In this article, I argue that we are witnessing a new phase or ‘theory turn’ in the field of educational leadership. These more critical perspectives in the field of educational leadership have typically been marginalised by the larger body of orthodox approaches due to a perceived lack of focus on best practice and ‘what works’ discourses, and especially in recent years with the rise of the school effectiveness and improvement movement. However, critical perspectives in educational leadership constitute an essential and vibrant part of educational leadership scholarship and discourse. Drawing on Michel Foucault's notion of discourse, through this article, I examine how critical perspectives have been constituted historically, with some of the main themes of research. This foregrounding also highlights a number of limitations with more orthodox and hegemonic leadership discourses. I identify a number of key writers in the field and situate them in the current theory turn, that is, an emphasis of theoretically informed research that have been prolific over the last 5–10 years.     

‘The more things change…?’: the Thatcher years and educational reform in Scotland

The period of the Thatcher Government continues to have special significance for politics and governance in Scotland. In the 11 years of the Thatcher Government, landmark legislation and reforms affected key areas of the Scottish society and economy. Education featured prominently in the Thatcherite agenda in Scotland. In Scotland, the education system’s association with national identity had particular implications for educational policy making and implementation in Scotland under the Thatcher Government. The distinctiveness of the Scottish education system presented particular problems for a government intent on challenging the social democratic consensus. Opposition to the Thatcher Government, especially its perceived attack on the social democratic underpinnings of the welfare state which included the state schooling system, re‐ignited the home rule campaign in Scotland in the late 1980s. The article examines both key legislation, namely the Education (Scotland) Act 1981, the School Board (Scotland) Act 1988 and the Self‐Governing Schools etc. (Scotland) Act 1989, and also key non‐legislative reforms to curriculum and assessment under the Thatcher Government in the area of public (state) schooling. The article argues that these reforms continue to influence the educational policy debates in Scotland today.     

Singapore’s educational policy through the prism of student voice: recasting students as co-agents of educational change and ‘disrupting’ the status quo?

This paper examines the implementation of Singapore’s landmark policy, ‘Thinking Schools, learning Nation’ (TSLN), in developing ‘thinking students’ through the prism of student voice. In the context of twenty-first century education and the growing importance of student voice in education, this paper argues that the time might be right to ‘disrupt’ Singapore’s education status quo and incorporate meaningful student voice in education policies. Instead of perceiving students as mere subjects of educational policy enactment, and seeing policy as something that is done to them, it should be reconceptualised as something which is done with them; importantly, students should be recast as key co-agents of educational change, consistent with TSLN’s reconceptualization of learners as ‘thinking students’. Basing its arguments on findings from a qualitative case study of students’ perceptions and schooling experiences of critical thinking in TSLN, this paper considers the case for the inclusion of significant student voice in Singapore’s educational policy reforms. It fills gaps in research on student voices in Singapore’s educational reforms and TSLN’s research from students’ perspective. The paper suggests that the inclusion of student voice in educational reform might be the next landmark step in ‘disrupting’ its educational landscape after the ‘big bang’ of TSLN.     

Re-defining ‘learning about religion’ and ‘learning from religion’: a study of policy change

The study of how policy processes shape religious education as a curriculum subject, rather than within faith schooling, is relatively unexplored. This paper applies a policy analysis perspective to an important distinction in non-confessional English religious education, which has also been adopted internationally: ‘learning about religion’ and ‘learning from religion’. The changing nature of the distinction in English policy documents from 1994 is examined in the light of three main voices of influence on educational policy: neo-conservatives, neo-liberals and progressives. These changes are also analysed through three policy contexts: influence, text production and practice. Revisions to policy wording are interpreted in the light of this theory, showing the growing significance of neo-liberalism, and the nature of compromise, amendment and ambiguity. The implications for an understanding of the inter-relationship between policy, pedagogy and practice are then considered.     

Behaviour change policy agendas for ‘vulnerable’ subjectivities: the dangers of therapeutic governance and its new entrepreneurs

Apocalyptic crisis discourses of mental health problems and psycho-emotional dysfunction are integral to behaviour change agendas across seemingly different policy arenas. Bringing these agendas together opens up new theoretical and empirical lines of enquiry about the symbioses and contradictions surrounding the human subjects they target. The paper explores the relationship between behaviour change policy, enduring philosophical and political scepticism about the viability of the rational, autonomous subject of liberal and neoliberal governance, and the contemporary cultural privileging of its vulnerable, anxious and stressed counterpart. Weber’s accounts of authority illuminate dangers arising from an ad hoc, shifting, unaccountable state-sponsored intervention market that targets the vulnerable subject, proselytised by new types of ‘therapeutic entrepreneurs’. Using an education-based example of statutory legislation for counter-terrorism in schools and universities, the Prevent strategy, the paper argues that jettisoning the rational, liberal subject has extremely worrying implications for education and democracy. It concludes with questions about the implications of these under-researched cultural and political phenomena for assumptions about the subjects of governance.     

The Council of Europe’s citizenship conception in ‘Education for Democratic Citizenship’: a critical discourse analysis of two textbooks

This paper presents a neocommunitarian conception of citizenship identified in two textbooks of the programme ‘Education for Democratic Citizenship’, organised by the Council of Europe. Critical discourse analysis is applied to the key themes of the textbooks T-Kit 7: Under construction: Citizenship Youth and Europe and Compass Manual enclosing citizenship and human rights discourses, respectively. An intra-disciplinary discussion follows drawing on critical political economy. The findings of the analysis are that the textbooks exhibit an abstract representation of social reality as well as moral relativism stemming from neoliberal communitarianism. The identification of the neocommunitarian conception of citizenship reveals the power of citizenship education today.     

Educational change in Singapore and its ‘tinkering’ around the edges: A critical realist perspective

This article re-examines the contents of Singapore’s Thinking Schools Learning Nation (TSLN) and Teach Less Learn More (TLLM) educational initiatives, introduced and implemented to promote change and to prepare Singaporeans for a twenty-first century knowledge-based economy. Adopting a critical realist perspective that enables investigations into complex social systems, the paper highlights the concepts, change process and possible outcomes of change proposed by realist social theory. An explanatory critique responding to the question, ‘What social structural changes were implemented by the TSLN and TLLM initiatives, and why?’ is developed, tracing the programmes of change in TSLN and TLLM. Findings reported in 2013, by a local large-scale research project, has made claims about the ineffectiveness of the initiatives in bringing about desired changes in classroom instructional practices. The critique questions—given Singapore’s recent and consistent successful performances in international benchmarking tests—whether it is only in the classroom that educational change that matters, counts. It suggests that despite making strong statements about the limited effectiveness of the TSLN and TLLM initiatives, many programs introduced and adopted by primary, secondary and post-secondary institutions, especially under TLLM, were left unexamined by the research project. The explanatory critique theorises that two kinds of changes have taken place—the reorientation of pedagogical practices in post-secondary institutions and extensions of what already exists in the primary and secondary sections. The paper concludes by highlighting some implications the explanatory critique have for research into educational change in general, and for educational change in Singapore.     

Employing discourse: universities and graduate ‘employability’

What constitutes graduate employability is discursively framed. In this paper we argue that whilst universities in the UK have long had an involvement in producing useful and productive citizens, the ongoing neoliberalisation of higher education has engendered a discursive shift in definitions of employability. Traditionally, universities regarded graduate employment as an aspect of institutions’ relationship with the labour market, and one where they enjoyed a significant degree of discretion. Now, employability is a performative function of universities, shaped and directed by the state, which is seeking to supplant labour markets. We argue that this has three profound implications. First, state intervention in labour markets adjusts power balances in favour of employers. Second, contrary to the legitimising rationale of enhancing social justice, pursuit of employability agendas may well be creating two tiers of universities – those that produce docile employees and those that produce employers/leaders. And third, employability discourses may be adversely affecting pedagogies and curricula, to the disbenefit of students, institutions, employers, social justice and civil society.