Conference Agenda

Comparative scholarship on educational systems appears to have a two-sided approach (Spring 2008). Some researchers are regarded as emphasising global isomorphism in education (LeTendre, Baker et al. 2001, Sorensen 2022) whilst others are identified as looking primarily at local variances and contrast (Alexander 2001, Helgetun 2022). These categorizations obscure the fact that researchers’ focus is affected by different methodological approaches to analysing education systems, and at times have a deeper epistemic root centred on whether knowledge is local or general. Meanwhile, according to Sorensen (2022) theories on globalization are often poorly defined, or the term is used as a form of “catch-all” to explain changes in education. This state of affairs often leads to artificially reifying layers (micro, meso and macro) of analysis while policy makers operate on, or respond to stakeholders across multiple layers at the same time (Putnam 1988, Helgetun 2023). In terms of arguments about the importance of the state vs. global governance, this can result in theories that state ”context matters” without further elaboration as to how when and why local contexts matter in education. Therefore, it is important to construct precise definitions of the concepts, and device concrete mechanisms of how globalization impacts education policy simultaneously on multiple levels.

In this essay, we argue it is important to look both at global and local trends when analysing education systems. As such, we present a theoretical approach to bridging the increasing gap between analyses focused on the globalization of educational trends and those focused on local variances. Our theorization work draws on a range of sources from the (in education) common tools of neo-institutionalism (world culture), comparative education, vernacular globalization, and policy borrowing. These traditional approaches are then contrasted to common analytical lenses in comparative political science derived from two-level game theory. Lastly, we draw on the importance of “langage” to give word to how educational concepts differ across contexts with deep significance for (comparative) research. The need for such a theoretical approach is illustrated througha range of studies on leadership in education.

Epistemically we construct our theoretical framework through the use of clear explanatory mechanisms to create some order out of chaos, with a post-positivist lens rooted in scientific realism (Sayer 2010) and process tracing Checkel 2006, Bennett and Checkel 2015). These mechanisms are then put into a framework that contains their triggers, associated concepts, and principal drivers. As such, this reflective essay uses existing theory to inspire our theory construction, whilst we (re)interpret the literature to fit with our epistemic approach.

To elaborate our argument and provide clear instantiations of theory, we choose to focus on the term leadership as an illustratration of how concepts or terms central to questions of educational change, reform or improvement are invoked in different ways depending on the context. We are especially interested in how this concept is aligned with the construction of the teacher’s role in policy aimed at assessing, improving or promoting teaching and learning across educational systems. Past research has established that there are commonalities to the teacher across contexts (Barber and Mourshed 2007), but also that there are distinct features of the teaching professions in given localities (Dumay and Burn 2023) that suggest greater or lesser leadership opportunities and activities. Moreover, leadership is the component of education and the teacher as a professional that is closest to questions of system and policy (particularly policy implementation). As such, we find leadership in education to be an ideal topic to illustrate the importance of crossing global developments and isomorphism with distinct local articulations and cultural traits.

The declaration of the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 brought together 193 nations, with all their diverse priorities and challenges, and all their historical, economic, political and cultural differences, to commit to a common set of 17 critical, highly ambitious global goals. While there has previously been (near) global commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), what sets the SDGs apart is that the goals are comprehensive, global and purposeful; they are accompanied by standardised indicators that make them measurable; there is a globally agreed strategy for achieving the goals; and member nations have committed to reporting on their progress and to be globally monitored on the basis of this reporting.

What does it take to bring together diverse views and representations to generate a collective, global, consensus view that gains not only acceptance at a given moment, but on-going commitment? Even ‘national’ views are difficult to generate – views are often strongly contested within nations, and the views of experts, politicians, philanthropists, NGOs, IGOs etc., are often both politically and epistemically divergent, incorporating practical knowledge, specialised expertise, and contextual and political understandings (Jasanoff 2017; Latour 1993). UNESCO’s task is not just one of getting all nations to agree on some technical definitions and indicators (though that is no trivial task – see, for example, (Gorur, 2018); it is also a political task that requires convincing, cajoling, compromising and coercing various actors to generate agreed understandings and maintaining their commitment through a variety of challenges over a period that spans more than one election cycle in most nations.

In this paper, we empirically examine how the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), in its role as the custodian of data for SDG4, develops consensus on measuring and monitoring the education SDG (SDG4) to make two key contributions. First, building on Jasanoff’s theory of global, consensus views as views from everywhere, we argue that the view forged by UIS is more appropriately understood as a view from elsewhere. We argue that the concept of views from elsewhere is particularly important in the context of global pressures on middle- and low-income nations whose epistemic traditions, situated understandings and social and political priorities are often overlooked, ignored, or forged by global agencies and experts. Second, and relatedly, we provide an empirical account of how such views from elsewhere are developed, based on detailed accounts of meetings convened by the UIS Technical Cooperation Group. We describe these processes as collecting, connecting and compounding views. Here we exploit the dual understanding of the verb ‘to compound’, evoking both the pharmacy compounder who mixes together different components to produce cures and chemical compounds which may look and feel entirely different to their component parts. These processes enable an understanding of how strenuously global agencies need to work to herd diverse political and epistemic cultures into various types of collectives to generate collective views, and how these views are orchestrated by those authorised to broker such views.

Much sociological research in education has focused on understanding the perspectives and experiences of ‘marginalised’ or subordinate groups, along with those of the occupations and organisations involved with them. However, since the 1980s and 90s a small tradition of work has emerged concerned with ‘studying up’: focusing on the role of elites (e.g. Troyna and Halpin 1994; Ball 1990; Walford 1994). The aim of this was to document the operation of elite power in shaping educational institutions and resisting ‘struggles for social transformation’ (Ozga and Gewirtz 1994: 123). Initially, studies of politicians, government officials, pressure groups, and their networks, tended to assume that they belonged to close-knit groups which could be easily identified (Walford 2012). However, the shift in the 2000s towards the notion of the governance of education reframed this research to include global policy actors who occupy ‘multiple spaces’, being ‘simultaneously national and transnational’, and therefore more difficult to identify (Grek 2021:18; see also Yates 2004; Addey and Piattoeva 2021).

The methodological challenges associated with interviewing ‘elite’ actors in qualitative research have been the focus of a growing body of literature in education, and in social research more widely. Generally speaking, ‘elites’ have been viewed as capable of protecting themselves from scrutiny by researchers because of the power they exercise (Dodge and Geis 2006). Given this, gaining access to them has often been portrayed as a matter of pursuing them as ‘quarry’ by any means possible (Dexter 2006). At the same time, it is often argued that elites should be accountable, and that research should play an important role in this process. Therefore, it has sometimes been argued that the usual ethical requirements, such as obtaining informed consent, must be suspended, on the grounds that members of ‘elites’ do not need protection, and indeed that their activities can legitimately be exposed to publicity (see Gaztambide-Fernández 2015). There is a particularly sharp contrast here with what is recommended in researching members of marginalised or oppressed groups, these often being treated as especially vulnerable to the risk of harm, and therefore in need of protection (see Hammersley and Traianou 2012).

However, recently some have argued that the very concept of vulnerability employed in discussions of research ethics is misconceived. Equally, questions have been raised about crude notions of power as an absolute possession that protects its holders from all harm. It would be a mistake to assume that elites are fully autonomous and entirely in control of what happens to them. Neal and McLaughlin (2009: 699), for example, pointed out that when power is ‘entangled with emotionally difficult reflexive processes’, as during research in a highly politicised context, it becomes ‘much looser, messier and multidirectional’. From this point of view, the designation of a group of participants as ‘elite’ (and the assumption of all-encompassing power upon which this category often seems to rely) obscures the fact that they may be vulnerable to a range of risks and harms (Lancaster 2015). In this paper I will build on this argument to suggest that, in fact, vulnerability is a relevant ethical concept even when it comes to studying political elites. I will illustrate the issues from some recent research on members of political elites in Greece who were involved in crisis negotiation with external creditors during 2015-18 (Traianou 2021).

This is a methodological paper which aims to address the following questions:

a) How is the concept of ‘vulnerability’ treated in social/educational research ethics, and what form should it take?

b) What are the researcher’s ethical responsibilities in studying the ‘powerful’ in education?

In October 2013, UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) launched the policy initiative of Learning Cities in Beijing. The aim was to promote Lifelong Learning through local initiatives involving cities in a bottom-up process of engaging with different aspects of Lifelong Learning (UNESCO, 2013). The UNESCO initiative consists of an international policy-oriented network of cities that have voluntarily committed themselves to the objectives. The idea of voluntary networking and peer learning mirrors the ‘open method of coordination’ (OMC) found in for instance EU policies, making the UNESCO a player in a field where they have no legal competence but still are able to set the agenda through policy tools (Brøgger, 2019). The document ‘Key Features of the Learning Cities’, thus present a list of 42 indicators which can be measured through official data, surveys or expert reviews. Besides governance by indicators, there is also an element of faming in the approach as a biennial UNESCO learning City Award was established in 2015. The Learning Cities initiative thus shares the characteristics of other transnational policy processes, although it seems to live a more secluded life.

When we look into the research on learning cities, we find a number of researchers who have been involved in the process of developing the initiative, for instance via relationship to the PASCAL International Observatory, including among others Osborne, Longworth, Kearns and Yang. Together, they have written a number of articles looking into the conceptual origin and political justification of learning cities.

When it comes to tracing the policy into the local and community level, there is a number of articles providing comparative case studies. Ó Tuama (2020) e.g. looks into the organisation into learning neighbourhoods in the City of Cork inspired by ‘learning organisations’ as defined by Senge. Németh (2020) compares the learning city models of Cork and Pécs in Hungary and concludes that “a bottom-up approach is key to a successful learning city instead of top-down measures which usually resemble the nature of politics and of the political in the planning of learning city models” (p. 68). Popović et al. (2020) highlights that in spite of “a new social reality in many countries marked by social movements, civic and student protest and new forms of organised citizenship” (p. 35), learning cities are still mainly described from the political level with a focus on municipal leadership and involvement of stakeholder.

Besides these articles, the research on how (or a critically if) the policy is enacted at the local levels is scarce. What is, however, clear from the existing research is that the actual enactment of learning cities might take many forms. This is the starting point for our research. We want to look into two learning cities with different ways of organising the UNESCO initiative and see how the UNESCO LLL policies are enacted at a local level? How are local communities and social actors ‘empowered’ through the commitment of a city to the Learning Cities network? Are these policies additional to the national policies, which the cities have to adhere to within the framework of the national legislation or are they an add-on? In short, how does a learning city translate its commitment to the UNESCO policy in practice?