Session Information
23 SES 06 A, Networks, Privatizations and Governance (Part 1)
Paper Session to be continued in 23 SES 07 A
Contribution
This paper draws on social network analysis and key informant interviews to consider how travelling ideas on teacher education policy are translated within local review processes. Particular consideration is afforded to the dynamics of the learning exchange between epistemic actors and national decision makers. Using a ‘home international’ comparison of the devolved jurisdictions of the UK, the paper addresses the following questions:
· What are the social structural features of the teacher education reform (TER) networks in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales?
· What is the brokerage role of external experts/epistemic actors in shaping teacher education policy in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales?
· How effective are cross-boundary networks (inter-organisational and cross-national) in supporting policy learning?
Over the past decade, teacher education has been framed as a ‘policy problem’ to be managed by government (Cochran-Smith, 2015). Transnational organisations have contributed to the flow of ideas on teacher education (European Commission, 2015; OECD, 2011; World Bank, 2013). In addition, philanthropic education advocacy groups, consultancy companies, edu-businesses and social entrepreneurs have promoted alternative modes of teacher preparation.
In this paper we consider the composition of the teacher education policy communities in three national jurisdictions, and explore how policy moves with an explicit focus on the role of epistemic actors as potential agents of change. Our focus is on the expert panel as an instrument of policy advice. Despite a significant increase in the use of contract consultants as sources of public policy advice (House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, 2010), the dynamics of policy advisory systems in many countries remain under researched (Craft and Howlett, 2013; Ambrus et al., 2014; Gabriel and Paulus, 2015).
The United Kingdom in the post-devolution period presents an interesting opportunity to examine how policy moves across geographical borders and organisational boundaries within a closely linked system. Formal devolution of legislative powers from Westminster (on different terms and with varying powers) followed referenda in Scotland and Wales in 1997 and Northern Ireland in 1998. Responsibility for policy related to teacher development resides with the Department for Education in England, the Scottish Government at Holyrood Edinburgh, the Welsh Government at Cardiff, and the Northern Irish Assembly at Stormont Belfast. In the last five years, government commissioned reviews of teacher education have been undertaken in Northern Ireland (Sahlberg et al., 2014), Scotland (Donaldson, 2011), Wales (Tabberer, 2013; Furlong, 2015) and England (Department for Education, 2015). The high level of interdependency between the home nations of the UK increases the exchange of information and this makes the UK a particularly interesting case for consideration of how ideas travel across national policy spaces (Carney, 2012). The study draws on the theoretical resources of policy sociology to revisit the politics of expertise.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Ambrus, M., Arts, K., Hey, E. & Raulus, H. (eds) (2014) The Role of 'Experts' in International and European Decision-Making Processes: Advisors, Decision Makers or Irrelevant Actors? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beauchamp, G., Clarke, L., Hulme, M., and Murray, J. (2015) Teacher education in the United Kingdom post devolution: convergences and divergences. Oxford Review of Education, 41(2), 154-170. Carney, S. (2012) Imagining Globalisation: Educational Policyscapes. In Policy Borrowing and Lending in Education, Steiner Khamsi, G. & Waldow, F. (eds), New York: Routledge, pp. 339–353. Clarke, J. (2012) 'Historical amnesia: linking past, present and future in politics and policy' Research, Policy and Planning, 29(3), 153-160. Clarke, J., Bainton, D., Lendvai, N. & Stubbs, P. (2015) Making Policy Move. Towards a Politics of Translation and Assemblage. Bristol: Policy Press. Cochran-Smith, M. (2015) Foreword. In Teacher Education Group, Teacher Education in Times of Change. Bristol: Policy Press. Craft, J. & Howlett, M. (2013) ‘The Dual Dynamics of Policy Advisory Systems: The Impact of Externalization and Politicization on Policy Advice’ Policy and Society, 32 (3): 187–97. Donaldson, G. (2011) Teaching Scotland’s Future. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. European Commission (2015) Shaping career-long perspectives on teaching. A guide on policies to improve Initial Teacher Education. Brussels: European Commission. Furlong, J. (2015). Teaching Tomorrow’s Teachers. Oxford: University of Oxford. Gabriel, R. & Paulus, T. (2015) ‘Committees and Controversy: Consultants in the Construction of Education Policy’, Educational Policy, 29(7) 984–1011. Hansen, D.L., Shneiderman, B. & Smith, M.A. (2011) Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL. Insights from a Connected World. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann. House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts. (2010) Central Government’s use of Consultants and Interims. London: The Stationery Office Limited. OECD (2011) Building a High Quality Teaching Profession: Lessons from Around the World. Paris: OECD Publishing. Park, H. H. & Rethemeyer, R. K. (2014) ‘The Politics of Connections: Assessing the Determinants of Social Structure in Policy Networks’ Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory, 24(2), 349-379. Sahlberg, P., Broadfoot, P., Coolahan, J., Furlong, J. & Kirk, G. (2014). Aspiring to Excellence. Belfast: DEL. Seddon, T. (2014) ‘Renewing Sociology of Education? Knowledge Spaces, Situated Enactments and Sociological Practice in a World on the Move’, European Educational Research Journal, 13(1): 26-46. Tabberer, R. (2013) A Review of Initial Teacher Training in Wales. http://wales.gov.uk/docs/dcells/publications/131007-review-of-initial-teacher-training-in-wales-en.pdf World Bank (2013) What Matters Most for Teacher Policies. SABER Working Paper No.4, April 2013.
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