Session Information
23 SES 02 B, Policies and Practices of Performativity and Assessment (Part 2)
Paper Session continued from 23 SES 01 B
Contribution
Using student performance data for governance of education systems has throughout last two decades gradually become a global policy. For different reasons and to different degrees, basing educational governance on ‘evidence’ generated by standardized testing is increasingly implemented in all parts of the globe, and is promoted by international organizations (such as World Bank and OECD and UNESCO) as a modern standard. While recognizing the active part that transnational agents take in setting national policy agendas, researchers also point to the importance of local agency in adaptation and translation of global policies, and argue that understanding local conditions and interests is indispensable to the analysis of global policy borrowing (e.g. Steiner-Khamsi 2012; Alasuutari and Qadir 2013; Waldow, Takayama and Sung 2014). In the analysis of the local level the theoretical-methodological framework of the Comparative Analytics of Dynamics in Education Politics (CADEP) suggests to focus on the room for action that is constructed and transformed in the process of policy borrowing, and investigate how the local actors make the most of existing situations and possibilities (Kauko et at. 2012). In our study of the translation of the ‘global policy’ of utilizing student performance data for education governance we intend to explore what ‘room for action’ is created for schools with the arrival of new quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) policies in education and which local actors benefit from this.
We analyze opportunities that open up or get limited for schools in Brazil, China and Russia through the lens offered by the political frame of organizational analysis (Bolman and Deal 2013). Within the political frame education can be viewed as a complex policy ecosystem in which schools as political actors interact with external constituents in order to obtain resources they need for survival. These external constituents are other organizations (e.g. local educational authority bodies, commercial providers of educational services) as well as families, future employers of students, and national policy makers. Schools can be viewed as ‘partisan’ actors as opposed to ‘authority’ actors in the education policy ecosystem, and they exercise influence on each other based on different sources of power. The sources of power identified by Bolman and Deal include (but are not limited to) position power, control of rewards, coercive power, information and expertise, reputation, alliances and networks, and control of agendas.
According to Bolman and Deal (2013), power struggles are inevitable because of the scarcity of financial as well as human resources that organizations need for survival and development. To broaden the perspective on resources that schools can gain through QAE policies, we use the concept of material and symbolic benefits that stems from the distinction between economic and symbolic capital (Bourdieu 2013 [1980]). Bourdieu argues that economic and symbolic capital are inextricably combined in the social space, as one complements and reinforces the benefits of the other.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Alasuutari, P., & Qadir, A. (Eds.). (2013). National policy-making: domestication of global trends. Routledge. Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2013). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. John Wiley & Sons. Kauko, J., Simola, H., Varjo, J., & Kalalahti, M. (2012) What could a dynamics perspective contribute to comparative research? In: J. Kivirauma, A. Jauhianen, P. Seppänen, & T. Kaunisto, Koulutuksen yhteiskunnallinen ymmärrys. Social Perspectives on Education. Turku: Finnish Educational Research Association, pp. 219-233. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2012). The global/local nexus in comparative policy studies: Analysing the triple bonus system in Mongolia over time. Comparative Education, 48(4), 455-471. Waldow, F., Takayama, K., & Sung, Y. K. (2014). Rethinking the pattern of external policy referencing: media discourses over the ‘Asian Tigers’’PISA success in Australia, Germany and South Korea. Comparative Education, 50(3), 302-321.
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