Equality and excellence. Hegemonic discourses of economisation within the German education system

Looking to conflicting constitutions of education systems through the terms equality and excellence, this paper examines the discursive formation of two political rationalities in the contemporary German education system. While early childhood and primary education discourses are dominated by a terminology of equality, tertiary education institutions such as universities are described using a terminology of excellence that has become a reference point for political interventions and institutional reform processes. Drawing from hegemony theory, governmentality studies and systems theory, this paper analyses the rules of justification referred to by such hegemonic discourses. It presents a policy discourse analysis of strategic, conceptional and institutional texts produced between 2003 and 2010. Through this analysis, the paper suggests that ‘mobilising’ and ‘optimising’ represent the common principles of equality and excellence as economic rationalities.     

改革开放以来我国高校办学自主权的历史嬗变与制度逻辑

办学自主权既是高校有效实施内部治理的基础,也是现代大学制度建设重要内容。改革开放以来,我国高等教育实现了从三级管理体制的建立,进而到以办学章程为载体的治理体系改革的历史嬗变,高校的办学自主权明显扩大。从制度变迁的视角看,高校办学自主权的变迁体现了权力与制度的互构关系:权力秩序呈现出从集中管控到分权治理的特点,制度模式从国家本位到多元导向的发展趋势。受路径依赖和高等教育供给制度的影响,我国高校的办学自主权在变迁过程中产生了宏观鼓励与微观约束、临时性制度过多与总体性制度欠缺、外部放权和内部集权等多对矛盾关系。在当前我国"双一流"建设的背景下,进一步提升高校的办学自主权,迫切需要加大高等教育领域"放管服"改革的力度,实现从行政主导型的制度变革转向发展驱动下的高校自主性治理改革。     

Mediating ‘School Direct’: The enactment of a reform policy by university-based teacher educators in England

The period 2010 to 2014 is widely acknowledged as a time of highly significant education reform in England, including of Initial Teacher Education (ITE). The Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government introduced a programme of ‘school-led’ education policies, of which ‘School Direct’ was intended to shift the balance of power, resources and modes of training teachers away from universities towards schools. Through an analysis of interviews with leaders of ITE in universities in two English regions, we examine the mediations of the School Direct policy from a socio-cognitive and activity-theoretical perspective. We identify three emotional frames for perceiving School Direct within the policy environment, drawing on the Vygotskian concept of perezhivanie. We also identify two policy enactment activities that involved bargaining within and rebrokering relationships between universities and schools. Consequently, we argue that the mediations of School Direct reported by the university leaders in our sample can be understood as limited appropriations of the policy within a highly charged emotional context where institutional risks were felt to be ever-present. We conclude that these leaders did not believe that School Direct achieved a transformation of ITE on the basis of a reconceptualisation of existing practices. The article contributes both to the scant research literature on School Direct as a significant reform by studying university leaders’ accounts of policy mediation and the socio-cognitively informed literature on policy enactment by foregrounding the emotional-affective dimension of sense-making.     

Exploring the interweaving of contrary currents: transnational policy enactment and path-dependent policy implementation in Australia and Japan

This article explores the neo-institutional theory of global policy convergence, or ‘isomorphism’, by comparatively examining one of its most recent manifestations – the global diffusion of national standardised testing – in Australia and Japan. By understanding the particular configurations of national testing as being conditioned by both nations' institutional frameworks and historical legacies of education policy development, this study illuminates how the conditioning effects of these frameworks and legacies resulted in the divergent ways in which a policy model circulating at the transnational level became translated into assessment policies that are ‘simultaneously similar and different’. These findings are related to the concept of ‘path dependency’, emphasised in particular by political science and historical institutionalism. The theoretical conclusions drawn on this basis indicate a promising direction of comparative education research, one that recognises global convergence and national divergence as processes that simultaneously shape the globalisation of education policy. In so doing, they summarise the implications of the study for the ongoing debate on the neo-institutionalist theory in comparative education.     

文字下乡与柔性动员:中国共产党的“民办公助”教育政策研究

陕甘宁边区乡村相对落后的自然、经济、社会和文化发展状况,曾严重阻碍了中国共产党对乡村社会的组织动员进程,加剧了为抗击日本侵略者和国民党势力的双重围困而获取政权和民族独立的难度。在综合力量不足的条件约束下,中国共产党探索实施的“民办公助”教育政策,本着实事求是原则和群众路线方针,将乡村教育与政府工作、劳动生产、家庭生活和社会教育相结合,通过牢牢掌握领导权和引导权,充分发挥农民主体的自主性作用,形成了以文字下乡为主要形式的乡村教育。相对土地改革、民主选举、诉苦等组织动员方式,以文字下乡的柔性动员方式改造乡村、建设乡村,使中国共产党的各项方针政策能深入乡土社会,达到组织动员农民的目的。从社会动员的视角阐释“民办公助”教育政策,对全面、客观地理解中国共产党与乡村、农民的关系,乃至对当前“教育扶贫”工作都有启示意义。     

Assumptions underlying performance‐based budgeting

Abstract

Interest in ‘performance budgeting’ is growing despite a lack of research on its effectiveness. U.S. states have largely used ‘incremental’ and ‘formula’ budgeting processes to fund higher education. However, more than half of them are experimenting with some form of ‘performance budgeting’. There have been similar attempts to reform budget practices in the U.S. in the past, but most of these processes have been largely abandoned. Governmental ‘performance budgeting’ for higher education assumes policy objectives are stable, complex decisions on budget trade‐offs can be made at governmental levels on the basis of data, institutions operate as bureaucracies, resources can be linked to outcomes, outcomes are identifiable and can be agreed upon, accountability can be achieved through budget policies, and current practices create incentives to enrol unqualified students. These assumptions are not realistic. Consequently, ‘performance budgeting’ will not meet proponents expectations and will suffer the fate of past budget fads.     

Recognition of prior learning (RPL) policy in Australian higher education: the dynamics of position-taking

The Bourdieuian concept of ‘position-taking’ is applied in this analysis of recognition of prior learning (RPL) policy and practice in Australian higher education. Data from institutional documents and participant interviews indicate that, within RPL policy, the universities selectively employ prevailing discourses of ‘quality’ and ‘equity’ to reinforce or potentially improve their reputation and symbolic power in the field of higher education. There is no common consensus about either equity or quality across the sector, as each university interprets the two concepts for its own benefit. The evidence suggests that, despite rhetoric in government policy implying that both are equally important, quality is a far stronger discourse and policy imperative than equity in RPL policy and practice. Also, RPL policies and practices provide an insight into how the key policy priorities of equity and quality are addressed by universities, when applied to a specific educational process or practice.     

Voluntary Self‐Control: Education reform as a governmental strategy

This paper takes the vigorous political debate unleashed in Germany by the results of the PISA study as a stimulus to take a closer look at the strategic aims and effects of the current education reforms, of which the PISA study is only one example. It shows that the reform measures underpin a powerful process of normalisation. In this context, the PISA study, along with other reform measures, can be seen as a ‘power stabiliser’. The paper indicates how techniques of political domination are linked with ‘technologies of the self’ and how the ‘discourse of self organization’ can be seen as the core of a governmental strategy to assimilate education more thoroughly than ever before into a network of disciplinary procedures and ‘voluntary self‐control’.     

Unlocking the gates to the peasants: are policies of ‘fairness’ or ‘inclusion’ more important for equity in higher education?

Attempts to make higher education more equitable more readily succeed at the aggregate (sector) level than at the institutional, with students from disadvantaged groups being overrepresented in low-status institutions. It is suggested that this is because policies of ‘fairness’ (i.e. proportional representation) dominate the contemporary policy framework and are strongly resisted by elite universities. However, using the Australian higher education sector as an example, this paper argues that equity policy is actually a mix of ‘proportional fairness’ and ‘inclusion’ and elite institutions resist not because the policy is deficient but because it might actually work. An alternative approach to higher education equity policy is proposed; one which requires elite institutions to engage meaningfully with disadvantaged students but allows them to retain their status advantage.     

Education in England – a testbed for network governance?

Abstract

Since devolution in the late 1990s, education policy in England has diverged further from that in Scotland and also from policy in Wales and Northern Ireland. In this paper we review the roots and trajectory of the English education reforms over the past two decades. Our focus is the schools sector, though we also touch on adjoining reforms to early years and further and higher education. In so doing, we engage with various themes, including marketisation, institutional autonomy and accountability. Changes in governance arrangements for schools have been a defining feature of education reforms since devolution. This has been set against an evolution in national performance indicators that has put government priorities into ever sharper relief. In theorising the changes, we pay particular attention to the suggestion that the English education system now epitomises the concept of ‘network governance’, which has also been applied to education in a global context. We question the extent to which policies have in practice moved beyond the well-established mechanisms of ‘steering at a distance’ and undermined the very notion of an education system in England. We conclude by considering possible futures for education policy and how they may position England in relation to other parts of the UK and the wider world.     

New public management in korean higher education: Is it reality or another fad?

The purpose of this study is to analyze changing patterns of governance in Korean higher education through the window of the NPM, so as to compare policy developments in Korea to wider international trends. Building upon Braun & Merrien (1999)’s earlier analytical framework on university governance, the study focuses on the following dimensions in analyzing the Korean case: (1) the belief system of the government regarding the role of universities; (2) the university-state relationship in terms of both ‘procedural’ and ‘substantive’ autonomy; and (3) the distribution of power and authority within individual universities. The results of the analysis suggest that, although some typical elements of the NPM governance model can be found, the NPM principles have yet to be firmly incorporated into Korean higher education. The study argues that the main reasons for this retardation in the implementation of the NPM driven reforms in Korea would be: (1) the general cynical attitude of professors towards the NPM governance model which was considered as the legacy of the former military regime and (2) the lack of a necessary coherence of government policies over the past two decades (i.e., the heavy emphasis on accountability without an accompanying increase in institutional autonomy). The study recommends, as a conclusion, that a more systematic and integrated implementation strategy would be needed so as to create the necessary preconditions for the NPM principles to be able to work properly in Korean higher education.     

Implementing General Education in Hong Kong: Government Policies,Institutional Responses,Opportunities and Challenges

In this paper, the authors explore the implementation of the government mandate in Hong Kong to move from three-year to four-year undergraduate degree programs which include studies in general education (GE), through an analysis of policies and activities related to the curriculum reform. While the authors are interested in the substance of these reforms, the primary objective is to explore the relationships between policy initiatives and implementation approaches at different levels. Using Scott’s (2001) new institutional theory as a framework, the authors discuss the policy implementation at the governmental, institutional norms, and cultural levels. By focusing on the complex interrelationships among influences at different levels within the institution, this paper identifies challenges in the implementation of the new four-year curriculum, and using a case study of one institution, offers suggestions for facilitating that implementation.     

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.     

A question of autonomy: Bourdieu’s field approach and higher education policy

The concept of field forms the centre of Pierre Bourdieu’s relational sociology and the notion of ‘autonomy’ is its keystone. This article explores the usefulness of these underexamined concepts for studying policy in higher education. It begins by showing how Bourdieu’s ‘field’ approach enables higher education to be examined as a distinct and irreducible object of study. It then explores the value and limitations of this conceptualization through analyses of policy during two contrasting moments of transition in the same field. First, the insights offered by a field approach are illustrated by analysing the new student debate over the creation of new universities in early 1960s English higher education. This shows how the field’s relatively high autonomy shaped the focus and form of policy debates by refracting economic and political pressures into specifically educational issues. Second, considering contemporary changes in policy highlights how the erosion of the social compact underpinning higher education has increasingly fractured autonomy, necessitating the development of Bourdieu’s conceptualization. A distinction between positional and relational dimensions of autonomy is introduced to capture an increasing disjuncture between the origins of the actors running higher education and of the principles they are adopting, respectively. These concepts are utilized to illuminate the effects of current moves towards marketization and managerialism in higher education on principles, practices and identities within the field.     

Expressions of agency within complex policy structures: science teachers’ experiences of education policy reforms in Sweden

We explore the experiences of school science teachers as they enact three linked national curriculum and assessment policy reforms in Sweden. Our goal is to understand teachers’ differing responses to these reforms. A sample of 13 teachers engaged in 2 interviews over a 6–9-month period. Interviews included exploration of professional background and school context, perceptions of the aims of the policy reforms and experiences of working with these reforms in the classroom. Analysis was guided by an individual-oriented sociocultural perspective on professional agency. Here teaching is conceptualised as an ongoing interplay between teachers’ knowledge, skills and personal goals, and the characteristics of the social, institutional and policy settings in which they work. Our analysis shows that navigating the ensuing continuities and contradictions results in many different expressions of teacher agency, e.g. loss of autonomy and trust, pushing back, subversion, transfer of authority, and creative tensions. Typically, an individual teacher’s enactment of these reforms involved several of these expressions of agency. We demonstrate that the sociocultural perspective provides insights into teachers’ responses to education policy reform likely to be missed by studies that focus largely on individual teacher knowledge/beliefs about reform or skills in ‘implementing’ reform practices.     

Comparing HE policies in Europe

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework for a comparative analysis of Higher Education policies that enables us to investigate the explanatory power of structural characteristics of politico-administrative systems. The policies that are studied aim at improving the efficiency and quality of institutional performance. The paper focuses on policy trends in higher education in the eight countries in the study. It discusses how the literature on comparative political and administrative systems can help formulate assumptions about public policy making and policy change. The ideas that are developed are then applied to public reform policies in general and in the area of higher education in particular, followed by a test of the assumptions on available data on reform outcomes in the countries involved. The data indicate that a comparative politico-administrative perspective is potentially useful with regard to explaining cross national variation in higher education reform policies in Europe.     

Students' perceptions on the influence of institutional evaluation on universities

There are many studies about the experiences of higher education students, but few analyse their representations of the governance and the management of their institutions. Our study will describe, analyse and compare students' representations of institutional evaluation at three institutions in Portugal and Brazil. Our results, based on an open questionnaire which sought to collect students' views on institutional evaluation, show that students' views are neither homogeneous nor do they simply reproduce the dominant external perspectives on the subject. A significant amount of students thought that evaluation is a legitimate exercise, resulting from a political decision, which is useful to improve the quality of universities and the relationship between students and academic staff. Some students also recognize that evaluation will lead to institutional comparisons, functioning as a mechanism of control, regulation, monitoring, and possibly of standardization. It is also noted to be ‘an impossibility’, since it can never comprehend the existing diversity of institutional performance.     

‘It’s not fair’: policy discourses and students’ understandings of plagiarism in a New Zealand university

Plagiarism is a concept that is difficult to define. Although most higher education institutions have policies aimed at minimising and addressing student plagiarism, little research has examined the ways in which plagiarism is discursively constructed in university policy documents, or the connections and disconnections between institutional and student understandings of plagiarism in higher education. This article reports on a study that explored students’ understandings of plagiarism in relation to institutional plagiarism discourses at a New Zealand university. The qualitative study involved interviews with 21 undergraduate students, and analysis of University plagiarism policy documents. The University policy documents revealed moral and regulatory discourses. In the interviews, students predominantly drew on ethico-legal discourses, which reflected the discourses in the policy documents. However, the students also drew on (un)fairness discourses, confusion discourses, and, to a lesser extent, learning discourses. Notably, learning discourses were absent in the University policy. Our findings revealed tensions between the ways plagiarism was framed in institutional policy documents, and students’ understandings of plagiarism and academic writing. We suggest that, in order to support students’ acquisition of academic writing skills, plagiarism should be framed in relation to ‘learning to write’, rather than as a moral issue.     

Political symbolism as policy craft: explaining non-reform in South African education after apartheid

The policy literature in developing countries is replete with narratives of ‘failure’ attributed to the lack of resources, the inadequacy of teacher training, the weak design of implementation strategy, and the problems of policy coherence. This research on education policymaking after apartheid presents the following puzzle: what if the impressive policies designed to change apartheid education did not have ‘implementation’ as their primary commitment? Drawing on data from seven detailed case studies, the construct of ‘political symbolism’ is proposed as a first step towards developing a more elaborate theory for explaining one of the most intractable problems in policy studies: the distance between policy ideals and practical outcomes.     

Quality Assurance with Respect to University Teaching in South Africa: a narrative analysis

In this paper, national research projects underway which are aimed at establishing national standards on lecturing capabilities within a new national qualifications framework, are argued to typify a policy narrative informed by functionalist understandings of education, curriculum and evaluation. This narrative is counter‐posed with two others, found largely but not exclusively in the historically white liberal English‐speaking universities, which critique that narrative, arguing that curriculum development, the evaluation of courses and programmes, and the assessment of teaching, are complex activities which are context‐bound, and incapable of being reduced to the measurement of the performance of certain capabilities. In the analysis undertaken in the paper, the two critiques identified are argued to be at odds with the dominant policy narrative partly because, although much of the language and the intentions are similar, at base lie fundamentally different concepts of quality. The dominant narrative is argued to regard quality as ‘fitness for purpose’, where the overall purpose of higher education is assumed to be singular and uncontested, and as meeting certain pre‐specified standards. The critiques understand quality either in the liberal sense as an absolute to be aspired to, or in a more constructivist way, as significantly adding to existing levels of development in particular sectors, thereby contributing to greater justice and equality in South African society. These different understandings have different implications for the assurance of quality in university teaching. The power differentials between the narratives are explored and it is argued that unless a way is found to accommodate the different perspectives, resistance to the dominant narrative might undermine its implementation. In this paper a metanarrative ‘told’ by the comparison of the three narratives, which attempts to take into account the conceptual dissonance examined, is put forward. It is suggested that, in order to lead to a policy‐relevant narrative on quality assurance with respect to university teaching, a conceptual distinction between ‘quality’ and ‘standards’ be made. With this conceptual separation, policies may be developed to assure both standards and quality, using different methodologies and different implementing bodies in such a way that potential resistance to the dominant narrative may be averted.