Autobiographies and interviews as means of ‘access’ to elite policy making in education 1

Abstract:

This paper explores questions of access to perceptions of educational policy by members of policy elites. In particular, it reviews some possibilities of broadening how national education policy is contructed by examining the utility of published autobiographical tests.     

‘Educare’ in Australia: analysing policy mobility and transformation

Abstract

Background: Early childhood education and care has been an area of significant policy attention, public investment and private market activity in Australia over the past three decades. Australian educationists and policy-makers have looked to international examples for evidence, policy design and institutional models. However, this area is under-researched in Australia, with regard to how these knowledge flows are theorised, and how policy is implemented on the ground.

Purpose: The paper’s purpose was to contribute new Australian-focussed conceptual and empirical insights on the trajectories, development and implementation of evidence-based policy in the field of early childhood education and care.

Sources of evidence: The paper is based on three main sources of evidence: ? the critical literature on policy transfer and policy mobility

? policy statements, reports and planning documents produced by national- and state-level governments

? data from fieldwork analysis of new capital works and programmes in the early childhood field.

Main argument: International research and evidence on the benefits of investment in early learning has had a significant impact on the framing of Australian policy. So too has a move in several countries to align early childhood institutions with schools. However, a dominant paradigm of policy transfer, reliant on pluralist and rationalist frameworks of policy-making, fails to account for the dynamics of policy development and implementation across and within jurisdictions and geographical space. Conceptualising a new alignment in Australia between children’s centres and schools as ‘educare’, this article employs the theoretical lens of policy mobility to account for the circulation and transformation of educare policy in Australian settings. Through an empirical analysis of a new educare centre in the growth corridor of western Melbourne, the article demonstrates the extent to which neoliberal policy settings outside the educational sphere, around public finance, partnership, place and infrastructure provision, influence the implementation of ‘educare’ policy.

Conclusions: The educare discourse in Australia addresses a complex and multiscalar set of policy problems that associate child development with concerns around human capital formation, economic efficiency and productivity, place making and community building, and the role of the public sector in neoliberal democracies. International circuits of knowledge, policy design and institutional models in the educare field have been significant in shaping recent Australian policy, despite well-publicised views expressed in Australia on the disconnection between academic research and policy. The strength of policy mobility as a theoretical lens to assist our understanding of these influences lies in its critique of formalism in policy-making and in its attention to fluidity and transformation. The mobility lens encourages new empirical research that focuses on spatial and institutional dynamics, assisting our reading of on-the-ground developments in Australia’s fastest growing city.     

Theorising policy and practice in refugee education: Conceptualising ‘safety’, ‘belonging’, ‘success’ and ‘participatory parity’ in England and Sweden

Across the world, children are forced to leave their homes for far-flung destinations. This global phenomenon has particular impact in Europe, where there are now more child refugees than since World War II. Education plays an important role for children with extraordinary experiences seeking to build meaningful lives in their new context. This article offers a new theoretical approach to underpin reforms to educational policy and practice for refugees in schools in resettlement contexts in Europe. The new conceptual framing is grounded in empirical work in England and Sweden, and brings two theories together: ‘participatory parity’ (Fraser) and ‘resumption of an ordinary life’ (Kohli). Kohli’s concepts of ‘safety’, ‘belonging’ and ‘success’ have resonance with practitioners from Sweden and England as they work to meet the needs of their new arrivals. Fraser’s conceptual lenses of redistribution, recognition and representation highlight the barriers to achieving the right to inclusive education for refugee children in each context. The interdependence of both theories shapes a new framework. The theoretical understandings offered in this article have been developed with practitioners and add to the field by offering a robust moral and operational approach to shaping pedagogical principles for policymakers and educators working in resettlement communities.     

Breaking and making curriculum from inside ‘policy storms’ in an Australian pre-service teacher education course

ABSTRACT

How teacher educators respond as policy actors from inside spaces where multiple policies and discourses collide provides insights into the ways in which policy plays out in educational contexts. By engaging and working within the uncertain space of our own contextual ‘policy storm’ we provide a narrative of enactment highlighting the roles and actions of policy actors simultaneously constrained and inspired by policy. We use the policy actor framework [Ball, S.J., Maguire, M., Braun, A., & Hoskins, K. (2011a). Policy actors: Doing policy work in schools, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32(4), 625-639] to unpack policy meaning-making within university and faculty climates, teacher education, and curriculum reform in Health and Physical Education (HPE) in Australia. This paper has three tasks. Firstly, we set-up the conditions of uncertainty and possibility as a ‘policy storm’ and place where four disparate policies converged. Secondly, we provide an empirical and theoretical account of policy interpretation and enactment from the actors perspective. Finally, we test the policy actor framework to determine if it adequately describes our insider policy work. In moving beyond reductionist policy narratives we provide policy possibilities that illustrate enactment, are innovative, and explore the productive potential inside policy reform.     

Making policy with ‘good ideas’: policy networks and the ‘intellectuals’ of New Labour

The educational reforms being enacted in Singapore can be considered exceptional in that they are being undertaken within a highly effective system. We explore these reforms using Brown and Lauder's ideal-typical analysis of ‘neo-Fordist’ and ‘post-Fordist’ models of national economic development. Singapore's reforms have been extensive, ranging from changes to early childhood education through to tertiary education. We examine the nature of state-market relations in education within the context of Singapore's ‘soft authoritarian’ political culture and assess the chances of success of the reforms.     

Dark matter: the ‘gravitational pull’ of maternalist discourses on politicians’ decision making for early childhood policy in Australia

The article reports on a study investigating influences on Australian politicians’ decision making for early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy. The astronomical concept of dark matter is utilised as a metaphor for considering normalising, and therefore frequently difficult to detect and disrupt, influences implicated in politicians’ decision making for ECEC policy. The concept of dark matter connects with and extends Foucauldian conceptualisations of knowledge, power and discourse. The paper argues that maternalist discourses continue to shape the policy landscape for ECEC, though these are largely unacknowledged.     

‘Use Condoms for Safe Sex!’ Youth-led video making and sex education

Situated at the intersection between child-led visual methods and sex education, this paper focuses on the potential of youth-led video making to enable young people to develop guiding principles to inform their own sexual behaviour. It draws on findings from a video-making project carried out with a group of South African young people, which engaged them in identifying and tackling critical issues of HIV and AIDS. By analysing one of the youth-generated videos using critical visual analysis, we conclude that youth-led video making can be an effective tool to allow young people to talk about their interests and concerns and to develop guiding principles for their own sexual behaviour. This tool is especially relevant to young people whose needs are not being met by the current sexual health curriculum and can be a fun medium through which to engage participants in ensuring that sex education needs are met.     

Culture,technology and local networks: towards a sociology of ‘making’ in education

This article is about ‘making’ in education. Often associated with software programming (as in ‘digital making’), making can also involve creating or modifying physical technological artefacts. In this paper, making is examined as a phenomenon that occurs at the intersection of culture, the economy, technology and education. The focus is not on the effects on cognitive gains or motivations, but on locating making in a social, historical and economic context. Making is also described as a form of ‘material connotation’, where connotation refers to the process through which the technical structure of artefacts is altered by culture and society. In the second part of the paper, the theoretical discussion is complemented by a case study in which making is described as a networked phenomenon where technology companies, consultants, volunteers, schools, and students were all implicated in turning a nebulous set of practices and discourses into an educational reality.     

Schools, ‘ferals’, stigma and boundary work: parents managing education and uncertainty in regional Australia

This paper examines forms of boundary work undertaken by parents in a regional Australian city to negotiate social processes around the school market amidst rising economic insecurity. It outlines structural changes, which have increased economic inequality in Australia and impacted on educational reform, and the specific challenges faced by public schools in regional settings. Drawing on 18 months’ qualitative research in one regional location, it identifies and analyses forms of boundary work undertaken by middle-class families to manage these uncertainties in a field of scarce economic and cultural resources. Theories of class culture, stigma and whiteness are used to show how local social labels such as ‘ferals’ and ‘shiny people’ acted as classed and racialised ways of negotiating this social and economic landscape through the school field. Such practices engendered feelings of security and control and shed light on feelings of class-based resentment and anxiety in regional Australia, specifically a middle-class ‘fear of falling’.     

‘A fair go for all?’ Australia’s language-in-migration policy

As the power of tests lies in their uses, language tests that are used to assess immigration eligibility exercise enormous power. Critical Language Testing calls for exposing the power of tests by examining the intentions of introducing tests and their effects on individuals and society, especially from the perspective of test-takers. This case study investigates the rationale for and impact of a particular language-in-migration policy in Australia, drawing on the experiences and perceptions of two skilled migration applicants. One of them was successful and the other unsuccessful, essentially on the ground of their language test results. Insights from the study challenge prevalent discourses about language tests and social integration, employability, economic efficiency, and national security. The article makes some policy recommendations for making the use of language tests more beneficial for immigrants and immigrant-receiving societies in a globalised world that has witnessed unprecedented flows of immigrants.     

Perspectives of ‘STEM education and policies’ for the development of a skilled workforce in Australia and India

ABSTRACT

In an increasingly competitive world, it has been proved that invention, development, and profusion of new technologies through science and technology are the fundamental source of economic progress. Australia, which is one of the world leaders in education and India, which has the capacity to produce the highest number of young skilled manpower to lead the world, both understand the current situation and have signalled their commitment to restoring the national strategy for STEM education. The proposed study focuses on a comparative understanding of the interplay of inclusive policies, government’s initiatives, knowledge gap from the literature and potential future challenges that Australia and India could face in STEM education at the school level. The question we asked is: what are the important inferences and best practices in STEM education that can be mutually beneficial to broaden the Strategic Partnership? It is identified that the governments of both the countries are determined to utilise the young population to train them as skilled workforce in order to meet the future demand of industries. Australia’s constructivist approach to education and the well-defined system of vocational training outperform India, which is still following the traditional approach. However, Australia has failed to engage students adequately in STEM and needs to revisit the efficacy of the current education model, while India needs to espouse the well-defined Australian framework, which could help to enhance quality infrastructure, curriculum, constructivist teaching and transparent policy implementation. In addition, both the nations must work hard to attract bright students in the teaching profession in order to promote a conducive environment for scientific learning.     

Popular histories: ‘education’ and ‘entertainment’ in information books for children

UK government policy has increasingly emphasized the importance of learning in the home; and commercial publishers have not been slow to respond. There is now a growing market in popular information books targeted at parents and children. This article provides an analytical case-study of four such books on a common historical theme: ancient Rome. It addresses three main issues. First, it considers the epistemology or historiography of these texts, particularly in relation to their use of sources and their implicit view of what history (as a subject) is. Second, it discusses the pedagogic style of the texts, as reflected in their mode of address to the reader and their use of narrative and expository language. Finally, it considers the balance between ‘education’ and ‘entertainment’ and the implications of using popular cultural genres as a means of representing the past.     

Comparative education,the ‘New Paradigm’ and policy borrowing: constructing knowledge for educational reform

Education reform in England is increasingly portrayed as a quest to create ‘world class’ schools through the transfer of features of ‘high performing’ school systems. The demand for evidence to support policy borrowing has been serviced by an influential intermediary network, which uses international data banks to compare education systems, and to identify and promote evidence of ‘what works’. The approach to comparisons has been portrayed as a ‘New Paradigm’ by its advocates, and whilst the network has been extensively critiqued, this has largely focused on its deviation from the norms of academic comparative education. This article explores how the ‘New Paradigm’ operates, identifying its inherent features and the strategies used to overcome the methodological issues associated with policy borrowing. This is pursued through an analysis of the rationale; assumptions; underlying ideology; methodology; omissions and silences; dealing with critics; and language and presentation of four of its influential publications.     

Framing the framework: discourses in Australia’s national values education policy

In the past, many Australian state schools avoided teaching about values explicitly. However, the Australian government released Australia’s first official values education policy in 2005: the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (NFVEAS). This framework represents a local manifestation of the recent international values education movement. This study contributes to an exploration of what, and who, the government’s construction of Australian values privileges. It uncovered the dominant discourses inherent in the framework through a critical discourse analysis, framing it in relation to the 16 key values education approaches identified in the literature. The data revealed the document’s strong privileging of conservative values education discourses, particularly civics and citizenship education, values inculcation and character education. In practice, some Australian schools have been disrupting this move to conservatism by taking more critical and postmodern approaches. The paper argues for such alternative practices and policy that is more diversified and student-centred.     

Untangling the conflation of ‘young adults’ and ‘young people’ in STI and sexual health policy and sex education

Young adults, aged 18–30 years, are disproportionally mentioned in sexually transmissible infection surveillance data both in Australia and internationally. This contributes to categorising young adults as an ‘at risk’ group in health policy. How young adults are framed in policy, and what informs this, have direct implications for policy priorities and responses, including the development of health promotion programmes. In this paper, we provide a case study of Australia’s National Strategies for Blood Borne Viruses and Sexually Transmissible Infections from 2005 to 2017. We identify how ‘young adults’ as a population are masked by, and subsumed within, the broader category of ‘young people’ within these strategies. As a result, young adults become framed by default as a ‘risk category’ that requires education to correct its deficits, regardless of personal experience. For health promotion to advocate, mediate and enable better sexual health outcomes, a policy environment is needed that reflects the changing social and cultural contexts and sexual independence that young adults experience. Sexual health policies should reflect the complexity and opportunities of young adulthood if we are to offer an enabling policy environment for innovative and nuanced health promotion strategies, including adult appropriate health education.     

‘Participatory parity’, young people and policy in Scotland

The last three decades have witnessed significant changes in the social and economic context of young people’s lives. There is increasing evidence that for young people growing up in the UK, this is fuelling a disparity between those with resources and those without. What this means in terms of social justice, however, is difficult to discern. In Scotland, promoting greater social justice so that all its citizens are included has been held up as a key vision of successive Scottish administrations since devolution began in 1999. Scotland therefore makes an interesting case for the examination of policy discourses in relation to young people. In order to do this, the paper draws on a theoretical framework of justice developed by Nancy Fraser which is oriented on the norm of participatory parity. Combining this framework with an approach informed by critical discourse analysis, the current policy context in Scotland is examined in order to discern if it contributes to all young people achieving participatory parity and subsequently social justice.     

Is ‘gender-sensitive education’ a useful concept for educational policy?

This article responds to Astrid Sinnes and Marianne Løken’s article ‘Gendered education in a gendered world: Looking beyond cosmetic solutions to the gender gap in science’ by exploring the idea of ‘gender-sensitive’ education and its usefulness in educational policy. It draws on theoretical discussions of the concept of gender and of difference to consider ways in which ‘gender-sensitive’ education might serve the task of promoting equality and justice.     

‘Won’t Somebody Think of the Children?’ Emotions,child poverty,and post-humanitarian possibilities for social justice education

Abstract

Under models of moral and global citizenship education, compassion and caring are emphasized as a counterpoint to pervasive, heartless, neo-liberal globalization. According to such views, these and related emotions such as empathy, sympathy, and pity, can cause people to act righteously to aid others who are disadvantaged through no fault of their own. When applied to the contemporary issue of alleviating child poverty, it seems such emotions are both appropriate and easily developed through education. However, emotional appeals increasing a sense of urgency regarding such a dire issue should not necessarily be prioritized in the face of competing possibilities. Emotions can be difficult to develop, regulate, and sustain. Their appropriate expression and application in global contexts can be problematic, as people’s valuation and understanding of feelings varies across societies. Additionally, there are tensions between discourses of emotional care and compassion and rational duty to social justice. This article examines competing views on education for understanding and responding to child poverty, and defends post-humanitarian imaginaries and the possibility of non-relational care ethics. Care, compassion, empathy, and emotion may be involved in learning about child poverty, but an a priori rational orientation is also essential in such grave matters of social injustice.     

Tensions and challenges in China’s education policy borrowing

Abstract

Background: This article critically discusses the key tensions and challenges arising from the educational policy borrowing in China, through its current education reform. Focussing on the new curriculum reform (NCR), the paper highlights the interactions and conflicts between foreign and local ideologies and practices.

Sources of evidence: The main sources of evidence that form the basis of the analysis for this article were research data from an open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interviews conducted with 166 school principals, vice-principals and teachers from China between 2013 and 2015.

Main argument: It is argued that the NCR has borrowed selective ideas and practices from elsewhere, such as a school-based curriculum, student-centred pedagogy and formative assessment. It is further suggested that the borrowed policies are mediated and moderated by the ideological attitude of the Chinese educational stakeholders, stemming from the notion of ‘theory-ladenness’ within an exam-oriented paradigm.

Conclusions: The example of China illustrates the effects of an ideological attitude on educational policy borrowing that challenges the notion of universally appropriate ways of teaching, learning and reforming an educational system.