23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Paper
A Network Ethnography of a ‘Laboratory School’ Network
Moira Hulme
University of the West of Scotland
Presenting Author: Hulme, Moira
The transnational movement of ideas and practices in education is well documented (Junemann, Ball and Santori, 2018). Policy scholarship has addressed the influence of supranational agencies, non-state advocacy networks, edu-businesses and social venture philanthropy on global education policy and practice (Savage et al., 2021). Attention has focused on corporate school reform (charter schools, free schools and academy chains), teacher education and the school curriculum (Ball, 2012; Olmedo, 2013; Hogan 2016; Rowe, 2023). In contrast, the mediation of transnational professional learning networks is under-researched.
This presentation uses the tools of network ethnography to follow a professional learning network that markets the ‘laboratory school’ (Dewey, 1907) as a traded support service for schools. The aim of the study is to trace, position and better understand how the lab school concept is disembedded, ‘re-contextualised’ (Schweisfurth and Elliot, 2019) and re-embedded in diverse settings in an emerging global market for school improvement services. The research extends earlier work on cross-national attraction (Clapham and Vickers, 2018), outsourcing (Sperka, 2020) and the commercialisation of education services (Hogan and Thompson, 2017, Lingard et al., 2017).
The research is guided by the following questions: What motivates network entry, maintenance and departure (intentions)? How are knowledge and practices mobilised within the network? And relatedly, what knowledge and practices are displaced or extended by lab school networking activity?
The study draws on the theoretical resources of relational sociology and policy ethnography to consider ‘mobilities’, ‘moorings’ and knowledge flows in a loosely coupled dynamic network (Ball, 2016). The methodological approach combines the reach of social network analysis and depth of ethnography to follow network activity over time (temporal), and between settings (institutional) and contexts (national/regional). The analysis attends to the spaces, exchanges and artefacts that provide opportunities for translation and ‘mutations’ (Junemann, Ball and Santori, 2018, p.607).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedQualitative network ethnography was employed to examine the translation and travel of the lab school concept in the twenty-first century. A University-coordinated laboratory school network initiated in the North of England was selected as the central node of analysis. The growth of this network (encompassing ninety affiliated primary, secondary and special schools and six Multi-Academy Trusts in England, and ten international associate schools in Sweden, USA, India and China) was mapped over a thirty-month period from its launch in July 2020 through to January 2023.
The main methods of data production include network mapping and network visualisation, document analysis, and six months virtual and place-based fieldwork including attendance at network events and follow-up interviews with key nodal actors (boundary spanners, brokers and gatekeepers). Data sources include online institutional profiles, shared protocols/materials used to support authorised lab school activity (e.g. collaborative peer review, instructional rounds and action research), participant observation records from attendance at (online, and in-person) network events and interview transcripts. In-person events were restricted to England (North and South) following the resumption of face-to-face meetings after the Covid pandemic. A digital archive of sources was created and managed within an NVivo project.
Network members (actors and organisations) and associations between members were identified and recorded initially in Excel. Network tracing was used to identify affiliations including the international schools’ network Kunskapsskolan India, Shanghai United International Schools (SUIS), and International Baccalaureate (IB) World Schools; UK online training and coaching providers including Creative Education and Mindspan Global Ltd; and the US professional learning provider, 2Revolutions. Network visualisation was conducted using Gephi software. The analysis moves beyond ‘descriptivism’ (Hogan 2016, p.382) to consider the role of agency and reflexivity in network participation.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe analysis records cross-cutting commitments in a fluid elective network. The visual portrayal of the network explicates the interaction of public-private interests in the commercialisation of the ‘lab school’ brand. The outsourcing, appropriation and adaptation of experimental education proceeds alongside market-based school choice (Ford, 2020; Wrigley, 2022). Network members and affiliates leverage a lab school orientation to gain internal and external legitimacy for decontextualized ‘school improvement’ strategies. Network activity interacts with and, at times, displaces local knowledge and practices. Network goals interact with regional/national systems of educational evaluation and accountability. Schools/Trusts work with a wide range of consultant advisers and commission services from a burgeoning pool of providers across multiple platforms. Further research is needed on how schools choose between alternative providers, how externally commissioned school improvement services are evaluated, and their impact on professional practice and outcomes for children.
ReferencesBall, S. J. (2012). Global Education Inc. New policy networks and the neo-liberal social imaginary. Oxon: Routledge.
Ball, S. J., & Junemann, C. (2012). Networks, New Governance and Education. Bristol: The Policy Press.
Ball, S. J. (2016). Following policy: networks, network ethnography and education policy mobilities. Journal of Education Policy, 31(5), 549-566.
Clapham, A. & Vickers, R. (2018) Neither a borrower nor a lender be: exploring ‘teaching for mastery’ policy borrowing, Oxford Review of Education, 44(6), 787-805
Dewey, J. (1907) The School and Society: Being three lectures by John Dewey Supplemented by a Statement of the University Elementary School (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press).
Ford, B. (2020). The odd malaise of democratic education: Horace Mann, Amy Gutmann and the inordinate influence of business. Policy Futures in Education, 18(8), 1075-1116
Hogan, A. (2016). Network ethnography and the cyberflâneur: Evolving policy sociology in education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29(3), 381-398.
Hogan, A., & Thompson, G. (2017). Commercialization in education. In G. Noblit (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Education. New York: Oxford University Press.
Junemann, C., Ball, S. J., & Santori, D. (2018). On network(ed) ethnography in the global education policyscape. In D. Beach, C. Bagley & S. M. Silva (Eds.), The Wiley Handbook of Ethnography of Education (pp. 455-477). John Wiley and Sons.
Lingard, B., Sellar, S., Hogan, A., & Thompson, G. (2017). Commercialisation in public schooling. Sydney: New South Wales Teachers Federation.
Olmedo, A. (2013). From England with love … ARK, heterarchies and global ‘philanthropic governance’. Journal of Education Policy, 1–23.
Rowe, E. (2023) Policy networks and venture philanthropy: A network ethnography of 'teach for Australia'. Journal of Education Policy, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2022.2158373
Savage, G., Gerrard, J., Gale T., & Molla, T. (2021). The politics of critical policy sociology: mobilities, moorings and elite networks. Critical Studies in Education, 62(3), 306-321.
Schweisfurth, M. & Elliott, J. (2019). When ‘best practice’ meets the pedagogical nexus: recontextualisation, reframing and resilience. Comparative Education, 55(1), 1–8.
Sperka, L. (2020) (Re)defining outsourcing in education, Discourse, 41(2), 268-280.
Wrigley, T. (2022). Learning in a time of cholera: Imagining a future for public education. European Educational Research Journal, 21(1), 105-123.
23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Paper
The Innovation Imperative: Reception in the Spanish Educational System
Miriam Prieto1, Alberto Sánchez-Rojo2
1Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain; 2Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
Presenting Author: Prieto, Miriam;
Sánchez-Rojo, Alberto
Educational innovation has been considered for decades the keystone for leading the adaptation of education systems to 21st century societies and economies (Greany, 2016; Hallgarten & Beresford, 2015; Hargreaves, 2003). It has been the answer to diverse school systems and societies needs such as providing training to guarantee countries economic competitiveness; diversifying the standardized model of schooling characteristic of bureaucratic educational systems; bringing teaching-learning processes near to traditionally excluded populations or improving students’ academic performance (Lubienski, 2009). Both as a mean to achieve other goals such as school effectiveness or students’ performance improvement or as an end in itself, innovation has become a large-scale reform (Fullan, 2009; Glazer & Peurach, 2013; Sotiriou et al., 2016), that has been closely connected with school autonomy and accountability policies, becoming a global movement (Greany, 2022; Lubienski, 2009).
The key role assigned to innovation within the global education agenda has been supported and promoted by the OECD, which has announced “the innovation imperative” (2005). The use of innovation as an imperative displays the mechanisms of governing through concepts (Mausethagen, 2013); understanding innovation as an imperative serves for structuring educational policies according to the rationale of continuous change, shaping schools as units of constant improvement (Peurach, 2015) and placing its main goal on a concept of students’ performance shaped by marketized understandings of education and educational systems. That use of governing concepts allows a process of framing in which a particular meaning is built (Lakoff, 2006), selecting a specific definition of a problem as well as its solution.
Despite the widespread of educational systems reform policies that have promoted innovation, research on its adoption and effects in the context of national educational systems is scarce and poor. Although some research has explored the impact of educational systems reforms on school innovation (Greany 2022, 2016; Lubienski, 2009), most of the literature on school change is produced from within the discursive framework of innovation with the goal of supporting the development and adoption of changes (Fullan, 2017; Hargreaves, 2003), but without carrying out a deep analysis of the innovation imperative discourse and its policy adoption and schools implementation.
In that context, the present paper seeks to identify the adoption of the innovation imperative within the Spanish education system, the meaning that the concept adopts and the rationale that its use helps to build. To that end, an analysis of the main national educational laws approved since the 90s is carried out, in order to identify the increased presence of the term and the frame from which it is defined.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe data collection has focused on primary data extracted by document analysis, based on the 6 national educational laws that have regulated the Spanish educational system in the last decades (approved in 1990, 1995, 2002, 2006, 2013 and 2020). The analysis has been carried out form the Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) methodological approach, used in social sciences for analysing semiosis; that is, the production of meaning under certain contextual conditions. The singularity of PDA is that it “deals specially with the reproduction of political power, power abuse or domination through political discourses, [highlighting] the consequences of social and political inequality that results from such domination” (Van Dijk, 1997: 11).
Taking this into account this paper aims to show to what extent the imperative of innovation has been playing an increasingly important role in Spanish educational laws, and how the use of the term addresses to marketized understandings of the Spanish educational system.
Specifically, we analyse the presence of the term innovation within the educational laws in order to identify if it appears to schools and teachers as an imperative. Also, we identify key words used by the OECD for conceptualizing innovation in education, as learning outcomes, productivity, quality, efficiency, workplace, digitalization (2021) and associated meanings, and analyse its use in the Spanish educational law, in order to identify the adoption of the OECD frame by the Spanish education system. These terms and others associated with them are used as traces for contrasting the influence of the OECD discourse on the understanding and spread of innovation within the Spanish education system.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsSince 1990 there has been an increase in the presence of innovation in the laws that regulate the Spanish educational system. The number of explicit references to this term that we can find in the law that currently regulates the Spanish educational system has tripled compared to the law that regulated it in the 1990s: 5 references compared to 16. Additionally, the way in which it appears has been changing as well. While in the law of the 90s the term "innovation" was always related to research, currently it appears fundamentally linked to the concept of experimentation. This conceptual change is what has determined that educational innovation is no longer one means among others to improve educational processes and practices, as it was before, but rather constitutes an imperative to be fulfilled by all education professionals. This is so to such an extent that its promotion is one of the skills that every headmaster must have, and it is considered as a merit in teacher transfer competitions as well as it is subject to economic incentives. This has turned innovation into an end in itself, forcing it to stop being at the service of education, as it should be.
ReferencesFullan, M. (2009). Large-scale reform comes of age. Journal of Educational Change, 10, 101-113. DOI: 10.1007/s10833-009-9108-z
Glazer, J.L. & Peurach, D.J. (2012). School Improvement Networks as a Strategy for Large-Scale Education Reform: The Role of Educational Environments. Educational Policy, 27(4), 676-710.
Greany, T. (2016). Innovation is possible, it’s just not easy: Improvement, innovation and legitimacy in England’s autonomous and accountable school system. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 1–21. DOI: 10.1177/1741143216659297
Greany, T. (2022). Doing Things Differently in Order to Do Them Better: An Assessment of the Factors that Influence Innovation in Schools and School Systems. Education in the Asia-Pacific Region, 61, 321-347.
Hallgarten, H.V. & Beresford, T. (2015). Creative Public Leadership: How School System Leaders Can Create the Conditions for System-wide Innovation. WISE.
Hargreaves, D. (2003). Education Epidemic: Transforming Secondary Schools through Innovation Networks. Demos.
Lakoff, G. (2006a). Simple framing. Available at: https://georgelakoff.com/writings/rockridgeinstitute/
Lubienski, C. (2009). Do quasi-markets foster innovation in education? A comparative perspective. OECD Education Working Paper Nº 25. DOI 10.1787/221583463325
Mausethagen, S. (2013). Governance through concepts: The OECD and the construction of “competence” in Norwegian education policy. Berkeley Review of Education, 4(1). DOI: 10.5070/B84110058
OECD (2005). Oslo Manual: Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Innovation Data, 3rd Edition. Paris.
OEDC. (2021). How to measure innovation in education? Exploring new approaches in survey development and in using Big Data. OECD.
Sotiriou, S.; Riviou, K.; Cherouvis, S.; Chelioti, E. & Bogner, F.X. (2016). Introducing Large-Scale Innovation in Schools. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 25, 541–549. DOI 10.1007/s10956-016-9611-y
van Dijk, T. (1997). What Is Political Discourse Analysis. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 11(1), 11–52.
23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Paper
Policy Networks and the Introduction of Programming in Swedish Schools
Anthemis Raptopoulou
Södertörn University, Sweden
Presenting Author: Raptopoulou, Anthemis
Contemporary education policymaking, especially the one revolving around education technology, is no longer confined within national borders but expands to new policy channels, which challenges the traditional notions of education governance. In recent years, computer programming has been introduced into school curricula in several national education systems across the world making it a key issue on the education policy agenda. In March 2017, the Swedish Government announced their decision to introduce programming as a mandatory teaching element as of the first grade of primary school. This study traces the policy networks and processes that contributed to the introduction of computer programming into the Swedish curriculum and its promotion in schools. The primary focus lies on the actors and actions that brought about this change, nationally and internationally.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe method of network ethnography is employed to map the policy field of programming and identify the key policy actors involved, starting from the area of Stockholm (Ball, 2016; Ball & Junemann, 2012; Player-Koro, 2019). Network ethnography is an analytic technique which borrows elements from ethnography and social network analysis for the study of contemporary policy and governance structures. Additionally, it involves a mapping of the policy field using qualitative data. The data for this study is comprised of: websites, online links and texts both written by or about actors involved in the policy agenda on programming; interviews with key policy actors; as well as national and international policy documents on the introduction of programming in schools.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThrough the policy network on programming, this study followed and mapped the evolution of the policy agenda on programming in Sweden. A wide range of actors were involved in the promotion and subsequent introduction of programming into the Swedish curriculum including governmental and inter-governmental agencies, national and multinational companies, for- and non-for-profit organizations and educational institutions. The findings show that the curriculum changes on programming in Sweden have been influenced by neoliberal rationalities that shaped both the way the policy was assembled and circulated. External actors both influenced and participated in the policymaking process, which led the policy agenda on programming along mixed policy arenas extending beyond national and institutional spaces and towards international and private ones. These findings indicate the emergence of a networked governance on education policy and the importance of out-of-the-parliament processes both locally and internationally in influencing policymaking. Emphasis is placed on the pervasive influence of external interests and the private sector in education policy, specifically on the area of education technology. Another important contribution has been the impact of the local space – i.e. the municipality of Stockholm – in aiding the inclusion of programming in the Swedish education. Through this study, a case has been made for the increasing complexity characterizing education policymaking and the role of diverse actors in the production and circulation of policies, especially in the field of education technology.
ReferencesBall, S. J. (2016). Following policy: Networks, network ethnography and education policy mobilities. Journal of Education Policy, 31(5), 549–566. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2015.1122232
Ball, S. J., & Junemann, C. (2012). Networks, new governance and education. Policy Press.
Player-Koro, C. (2019). Network Ethnography as an Approach for the Study of New Governance Structures in Education. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.323
23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Paper
Constructing the Legitimacy of Educational Firms in the Education Sector: A Text Analysis of Annual Reports
Anki Bengtsson, Eric Larsson
Stockholm University, Sweden
Presenting Author: Bengtsson, Anki;
Larsson, Eric
In many countries, the public school is increasingly intertwined with the market that give rise to a struggle over the values that underlie education. Quasi-marketisation of public education blurs the distinction between public and private and bring about a competition of egalitarian values and market values. To explore conflicting values in education and the market, this paper takes the Swedish case of quasi-marketisation as an example. The introduction of a voucher as part of the Swedish school choice system in 1991/1992, contributed to both competition, price-setting in education and the establishment of for-profit educational firms (Lundahl et al, 2013). Today, a few large educational firms dominate the upper secondary school-market in Sweden and they recently adopt an expansion strategy to export their schools internationally (Rönnberg et al, 2022). AcadeMedia, the example in our study, is among the largest educational firms that export education.
Privatisation in public education are societally contested (Ball, 2012). A recent national survey in Sweden, the majority of Swedes believe that for-profit schools should be banned (Lindblad et al, 2021). Despite that, the parliamentary finance committee voted against a proposal in 2018 of limiting profit-making in the welfare sector (Finance committee report, 2017/2018) and large corporations' share of newly started schools is growing. Furthermore, 30 percent of pupils chose independent upper-secondary schools, which is a sector dominated by large educational corporations (Swedish Schools Inspectorate, 2022).
Marketizations of formerly non-marketized areas generate tensions between antagonistic values in business and education. In contrast to market values and conventions, egalitarian education is based on moral values and norms and this contradiction prompts contests, compromises, and justifications over the issue of worth in a context of the school market. Through the behavior of actors in markets and the use of practices, conventions arise within the system. When actors encounter criticisms or competing justifications for the market’s products, they use tests and justifications to determine what is valuable and by which measure (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006).
The aim of this study is to examine through which discourses and coordinative devices educational firms gain and maintain legitimacy within the arrangement of the Swedish education system. The empirical example is the large educational firm AcadeMedia. We interpret and analyse AcadeMedia’s annual reports that contain disclosed information, mandatory by law and descriptions of the firm's viewpoints and actions concerning crucial educational matters. Annual reports communicate fulfillment of societal and business expectations and in that sense, they can be regarded as devices of control of legitimacy.
We pose the questions: Which conventions does AcadeMedia mobilise to justify its actions in the education system? Which discourses and devices does the firm mobilise to manage and influence education policy?
Focus in the analysis is on the rationalisation the firm uses for their actions through which they manage the arrangement of the education system and influence the decision making of educational policy. The theoretical approach is inspired by the French pragmatic sociologists Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot (2006) and their theoretical framework of plural ‘orders of worth’ in different worlds of reality. Boltanski and Thévenot offer a model for analyzing different ways of combining competing orders of worth to justify actions in the education system. An analysis of actions demonstrates the gathering of devices and discursive resources and show how compromises are situated in specific arrangements of the educational system.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedActors orienting their behavior to various sets of values that exist in so-called worlds of justification in society. The present study, focusing on conventions, considers the typology of orders of worth enacted in specific worlds as an analytical tool in order to analyse the behavior of the educational firm (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006; Thévenot, 2011). Our data consist of AcadeMedia’s annual reports, collected from the time period 1994-2021. Annual reports communicate fulfillment of societal and business expectations and in that sense, they can be regarded as devices of control of legitimacy. In this material we can identify the relationship between rationalities in business, policy and the public sphere. The annual reports contain disclosed information, mandatory by law and descriptions of the firm's viewpoints and actions concerning critical educational matters. It allows us to examine how the firm interpret and respond to critical events and trace the ways it combines conventions in different worlds to test what can be justified in education. Testing may for example occur by questioning application of generally accepted procedures (e.g. price-setting of school-vouchers). At a deeper level, test may challenge organizing principles in practice as an attempt to promote different principles (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006; Thévenot, 2000).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsIn the context of this study, we expect that AcadeMedia’s actions for agreement and critique in debates on education interact with the shift in the way education is provided and financed, new practices of valuation and added values in education. Identifying specific controversies, we expect to show the firm’s act on and decide on their significance and worth. In reality tests, each situation is specific, for example in the test of digital education the object is digitisation, which is a technologic development that is framed in both societal and economic terms. In this regard, we could expect a compromise of the industrial worth of efficiency, the market worth of access to a new technology and the civic worth of equal access to education. The analytic tool allows us to detect both relations of conventions in various worth, their type and variation, for example interaction, trust and formal and informal networks. In this way, the expected findings concern the relationship between how orders of worth operate as coordinative devices within the system and the ways the educational firm manages conflicting orders of worth.
ReferencesBall, S.J. (2009). Privatising Education, Privatising Education Policy, Privatising Educational Research: Network governance and the ‘competition state, Journal of Education Policy, 24(1), 83-99.
Boltanski, L. & Thévenot, L. (2006). On Justification. Economies of Worth. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hogan, A. & Thompson, G. (Eds.) (2020). Privatisation and commercialisation in public education: how the public nature of schooling is changing. Routledge.
Lindblad, S., Lagergren Wallin, F. Samuelsson, K. & Wallström, H. (2021). Medborgarna om den svenska skolan: stat, marknad eller profession? In U. Andersson. et al. (Eds.) Du sköra nya värld. SOM-rapport nr 81, Gothenburg.
Rönnberg, L., Alexiadou, N., Benerdal, M. Carlbaum, S., Holm A-S & Lundah, L.l (2022) Swedish free school companies going global: Spatial imaginaries and movable pedagogical ideas, Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 8(1), 9-19, DOI: 10.1080/20020317.2021.2008115
Swedish Schools Inspectorate (2022). Beslut om att starta eller utöka skola Statistik läsåret 2023/24 [Decision to start or expand school Statistics academic year 2023/24].
The Finance Committee (2017/18). Report FiU44 https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/arende/betankande/tillstand-att-ta-emot-offentlig-finansiering-inom_H501FiU44
Thévenot, L. (2011). Conventions for Measuring and Questioning Policies. The Case of 50 Years of Policy Evaluations through a Statistical Survey, Historical Social Research, 36(4), 92-217.
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