Education Policy Discourse Research Articles

Seeking continuities and discontinuities in the European policy agenda(s) for adult learning – Reflections on purposes and governance

This article focus on what is and isn’t ‘new’ in the most recent European Union (EU) key policy document for Adult Learning (AL), because it claims (in its own title) that it will constitute a basis for a ‘new’ agenda. As this document has been much disseminated to Member States, we think it is important to analyse its evidence of the ‘new’ determined by comparing the 2021 Council Resolution [the ‘New European Agenda for Adult Learning 2021–2030’ (CEU, 2021)] with the two other previous EU’s key policy documents for AL [the ‘Renewed European Agenda for Adult Learning’ (CEU, 2011) and the ‘Adult Learning: It is Never too Late to Learn’ (CEC, 2006)]. By highlighting how the discourse of the ‘new' is used in the European policy agenda(s) we expect to give an interesting contribution for the actors that, in each country, are looking for policy implementation beyond rhetoric statements. From this analytical angle, we use an adult education policy discourse analytical model as a theoretical framework to seek for continuities and discontinuities in purposes and governance of AL in the EU. Thus, we seek the policy approach and educational rationale supporting what is claimed by the Commission of the EU to be explicitly ‘new’ in the most recent AL key policy document (which has significantly been entitled ‘The New European Agenda for Adult Learning 2021–2030’). The core results of a comparison focussed on the educational aims, vision and policy purposes as well as main governance mechanisms of these three key documents, suggest that the ‘new’ in the CEU (2021) document (also known in the literature as the NEAAL 2030) is not really ‘new’. Instead, the recent document reflects and maintains trends within previous rationale dating from 2006 and 2011, with policy priorities rooted in the logic of human resources management, as well as governance trends based on multilevel coordination at the European level. Here, the modernising trend toward a framework of control and standardisation, according to our theoretical model, seems to have gained momentum as a political rationale over the last 15 years. We argue those set of major continuities were, indeed, assisted by the discursive power of the ‘new’, which is a hyperbole favourable to the political purpose of disseminating an educational rationale of functional adaptation whose AL guidelines can influence the national policy implementation in the current contexts of Europeanisation.

Constructions of choice in U.S. education policy discourse, 1994–2020: a corpus-assisted analysis

ABSTRACT This study uses corpus-assisted discourse analysis to investigate the way U.S. secretaries of education have discursively constructed the topic of school choice in their public speeches over the course of 27 years, spanning four presidential administrations (1994–2020). Collocation and concordance analyses reveal a series of evolving discursive constructions: a public institutional frame favoring the prevailing logic of public schooling; an overtly neoliberal frame touting free markets, consumerism, and accountability for public systems; a depoliticized and technocratic neoliberal frame emphasizing high performance; and a populist, anti-institutional frame advocating choice as an end in itself. This study demonstrates how the language of school choice can tell us much about ideological trends in education reform. In particular, the analyses reveal an erosion of concern for the publicness of public schooling in federal school choice discourse.

‘Datafied dividuals and learnified potentials’: The coloniality of datafication in an era of learnification

Widespread popular discourse, at the time of writing, is centring on the capabilities of AI technologies, among others, in utilising the readily available mass of data to augment claimed educational problems. These positions often elide the unobjective nature of algorithms and the socio-politically infused assemblages of data available, situated within the neoliberalist scientism dominating educational policy discourse. The simplicity with which datafication treats education has led to a global culture of data-driven techno-rationality that affords ultra-rapid forms of free-floating control settled on an ideology of dataism. Dataism rests on the assumption that sociality and subjectification can be reduced to quantifiable data whereby the student rather than being treated as a subject comes to be treated as data doppelganger. The injustices inherent in datafication and its associated epistemes ignore hidden neoliberal inequalities and maintain the insidious coloniality inherent in advanced capitalism, while simultaneously fuelling the rapid and cyclical stripping of purpose from education itself. There is a need to problematise the hidden logics of coloniality that are both maintained and reproduced within the datafication agenda. The current article draws on decolonial theory to animate the logics of datafication through a Deleuzian reading, situated within the learnification of neoliberal education.

Effectiveness of History and Cultures Curriculum for Students’ Parents and Preschool Teachers

This research explores the critical need to integrate history and culture into preschool education, an area often overlooked in educational policy discussions. Drawing from the insights of Chinese history and culture curriculum in primary, secondary, and university levels, this study addresses the deficiencies in preschool education reform and policy. The study emphasizes the value of incorporating historical and cultural by Lee, W. O., Hao, N., & Zhou, Q. (2020), highlighting aspects such as cultivating aesthetic taste, showcasing cultural characteristics, and fostering cultural inheritance. The paper delves into the significance of history and culture curriculum in preschool education, focusing on children's development, patriotism, social fairness and justice, cultural inheritance, and unity between heaven and man for a harmonious life. Based on Piaget's child development theory and Confucianism's foundational principles, it elucidates the importance of aligning preschool education with cultural and historical contexts. Given preschool children's limited understanding and cognitive abilities regarding history and culture, the study proposes methods for integrating these themes into pre-education. It advocates for policy reforms in preschool education, emphasizing curriculum guidelines that reflect philosophical, psychological, pedagogical, sociological, and anthropological dimensions. Through a case study at Grace School in Yichun City, Heilongjiang Province, China, employing survey methods and case analysis, the research outlines goals for preschool history and culture curriculum. It incorporates Confucian concepts such as "harmony without diversity" and "endless life" to guide curriculum design and implementation, addressing evaluation criteria and curriculum content (Bahtilla, M., & Xu, H. 2021). In conclusion, the paper stresses the necessity of enhancing theoretical research levels in preschool education history and culture curriculum, advocating for improved training and implementation strategies. It envisions a collaborative effort among families, schools, and communities to foster continuous cultural learning and development among children.

The politicization of education policies: The case of Ghana’s Free Senior High School Policy

While many scholars recognize and criticize the politicization of education policies, scholarly attention to the strategies politicians utilize to politicize educational policy discourses remains limited. Focusing on the officials of Ghana’s two major political parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), as policy actors, this paper investigates how officials of these two parties operationalized discussions regarding Ghana’s Free Senior High School Policy (FSHSP) to garner support for their parties while stoking resentment for their political opponents. The study employs a critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework and a dataset of 175 documents, including news stories, press releases, party manifestos, and government publications. The analysis reveals that both parties resorted to strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other presentation. The NPP contrasted its regime with the NDC’s tenure and framed the NDC as a threat to FSHSP and the education of the poor and vulnerable. The NDC problematized and highlighted implementation bottlenecks while framing the NPP and FSHSP as threats to quality education. I argue that through these strategies, NPP officials aimed to maintain incumbency while NDC officials advocated a regime change. The paper concludes by emphasizing the potential risks associated with politicizing education policies.

Comparative studies "Effect of educational policy on artificial intelligence in the countries of America, Singapore and Iran

Artificial intelligence under the paradigm of the fourth industrial revolution has become one of the fateful trends of societies in such a way that university education methods, as one of the most important social constructions, have influenced the advancement of technology. Undoubtedly, educational policy has changed the speed, depth and extent of artificial intelligence technology Artificial intelligence is one of the most important emerging technologies, which today has caused huge changes in all areas, including educational policymaking, at a high speed. Among the important applications of artificial intelligence in educational policymaking, we can mention the prioritization of issues based on the real needs and demands of the society and the diagnosis of problems based on the existing conditions, which will lead to the design and formulation of macro-educational policies. The use of methods such as neural networks, natural language processing, and machine learning algorithms makes the process of policy making more intelligent and dynamic, and as a result, the role of policymakers in the application of this technology becomes more efficient. Today, new technologies such as artificial intelligence, sensor networks, blockchain are changing aspects of everyday life. The study of artificial intelligence began in the 1940s and in recent years it has overshadowed the government departments of a large number of countries, of which e-government is one of the examples. One of the topics that is analyzed in the discussion of educational policy is the effect of content on artificial intelligence. In other words, understanding the complexities of decision-making processes as well as the importance of the actors involved in such processes, has undoubtedly influenced artificial intelligence and is influenced by it. This article is designed as a review and library method and it examines the educational policies of Iran, America and Singapore in the field of artificial intelligence with an exploratory view.

Wrestling with the ghost of deficit: exploring the experiences of trainee English further education teachers

Global education policy discourse is based on an unshakable belief that more and improved skills will promote economic prosperity, global competitiveness and social inclusion. In England, the Further Education and Skills sector (FES) has emerged as the vehicle to deliver these skills. However, the portrayal of FES as focusing primarily on vocational education for people often adjudged to be ‘not academic’ positions the sector at the bottom of the educational hierarchy, with negative ramifications for those who teach and study in it. This paper applies a case study approach to explore the lived experiences of five trainee FES teachers completing their initial teacher education (ITE). Drawing on contemporary interpretations of Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, I develop Morrin’s notion of hauntings to explain the psycho-social, historical and spatial influences on the trainees’ responses as they re-enter the field of education as teachers.

Surveillance and datafication in higher education

It has become a commonplace in educational research and policy discourses to state that digital technology has ‘transformed’ the nature of higher education, and even the university itself, leading to what is claimed to be more interactive or less hierarchical formats and engagement, in which traditional modes of teaching such as the lecture, are claimed to be obsolete. These narratives, arguably, express a widespread desire for ‘transformation’ in the university. In terms of digital education, this has been expressed variously in the apparently benign ideologies of ‘active learning’, ‘connectivism’, and ‘the flipped classroom’, all of which share common values, those which prize student interaction, and observable engagement, both online and in the face-to-face setting. Although these constructs appear to be ‘student centred’ and progressive, critics (e.g. Macfarlane 2017) have pointed out that an emphasis on student performance of a particular form of engagement and identity in higher education may in fact threaten the fundamental values of academic freedom. In parallel, regimes of audit concerning academic performance have become more prevalent in higher education, with metrics measuring publications and impact becoming more influential on academic careers. I have argued elsewhere (Author 2020) that this tendency is greater in the context of digital education, where performativity, surveillance and regulation are intensified via digital technologies, as part of a broader ‘culture of surveillance’ in society (Lyon 2018). As recent commentators have argued (e.g. Williamson 2017a), the increased use of big data to track and monitor student activity, has the effect of ‘datafying’ them as human subjects; the same could be said for the technology of the h-index for academics. In this paper I will combine insights of digital education research, science and technology studies and information science in order to interrogate the nature and effects of this increased ‘datafication’ of higher education, looking at two examples; learner analytics and the author publication metric h-index. I will argue that these two digitally-mediated ‘documenting’ practices share several features; they have a supervisory or surveilling function, they are underpinned by particular ideologies, and they carry normative force regarding the nature of ‘desirable’ subjectivities and practices. I conclude that there is a need to sustain a critical agenda of research around these technologies of surveillance and documentation, particularly in the current context in which ‘discourses of inevitability’ surrounding digitisation of higher education prevail.

CONDITIONERS OF DEMOCRATIC MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC BASIC EDUCATION SCHOOLS

This article is the result of a Doctoral Thesis in education whose object of study was to analyze institutional evaluation as a mechanism that enhances democratic management, investigating resonances of this relationship in public basic education schools. One of the paths was the identification of factors that have acted as conditions for democratic management. One of the conditions for the democratic management of public schools concerns management reforms, implemented in Brazil in recent decades, influenced by the neoliberal model of public administration. The second condition refers to the formation of educational policy discourse, which has been influenced by global and international networks in the process of formulating national policies, especially multilateral agencies that offer sponsorship for the implementation of certain national policies. A bibliographical research pointed out similar difficulties in different regions of Brazil regarding the limitations of implementing Democratic Management, highlighting the need to break with clientelistic and authoritarian management practices.

Transformative Way of Becoming a Teacher: A Phenomenological-Hermeneutic Analysis of Class Teacher Education in Finland

Transformative learning in teacher education qualitatively changes future teachers’ meaning systems of learning, teaching, and education. In this study, I explored transformative learning in Finnish class teacher education. Data were collected by observing student teachers over two academic years. Data also contains writings that student teachers produced during that period. A phenomenological analysis focused on the general characteristics of the transformative way of becoming a teacher and identified a process consisting of four phases: starting point, crack, ambivalence, and transformation. A hermeneutic analysis was used to interpret how the process occurred in practice. The results suggest a long and ambivalent process, which challenges educational policy discourses that emphasize efficiency and speed.

Teachers’ Perceptions of Curriculum Changes in the Sumba, Timor, and Flores Regions

This research investigates teachers’ perceptions of transitioning from Curriculum 13 to the Merdeka Curriculum in Sumba, Timor, and Flores. Using a quantitative descriptive approach, 180 respondents participated, including 70 from Sumba, 90 from Timor, and 20 from Flores. Data was collected using a Likert scale questionnaire via Google Forms, a widely accepted method for measuring attitudes and perceptions. The questionnaire was validated by experts in the field. These research findings show that teachers perceive the transition as sufficient, with variations in aspects like absorption, understanding, evaluation, and role perception. Challenges include insufficient information about the Merdeka Curriculum, impacting implementation and outcomes. The study underscores the need for proactive measures to enhance teachers’ understanding and implementation while advocating for stability in curriculum changes, contributing to educational policy discourse and teacher professional development.

On the surface and below: a genealogical look at the waves of evaluation in early childhood education and care

ABSTRACT The rise of evaluation and data in education and education policy is a trend manifesting across a wide variety of policy contexts, holding in its grip national and global policies, with impacts that reach the level of individual children, teachers, and their subjectivities. Earlier research has mainly focused on the phenomenon in neoliberal contexts. This article presents a case study of Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy discourse built on a tradition of social democratic political rationality and egalitarian values. By utilizing Evert Vedung’s metaphor of evaluation waves, we examine how the evaluation trend has influenced the Finnish ECEC policy, which has traditionally been skeptical toward the assessment of individual children’s learning and skills and the production and use of data for accountability purposes. In the genealogical reading of ECEC curricula and policy documents from 2002–2021 as data, we identify three discursive practices – partnership, pedagogization, and evidence wave – that have socio-historically contributed to the formation of the present conception of evaluation in the Finnish ECEC policy discourse. Our genealogical reading also reveals a movement toward international trends – evaluating the individual child’s skills – especially through the evidence wave.

Towards governmentality with Chinese characteristics: higher education policy discourses in post-colonial Hong Kong and Macao

ABSTRACT This article examines the intertwining and evolution of neoliberal and nationalist discourses in post-colonial Hong Kong and Macao, arguing that their combination reveals the dual layers of political rationality in the dynamics of higher education policymaking. It suggests a move towards governmentality with Chinese characteristics, marked by gradual and continuous shifts towards decolonisation and re-Sinicisation within the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ framework. This perspective contrasts with existing literature on Hong Kong that emphasises the maintenance of the colonial status quo and points out abrupt changes due to the 2019 protests and the 2020 National Security Law. By analysing the reconfiguration of governmentality in the higher education systems of these post-colonial Chinese societies amid changing political landscapes, the article sheds light on both the incremental changes and significant moments influencing the trajectory of higher education development in Hong Kong and Macao.

Participatory politics and education policy reform: publics and histories

ABSTRACT In this theoretical article, we respond to a common education policy discourse that represents community participation in educational policy-making as an essentially rational solution to policy problems and as inherently progressive and democratic. We propose that conceptualising participatory politics as ‘publics’ challenges this discourse and provides new openings for understanding community participation in education policy reform as modes of worldmaking. Historicising the participative turn within the key decades of the 1970s and 1980s, we argue that mobilisations of participatory politics in education reform are complicated by the existence of participatory reactionary or conservative politics and by participatory politics that are either fleeting and unsuccessful, or exceed or refuse the sovereignty of the liberal democratic state. We propose that working with the theories of the publics can enable a richer understanding of the history of neoliberal education policy reform and of present and future aspirations for participatory education policy practices.

Janus-faced discourse in contemporary Norwegian policy framing for tackling educational inequality? A critical analysis of contemporary tensions and contradictions

This paper focuses on contemporary tensions and contradictions in current Norwegian educational policy discourse. Based on critical discourse analysis (CDA) of Norwegian governmental white papers our analysis reveals that contemporary Norwegian policy formulation is torn between an egalitarian and a selection discourse about how to tackle educational inequality in the Norwegian comprehensive school system. The egalitarian discourse is characterised by principles like inclusion, equity and recognising diversity in the education system with a stated aim to balance educational outcomes. The selection discourse advertises greater selection, competition, and outcome control in the light of international competition and calls for better correspondence between schooling, higher education, and labour market needs. Paradoxically, both discourses are advertising themselves as proper solutions for tackling and reducing educational inequality in Norway. Taking indications of growing social inequality in Norway into consideration we conclude that growing importance of selection and competition arguments in contemporary Norwegian educational policy have increased dissonance and inconsistency in discourse and have started to overpower egalitarian values. We conclude that this will, against egalitarian creed and rhetorical claim in Norwegian educational policy, rather foster than reduce educational inequality.

Doing “more with less”: the entrepreneurialization of Finnish higher education and innovation policy discourses in 2015–2019

ABSTRACT In the past decades, the development of higher education institutions (HEIs) in industrialized countries has become intertwined with innovation policy and the goal of national competitiveness. Focusing on the discourses on innovation by the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC), this article illustrates the transformation of Finnish higher education policy ideas in the late 2010s following the demise of the previous policy consensus built around the notion of the National Innovation System. Through a critical policy discourse analysis of 35 publications by the MEC, we demonstrate that its recent policy discourses are dominated by an increasingly market-centric strategy of entrepreneurialism in conditions of major cuts to the public funding of universities and R&D. This strategy has serious limitations and contradictions, which have generated institutional conflicts and hinder the development of a more sustainable and balanced innovation agenda for the Finnish higher education field.

한국의 지식 공유형 교육 ODA 정책 내러티브에 관한 비판적 담론 분석

This study examines how education ODA policy narrative has been delivered in the form of policy transfer through the Knowledge Sharing Program (KSP) from South Korea to partner countries and further explores what kind of education policy discourse is being formed in the process. To this end, a critical discourse analysis was conducted on 33 policy advisory reports of KSP projects in the education sector from 2005 to 2021. The results can be divided mainly into three dimensions. In terms of textual practice, the KSP reports deliver a tacit message that Korea's education policies and systems are superior to those of partner countries by repeatedly using specific vocabulary or reinforcing contrasting metaphors when describing the current educational state of Korea and partner countries. At the level of discursive practice, the forms of description tended to be particularly bureaucratic and stereotyped, simply listing information according to a consistent structure. Moreover, the content of the reports, in general, was characterized by lacking consideration of the different social contexts of the partner countries. In terms of socio-cultural practice, it was confirmed that the situational context in which the report was planned and written ─ as well as the political stance of the Korean government had a significant influence on the formation of the policy narrative. This study examined the trends, characteristics, problems, and limitations of Korean education ODA analyzed in previous studies from a new perspective of discourse formation and dissemination through critical discourse analysis of policy narratives. On that basis, this study suggests considerations essential for Korean education ODA to create a narrative with its own originality and expertise.

Difference and school exclusion in a time of COVID-19

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 crisis has deepened educational and social inequalities and exacerbated different forms of exclusion from education. This article reviews current concerns about formal and informal disciplinary school exclusion in England. Educational policy discourse in England has tended to seek individual reasons for exclusion rather than develop an understanding of exclusion in the wider context of education, social policy and the law. In contrast, this article attempts to advance a multi-disciplinary theoretical understanding of the phenomenon of disciplinary school exclusion by drawing on the related concepts of repair and maintenance, connective specialisation, classification and categorisation. The article draws on conversations with professionals and practitioners about the impact of the pandemic on practices of exclusion in England. The conclusion calls for a more nuanced understanding of vulnerability as a primary category in practices of exclusion. This would involve a reconceptualisation of the concept of connective specialism, which assumes that school exclusion cannot be treated as separate from the general welfare and education systems, as a means of understanding vulnerability within an inclusive education system.

A view from the garden: Interrupting politics of attainment and re-orienting education towards sustainable futures

There is growing recognition amongst scholars that addressing the current global ecological crisis requires a new ecological awareness, and a different model of education, in order to live together on a ‘planet under pressure’. Against this backdrop, several studies internationally have pointed to initiatives such as school gardens, with the capacity to address sustainability issues, enhance participation, engagement and responsibility of young people from different backgrounds and locales. However, questions remain about the extent to which garden spaces may leverage current educational discourses, and the work of schools, to meet the needs of all. This article draws upon interviews with teachers, head teachers and student teachers who had been involved in growing food with children in school garden spaces. Drawing on the concept of ‘learning ecology’, data illustrate the co-existence of multiple views and purposes of engaging children with gardening in school, and the impact of linear discourses of education framing the teachers’ gaze. Findings from the study are twofold: (i) they illustrate that gardens have the potential to interrupt economic discourses around attainment defined as cognitive gains and (ii) that such awareness is paramount to re-direct attention to that which is often marginalised and forgotten in educational policy discourses.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of the UK SEND Review Green Paper

Abstract In this paper we carry out a Critical Discourse Analysis (cda) of the UK Government’s 2022 Green Paper ‘Right Support, Right Place, Right Time’, known as ‘the SEND Review’. Our analysis is informed both by Hyatt’s (2013) Critical Higher Education Policy Discourse Analysis (chepda) framework and by our cognizance of how the term ‘special educational needs’ is constructed in the context of the state’s active and passive enactment of policies that continue to diminish the quality of disabled people’s lives. Our analysis focuses principally on deconstruction of the Green Paper with close attention to modes of legitimation, interdiscursivity, intertextuality, presupposition/implication, and lexico-grammatical construction. We present three main areas of interest: the (mis)use of and omission of ‘need’, the ubiquitous and ambiguous use of ‘we’, and the presentation of ‘newness’ in the SEND Review.