Abstract
Policy innovation labs are emerging knowledge actors and technical experts in the governing of education. The article offers a historical and conceptual account of the organisational form of the policy innovation lab. Policy innovation labs are characterised by specific methods and techniques of design, data science, and digitisation in public services such as education. The second half of the article details how labs promote the use of digital data analysis, evidence-based evaluation and ‘design-for-policy’ techniques as methods for the governing of education. In particular, they promote the ‘computational thinking’ associated with computer programming as a capacity required by a ‘reluctant state’ that is increasingly concerned to delegate its responsibilities to digitally enabled citizens with the ‘designerly’ capacities and technical expertise to ‘code’ solutions to public and social problems. Policy innovation labs are experimental laboratories trialling new methods within education for administering and governing the future of the state itself.
Highlights
Policy innovation labs are characterised by specific methods and techniques of design, data science, and digitisation in public services such as education
In a report on emerging labs around the world circulated widely through the #psilabs hashtag in February 2014, Nesta chief executive Mulgan (2014) wrote that ‘social and public labs’ can be characterised by their distinctive methods. These include design methods, such as design ethnography, citizen input, rapid prototyping, and visualisation; tests and evaluations including randomised control trials, such as those proposed by Nesta’s Really Useful Evidence Alliance; psychological and behavioural experimentations, such as those developed by the Behavioural Insights Team; and digital tools and data science methods, such as data mining, data analytics, and predictive ‘machine learning’ methods
Through policy innovation labs such as Nesta, and the networks it connects, digital R&D, data science, and design methods are being governmentalised as a means of knowing and managing individuals and the masses
Summary
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjeh. Ben Williamsona a School of Education, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK Published online: 27 May 2015
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