Global Education Policy Field Research Articles

The racial grammar of development: a critical narrative inquiry of Vietnam’s educational exchange program with Mozambique

ABSTRACT In recent years, mounting criticisms of international development aid to education have led many policymakers, practitioners, and scholars to look to South-South cooperation (SSC) as an alternative. This study problematises the current fascination with SSC through a critical narrative inquiry of six Vietnamese experts in Mozambique, using the conceptual framework of the racial grammar of development. As a bilateral governmental exchange rooted in solidarity, the Vietnamese-Mozambican case of SSC indeed shows an alternative model to deliver international assistance. Nevertheless, this South-South cooperation is still an Asian-Black encounter where solidarity is subverted by the racial grammar that underwrites development aid. Vietnamese-Mozambican SSC is not an alternative to development, it is merely an alternative in development. Through centering global dynamics of racism beyond the Black–White dichotomy, this study contributes to the global education policy field a cautionary note against the romanticisation of the Global South.

Equity and opacity in enacting Chinese higher education policy: contrasting perspectives of domestic and international students

Drawing upon notions of a global higher education policy field and recently theorised conceptions of ‘global-local’ imbrications in social space, this article explores the complex tensions that characterise the enactment of internationalisation policies in Chinese higher education (HE) and their contrasting effects upon domestic and international students. Ten domestic Chinese and ten international students attending an elite university in China were interviewed. The article reveals that although the Chinese government and universities ostensibly sought to introduce internationalisation policies that ‘managed’ domestic and international students ‘similarly’, comparisons of domestic and international students’ experiences revealed different ways of recruiting, educating, and hosting domestic and international students; these left the former feeling the system was inequitable and encouraged lower standards, and the latter feeling the system was opaque and difficult to navigate. The study cautions that the political imperative to increase the number of international students as a measure of internationalisation adversely influences efforts to develop sustainable international HE in China, even as the limitations of this approach are increasingly recognised.

The sociology of policy change within international organisations: beyond coercive and normative perspectives – towards circuits of power

ABSTRACT For international organisations in the global education policy field, legitimacy is based in large part on the supposed techno-rational basis of these organisations and their ability to credibly produce knowledge and policy expertise. However, as the present article demonstrates, there are clearly a range of macro–micro organisational dynamics driving the production of knowledge and the policy ideas that are advanced. By revealing the way that a particular policy emerged and was promoted within the World Bank, this article seeks to expose the way that policy innovation is produced by the iterative interplay of agentic activity and particular organisational circumstances – and how this process is used to maintain and extend the influence of international organisations and the individuals who represent them. By drawing on Stewart Clegg’s ‘circuits of power’ approach, we seek to theorise the internal dynamics of international organisations, and, in so doing, to move beyond the dominant coercive and normative perspectives.

The suspect statistics of best practices: a triple critique of knowledge production and mobilisation in the global education policy field

ABSTRACT The present article addresses the production and global dissemination of ‘policy relevant knowledge’. It not only unpacks the methodological assumptions of a particular type of knowledge production – known as impact evaluations – but also analyses the issue of knowledge mobilisation within the political economy of the global education policy field. Having a critical understanding of impact evaluations is crucial because they are widely regarded as the most valid informational basis from which to make policy decisions. The importance of grasping the methodological limitations and political-economic dynamics that afflict knowledge production and mobilisation is demonstrated through the case of Colombia’s well-known charter school programme. By employing a strategy that has been labelled bibliographic ethnography, this article not only takes a critical look at the knowledge base that has been produced on this programme but also maps the way that evaluations of this charter school programme, despite their limitations, have been cited and invoked in academic and organisational publications to project this programme internationally. The article concludes by offering a theoretically-informed discussion of how we should understand the trajectory of impact evaluations (and other knowledge products) as they cross multiple personal, organisational, political, and discursive contexts.

Setting a global agenda of education: Cooperation and tension within the global education policy field

This paper explores how the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) mediate normative values of education and influence education policy. Drawing on staff interviews, the paper examines the perceived pivotal function of the OECD and UNESCO as ‘global’ agenda setting. Taking the notion of a wider global education policy field as the theoretical departure point, the analysis shows that the geographical knowledges of these organisations are significantly shaped by tensions and interdependencies between different agents within the broader field. The polarities within the field reflect the organisations’ different geographical scopes and political-economic paths. Moreover, there is a balancing act whereby the OECD and UNESCO are expected to address global issues while also nurturing relations with individual member-states that bring economic and symbolic capital to the organisations. The paper highlights two sets of geographical knowledges present in the organisations’ work, namely, time-space knowledges and scalar knowledges. Thus, the global agenda of education is embedded in a complex geography ranging from individual to global level, where orders of dominance between nation-states are reinforced in the formulation and allocation of problems and solutions.

Global-local Education Policy Dynamics: A Case Study of New Zealand and Norway

ABSTRACTWhile a number of studies have established the growing role impact PISA has had on national education policy, much less is known about the global-local recontextualization of policy transfer, and the role of national policy officials. Through interviews with key policy officials in Norway and New Zealand, the study revealed a growing cosmopolitanism in outlook in both countries with strong indications of changes made to respond to PISA data. However, officials also reasserted the strengths of their national education system and worked to enrich OECD understandings of educational quality. Theorizing through Bourdieu, the authors propose that the concept of cosmopolitan capital provides a useful analytical tool to explain increasingly outward and globally-oriented practices and dispositions held by policy officials within a global education policy field.

OECD’s Role on the educational reform of Kim Young-Sam administration: The Influence of International Organization and Korea’s incorporation into Global Education Policy Field

OECD’s Role on the educational reform of Kim Young-Sam administration: The Influence of International Organization and Korea’s incorporation into Global Education Policy Field

Organizational Legitimacy in the Global Education Policy Field: Learning from UNESCO and the Global Monitoring Report

In the field of global education policy, it is common for scholars to reflect on the progress made toward internationally agreed-upon agendas, such as Education for All (EFA). However, scant research has turned the gaze back on the major multilateral institutions that commit to taking the lead in meeting these agendas in order to ask, what implications do such agendas have for these organizations? We respond in this article by investigating the way in which UNESCO used its position as the coordinator of EFA to help it regain some of the legitimacy it lost in the preceding decades. To do so, the article first elaborates a tripartite conceptualization of organizational legitimacy and then applies it to the two prongs of UNESCO’s strategy—EFA coordination and the production of the Global Monitoring Reports (GMRs) during a key period, 2000–2014, that were at the forefront of UNESCO’s efforts to rebrand and reposition itself in the context of multilateralism.

Regaining legitimacy in the context of global governance? UNESCO, Education for All coordination and the Global Monitoring Report

This research note shares insights which resulted from a larger study into the ways in which the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) – during 2010–2014 – used its position as coordinator of the post-Dakar Framework for Action (initiated at the World Education Forum held in 2000 and designed to reinvigorate the Education for All initiative) to help it regain some of the legitimacy it had lost in the preceding decades. The research study focused on the role of both the UNESCO Education for All Follow-up Unit and the production of the Global Monitoring Report (GMR) during the 2000s because they were at the heart of UNESCO’s efforts to repair its image and renew its impact in one area of global governance, specifically in the global education policy field. The study’s findings were based on an analysis of documents, archives and interviews (n = 17) with key actors inside and outside UNESCO, including representatives of UNESCO’s peer institutions.

PISA in the Greek daily Press: the social significations and the relationship between the Greek society and the global education policy field

Literature has been discussing the influence of International Organisations (IOs) on education policies ever since globalisation became the regime of our times. In this regard, a global education policy field has emerged where IOs meet with nations on different levels. This project focuses on PISA, the OECD’s programme of student assessment, and aims to explore the emergence and expression of the social imaginary significations that arise in the Greek daily Press regarding PISA. By looking at PISA-related press publications, this paper addresses the unequivocal power of Press and seeks to understand how Greek society positions itself within the global education policy field i .

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

ABSTRACTIn 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.

Researching the habitus of global policy actors in education

This paper reprises the argument for the emergence of a global education policy field and then focuses on the shared habitus of global and national policy actors and technicians. It is argued that this shared habitus is constituted as a reflection of and a contribution to the creation of the global education policy field. Bourdieu’s approach to habitus as both methodological tool and concept is used and the significance of the interview encounter to understanding habitus is argued. The authors also draw on the content of interviews with five elite policy-makers and technicians. It was found that the policy actors and technicians shared a similar middle-class embodied habitus; in terms of schemes of perception, they identified with a high-modernist confidence in both science and technology; they identified with a cosmopolitan outlook and sensibility; and demonstrated scientistic approaches that held real confidence in understanding the social through quantitative social science methods.

Defining Moments in Policy Development, Direction, and Implementation in Irish Initial Teacher Education Policy

This paper explores the impact of significant OECD documents on the development of Irish education policy, specifically teacher education policy, over the last half century. While other commentators have argued that Irish education has been predominantly influenced by policy developments in the UK, US or Europe, this paper identifies the OECD as a significant trigger for domestic policy reform and discusses key reports/publications that have influenced both ideological and structural reforms of Irish education. Long before the growth of evidence-based reform or the emergence of a global education policy field, Irish policy makers invited the newly formed OECD to review Ireland’s provision of education; this review generated base-line data and highlighted both the inequity of Irish education as well as its inadequacy in providing for the future needs of the Irish economy. Thus began a long-term relationshipwith the OECD, which has served to prompt and guide policy revision and reform at critical decision points over five decades. While engagement with the OECD cannot simply explain changes in Irish education, it does, however, provide a valuable perspective on domestic policy making.

Representing Your Country: Scotland, PISA and New Spatialities of Educational Governance

This paper focuses on the rescaling and re-spatialization of policy and governance in education, including the constitution of a global education policy field. It deals with the changing education policy work of the OECD, particularly the influential Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We argue that PISA has become the most successful OECD ‘product’ and as such has become the prototype for other OECD developments, including PISA-Based tests for schools, PISA for development, PIACC and AHELO. These developments help constitute a global education policy field and contribute to the production of a global data infrastructure in education. At the same time, they also have impacts on other spatial relations, including sub-national and local effects in schooling. For example, the PISA-based test for schools programme can be used directly by schools and sub-national systems as part of the new policy spaces in education. In this paper, we document the role of the OECD’s education work in respect of these matters. We focus specifically on a video, PISA 2012 - Representing Your Country, produced by the Scottish Department of Education and anchored by the Scottish National Party Minister for Education. The aim of the video is to inspire the participation and strong performance of Scottish students in the 2012 PISA sample. As we will show, using a ‘videological analysis’, this video demonstrates how Scottish independence and nationalism involve reaching out to draw on the expertise of supranational organisations such as the OECD, while at the same time the OECD is reaching in to nations to shape policy agendas in sub-national spaces.

Looking East: Shanghai, PISA 2009 and the reconstitution of reference societies in the global education policy field

This paper examines the outstanding performance of Shanghai, China on PISA 2009 and its effects on other national systems and within the global education policy field. The OECD's PISA is helping to create this field by constituting the globe as a commensurate space of school system performance. The effects of Shanghai's success are considered in three other national contexts: the USA, England and Australia. We combine (a) analysis of data from more than 30 research interviews with senior policy actors at the OECD, the IEA and within Australia and England; and (b) document analysis of policy speeches, commissioned research reports and media coverage from the three national contexts. Shanghai's performance in PISA 2009 produced a global ‘PISA-shock’ that has repositioned this system as a significant new ‘reference society’, shifting the global gaze in education from Finland to the ‘East’ at the beginning of the so-called ‘Asian century’.

Testing regimes, accountabilities and education policy: commensurate global and national developments

This paper focuses on outlining, contextualising and theorising the rise of global and complementary national modes of test-based, top-down accountability in schooling systems. The effects of these infrastructures of accountability on schools, teachers’ pedagogical work, on the width of curriculum and on the goals of schooling are also alluded to. These developments are theorised in terms of rescaling of the policy cycle globally, as a well as the topological turn that sees the globe reconstituted as a single space of comparative and commensurate measurement of the performance of school systems, as part of the move to new global forms of networked governance. We argue that we are seeing a new global panopticism, with national school systems variously positioned within the global market place and global educational policy field with important effects within national policy-making. The analysis and theorising provided serves as a contextual backdrop and introduction to the papers included in the special issue of the Journal of Education Policy on the theme of Testing Regimes, Accountabilities and Education Policy. We argue, and the papers demonstrate, the significance for policy sociology today of recognising testing as a, perhaps the, major policy steering systems and the work of schools today.

Policy as numbers: ac/counting for educational research

This paper provides an account and a critique of the rise of the contemporary policy as numbers phenomenon and considers its effects on policy and for educational research. Policy as numbers is located within the literatures on numbers in politics and the statistics/state relationship and, while recognising the longevity of the latter relationship, it is argued that the governance turn and neo-liberalism have strengthened the role of numbers in contemporary education policy. This phenomenon is situated in the contemporary ‘structure of feeling’, which sees politics reduced to managing the everyday and the evisceration of a progressive imaginary. The paper then documents the impact within education, focusing both on the emergent global education policy field and on the national agenda in Australian schooling and the related rise of ‘gap talk’, both globally and nationally. The paper concludes by drawing out some implications for educational research, suggesting that we as educational researchers are also being positioned by policy as numbers.

New scalar politics: implications for education policy

This paper argues that globalisation has implications for research and theory in the social sciences, demanding that the social no longer be seen as homologous with nation, but also linked to postnational or global fields. This situation has theoretical and methodological implications for comparative education specifically focused on education policy, which traditionally has taken the nation-state as the unit of analysis, and also worked with ‘methodological nationalism’. The paper argues that globalisation has witnessed a rescaling of educational politics and policymaking and relocated some political authority to an emergent global education policy field, with implications for the functioning of national political authority and national education policy fields. This rescaling and this reworking of political authority are illustrated through two cases: the first is concerned with the impact of a globalised policy discourse of the ‘knowledge economy’ proselytised by the OECD and its impact in Australian policy developments; the second is concerned explicitly with the constitution of a global education policy field as a commensurate space of equivalence, as evidenced in the OECD’s PISA and educational indicators work and their increasing global coverage. The paper indicatively utilises Bourdieu’s ‘thinking tools’ to understand the emergent global education policy field and suggests these are very useful for doing comparative education policy analysis.

Defining educational research: A perspective of/on presidential addresses and the australian association for research in education

This paper is concerned with the definition of the field of educational research and the changing and developing role of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) in representing and constituting this field. The evidence for the argument is derived from AARE Presidential Addresses across its 40-year history. The paper documents the enhanced complexity and diversity of the field over these 40 years, including the emergence of a global educational policy field, theoretical and methodological developments in the social sciences and new research accountabilities such as the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) measure. Specifically, the paper suggests that the evidence-based movement in public management and education policy, and the introduction of the ERA, potentially limit and redefine the field of educational research, reducing the usefulness and relevance of educational research to policy makers and practitioners. This arises from a failure to recognise thatEducation is both a field of research and a field of policy and practice. Located against both developments, the paper argues for a principled eclecticism framed by a reassessment of quality, which can be applied to the huge variety of methodologies, theories, epistemologies and topics legitimately utilised and addressed within the field of educational research. At the same time, the paper argues the need to globalise the educational research imagination and deparochialise educational research. This call is located within a broader argument suggesting the need for a new social imaginary (in a post-neoliberal context of the global financial crisis) to frame educational policy and practice and the contribution that educational theory and research might make to its constitution. In relation to this, the paper considers the difficulties that political representations of such a new imaginary might entail for the President and the Association, given the variety of its membership and huge diversity of its research interests.

Critical Discourse Analysis in Comparative Education: A Discursive Study of “Partnership” in Tanzania’s Poverty Reduction Policies

The study of policy in comparative education has been approached using methods associated with the principal social science disciplines that have informed the field since its inception. In particular, the disciplines of history, political science, sociology, and anthropology have had a significant influence on determining the acceptable methods for comparative educational policy analysis, as evident by studies of policy published since the mid-1990s in Comparative Education Review. Given the multidisciplinary orientation of comparative education, it is curious that the discipline of linguistics remains virtually absent from the pages of the field’s flagship journal. This dearth is particularly anomalous today when one considers the interest in critical inquiry as a framework for interpreting the discursive aspects of knowledge production. Such interest makes it an opportune time to consider how one type of linguistic analysis—critical discourse analysis (CDA)—could enhance the comparative study of educational policy. The field of policy studies is a particularly fruitful area in which to explore the critical strand of discourse analysis because policies are, by definition, texts imbued with authority. Broadly constructivist in methodology, CDA asserts that knowledge is socially constructed and shaped by relations of power that are both material and discursive. It rejects the premises of structuralism and, instead, embraces the view that certain meaning systems—or discourses—are privileged by their relationship with dominant groups in society and are, themselves, constitutive of social relations (Rogers 2004). Policies, according to Stephen Ball, are particularly important expressions of social power in that they convey the values of authoritative actors and institutions whose particular forms of knowledge about the social world are reflected in these texts. Ball (1990, 17) utilizes a Foucauldian notion of discourse to explicate this power/knowledge relationship: “Power and knowledge are two