Explorations in policy enactment: feminist thought experiments with Basil Bernstein’s code theory

This paper builds on feminist elaborations of Bernstein’s code theory to engage in a series of thought experiments with interview data produced during a co-inquiry design-based research intervention project. It presents three accounts of thinking/writing with data. Our purpose in presenting three different accounts of interview data is to demonstrate the relation between theory and empirical data. In the first two accounts, interview data are interpreted and performed through the lens of theory. By contrast, in the third account attention is paid to the ways in which care is practised not only in terms of policy enactment, but also research enactment. Empirical data are not moulded to fit generalisable theoretical frameworks. Rather, empirical data push back on theoretical concepts in a collaborative thought experiment.     

Datafication in schools: enactments of quality assurance and evaluation policies in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates datafication in schools through an analysis of the enactments of quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) policies in Brazil. In doing so, I question how data permeates and changes school environments, school actors’ conduct and their imaginaries. QAE policies encompass large-scale assessments, indicators, rankings and other steering mechanisms, but importantly connect data to quality in education. Here, I analyse the discourses of school actors (principals, coordinators, supervisors, teachers, students and parents) from three Brazilian public schools collected through semi-structured interviews (n = 28). Data manifests in those schools as a technology of government. Schools enact QAE policies in distinct ways, incorporating the idea of governmentality, but also proposing alternative patterns of action.     

Towards a policy social psychology: Teacher engagement with policy enactment and the core concept of Affective Disruption

The article uncovers the complex process of educational policy enactment and the impact this process has on teachers as policy actors as they undertake the task of introducing a new mathematics curriculum in a Canadian secondary school. The three year study based on in‐depth qualitative interviews adopts a classic grounded theory approach of concurrent iterative cycles of data collection, conceptual categorisation and analytical abstraction, to identify six emergent concepts indicative of policy actor engagement with the policy process: (1) Professional and Emotional Investment; (2) Decisional Legitimacy; (3) Hierarchical Trust; (4) System Integrity and Viability; (5) De‐professionalisation; and (6) Identity Safeguarding. Further, and significantly, the grounded theory analysis identifies the core concept of Affective Disruption, conceived as an interruption to an individual's emotional equilibrium resulting from interference to their cognitive sense‐making in relation to policy. It is proposed these six emergent concepts and Affective Disruption as a core concept are precipitated within policy actors in response to the tensions created by the process of policy enactment; the research findings moving towards what might be tentatively termed a policy social psychology.     

关于汉语姓名设定的立法建议

法律应当对公民设定姓名作出限制，但应当允许少数民族作出变通的规定。姓名必须有名有姓，姓氏不可废。公民不可随意取姓，只可随父或者随母。取名只能使用法定用字表中的两个汉字。姓名的意义也应当有所限制。户籍登记机关在控制重名重姓方面应当负主要责任。变更姓名应当有正当原因，并且原则上以一次为限。     

Moving primary physical education forward: start at the beginning

This paper presents selected findings from a questionnaire completed by 509 primary school teachers in Scotland. Drawing on policy enactment theory, the paper focusses on teachers’ personal experiences of physical education and perceptions of the importance of physical education in their schools. More than half (56%) reported that physical education was either ‘very important’ or ‘important’, while almost 40% perceived it to be of ‘limited’ or ‘very limited importance’. ‘Staff’, ‘time’ and ‘subject status’ were the main themes they drew on to explain their responses. Our findings highlight the diverse nature of the physical education professional cultures in Scottish primary schools. From this, we propose that future initiatives to support change in primary physical education should, as a starting point, acknowledge these diverse professional cultures and move beyond the simplistic one-size-fits-all change projects that have been shown to have limited impact on practice.     

Doing education policy enactment research in a minor key

This article discusses ‘minor key research’ and doing this kind of research as ‘response-ability’. We explore the possibilities that education policy enactment research might hold for theorising and doing research, not just for work on ‘how schools do policy’, but also for how researchers do policy research with schools. A methodological question is raised here by us with respect to what researchers might ‘do’ in schools and other policy locations (such as when working with bureaucrats or politicians). We also discuss our researcher responsibility with respect to such work, and we have attempted to respond to the questions: ‘Is there an alternative for the current regime of accountability? Are there ways to resist and intervene in the current culture of accountability?’ In the first section, we focus on minor key research, and in the second section we discuss doing minor key research as ‘response-ability’.     

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.     

The Impact of High School Science Teachers’ Beliefs,Curricular Enactments and Experience on Student Learning During an Inquiry-based Urban Ecology Curriculum

Inquiry-based curricula are an essential tool for reforming science education yet the role of the teacher is often overlooked in terms of the impact of the curriculum on student achievement. Our research focuses on 22 teachers’ use of a year-long high school urban ecology curriculum and how teachers’ self-efficacy, instructional practices, curricular enactments and previous experience impacted student learning. Data sources included teacher belief surveys, teacher enactment surveys, a student multiple-choice assessment focused on defining and identifying science concepts and a student open-ended assessment focused on scientific inquiry. Results from the two hierarchical linear models indicate that there was significant variation between teachers in terms of student achievement. For the multiple-choice assessment, teachers who spent a larger percentage of time on group work and a smaller percentage of time lecturing had greater student learning. For the open-ended assessment, teachers who reported a higher frequency of students engaging in argument and sharing ideas had greater student learning while teachers who adapted the curriculum more had lower student learning. These results suggest the importance of supporting the active role of students in instruction, emphasising argumentation, and considering the types of adaptations teachers make to curriculum.     

Building a compassionate workplace using information technology: Considerations for information systems research

This opinion paper presents the need for IS research on compassion in the organizational workplace. Given the current challenges caused by COVID-19, we argue that organizations need to be resilient to counter the adverse effects of this pandemic. Developing a compassionate organizational workplace is an effective way to build resilient organizations. The paper draws attention to the fact that a focus on compassion can be a valuable scope of inquiry within IS research. It proposes an integrative framework mapping the scope of compassion in IS research and develops a research agenda that can aid future inquiry into this phenomenon.     

Policy enactment,context and performativity: ontological politics and researching Australian National Partnership policies

Recently, critical policy scholars have used the concepts of enactment, context and performativity as an analytic toolkit to illuminate the complex processes of the policy cycle, in particular, the ways in which a multitude of official education reform policies are taken up, challenged and/or resisted by actors in local, situation-specific practices. This set of theoretical tools are usually deployed to analyse interview data collected from a single school or cluster of schools to draw findings or conclusions about the complex processes of policy enactment. We aim to build on this critical policy studies work by, firstly, highlighting key aspects of these theoretical/methodological constructs, secondly, exploring the performative role of research in the materiality of specific contexts and, thirdly, theorising education policy research in terms of ontological politics. We ground this work in a recent collaborative enquiry research project undertaken in Queensland, Australia. This research project emerged in the Australian policy context of National Partnership Agreement policies which were designed to reform public or government-funded schools servicing low socio-economic communities, in order to improve student learning outcomes, specifically in literacy and numeracy as measured by high-stakes national testing.