Why Universities Need Institutional Researchers and Institutional Researchers Need Faculty Members More Than Both Realize

This paper provides an overview of research that I have conducted during my career using data sets collected by offices of institutional research. Many of the examples discussed in the paper deal with graduate education. The paper illustrates how valuable the data collection efforts by these offices are to academic researchers interested in helping to formulate institutional, state and national higher education policies. It concludes with suggestions for how the usefulness of institutional researchers to colleges and universities can be improved and stresses that institutional researchers and administrators would be wise to involve more faculty members in research that aids in institutional decision making and the formulation of public policy towards higher education.     

教育政策行动：解释与分析框架

教育政策研究的一个重要目的就是要解释国家为何采取特定的政策行动或计划而非其他方案。然而在公共政策研究以及社会科学研究领域内,解释社会行动不论在理论视域还是研究取向上,均存在着严重的分歧以至激烈的争论,其中以逻辑实证主义为基础的因果解释与由阐释理论而衍生的意图解释之间的对立最为明显。。即使在意图解释模型内,现象学派、理性选择理论与功能主义等视域的分歧亦颇为明显。。当教育政策研究者尝试解释国家对特定政策所采取的行动或计划背后的原因与理由时,对现存众多解释模型的分歧与争议往往无所适从。本文旨在对上述各种解释模型的理论与方法学基础加以梳理及评论,并尝试整理出一个较为综合的分析架构,供从事教育政策研究以及公共政策研究的工作者参考。 更多还原     

Empirische Bildungsforschung und evidenzbasierte Bildungspolitik

This paper discusses opportunities as well as constraints of evidence based policy and evidence based practice in education. Expectations held by different strands of the public (policy makers, teachers, parents) are discussed as constraint of the underlying educational research. Furthermore, such expectations constrain the communication between researchers and the public (a case of science communication). Communicating empirical evidence is a precondition for any evidence based policy in education.     

The university,democracy and the public sphere

This article takes a historical approach to the rise and fall of the public university, relating its fate to specific developments in public policy. Particular attention will be paid to the United Kingdom since it has developed an explicit drive towards the marketization of higher education in the context of an earlier commitment to public higher education, although the latter was initially first developed in the United States. Both countries are typically characterized as liberal policy regimes and therefore the article considers how wider social structures are implicated in recent changes to higher education. In particular, the article addresses how the functions of the university and its corporate form are being transformed and relates this to wider developments in the nature of the corporation and the relation between business and citizenship (or market and democracy).     

Managing managerialism in church school leadership: a practitioner inquiry in the theology of education

This paper is written from the perspective of an Anglican head teacher in the context of UK public educational policy in which managerialism is construed as the prevalent orthodoxy of reform. It seeks to bring the discipline of theology and the field of school leadership studies into closer dialogue around the theme of managerialism in a way that will benefit academic scholarship and practitioner researchers. Firstly, it explores The Way Ahead report as an impetus to critical theological reflection about Christian vocation and the distinctive role of church school head teachers. Secondly, it indicates how the site of managed reality is important for theology and how the theology of education might be pursued in defence of education. Against claims that doing theology tends to domesticate education, it is argued that theology can help provide an important countercultural perspective intended for the good of education. Thirdly, it outlines the background of public educational policy which makes countercultural theology an appropriate response in the service of a faith‐inspired professionalism. Fourthly, it suggests how a countercultural model of contextual theology can collaborate with important forms of research in the field of educational leadership, management and administration.     

Contesting education policy in the public sphere: media debates over policies for the Queensland school curriculum

This paper investigates the work of media discourses on education policy in public debates over the Queensland school curriculum. It draws on theories of discourse, theories that have recently influenced the field of policy sociology, to outline a conceptualization of policy and media texts as discourses in the public sphere. In so doing, it notes the significant contribution such public discourses on education make to the policy process. The paper employs critical discourse analysis to investigate the discursive constructions of curriculum during one particular policy initiative. The analysis focuses on newspaper debates over the inclusion of a subject called Health and Physical Education (HPE) in the Queensland secondary school curriculum. The paper shows how educational policy issues were discursively constituted and contested through the construction of public discourses on education policy. In particular, it demonstrates how such public discourses worked to construct authoritative voices on educational policy. The paper concludes with a call to teachers and policymakers to seek opportunities to construct an authoritative public voice on issues of education policy.     

Neoliberalism,education and the integration of ICT in schools. A critical reading

This article explores a contemporary perspective of education that aims to radically re-construct schools through the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT). Through the analysis of key texts produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, leading ICT industries, and international educational researchers, the article looks at the apparently neutral and desirable regime of truth surrounding education, where concrete problems are created and certain solutions provided. The findings discuss how the integration of ICT in schools is embedded in a perspective of education based on: new modalities of soft government, the centrality of a self-regulated and entrepreneur learner, and the representation of schools as flexible, autonomous and non-hierarchical environments organised around non-standardised modalities of public ‘accountability’.     

Teacher-Advocates Respond to ESSA: “Support the Good Parts—Resist the Bad Parts”

Although researchers consider them powerful, teacher policy advocates are among the least studied stakeholders in U.S. public education reform today. Although plenty of attention has been given to the impact of policy on teachers' work, little research explores how teachers interpret or interact with policy. Drawing on the work of Spillane, Reiser, and Reimer (2002) on teachers' policy implementation and Coburn's (2001) work on teachers' collective sense-making of policy, this qualitative study examines the different ways in which five teachers interpreted, translated, and enacted a response to ESSA. The findings describe how contextual factors influence teachers' relationship with education policy: (a) structural supports for grassroots involvement via social networks are instrumental in mobilizing teachers, and (b) unless a more bottom-up approach is taken that enables teacher agency, sense-making, and advocacy, top-down school policies will continue to hold limited promise. The paper concludes with implications for understanding how teachers are indeed policy advocates.     

In the World,But Not of the World: Understanding Conservative Christianity and Its Relationship With American Public Schools

This article provides an overview of the socio-political, cultural, and historical characteristics of the relationship between conservative Christians and the American system of public education; describes the influence of fundamentalist views on contemporary conservative Christians; and recounts the historical relationship between the Religious Right and American public schools. Specifically, the article examines several policy issues advanced by conservative Christians, analyzes developments in legal strategies employed by the Religious Right to influence public school curricula over the past century, and considers how vestiges of the Judeo-Christian roots of American public education continue to influence school policy and discourse despite claims to the contrary by contemporary fundamentalist Christians. The article concludes with a critique of the fundamentalist approach to education and an argument for taking seriously the need to defend democratic aims of public education against fundamentalist challenges.     

A Fragile Dialogue? Research and Primary Education Policy Formation in Bangladesh, 1971-2001

This paper considers the relationship between knowledge production and primary education policy making in Bangladesh. It investigates the form of discussions and dialogues that have taken place between policy makers and researchers and considers how these have shaped the nature of the evidence policy makers have used in different periods. The paper also attempts to assess the implications of the shifting forms of relationship between policy and knowledge production for strategies to introduce universal primary education and improve its quality. The paper itself is an example of some of the themes it examines. It has emerged out of discussions taking place in the research committee of the Bangladesh Directorate of Primary Education (DPE) and Primary and Mass Education Division (PMED). (See Figure 1.) This committee, established as part of the DFID funded ESTEEM project [1], brings together officials from DPE and PMED with education researchers from Bangladesh's universities and consultants appointed by ESTEEM. An aspect of the work of the research committee has been to consider what kinds of knowledge are useful in the implementation of policy. In summary we argue that, except for an early period after the War of Independence, there has been little open dialogue between researchers and policy makers in Bangladesh. Policy has been much more closely shaped by the changing forms and values of educational administration in central government and in large NGOs than by 'scientific' forms of research and knowledge production or by the debates these might provoke. Research and education policy development have been the preserve of elite groups closely connected to central government. Very little research has been undertaken independent of government or commissions from large NGOs. However, in different periods researchers have participated in policy formation in different ways and there are indications in the present period that the views of researchers and policy makers are beginning to diverge somewhat with some more critical commentary being published. We map the history of these changing forms of participation in order to reveal aspects of the context in which successive policies have been formed.     

Boundary spanners,network capital and the rise of edu-businesses: the case of News Corporation and its emerging education agenda

This paper provides a critical analysis of News Corporation and argues that through the acquisition of high profile policy actor, Joel Klein, News Corporation has been able to assemble significant network capital to position itself as an entity apparently responsible for the public good and with a role to play in public policymaking. My aim in this paper was to document and analyse how the contexts of policy influence in education are evolving through the involvement of multinational edu-businesses and the quasi-privatisation of the education policy community globally. I analyse the place of education in News Corporation’s current business strategy as exemplary of the changing role that businesses are playing in education policy processes nationally and globally and argue that we are seeing the emergence of powerful new policy actors. This analysis is set against the emerging literature that seeks to analyse the increasing influence of edu-businesses on education policy processes and locates these developments within considerations of changing educational governance structures, new privatisations and public–private partnerships in education. It is argued that boundary spanners like Klein with their intimate ‘inside knowledge’ of state structures are mobilising network capital to frame policy problems and advocate policy solutions in ways that are attractive to education policymakers while also being commercially beneficial to News Corporation and their shareholders.     

The evolution of the student as a customer in Australian higher education: a policy perspective

In 2014, the Australian Federal Government attempted to de-regulate higher education fees so as to allow universities to set their own tuition fees. The associated public debate offer critical insights into how the identity of a student as a ‘customer’ of higher education is understood and deployed when developing higher education policy. This paper uses the 2014 Australian higher education reforms as a lens through which to further scholarly research into the student-as-customer metaphor and to see how it is influenced by the perceptions and understandings of policy actors external to the higher education sector. These include politicians, special interest groups, the students and their parents and prospective employers. This study reveals that the public/private nexus—both of funding and benefit—problematizes traditional conceptualisations of students and others as higher education customers. In turn, this restricts the ability or desire of policy actors to describe how the student functions as a customer as a consequence of market reform. This inability compromises the development of effective and sustainable higher education policy.     

Russian Schools

This article presents educational statistics that reflect the basic indicators describing the state of information technology infrastructure in secondary general education in 2014. This research seeks to analyze how Russia’s Federal State Educational Standards governing secondary general education facilitate the creation of information-based teaching methods and the supply of equipment. Special attention is paid to the interregional differences in information-educational infrastructure as well as the differences between how urban and rural schools are equipped with this infrastructure. This study may prove to be useful to regional education authorities and experts in the field of public educational policy as a starting point for analyzing educational statistics while taking into account regional contextual indicators.     

'The Trouble with Our Schools': A media construction of public discourses on Queensland schools

This paper gives an account of competing public discourses on schooling. In particular, it investigates one newspaper's coverage of the release of an educational report. The paper combines interview data with a critical discourse analysis of newspaper texts to show how media reporting of Queensland schools constructed a preferred discourse on education that represented schools as being in crisis, 'in trouble'. The analysis describes how the paper shaped popular opinion on educational policy through the construction of public discourses of crisis in education. Further, the analysis shows how this discourse positioned particular groups as the authoritative voice on standards in Queensland schools. It shows how, at a time when teacher quality was under question, the media constructed a public discourse that diminished the authority of teachers to speak about education policy, granting that authority to the newspaper's editor, who assumed the people's voice on educational issues. This analysis of the construction of public discourses about education policy gives insights into the media's place in educational policy-making. In so doing, the paper adds to the small body of literature that investigates the relationships between the media and education.     

The Steward Street School experiment: a critical case study of possibilities

This article presents a critical case study of an inner city state school that for a decade (1940s–1950s) attracted the interest of a wide contingency of educationalists, policy makers, researchers, artists and various press and film media. It has been argued that if we are to progress ‘social alternatives’ in education, researchers need to construct ‘critical case studies of possibilities’ drawing inspiration from traces of experimental and utopian practice in schools from the past as well as the present. The article demonstrates how this might be achieved through research that questions dominant narratives, goes beyond the public accounts of particular sites of experimentation and explores multiple‐narratives embedded in the records of past practice. The authors argue that such situated counter‐currents in the history of education are necessary both to inform our collective notions of past experience and enrich our regard for future possibilities.     

What,Where, and How? Special Education in the Climate of Full Inclusion

After the passage of PL 94-142 in 1975 guaranteeing a free, appropriate, public education to all students with disabilities, multiple reauthorizations of IDEA have refined, revised, and renewed the nation's moral and pedagogical commitment to providing well-planned, public, inclusive, and appropriate education to all students with disabilities. But conflicting views of where that education should take place, what that education should consist of, and how that education should be delivered have continued to plague the field of special education. In this article, we provide an historical perspective on the arguments over where, what and how. We open four “windows” on special education service delivery in four different settings in Pennsylvania to illustrate contemporary interpretations and contemporary public policy related to where, what, and how. In the end, we raise questions about whether current, fully inclusive special education practices fulfill the promise of PL-94-142 to provide a special and appropriate education to students with disabilities.     

Lifelong learning policies and discourses: critical reflections from Aotearoa,New Zealand

This article examines New Zealand experiences and understandings of lifelong education and lifelong learning over the past 30 years or so. It investigates the place of lifelong education and lifelong learning discourses in shaping public policy in Aotearoa as well as questions about the similarities and differences between the discourse in New Zealand and in Europe and the UK. The aim of the paper is to throw light on the following questions: what effects, if any, have notions of lifelong education or lifelong learning had on public policy discourses on tertiary education and the education of adults? Is there evidence to suggest that notions of either ‘lifelong education’ or ‘lifelong learning’ have provided a vision or sense of purpose or set of guidelines in developing public policies? Have they served to justify or legitimate new initiatives or funding arrangements? And, if so, what is the nature of this influence? Finally, in the light of this discussion the article also examines the question whether notions of ‘lifelong education’ and ‘lifelong learning’ as they have featured in the academic and policy literature are predominantly located in a Euro‐centred discourse and hence how they might be reconstituted to reflect more adequately discourses of learning and education in other parts of the world.     

Diversity training,inclusive education and our inevitable lament

As education systems the world over acknowledge the significance of supporting students with disabilities and related conditions to maintain school enrolment, building the capacity of educators to fulfil an inclusive ambition is frequently promoted through activities like awareness training. Here, the intention is to potentially change how people living with disability are understood and related to. Traditionally, awareness raising work relies on psychological interventions targeting human being’s cognitive-behavioural triumvirate – thoughts, feelings and behaviours, nudging public policy and individual attitudes to sustain such changes. Yet, an inevitable lament typically befalls researchers and practitioners when inclusive ideals are not reached through the promotion of human rights, individualised support and positive attitudes. Advancing a conceptual approach to orientating to difference resourced by theory from critical psychology, critical disability and affirmative ethics, our discussion seeks to question the validity of current orientations to awareness training in favour of engaging difference differently. The discussion is relevant to education policy makers and practitioners seeking to reduce inequities, particularly among students living diverse ways of being within mainstream populations, so they might engage difference differently to reduce school exclusion.     

Scholarship as intervention: critique,collaboration and the research imagination

Following Scott (this issue), this paper examines how environmental education researchers might intervene to greater effect in the policies and practices of our governments and local and international organizations through individual and collective programmes of research. Suggesting that public scholarship or academic activism can engage a wide spectrum of genres and outcomes of research activity, the paper proposes that what stands out are not the methods employed in seeking to have research ‘be of use’, but instead what can be termed modes of engagement. These can be described as including interpretive critique or ‘speaking truth to power’, public space and collaboration, and the role of research imagination in social life. These three modes are discussed with the hope that researchers will consider their possibilities and implications in working towards more powerful public scholarship in environmental education.