Session Information
23 SES 04 B, Evaluation and Policy Enactments
Paper Session
Contribution
Recent research on education policy has argued the redefinition of what Stephen Ball has called ‘the policy cycle’ (Ball et al., 1992) to include a level of global governance through international comparative standardised assessments such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys and associated expert support such as that provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (Lingard et al. 2013). International systems of assessment and counsel are recontextualised at the mid - often national - level as vernacular versions of testing regimes (Singh et al., 2013). Here the global complements the national as commensurate spaces for measurement, providing for governance by numbers (Ball, 2015; Lingard, 2011; Ozga, 2008).
Picking up the thread from Lingard and his colleagues, our concern is to elaborate particular versions of this extended policy cycle, but our focus is on both the mid-level of national recontextualisation and the micro level of policy enactment in schools and classrooms, something Ball et al. (2012) assert is a difficult but important focus for research. In particular, we are interested in interactions between the three ‘message systems’ identified by Bernstein (1971) which together constitute pedagogic discourse (Bernstein, 1990); specifically the ways vernacular assessment regimes are themselves shaped, and how they shape curriculum and pedagogy (Au, 2008). As these act as reproducers of inequality within the pedagogic device (Bernstein, 1990; 1996), we are also interested in the impact vernacular assessment regimes have on students and student subjectivities, including their contribution towards the shaping of neoliberal subjectivities (Keddie, 2016) or subject positions within neoliberal discourse. By comparing different vernacular regimes, we will examine the degree to which standardised assessment is an example of cross-national policy convergence (Breakspear, 2012). Considering the distributive and evaluative rules surrounding tests, we will discern parallels and variations in how vernacular assessment regimes shape curriculum and pedagogy and their impact on students and student subjectivities. Finally, we will contrast the experiences of each country to ascertain policy lessons.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Au, W. (2008) Devising inequality: A Bernsteinian analysis of high-stakes testing and social reproduction in education, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29(6), 639-51. Ball, S. (2015) Education, governance and the tyranny of numbers, Journal of Education Policy, 30(3), 299-301. Ball, S. & Bowe, R. (1992) Subject departments and the 'implementation' of National Curriculum policy, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 24 (2), 97-115. Ball, S., Maguire, M. & Braun, A. (2012) How schools do policy: Policy enactment in secondary schools, London, Routledge. Bernstein, B. (1971) On the classification and framing of educational knowledge, in: Michael Young (Ed), Knowledge and Control, London, Collier-MacMillan. 47–69. Bernstein, B. (1990) The structure of pedagogic discourse. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Bernstein, B. (1996) Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. London: Breakspear, S. (2012) The policy impact of PISA: an exploration of the normative effects of international benchmarking in school system performance. OECD Education Working Papers 71. Paris: OECD Publishing. Keddie, A. (2016) Children of the market: performativity, neoliberal responsibilisation and the construction of student identities, Oxford Review of Education, 42(1), 108-122. Kelly, P. (2014) Intercultural comparative research: rethinking insider and outsider perspectives, Oxford Review of Education, 40(2), 1-20. Lingard, B. (2011) Policy as numbers: Ac/counting for educational research, Australian Educational Researcher, 38(4), 355–382. Lingard, B., Martino, W. & Rezai-Rashti, G. (2013) Testing regimes, accountabilities and education policy: commensurate global and national developments, Journal of Education Policy, 28(5), 539-556. Ozga, J. (2008) Governing knowledge: Research steering and research quality, European Educational Research Journal, 7 (3), 261–272. Singh, P., Thomas, S. & Harris, J (2013) Recontextualising policy discourses: a Bernsteinian perspective on policy interpretation, translation, enactment, Journal of Education Policy, 28(4), 465-480.
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