The politics of educational policy studies: a preliminary analysis of leading educational policy journal publications

This paper argues that the content, analytical approaches and institutional affiliations of authors of articles published in the latest issues of two leading educational policy studies journals provide useful insights into the contested nature of educational policy studies. The paper draws upon a selection of articles published in 2007/08 issues of two flag-ship policy journals, the UK-based Journal of Education Policy, and the US-based Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. At the same time, the article is also suggestive of how Pierre Bourdieu's analytical resources of field, habitus and capital might be used to understand the academic journal publication practices which contribute to this contestation. The paper suggests that these journals and the articles within them may be construed as valued capitals and ‘traces’ of a broader conflict over what is considered valid research within the field of educational policy studies.     

The local educational change process and policy implementation

That change is a process, not an event, is being accepted gradually by educators, policy makers, and researchers. Just as development of an innovation takes time, specialized personnel, and resources, so does implementation. A number of issues and implications related to viewing innovation development and implementation as a process need to be addressed. Planning for, facilitating implementation, and evaluating the change process varies depending on whether there is a single innovation, innovation bundle, hyperinnovation or large—scale innovation. Instead of top down, or bottom up, in all cases, the various participants must strive to level the playing field. Change processes are most successful when policy makers, practitioners, and researchers understand that all are part of the same effort and each has an essential role in achieving implementation success.     

The critical policy discourse analysis frame: helping doctoral students engage with the educational policy analysis

This paper addresses an issue of increasing significance in the context of taught educational doctorates and argues that this may have wider applicability for doctoral students across a range of social science disciplines. It identifies the need to engage with policy analysis as a key element of such programmes and attempts to address students' concerns over a lack of practical approaches to do so by offering an analytical framework drawing on critical discourse analysis. This paper highlights the affordances of a taught doctorate context to consider the potential for more collaborative community approaches to doctoral pedagogies through reflecting upon the way the frame was introduced and used by one group of EdD students. In doing so, this paper offers both a practical analytical tool for doctoral students but also a pedagogical approach grounded in an invitation to dialogue and induction into the academic discourse community, through a notion of critical inclusion.     

教育政策过程中的行政纵向制约:垂直维度和水平维度的研究

以一项民办高等教育政策和一个跨省市办学事件为案例,分析教育政策过程中的行政纵向制约系统的构成,结果表明:在行政纵向制约系统中,地方教育行政部门是政策过程中最重要的行动主体,政策对象处于纵横交错的行政纵向制约系统的最底端,政策的“工具性”强化了行政纵向制约系统的垂直维度,“等级化”的存在使得处于纵向制约系统中层级较低的政策部门无法完成权威和认可的自给自足,垂直维度的政策含义的实现还要依靠政策部门与其他参与者在水平维度上的互动、协调和共谋,才能实现政策的“一致性”。     

Clarifying and reframing the neoliberal critique of educational policy using policy process theories

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the vocabulary and frameworks offered by two theories of public policy process: the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) and the narrative policy framework (NPF) and what they offer to the study of global education reform. The foci of ACF are policy subsystems, formation of advocacy coalitions around policy issues, and their impact on policy change; the emphasis of NPF is the divergent narratives developed and used by these coalitions. This paper reviews each theoretical framework, summarizes existing research literature on their education policy applications, and then poses alternative questions and suggest alternatives to study global education policies, especially those presently critiqued using the term neoliberal which we position as nebulous in its current usage. The aim is to open channels of communication for scholars from different disciplines by introducing different theoretical approaches to analyse the role of the numerous elements that shape global education policy.     

The identity crisis of educational planning

As long as educational expansion was considered to be decisive for achieving economic growth as well as social and political equality, the prospects and merits of educational planning were rarely questioned. However, the failure of educational expansion to produce the desired results, challenged the relevance of educational planning to such a degree that it is now suffering from an identity crisis. The author critically reviews traditional and contemporary technical approaches to educational planning, governmental planning activities, and the role of educational planning as a part of the political apparatus. Weighing up the possibilities and the limitations of educational planning, he stresses the need to build a new identity for it in order that it should be able to cope with the demographic, educational, economic and financial challenges of the 1980's.

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Zusammenfassung Solange die Auffassung vorherrschte, die Expansion des Bildungswesens sei die entscheidende Voraussetzung für wirtschaftliches Wachstum, größere soziale Gerechtigkeit und mehr Demokratie, genoß die Bildungsplanung beträchtliches Ansehen und weckte große Erwartungen. Dies hat sich grundlegend geändert. Das Scheitern der anspruchsvollen Ziele expansionistischer Bildungspolitik verstrickte die Bildungsplanung in eine Identitätskrise. Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich kritisch mit der Entwicklung der wissenschaftlichen und politischen Bildungsplanung. Im Mittelpunkt steht der Wandel der Konzepte und Modelle der Planungsforschung. Die Überlegungen führen zu dem Fazit, daß eine Rekonstruktion der Bildungsplanung dringend geboten erscheint, um den Herausforderungen gewachsen zu sein, mit denen das Bildungswesen in der 80er Jahren konfrontiert wird.

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Résumé Tant que l'on considéra l'expansion éducative comme le facteur décisif du développement économique, de l'égalité sociale et politique, les expectatives et les mérites de la planification éducative ne furent que rarement contestés. Cependant, l'échec de l'expansion éducative au niveau de la réalisation des résultats souhaités a tellement mis en cause l'importance de la planification éducative qu'elle souffre maintenant d'une crise d'identité. L'auteur procède à un examen critique des approches techniques nouvelles et traditionnelles de la planification éducative, des activités de planification du gouvernement et du rôle de la planification éducative en tant que partie de l'appareil politique. En évaluant les possibilités et les limitations de la planification éducative, il souligne le besoin pour la planification éducative de construire une nouvelle identité afin de pouvoir répondre aux exigences démographiques, économiques, éducatives et financières des années 80.

     

The demand for higher education in Cyprus: an educational policy perspective

The article examines the reasons for the high demand for higher education in Cyprus. At present, economic, societal, and cultural forces are widely accepted as responsible for the phenomenal increase in demand. A survey of secondary school final form students conducted in Cyprus by the author reconfirms the importance of these forces but also points to another demand influencing factor, namely, the students' psychological motivation in the pursuit of higher studies. The article discusses the policy implications of the findings and suggests the following as measures to help promote a better match between higher education choices and labour market conditions: the provision of greater and more accurate information to secondary school students on the employment opportunities available with a higher education diploma; the promotion of vocational nonuniversity fields of study among secondary school students; and the frequent and closer interaction between higher education institutions and the labour market.     

UNDP and educational development: An institutional policy analysis

The role of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in shaping educational development has been considerable. For more than half a century, the scale and reach of UNDP education projects have been significant, yet have not been adequately researched. For both UNDP and its precursors, the evolution of policies for development and for educational development is traced. UNDP's project priorities in education are considered, as is the role of UNESCO as a key implementing agency for UNDP. The rationale underlying UNDP's recent abandonment of education as a designated priority sector is also examined, as are its implications.     

The Scottish national curriculum and special educational needs

One of the defining features of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme is that it ‘aims to improve outcomes for learners of all ages in teaching and learning contexts across the UK’. This article argues that, although it is possible to use the terms outcomes for learners and learning outcomes interchangeably, they have an important difference in connotation. Particular meanings of the latter term are dominant within the Further Education sector. Some insight from analysis in the TLRP project Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education is presented to illustrate this difference and to underline the necessity for educational research to engage critically with both outcomes for learners and learning outcomes if it is to provide knowledge with a practical application.     

The construction of teacher identities in educational policy documents: A critical discourse analysis

Abstract

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a complex eclectic method that has potential to be a valuable tool for critical policy analysis. This article highlights this potential by demonstrating how CDA can be applied to policy texts. That is, it focuses on the processes involved in ‘doing’ critical discourse analysis. In particular, it examines the framework identified by Chouliaraki & Fairclough (1999) as the means by which CDA can be ‘operationalised’ in order to produce ‘theoretically grounded analyses in a wide range of cases’. The framework is outlined and discussed in relation to the construction of teacher identities in educational policies. The article then applies CDA to an analysis of one education policy document to illustrate the framework in operation. In so doing, it addresses the problem of teacher quality, which is analysed in terms of the discursive constructions of teachers’ professional identities. The analysis demonstrates how CDA may be used both as a tool for critical policy analysis and for the analysis of the construction of identities in educational, and other, documents.     

The implementation of counsellor training in the Netherlands and its effects: An analysis of educational policy

The development of a counsellor education program and the implementation and dissemination of counselling services in Dutch schools is treated in this article as an example of educational innovation in a country with a centralized system of decision-making in educational matters. Advantages and disadvantages of the pivotal role of the government in the determination of educational policy are discussed with respect to the counselling movement.     

Urban preference among Nigerian teacher-trainees: An analysis for educational policy

The preference of teachers in developing countries for ‘urban’ appointments is a problem which is intuitively well-known but has been neglected in research and policy. With data obtained from Nigerian teacher-trainees, this paper examines collective urban preference, as indicated by the popularity of school locations, and also the extent and correlates of urban preference as a personal attribute. In the context, urban preference is found to be the dominant form of locational preference, with a high degree of consistency among individuals. Policies are advocated which would recognize that this kind of preference is based on rational and legitimate considerations.     

Psychosocial aspects in the German unification process

Articles

Psychosocial aspects in the German unification process     

Historicizing educational disparity: colonial policy and Fijian educational attainment

This paper charts the emergence of community publishing and worker writer groups in England in the early 1970s. These workshops supported working class and marginalized people to express their personal experience through poetry, prose, autobiography and history, a process with significant educational, cultural, political and social implications. From the 1970s these activities developed in a range of settings including schools, adult education and adult literacy as well as community campaigns and the traditional labour movement. In 1976 these groups came together to form the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers. Although it often appears as a unique uprising, the movement drew on a wide range of broader intellectual influences and social movements.     

The School Mix Effect: the history of an enduring problem in educational research,policy and practice

The contextual effect of the social class mix of a school's intake has been identified in several recent studies as having an important influence on individual academic performance, particularly for working class students. However the effect, if genuine, is poorly understood. This paper reviews the history of research into this concept since the sixties, examining how political, ideological and methodological considerations have influenced research to create our current ignorance of the effects of school mix. On the basis of this review, it is argued that (i), there is at least a prima‐facie case for the existence of a significant school mix effect: and (ii), that given the limitations of past approaches, the most rewarding direction for future research would be to explore likely causal mechanisms through micro‐level analysis. Some ways in which causal mechanisms relating to student subcultures might begin to be theorised are suggested.     

从教育服务承诺看高等教育的政策调整

我国加入WTO签定的教育服务承诺具有鲜明的政策性意义。履行这一承诺要求对现行的教育政策尤其是高等教育政策作出一些必要的调整。高等教育政策调整主要包括宏观管理政策、招生政策、财政政策和高校教学政策等方面。调整教育政策又特别需要加强政策研究。