Revisiting educational equity and quality in China through Confucianism, policy, research, and practice

The promotion of educational equity and improvement of educational quality in China are contextualised in tenets of Confucianism and policy directives, inspiring educational research and practice. In this paper, we first explore the historical and cultural roots of educational equity and quality through Confucianism and elaborate on the current policy priority that aims to address educational equity and quality. We then present an overview of research on equity and quality in Chinese education. Informed by Confucianism, policy, and research, we pose a framework to structure our investigation and analysis of three illustrative examples, namely the Special Post Teacher Plan, amalgamation of rural schools, and schooling of floating children. Drawing insights from Confucianism, policy, research, and practice, we conclude that the promotion of educational equity through high quality provision of education for disadvantaged groups can help to narrow the gap in educational quality currently existing in China.     

From positivism to critical theory: school-community relations toward community equity literacy

In recent years, research on urban school–community relations has emerged with renewed vigor and a myriad of suggestions for how to best approach the topic. While most of these suggestions are anchored in positivist and interpretive epistemologies, a growing number of scholars are applying more critical approaches to school–community relations that center issues of equity and unequal power relations. However, these approaches are often perceived as being too impractical for educational leaders to implement. This article thus situates approaches to school–community relations across three epistemologies: positivism, interpretivism, and critical theory to make these ideas more accessible for educational leaders. With a focus on developing educational leaders to work equitably across school and community contexts, this article provides an operating framework for each approach that delineates assumptions, goals, views of families, strategies, and types of leadership. Finally, this article provides an epistemological grounding to propose that educational leaders develop what I call community equity literacy, and concludes with implications for future research.     

Sex equity in mathematics and science education: Research-policy links

Despite the accumulation of a large body of research concerning effective sex equity practices in math and science, the lack of change in educational procedures suggests the need to reexamine the role of research in policy and program planning. This paper reviews the current research on sex equity in mathematics and science education, focusing on research in the categories of educator-student interaction, instructional context, and macrolevel demographics. Existing applications of current research to mathematics and science education programs are examined at regional, state, district, and individual school levels. Recommendations for future directions in policy and research are made, emphasizing the gaps in knowledge on each side. The paper ends with specific suggestions for strengthening the links between research and policy in the area of sex equity.     

Glass Ceilings and Stone Walls: Employment equity for women in Ontario school boards

Women continue to be underrepresented in administrative positions within the education system in Ontario, Canada, despite the existence of employment equity policy for women for 20 years. However, while government reports present statistical data to monitor policy progress, little research has been conducted into how women administrators experience employment equity policy in their everyday lives. This paper uses data from interviews with female administrators to examine their perceptions of gender relations within the context of the provincial policy. First, the memories of these women, as they entered and achieved administrative positions, are presented. Second, I discuss their experiences of contradiction with respect to the policy in practice. Finally, I identify the ways in which these women construct themselves as agents of resistance and change. The paper concludes by arguing that existing relations and practices within the education system constitute an 'invisible policy', which must be acknowledged in order to understand the policy contradictions experienced by women educators.     

Discourse analysis as theory,method, and epistemology in studies of education policy

ABSTRACT

Discourse has featured in studies of educational policy as an analytic and methodological tool, theoretical frame, realm of implication, and even a foundational definition of educational policy itself (e.g.) Despite the centrality of discourse as a frame for exploring educational policy and its implications, the ways that discourse is defined or operationalized in educational policy research are often left implicit which can lead to murky relations to larger onto-epistemological questions of how we construct findings from data as well as the nature of policy. In this interpretive analysis, we synthesize a corpus of 37 peer-reviewed journal articles that bring together educational policy and analyses of discourse from varying theoretical and methodological perspectives in order to better understand the breadth and scope of how discourse is defined and operationalized in studies of educational policy, including in ways that are sometimes incommensurate with authors' stated theoretical and methodological positions. After first laying the theoretical groundwork for analyses of discourse in the field of educational policy, we then illustrate how discourse analysis is used differently, and sometimes inconsistently, within contested paradigmatic landscapes. We conclude with an argument for discussions across theoretical frameworks and methodological paradigms about how the concept of discourse lends itself to different epistemological vantage points on educational policy.     

Equity and marketisation: emerging policies and practices in Australian education

The conjunction of equity and market logics in contemporary education has created new and different conditions of possibility for equity, both as conceived in policy discourses and as a related set of educational practices. In this editorial introduction, we examine how equity is being drawn into new policy assemblages and how, in the context of marketisation, equity is evolving and being enacted in new ways across education sectors. Different conceptions of equity are considered, including the increasingly influential human capital perspective promoted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We argue that, separate from critiques of neoliberalism and its deleterious effects on equity in education, it is necessary to analyse carefully the increasing rationalisation of equity agendas in economic terms, the associated effects on education governance and policy-making, as well as on the work of educational institutions and educators. Providing an overview of the contributions to this Special Issue, we direct particular attention to the multiple, complex and often contradictory effects of the current education reform agenda in Australia, which has prioritised equity objectives and intensified performance measurement, comparison and accountability as means to drive educational improvement and reduce disadvantage.     

The new articulation of equity education in neoliberal times: the changing conception of social justice in Ontario

In this paper, we draw attention to the impact of neoliberal globalisation in rearticulating conceptions of equity within the Ontario context. The Ontario education system has been hailed for its top performance on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) as a high-equity/high-quality education system and created ‘PISA envy’ in the international context. Our aim in this paper is to provide some critical analysis of the neoliberal rationality and to examine its manifestations for rearticulating conceptions of social justice. Drawing on equity education policies in Ontario and one in-depth interview with an equity practitioner in one of Ontario’s large and most diverse school boards, this paper illustrates how a redefinition of equity has been made possible through neoliberal systems of accountability and performativity involving measurement and facticity. As a result of these strategies, equity policy in education has been concerned with outcome measurement and boys’ underachievement, while racial and class inequalities have become invisible. While this paper is focused on Ontario equity policy, we believe that it serves much broader interest given the current context of global education policy field.     

Reducing the distance: equity issues in distance learning in public education

Distance learning and educational equity both began with an emphasis on access, on providing underserved students with an increased access to education. Today definitions of equity have gone beyond simple access to include equal or equivalent treatment and outcomes while definitions of underserved students have expanded to include girls, children of color, children with limited English proficiency and children with disabilities. At the same time the definition of distance learning has expanded to include new technologies, new audiences and new roles. Based on these new definitions and roles, the article raises a number of equity challenges for distance learning educators centering around who is taught, what is taught and how the teaching is done. To answer these challenges, a series of recommendations are suggested that educators can implement to make distance learning a leader in increasing educational equity for all students. The time to act is now.     

Target-driven reforms: Education for All and the translations of equity and inclusion in India

This paper critically examines the ways in which inclusion and equity are constituted through education development policies in India. Programmes implemented under global and national Education for All (EFA) policies have largely involved the quantification of ‘equity’ whereby schooling processes are measured against broad targets for school outcomes – focused mainly on student attendance, retention and academic achievement. Drawing on perspectives from Actor Network Theory, the paper puts forward the view of development reforms as ‘networks of translation’ in order to trace the shifts and vicissitudes of educational ideals. Reporting on ethnographic data of two reforms in the south Indian state of Karnataka, we show how narrow understandings of equity are produced through target-driven approaches to EFA. In doing so, the paper highlights the performative effects of education development policy and its potentially counterproductive consequences in contexts of poverty and marginalisation.     

Teacher education reform: Issues of equity and accountability

Recent policy changes in teacher education have had a significant impact on equality of educational opportunity for the teaching profession. Improving standards of excellence in the school system while at the same time insuring equality of opportunity has become a major concern. The policy maker interested in promoting equality of opportunity will have to balance the need for teacher quality with the notion of equity. This paper examines some of the policy changes in teacher education and focuses on how they impact the recruitment and retention of minority students.     

Developing glocally informed diversity and equity discourses: examining inequity via autobiographical reflection

This study responds to the need for glocally informed discourses on diversity and equity that draw upon internationally situated, local narratives to contribute to larger analyses. Such work is vital so that cross-national educational discourses do not become infused with PISA score comparisons or globally dominant perspectives alone. This local qualitative case study employs narrative inquiry with observation and document analyses to examine one accomplished multicultural teacher educator’s US-based practice. This study demonstrates the benefit of engaging teachers in autobiographical reflection as a supportive precursor for appreciating and learning from students’ diverse backgrounds, and critically analyzing societal inequities, such as the institutionalized use of inaccurate or incomplete text-based narratives. Promising practices are offered for how teacher educators across international settings might help teachers to navigate complex personal and institutional spaces while working to ‘reconstruct society toward greater equity in race, class, gender, and disability’.     

从技术的角度关注教育公平——国内教育技术领域研究的一个视角

促进教育公平作为我国基本教育政策,已经越来越引起各界的关注。在当前教育信息化发展的大背景下,从信息技术的角度关注和研究教育公平问题是国内教育技术领域研究的一个新视角。本文在阐述信息技术与教育公平关系的基础上,对“无障碍网络教育环境构建”和“以信息技术促进教育资源城乡共享”两项相关研究做了简要介绍。     

The Other Canadian 'Mosaic'-'race' equity education in Ontario and British Columbia

While the influence of multicultural and anti-racist education has declined significantly in England and Wales since the late 1980s (as a result of the continuing impact of New Right thinking on education policy), this has not occurred in other countries. For example, in Canada successive federal administrations-irrespective of political hue-have remained firmly committed to Pierre Trudeau's (1971) pluralistic notion of the Canadian 'mosaic' and continued to endorse educational and social policies to promote 'race' and ethnic equality. Despite this, regional devolution has ensured that the responses to these federal initiatives at the provincial level have been varied and that developments in practice have been uneven. In this paper, we draw upon ethnographic data in an attempt to provide a sociological account of these regional differences. Focusing on the perspectives of a sample of 42 'active players' in the field of race equity education (i.e. teachers and youth workers, academics, university administrators, school board officials, equity officers, provincial government officials, consultants, grass-roots activists and representatives of various pressure groups), we compare and contrast the developments in theory, policy and practice in two Canadian provinces: Ontario and British Columbia. Throughout the paper, we underline the importance of grounded research, focusing on the part played by local political and historical conditions in both shaping and modifying the articulation and effects of federal policy.     

National gender equity and schooling policy in Australia: Struggles for a non-identitarian feminist politics

This paper tracks the development of gender equity and schooling policy in Australia from theNational Policy on the Education of Girls in 1987, to current policy concerns with boys’ educational underperformance. The paper’s key focus is on the ways in which feminist informed equity policy has been undermined by broader imperatives of economic rationalism and anti-feminist discourses. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s understandings of distributive and cultural gender justice and her notion of a nonidentitarian feminist politics, the paper critically examines the ways in which such imperatives have re-articulated equity and schooling concerns. Through these lenses, the limitations of the affirmative gender binary politics and remedies that have dominated gender and schooling reform in Australia are highlighted. The paper concludes with an illumination of the gender justice spaces currently being mobilised in Australian schools. Such spaces, it is argued, fostered within a context of increasing autonomy and self-management for schools, are providing avenues for creative and disruptive (pro)feminist activism.     

Bernstein revisited: the recontextualisation of equity in contemporary Australian school education

This article draws on the sociology of Basil Bernstein to show how his detailed theories of ‘recontextualisation’ and the ‘pedagogic device’ provide useful analytic levers to examine the politics of educational change. We focus on recent policy developments that have significantly impacted Australian school education: the Program for International Student Assessment; the National Assessment Programme for Numeracy and Literacy; and the government’s public dissemination of school achievement data through the MySchool website. The analysis illustrates the ways in which the logics of economic rationalism not only have become ubiquitous in Australian education policy, but have come to recontextualise – or reshape – discourses of social and educational equity through new norms of competition, standardisation and commensurability. In doing so, the paper highlights the value of a Bernsteinian approach to understanding the vernacular character of neoliberalism in contemporary educational policy.     

Legal and educational perspectives of equity in assessment

Equity in assessment concerns all educational authorities and practitioners. While educators commonly consider issues of equity in terms of accommodations for students with special needs, or addressing cultural difference, equity issues in educational assessment have emerged outside these bases. This paper examines equity assessment issues, drawing predominantly on case history from the United States of America (US) with examples from Australia and England, to demonstrate areas that may draw legal consideration. The discussion shows that the legal standard to establish inequity is high and sometimes illogical from an educational perspective. The paper is intended to assist understanding of legal implications of educational assessment in order to reduce the likelihood of legal claims and the resultant redirection of valuable resources from educational provision. The discussion is also intended to broaden thinking on matters that impact on the provision of equitable educational and assessment opportunities for all students.     

The administration of feminism in education: revisiting and remembering narratives of gender equity and identity

This article examines challenges in writing histories of feminist reforms in schooling and educational administration. The focus is gender equity reforms in Australian schools since the 1970s, looking at how those earlier interventions are now remembered, represented and forgotten, in policy memory and collective narratives. Such feminist endeavours were part of the policy landscape and the administration of schools during the 1970s and 80s. I argue that feminist agendas can also be examined as themselves sites for managing the conduct of teachers and students and for regulating new forms of identity and social relations. These paradoxical aspects of feminist reform are analysed through a Foucauldian lens. The discussion identifies contextual themes in JEAH before considering debates within gender and feminist history. A revisiting mood has initiated a stocktake of the stories told not only about feminism but also the accounts feminism gives of itself. Extending this, I propose that critical attention to memory and the movement of received and revised historical narratives is vital for analysing the legacies of feminist reforms and how they might be (re)animated in the present. More broadly, it is suggested that attention to policy memory offers fruitful directions for historical studies of educational administration.     

Romancing the market: narrativising equity in globalising times

Despite the ongoing production of statistics about inequities in education, national policy agendas seem incapable of getting traction on the everyday realities of the schooling which re/produces them. This paper is a think-piece which uses narrative analysis to explore some of the meaning-making processes that are implicated in this stalemate. Mobilising Lyotard's notion of a performative master narrative, that of the globalised economy with its attendant trope of the market, equity policy is conceived as a parallel story of distribution of knowledge-as-a-thing, where outcomes are privileged over purposes and processes, and learning is assumed to proceed in the same way for all. The ways in which this equity story supports the master narrative – through the display of test results for example – are signposted, and illustrations are presented to show how blame and sequestration are used as rhetorical strategies to silence equity critics. This kind of deconstructive critique of course has its limitations: debate about norms and ideals, as well as persuasive counter-narratives and exemplars are also needed in order for political action to be undertaken.