Showing papers in "Journal of Education Policy in 2013"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors 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.
Abstract: 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 iss...
315 citations
TL;DR: A review essay on the history, evolution and development of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and traces the growing impact of its education work is presented in this paper.
Abstract: This review essay discusses the history, evolution and development of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and traces the growing impact of its education work. The essay is in four main sections. The first discusses Carrol and Kellow’s The OECD: A Study of Organizational Adaptation (Edward Elgar) and provides a brief historical account of the Organisation. The second section reviews Woodward’s The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Routledge) and considers the different modes of governance employed by the OECD, particularly its exercise of soft power through peer review. The third section considers Tucker’s edited book, Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems (Harvard Education Press) and the effects that Shanghai-China’s 2009 (PISA) success has had on education policy debates in the USA and globally. The final section engages with Sahlberg’s Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn From Educational Change in Finland? (Teachers College Press) and describes factors that have contributed to the high quality and equity of schooling in Finland. The review essay thus moves from an examination of the role and function of the OECD in general terms to more specific discussion of the recent impact of its PISA, which has drawn attention to particular school systems and has influenced education policy-making in both member and non-member countries. We conclude by providing a framework for understanding the epistemological and infrastructural governance functions of the OECD in education globally.
266 citations
TL;DR: For example, the authors argues that no country has established a bona fide economic market in the first-degree education of domestic students, and no research university is driven by shareholders, profit, market share, allocative efficiency or the commodity form.
Abstract: For more than two decades, governments around the world, led by the English-speaking polities, have moved higher education systems closer to the forms of textbook economic markets. Reforms include corporatisation, competitive funding, student charges, output formats and performance reporting. But, no country has established a bona fide economic market in the first-degree education of domestic students. No research university is driven by shareholders, profit, market share, allocative efficiency or the commodity form. There is commercial tuition only in parts of vocational training and international education. While intensified competition, entrepreneurship and consumer talk are pervasive in higher education, capitalism is not very important. At the most, there are regulated quasi-markets, as in post-Browne UK. This differs from the experience of privatisation and commercialisation of transport, communications, broadcasting and health insurance in many nations. The article argues that bona fide market refo...
262 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the perverse effects of the accountability regime central to the Labor government's national reform agenda in schooling and examine the relationship between the federal government and states in negotiating performance targets on NAPLAN for reward payments in respect of a national agreement to improve literacy and numeracy.
Abstract: This paper examines the perverse effects of the new accountability regime central to the Labor government’s national reform agenda in schooling. The focus is on National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results that now act as ‘catalyst data’ and are pivotal to school and system accountability. We offer a case study, with two embedded units of analysis, in which NAPLAN has become high stakes testing for systems. The first involves the relationships between the federal government and three States (Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland) in negotiating performance targets on NAPLAN for reward payments in respect of a national agreement to improve literacy and numeracy. We show how Victoria used 2009 data as baseline, set ambitious targets and failed to meet them, while Queensland set much less ambitious targets, met them and was rewarded. New South Wales created targets that combined literacy and numeracy scores, obfuscating the evidence, and met their targets. The second focuses specif...
216 citations
TL;DR: Ringrose et al. as mentioned in this paper have suggested that the normative standards of education are not always the right ones and proposed a new foundation and future of education series, Foundations and futures of education.
Abstract: by Jessica Ringrose, Foundations and futures of education series. London, Routledge, 2012, 200 pp., £24.99 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-415-55749-8 Faulkner (2010, 104) has suggested that the normative...
135 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that mid-level policy actors are crucial to the work of policy interpretation and translation because they are engaged in elaborating the condensed codes of policy texts to an imagined logic of teachers' practical work.
Abstract: This paper contributes to critical policy research by theorising one aspect of policy enactment, the meaning making work of a cohort of mid-level policy actors. Specifically, we propose that Basil Bernstein’s work on the structuring of pedagogic discourse, in particular, the concept of recontextualisation, may add to understandings of the policy work of interpretation and translation. Recontextualisation refers to the relational processes of selecting and moving knowledge from one context to another, as well as to the distinctive re-organisation of knowledge as an instructional and regulative or moral discourse. Processes of recontextualisation necessitate an analysis of power and control relations, and therefore add to the Foucauldian theorisations of power that currently dominate the critical policy literature. A process of code elaboration (decoding and recoding) takes place in various recontextualising agencies responsible for the production of professional development materials, teaching guidelines and curriculum resources. We propose that mid-level policy actors are crucial to the work of policy interpretation and translation because they are engaged in elaborating the condensed codes of policy texts to an imagined logic of teachers’ practical work. To illustrate our theoretical points we draw on data collected for an Australian research project on the accounts of mid-level policy actors responsible for the interpretation of child protection and safety policies for staff in Queensland schools.
122 citations
TL;DR: This is a fundamentally practical book and all the more so because Youdell avoids the temptation to reach for superficial answers, searching instead for how radical change might actually be achieved as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: This is a fundamentally practical book and all the more so because Youdell avoids the temptation to reach for superficial answers, searching instead for how radical change might actually be achieved. Much of the book is devoted to a presentation of her understanding of the nature of the social in general and of schooling in particular, and the possibility of doing things differently and better. Her starting point is
121 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a sociological analysis of the knowledge and actors that have become central to international assessments is presented, focusing on the processes that influence the production of shared narratives and agendas, adopting the position that their existence is not organic, but rather the product of undertakings that often fabricate and manage.
Abstract: Through a sociological analysis of the knowledge and actors that have become central to international assessments, the paper focuses on the processes that influence the production of shared narratives and agendas, adopting the position that their existence is not organic, but rather the product of undertakings that often fabricate and manage, rather than strive for ‘real’ consensus. The paper suggests that limiting the analysis to the role of travel and exchanges of experts and policy-makers in the making of policy is, in fact, the construction of an ‘ideal-type’ of an international policy-making world. Recent research on these encounters suggests that one needs to focus on actors’ conflict and struggles, rather than processes of ‘collective puzzling’. Using the concept of ‘political work’, as well as elements of Bourdieu’s field theory, the paper shows the ways that international comparative testing in the field of education has not only offered policy-makers with much needed data to govern, but has in f...
110 citations
TL;DR: The state and federal tests are not only used to assess students but also to evaluate schools, with poorly performing schools facing overhaul and potentially privatization as discussed by the authors. But, because of the way in which New York has constructed the grading curve, most teachers will be rated as ineffective.
Abstract: Over the last almost two decades, high-stakes testing has become increasingly central to New York’s schools. In the 1990s, the State Department of Education began requiring that secondary students pass five standardized exams to graduate. In 2002, the federal No Child Left Behind Act required students in grades three through eight to take math and language arts tests. Results from the state and federal tests are not only used to assess students but also to evaluate schools, with poorly performing schools facing overhaul and potentially privatization. Most recently, President Obama’s Race to the Top competition requires evaluating teachers based on their students’ test scores which, because of the way in which New York has constructed the grading curve, most teachers will be rated as ‘ineffective.’ Standardized testing, along with other neoliberal reforms such as granting the mayor of New York City control of the public schools, has been promoted as providing more objective assessments and increasing educa...
103 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines education accountability as a mechanism of coercive neoliberal urban governance in the USA and argues that as the crisis gives the state less room to win consent, it intensifies coercion as a strategy of governance.
Abstract: This article examines education accountability as a mechanism of coercive neoliberal urban governance in the USA Drawing on Gramscian theory of the ‘integral state’ as the dialectical synthesis of coercion, consent, and resistance, the author argues that as the crisis gives the state less room to win consent, it intensifies coercion as a strategy of governance The author discusses three aspects of coercive state responses to the crisis in relation to education: (1) cannibalizing public education as a site of capital accumulation; (2) imposition of state austerity regimes and selective abandonment of education as a mechanism of social reproduction and legitimation in African-American communities that have become zones of disposability; and (3) governance by exclusion of African-American and Latino communities through school closings, state takeovers of elected governance bodies, and disenfranchisement Systems of accountability are integral to this process as they make schools legible for the market, mar
101 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue two major difficulties in current discourses of citizenship education are identified: the first is a relative masking of student discourses by positioning students as lacking citizenship a...
Abstract: We argue two major difficulties in current discourses of citizenship education. The first is a relative masking of student discourses of citizenship by positioning students as lacking citizenship a ...
TL;DR: The authors examined the influence of having a university-educated parent on an individual's chances of obtaining a higher education degree and found that although the expansion of higher education has had some impact in terms of reducing inequality, a disproportionately large share of the undergraduate student population is still drawn from higher socio-economic backgrounds.
Abstract: During the latter half of the twentieth century, Australia, like many countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, experienced rapid expansion in participation in higher education which was supported by government through increases in the number of publicly funded university places. However, in spite of this expansion, a disproportionately large share of the undergraduate student population is still drawn from higher socio-economic backgrounds. This paper seeks to understand the persistence of inequality in higher education by examining changes in patterns of participation in Australian universities since the 1970s. Using logistic regressions to analyse data collected by three Australian surveys conducted between 1987 and 2005, the authors examine the influence of having a university-educated parent on an individual’s chances of obtaining a higher education degree. They find that although the expansion of higher education has had some impact in terms of reducing inequality, havi...
TL;DR: In this article, a particular policy critique and analysis of the gender achievement gap discourse in Ontario and Canada, and situate it within the context of what has been termed the governance turn in educational policy with its focus on policy as numbers and its multi-scalar manifestations.
Abstract: In this paper, we undertake a particular policy critique and analysis of the gender achievement gap discourse in Ontario and Canada, and situate it within the context of what has been termed the governance turn in educational policy with its focus on policy as numbers and its multi-scalar manifestations. We show how this ‘gap talk’ is inextricably tied to a neoliberal system of accountability, marketization, comparative performance measures and competition within the context of a globalized education policy field. The focus initially is on how the gender achievement gap has emerged in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OCED) publication of the 2009 Program For International Student Assessment Results, but attention is drawn to questions and categories of equity that are used to define and measure socio-economic disadvantage. We illustrate that such measures and categories in use function to eschew important aspects of maldistribution, with important consequences for understandin...
TL;DR: The International Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) as discussed by the authors is a feasibility study that aims to develop measures that would assess student learning outcomes that would be valid across different languages, cultures and higher education institutions.
Abstract: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is currently engaging in a worldwide feasibility study entitled International Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO). This feasibility study seeks to develop measures that would assess student learning outcomes that would be valid across different languages, cultures, and higher education institutions. Drawing on anticolonial perspectives, this article provides a critical policy analysis of the AHELO project. Based on a review of the AHELO texts, it presents two themes: (1) crisis and imperial logic in policy production and (2) Anglo-Eurocentrism as global designs and colonial relationships. It argues that, through AHELO, OECD is striving to construct a global space of equivalence for teaching and learning in higher education, and in so doing, perpetuates coloniality in global higher education. It concludes by noting some comparative observations between AHELO and Programme for International Student Achievement in terms of ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the concept of rationality is undergoing significant revision in UK education policy-making, influenced by developments in several academic fields and argue that a reliance on rational choice is insufficient and individuals need to be "nudged" to make good choices.
Abstract: This article argues that the concept of rationality is undergoing significant revision in UK education policy-making, influenced by developments in several academic fields. This article focuses on the take up of behavioural economics in policy as one aspect of this revision of the concept of rationality, discussing how this has happened and its implications. Framed by a wider debate regarding the significance of a ‘crisis’ in neoliberal approaches to social change, behavioural economics suggests that a reliance on rational choice is insufficient and individuals need to be ‘nudged’ to make good choices. This revision and its impact on the subject of policy, the policy-maker and policy technologies are examined, and the discussion is supported by two illustrations from school choice and youth service policy texts from the 2000s. The potential use of ‘nudge’ theory in education is also considered with respect to the Conservative–Liberal Democrat government’s use of behavioural economics. In conclusion, we ar...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the dimensions of context at a large English comprehensive school that enable it to thrive within the current demands of the contemporary audit culture, using interview data gathered from a number of senior educators, and draw on Braun et al. (Braun, A., S. Ball, M. Maguire, and K. Hoskins).
Abstract: The predominant focus in this paper is on issues of school context and, in particular, on the dimensions of context at a large English comprehensive school that enable it to thrive within the current demands of the contemporary audit culture. Featuring interview data gathered from a number of senior educators, the paper draws on Braun et al’s (Braun, A., S. Ball, M. Maguire, and K. Hoskins. 2011. “Taking Context Seriously: Towards Explaining Policy Enactments in the Secondary School.” Discourse: Studies in the Politics of Education 32 (4): 585 -596) heuristic device for thinking about the ‘situated’, ‘professional’ and ‘external’ dimensions of context at the school. This device supports an analysis of the school’s intake (in particular the high cultural and class related aspirations of parents and students) and its values (namely the school’s traditional ethos of academic and behavioural excellence). The central argument of the paper is that these contextual dimensions contribute significantly to the scho...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors experiment with the idea of combining path dependency, convergence and contingency in explaining Finnish distinctiveness in education policy and politics since the early 1990s, and elaborate on and contextualise the Finnish QAE model by analysing the particular and somewhat ambiguous ways in which global QAE practices have been received and mediated in Finland.
Abstract: In this article, we experiment with the idea of combining path dependency, convergence and contingency in explaining Finnish distinctiveness in education policy and politics since the early 1990s. The focus of this article is on quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) in comprehensive schooling. We elaborate on and contextualise the Finnish QAE model by analysing the particular and somewhat ambiguous ways in which global QAE practices have – or have not – been received and mediated in Finland.
TL;DR: In the context of the increasing internationalisation of higher education, there is a pressing need to think through how demands for educational equality and justice, that currently tend to be framed at the national and sub-national level, should be conceptualised at a global level.
Abstract: In the context of the increasing internationalisation of higher education, there is a pressing need to think through how demands for educational equality and justice, that currently tend to be framed at the national and sub-national level, should be conceptualised at a global level. This article compares two recent media and policy debates in the UK, over admitting wealthy students off-quota to university and restricting international student visas, in order to demonstrate the contradictions that are created when demands for educational equality stop at the national border. Based on a discussion of these debates, the article calls for the principle of educational equality to be extended outwards, beyond the national border, to apply to domestic and international students alike.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss issues concerning the implementation of quasi-market dynamics, the introduction of private interests and market rules in the provision of formal education at compulsory levels in the Spanish educational system.
Abstract: This paper discusses issues concerning the implementation of quasi-market dynamics, the introduction of private interests and market rules in the provision of formal education at compulsory levels in the Spanish educational system. It aims to discuss current neoliberal discourses and practices in Spain, suggesting new spaces to be considered in future education policy studies. In the paper, I discuss first the ideological sources on which the political action rests and sketch some basic principles developed by the market advocates in the Spanish case. Secondly, I analyse specific mechanisms implemented to guarantee a fertile ground for the establishment of market dynamics in the education system, which has facilitated a significant growth in the private provision in compulsory education levels throughout the last 30 years. The examples presented in this section refer to two specific regions, the autonomous communities of Andalusia and Madrid, traditionally governed by the socialist and conservative party,...
TL;DR: In this paper, a new way of conceptualizing education policy and also beginning to develop a new method of policy analysis is proposed, which draws on the theoretical and conceptual tools of Foucault, and in particular his concept dispositif.
Abstract: This paper proposes a new way of conceptualising education policy and also begins to develop a new method of policy analysis. In both instances, it draws on the theoretical and conceptual tools of Foucault, and in particular his concept dispositif. It posits an historical and ontological formation – a policy dispositif – with formative roots in historical reflections on ‘how to govern’. This contingent policy formation is comprised of a multiplicity of heterogeneous elements, including material objects, discourses, practices and subjectivities. Although it is argued that hegemonic discourses and rationalities have an ontological effect on the dispositif, as an amorphous polymorphic formation it is not so much determined by these, but is rather engendered by strategic struggles over the meaning and governing of education. In developing a new method of policy analysis, three analytical trajectories are identified for investigating the performative and dispositional ontology of micro-dispositifs – power, tru...
TL;DR: This article present a critical analysis of the state-prescribed teaching standards from 1984 to 2012 in order to reveal discourses of equality imbued within, arguing that because this tension remained unexamined in the documents, damaging assumptions of deficit were obscured, thereby effecting a failure to critique the hegenomic norms against which such deficit was assumed, with the ultimate effect of maintaining the status quo of inequitable outcomes.
Abstract: This study presents a critical analysis of the state-prescribed teaching standards from 1984 to 2012 in order to reveal discourses of equality imbued within. Critical discourse analysis and critical race theory are employed to explore and explain how the discourses of equality are shaped by the prevailing political ideology of the state. Up to 2007, the analyses revealed the gradual emergence of two seemingly incompatible discourses: recognition of the difference within notions of appropriacy of curriculum input vs. the assertion of a homogenised knowledge valid for all. It is argued that because this tension remained unexamined in the documents, damaging assumptions of deficit were obscured, thereby effecting a failure to critique the hegenomic norms against which such deficit was assumed, with the ultimate effect of maintaining the status quo of inequitable outcomes. The standards of 2012 also operate to maintain the status quo, but do so far less discretely. Here homogeneity appears overtly approved th...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the methodological basis for empirically researching moments of major policy change, including the creation of the first nation-wide Australian curriculum, through the production, reproduction and subsequent enactment of generations of policy texts.
Abstract: This paper explores the methodological basis for empirically researching moments of major policy change. Its genesis is in the methodological challenges presented by the initial stages of an ongoing research project examining the current attempts to establish the first nation-wide Australian curriculum. We draw on Dorothy Smith’s development of institutional ethnography and Bourdieuian field analysis to outline a methodological framework for research that has at its centre a concern to understand the social and institutional processes that enable, support and discursively prepare for significant educational reform. Working with and between these two eminent contributions to sociological enquiry, our paper explores the ways in which research can trace educational governance through the production, reproduction and subsequent enactment of generations of policy texts even before they are officially released for use in schools. In particular, we suggest that examination of the day-to-day processes involved in...
TL;DR: For example, the authors argue that students with disabilities do not belong in a culture of achievement and educational evaluation, which has an impact on policies concerning educational equity and maintains the oppression of low expectations.
Abstract: International tests of achievement narrowly measure specific academic subjects, but have larger educational policy implications. These tests come to summarize national education systems and are used in national and international discourse. However, students with disabilities are being entirely excluded from participation in the discourse of achievement. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, and Programme for International Student Assessment all actively exclude students with disabilities from being measured when the testing agencies set up ‘desired target populations’ and report out on testing participation. This exclusionary discourse establishes that students with disabilities do not belong in a culture of achievement and educational evaluation, which has an impact on policies concerning educational equity and maintains the oppression of low expectations. US policy requires that 95% of all students take achievement tests and be given...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors address the question of how it is that some education policies "fail" to translate into a continuing and effective set of practices in schools, and instead, are subjected to processes of dissipation and mutation.
Abstract: While a great deal of attention has been given to evaluating how well policies are implemented, that is, how well they are realised in practice, less attention has been paid to understanding and documenting the ways in which schools actually deal with the multiple, and sometimes opaque and contradictory demands of different ‘types’ of policy. This paper addresses the question of how it is that some education policies ‘fail’ to translate into a continuing and effective set of practices in schools, and instead, are subjected to processes of dissipation and mutation. In this paper, we take as our case personalised learning (PL) launched in England in 2004. In understanding complex processes of enactment, the challenge is to understand how policies differ and analyse why some policies ‘work’ in ways that are unexpected – not as failures of implementation but as mutations. As a ‘case’ of policy dissipation, PL highlights the changing relationships between national and institutional imperatives, and the creativ...
TL;DR: This paper analyzed how two policy narratives operated in Canada to promote and ultimately enact financial literacy education policy: the "crusade" and the "chicken coop" to maintain financial literacy's "sacred cow" status.
Abstract: Financial literacy education as policy has gained international political momentum in the years following the 2008 financial crisis. This paper analyses how two policy narratives operated in Canada to promote and ultimately enact financial literacy education policy: the ‘crusade’ and the ‘chicken coop’. While the dominant and counter-narratives offer different perspectives, they both maintain financial literacy’s ‘sacred cow’ status. The application of narrative policy analysis (NPA) underscores how the politics of education policy are complex and cannot be explained by rational, positivist models that would privilege evidence over metaphor. This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on NPA, and sheds light on how financial literacy education is likely to be shaped and legitimized more by the values and mobilization power of special-interest coalitions in favour of it through politics, than by evidence-based research.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors suggest that a significant flaw of systems thinking is the level of simplification at which policy-makers operate on abstract categories such as standards, as if they were reality.
Abstract: Education policy-makers in the UK have repeatedly stated their central aim as transforming British education into a ‘world-class system’. Over the last 20 years, several large-scale education reforms have brought radical changes to the school curriculum, teacher professionalism and educational leadership. Explicit in these reforms, is the deployment of measurable standards of pupil attainment as a lever for achieving school improvement. However, despite this proliferation of policies, the claims to educational improvement made by policy-makers have been contested. Concerns about the unpredicted and damaging long-term effects of these policies can be linked to the limitations of systems thinking which underpins much of this education reform. A significant flaw of systems thinking is the level of simplification at which policy-makers operate on abstract categories such as standards, as if they were reality. Based on case study research conducted in two primary schools, this paper suggests that the systemic ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the role of resistance in higher education reform and suggest that resistance has been circumscribed through a coordinated collection of policies and that as elsewhere, the proliferation of competition based on quasi-markets and the standardisation of quality assurance through new accountability systems predominates, with significant effects on universities, their interactions and agents, and the relative social positions, influence, status and relationships of these agents.
Abstract: The past two decades of international higher education reform are often described by researchers as having produced new managerial and neoliberal policy turns that have brought about a fundamental global shift in the way institutions of higher education are defined, run and justify their institutional existence and practices. Universities in Sweden were felt able to offer some possible resistance and based on ethnographic research at three Swedish universities this idea is explored in the present article. The article suggests however that resistance has been circumscribed through a coordinated collection of policies and that as elsewhere, the proliferation of competition based on quasi-markets and the standardisation of quality assurance through new accountability systems predominates, with significant effects on universities, their interactions and agents, and the relative social positions, influence, status and relationships of these agents.
TL;DR: In this paper, one policy response to the problem of classed school choice experiences in England is examined, and interviews with choice advisors show that difficulties of the job in addition to insecure working conditions within local authorities have led to depoliticised, contradictory advice and Advisers bearing the brunt of policy both in terms of overwork and the venting of parental frustrations.
Abstract: In this paper, one policy response to the problem of classed school choice experiences in England is examined. ‘Choice Advisers’ are employed by government to provide advice and information to working class and disadvantaged parents with the aim of ‘empowering’ them to exercise school choice and aspire to ‘better’ schools for their children. However, Advisers have been subjectified by contradictions inherent in policy, expected to solve the problems of school choice in a context of significant structural limits to choice for working-class parents. Interviews with choice Advisers show that difficulties of the job in addition to insecure working conditions within local authorities have led to depoliticised, contradictory advice and Advisers bearing the brunt of policy both in terms of overwork and the venting of parental frustrations. Agency, both for parents and for Advisers themselves, is described as being something possessed by individuals rather than collectives, so there is little sense overall that u...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the dynamics which occurred in Italy in 2010-2011, within the context of the umpteenth national pilot of school and staff evaluation, and show a paradoxical story of resistance, where teachers and their unions displayed a strong capacity of effective counter-action, becoming active members of the policy trajectory, but were eventually confronted with displacements which weakened their resistance.
Abstract: Italy is well known for its difficulty in introducing any educational evaluation system. This paper explores the dynamics which occurred in Italy in 2010–2011, within the context of the umpteenth national pilot of school and staff evaluation. Our research object is an unfinished project, observed in its development. We get close to the struggles of policy enactment, capturing the processes of borrowing, bricolage, translation and mediation involved in the vernacularisation of the global accountability trends in a national context. Using governmentality and the repertoire of Callon’s sociology of translation, we deconstruct events and displacements and reshape them in a policy ‘storytelling’. We show a paradoxical story of resistance, where teachers and their unions displayed a strong capacity of effective counter-action, becoming active members of the policy trajectory, but were eventually confronted with displacements which weakened their resistance. Although still open-ended, our story provides evidence...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the dual dependencies apparent at the intersection of the media society and the audit society by empirically exploring and discussing the relationship between Swedish local ne...
Abstract: This paper focuses on the dual dependencies apparent at the intersection of the media society and the audit society by empirically exploring and discussing the relationship between Swedish local ne ...