Empowering teacher voices in an education policy discussion: Paradoxes of representation

This article investigates the problems and paradoxes of attempting to empower teacher voices within the context of an international conference of policy-makers, academic researchers and practitioners. We examine the distribution of talk within a teacher workshop: who spoke, how, and to whom did the group and broader audiences listen? We trace the emergence of ideas in the workshop discussions and their trajectory into the joint teacher-policy-maker panel in the conference and in the post-conference summary report. We identify four factors shaping the realisation of teacher voice – repertoires, social position, topics and gatekeepers – and highlight paradoxes of teacher representation.     

Bilingual education policy and social justice

This paper examines the Australian government’s Indigenous policy by interrogating the concept of partnership between governments and Indigenous communities through three examples. Increasingly, the Australian federal government is focusing attention on the poor literacy and numeracy outcomes for Indigenous children in remote and very remote locations. The three examples examined in this paper occurred between 2002 and 2007 during the development of the government’s policies about partnership accountability. A case study methodological approach evolved into a policy ethnography which was adopted to investigate the central question examined in this paper about the strengths and limitations of partnering as a policy concept. The strongest theme to arise from analysis was that parents and caregivers, and indeed their broader families and communities, had a distinctly different expectation of partnership to that of the government policy. Drawing on social exchange theories, the differences identified were concerned with the asymmetry and reciprocity. Indigenous communities are asserting the right to negotiated agreements that are accountable ‘both ways’ and governments seem to be more focussed on a ‘one way’ process of making Indigenous people accountable for education failure.     

Policy learning and governance of education policy in the EU

Open methods for coordinating (OMC) education policies in the EU rely on a number of techniques, one of which is policy learning. This article examines how policy learning and governance transform each other. More specifically, policy‐learning in the education OMC becomes differentiated into four distinct learning styles: mutual, competitive, surface and imperialistic learning. While they overlap with some forms of policy learning discussed in the literature, they are also different by focusing upon interactions and political dynamics between the European Commission and the member states. In seeking to understand how governing through learning occurs, we argue that any ‘impact’ of EU‐level policy‐learning is co‐constructed by both the European Commission and the member states. The analysis of this article is grounded in a discourse analytical and institutionalist perspective. It draws on qualitative data derived from semi‐structured interviews with officials from the Directorate General for Education and Culture in the European Commission and on EU documents generated during policy‐learning activities.     

Teacher heterogeneity,value-added and education policy

This study examines the theoretical and practical implications of ranking teachers with a one-dimensional value-added metric when teacher effectiveness varies across subjects or student types. We create a theoretical framework which suggests specific tests of the standard teacher input homogeneity assumption. Using North Carolina data we show that value-added fails to empirically meet these tests and document that this leads to a large number of teacher misrankings. Thus, critics of potential value-added teacher personnel policies are correct that such policies will terminate many of the wrong teachers. However, we derive the conditions under which such policies will improve student test scores and find that they will almost certainly be met. We then demonstrate that value-added information can also be used to improve student test scores by matching teachers to students or subjects according to their comparative advantage. These matching gains likely exceed those of a feasible, value-added based firing policy.     

Child labour,education policy and governance in Cambodia

This paper considers how the issue of child labour is located in Cambodian education policy debates and how it is affected by the major constraints surrounding the Cambodian education sector. In particular, it asks why Cambodian policy makers have not sought to address the issue explicitly despite its considerable, and adverse, impact on children's school education. In doing so it first identifies the Cambodian education sector's passive approach to child labour, leaving it as a problem to be resolved by wider economic development. Secondly, it finds that the major constraints surrounding the education sector, including the issue of its governance, contribute to sustain a wide gap between stated education policies and actual practice, thus further diminishing working children's chances to benefit from a school education.     

Saving the world through neoliberalism: philanthropic policy networks in the context of Spanish education

This article analyses the processes of ‘neoliberalisation’ in education as directed by Teach For All. Specifically, we explore the case of Empieza por Educar, the Spanish policy network included in Teach For All. The first section seeks to clarify what we understand by the term neoliberalism, using a theoretical dimension through different perspectives. The second section explores the meaning of the new philanthropy. Methodologically, in the third section, the piece of research is categorised under what is defined as ‘Network Ethnography’, an approach which unifies social network analysis with some traditional ethnographic methods. The fourth section explores the meaning Teach For All and its foundation in Spain (Empieza por Educar) as a philanthropic foundation which is changing the political arena. The fifth section explores how Neoliberalism (with big ‘N’) is constructed by means of a complex interconnection of actors and policies that establish the policy network within the Spanish context. The sixth section analyses how neoliberalism (with small ‘n’) is implemented in the curriculum through three aspects: hegemonic truths; the conduct of the conduct (performativity culture); and the modes of formation of the subject with practices of oneself (entrepreneur of oneself).     

Towards a mechanism for expert policy advice in education

There is a growing consensus that existing arrangements for policy making in education are far from optimal. This paper is about policy making and the roles of—and relationships between—elected officials, civil servants and academics in the making of policy. It aims to open up a conversation about new ways of making education policy that make better use of academic expertise by shedding light on policy making from the perspective of a former policy broker. With specific reference to England, experiences of the world of policy are drawn on to provide an account of the following: the disconnect between academic research and policy; what good policy advice looks like; and, most significantly, what an expert policy advice mechanism in education could look like. The mechanism put forward is one possibility for further discussion within the academic community in the first instance: an independent group of diverse academic experts to provide trustworthy and transparent policy advice to the education ministry. It is envisaged that by bringing a set of insights together here, understandings of the world of policy making will be enhanced and further thinking and conversations about mechanisms for expert policy advice in education will be induced, starting with this flagship journal's readership. The subsequent accumulation of these discussions may then, in time, lead us towards better policy making.     

A critical policy analysis of local religious education in England

ABSTRACT

This critical policy analysis investigates the opinions and activities of Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education (SACREs) in England. It uses a critical approach to educational policy to examine the diffuse power structure of SACREs and give voice to those local councils. Using data gathered in an online survey of SACREs, conducted between January and May 2017, it critiques the activities of SACREs and, in identifying what they see as their future role, questions whether the complex, producer-based governance structure of religious education is preferable to a simple, neo-liberal centralised legal settlement. It suggests that those individuals and groups which are successful in surviving in the increasingly competitive, marketised, local RE policy landscape become intrinsic parts of the national neo-liberal solution.     

Mechanisms of adopting and reformulating comprehensive sexuality education policy in Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

Over the past few years, international organisations have advanced Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) as a global policy to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and address gender-based violence in schools. This paper analyses policy adoption, transfer mechanisms, and reformulation of CSE in Ethiopia, a late adopter of the policy. To do this, we identify education policy transfer mechanisms and apply a gender analysis by focusing on conceptualisations of gender relations in the uptake and reformulation of CSE policies. Drawing on document analysis and stakeholder interviews, the paper reveals that CSE in Ethiopia is largely a donor-driven agenda, advanced through dissemination and networking strategies. CSE is particularly embraced by the Ministry of Health, international organisations and NGOs in Ethiopia, but at the same time, the Ministry of Education and other critics continue to resist adoption, emphasising cultural differences. As a result, CSE in Ethiopia is (re)formulated and reflects narrow conceptualisations of how CSE can address gender-based violence, restricting its focus to health and development outcomes.     

Balancing basic and post-basic education in Kenya: National versus international policy agendas

The article traces the policy history of Kenya over more than 40 years (1963–2006) in order to tease out the tensions between the key themes of its own national agenda and the priorities of its principal development partners. The national concerns with the education-and-employment connection and with the orientation of schooling towards skills for work in the formal and informal economies can be contrasted with the aid agency priorities on quality and on education-for-poverty reduction. Equally, national preoccupations have been with the whole of the education and training system—from early childhood, to technical, to university. By contrast, external donors have frequently prioritised a particular sub-sector such as primary schooling. In the most recent period, 2002–2006, the paper identifies the emergence of common ground between the national and external agendas. Thus the international education agenda, as marked out by the UN Millennium Project, the Commission for Africa, and the World Bank's most recent education policy paper, is not dissimilar in its priorities to the latest Kenyan education agenda, as expressed in the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme. There is also an agreement that the education sector, on its own, cannot deliver the many benefits so often associated with schooling; rather, there needs to be an enabling environment in other sectors of the economy, if the investment in education is to be most productive. The one area where there is serious divergence, between the Government of Kenya, and, at least, its principal Western donors is on the treatment of corruption. At the point of writing, the extent of corruption remains a major threat to the external funding so necessary to Kenya's large educational ambitions.     

The impact of aid on education policy in India

In the early 1990s, large numbers of children in India remained out of school. International commitments to achieve education for all (EFA) globally meant that India was an important case for donors. India was pressed to accept aid for primary education, and agreed with some reluctance. Although subsequent donor involvement was substantial and influenced aspects of both policy implementation and management, it is shown that Indian education policy priorities remained self-determined. The Government of India – though falling short of securing universal education for its children – succeeded in using external resources and expertise in ways which suited its own purposes, whilst minimising external impact on policy development. The politics and economics of this process are discussed.     

Eyes wide shut: the fantasies and disavowals of education policy

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the tensions between education policy’s attachment to notions such as excellence and inclusion and its investments in managerial tropes of competition, continuous quality improvement, standards and accountability that are at odds with and which undermine its attachments. In order to explore these tensions, I draw on the psychoanalytic notion of fantasy, explained through Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes wide shut. My argument is that while the individual and society are both constituted through unavoidable division, antagonism and opacity, these notions are obscured through the operations of fantasy which holds out the promise of wholeness, harmony and redemption. In particular, education serves as a key site in which these fantasmatic ideals are promoted and pursued, a claim I substantiate via an analysis of the UK government’s 2016 White Paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere. Specifically, I read the White Paper in terms of five fantasies of: control; knowledge and reason; inclusion; productivity; and victimhood. My argument is that while fantasy is an inescapable element that inevitably structures what we take to be ‘reality’, education policy might strive to inhabit fantasy differently, thereby finding ways of escaping its current mode of seeing education with eyes wide shut.     

The activation,appropriation and practices of student-equity policy in Australian higher education

Current national reforms in Australian higher education have prioritised efforts to reduce educational disadvantage within a vernacular expression of neoliberal education policy. Student-equity policy in universities is enmeshed in a set of competitive student recruitment relations. This raises practice-based tensions as universities strive to meet specific institutional targets for low-socio-economic status (SES) and Indigenous student participation, whilst broadening participation more generally within the sector. This paper seeks empirically to trace the activation and appropriation of federal policy through two sites of higher education policy practices: a state government-sponsored equity practitioner body and two differently positioned universities, Dawson and McIllwraith, as they engage with low-SES schools. Working together Dorothy Smith’s insights into the textually mediated activation of local practices, Levinson and colleagues’ concept of the local appropriation of authorised policy, and Bourdieu’s notion of the contested field, we demonstrate that the generation of state level and institutionally specific policies for student-equity practices not only articulates to federal policy, but also appropriates the ruling relations of mandated policy. Further, the scope of these creative local appropriations is organised within a hierarchical academic field through which particular institutional imperatives, as well as the needs of low-SES students, are negotiated. The analysis demonstrates the vernacularisation of policy in the national rearticulation of global discourses, in appropriation at the level of the state body and in the practices of equity workers.     

Social justice intents in policy: an analysis of capability for and through education

Primarily developed as an alternative to narrow measures of well-being such as utility and resources, Amartya Sen’s capability approach places strong emphasis on people’s substantive opportunities. As a broad normative framework, the capability approach has become a valuable tool for understanding and evaluating social arrangements (e.g. education policies and development programmes) in terms of individuals’ effective freedoms to achieve valuable beings and doings. This paper explores the recent emergence of ‘capability’ in Australian education policy, specifically in the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper. We explore capability as a framing device and reveal how its various meanings are at odds with the scholarly literature, specifically Sen’s conception of capability and its implications for social justice in and through education. The analysis shows that the social justice intent of a capability approach appears to be overtaken in the White Paper by an emphasis on outcomes, performance and functionings that seek to serve the nation’s economic interests more than the interests of students, especially the disadvantaged.     

'The centre cannot hold': complexity and difference in European Union policy towards a learning society

The notions of lifelong learning and a learning society have been an important policy driver in the European Union at both the Commission and national government levels for a number of years. Overall, these policies aim to promote the twin goals of competitiveness in international markets and social cohesion within the still-expanding borders of the Union itself. To date, however, the impact of this emphasis on lifelong learning has been relatively slight. This article argues that this is in part because the policy process in relation to the development of a learning society is based on a view of governance and power that is open to reasoned dispute, and is, therefore, bound to disappoint in relation to its espoused goals. It is suggested that, rather than implementation being the main ‘problem’ of policy, the policy context inevitably generates many recontextualizations and renegotiations of meanings according to the situations and the actors involved, thereby undermining the notion of ‘implementation’ as a technical-rational process. It is argued that the complex negotiations enacted at local level reveal and are fashioned by tensions between the membership resources available to actors. This emphasizes complexity, diversity, and difference in policy processes, bringing to the fore a communicative and distributed approach to policy rather than one that is technical and centralizing.     

A study on the effects of education welfare action zone policy in Korea

This study was designed to analyze the effects of the support programs provided in education welfare action zones. Education welfare action zone policy came into effect by government from 2003 to guarantee actual educational opportunity to disadvantaged children in urban areas by providing educational, cultural, and welfare service. Education welfare action zones were selected in low-income group area in the metropolis. In this regard, both quantitative and qualitative analytical methods were used to ascertain the effects of the program. The qualitative analysis included a preliminary examination of conditions prior to the actual commencement of the program, which was then followed by an investigation of specific schools used, as case studies in order to identify the changes that had taken place during the program’s implementation process, and the program’s effect. Meanwhile, a quantitative analysis was employed to verify the actual changes that took place in several different aspects, changes that were revealed by the case studies.     

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.     

With permission: education policy,space and everyday globalisation in London’s east end

This paper attempts to make sense of a public–private partnership in London’s East End. I am interested in how policy directions, in terms of cultural practices, may operate as links between transnational corporations and education provision, and, additionally, how concepts of space and place provide possibilities for different understandings of educational policy change in local instances. I examine the philanthropic practices of a corporation and the practices of schools receiving this philanthropy, and suggest that these are practices of ‘everyday globalisation’ occurring as part of a specific policy direction, Excellence in Cities.     

教育政策文本分析及其应用

本文通过分析社会科学研究中相互关联的文本分析、内容分析和话语分析的异同,对政策文本分析的概念进行了界定.指出教育政策文本分析的深层内涵在于:对政策文本的分析,最终要走出文本,走出文本的过程也就是对文本的微观分析与文本所处的宏观历史脉络相结合的过程,是研究者运用多种"解读"文本的方法和视角发掘文本"深层结构"和文本演变的内在逻辑的过程,是透过文本话语揭示政策过程中的价值分配和斗争的过程,是文本理论化的过程.作为一种"黑箱技术",政策文本分析需要研究者将文本与其所处的历史、制度和政策实践进行有效的"对话".政策文本分析是理解教育政策的基本手段,也是促进我国教育政策研究发展的重要途径.     

Policy innovation and tertiary education graduation rates: a cross-country analysis

This study extends Trow’s theory of higher education development to examine changes in national-level tertiary education graduation rates. Applying Trow’s framework we arrive at three stages: (1) elite systems with gross tertiary graduation rates less than 15%, (2) massified systems with gross tertiary graduation rates between 15% and 50%, and (3) universal systems with gross tertiary graduation rates above 50%. This study conducts event history analyses using a unique cross-national panel dataset, which spans the time period from 1999–2005. Following the work of Berry and Berry, our event history analyses model both the internal features of each country and the influence that nation-states have on each other with regard to setting tertiary education graduation policy. We find significant influences of both internal determinants and diffusion factors. We find a positive, significant effect of membership in the OECD consistent across both the massified and universal thresholds. We also find a positive, significant effect of having a more stable political system for crossing the 15% threshold. In addition, being located near a pioneering nation, the UK, has a positive, significant effect of crossing the 50% threshold.