Conference Agenda

Context is arguably one of the most ubiquitous terms and concepts utilised in educational research in Europe and beyond. Nearly every article published in recent decades in the European Educational Research Journal, for instance, attends to context in some fashion, though understandings of and engagements with notions of context vary widely. Researchers working in sociology and comparative education in particular have long emphasised the role of context and its centrality to comparative inquiry (Phillips & Schweisfurth, 2014). Moreover, innovative approaches to policy sociology are reshaping our understandings of how policies and practices flow and mutate across networks, levels, and actors, calling into question previous understandings of what context entails across time and scales, and how to research (within) it (e.g., Addey & Piattoeva, 2022; Lingard, 2021). The time is thus ripe to turn renewed attention to the role of context in European and international research and, importantly, how it relates to the methodological approaches employed.

This symposium features three papers focused on the role of context in sociological and comparative education research. The first paper by Brown and Schweisfurth sets the stage by tracing the historical trajectory of context in global educational research, and how conceptualisations of it have evolved. The paper then explores how Massey’s notion of relational space addresses some of the weaknesses in how context has been conceptualised and operationalised, using examples from empirical research in Tanzania to more broadly highlight the utility of this approach to context. Next, Verger and Fontdevila examine how process tracing as a methodological approach within policy sociology and comparative education research can enable a more fine-grained analysis of context and contingency in policymaking. National case studies from the REFORMED project (e.g., Netherlands, Norway, Spain) highlight both the promises and challenges of using process tracing across diverse geopolitical and educational systems, calling further attention to context in studying policy processes and outcomes. The final paper by Luoto and Thomas explicitly considers how researchers employing observational research have interpreted, employed, or ignored context in sociological and comparative studies. Drawing on examples from empirical studies conducted in Europe, Africa, and North America, they explore three ways context has ‘mattered’ in observational research, linking thematically back to the first paper of the symposium. In sum, the symposium collectively raises new questions about what we mean by attending to ‘context’ in educational research and how it implicates and intersects with our methodological decisions.

One of the foundational principles for comparativists researching pedagogy is that what happens inside classrooms is shaped by what is outside – that is, the full range of contexts within which teaching and learning are situated. Context is important across a range of scales, from institutional and local to regional and global, and includes potentially infinite influences, from policy drivers to cultural traditions. However, knowing which things, how they matter, and to who, and also how they also affect each other, places challenging demands on comparative researchers. Historically and across different research traditions, attempts to tame the complexity of context have led to a range of approaches, each of them a useful tool but ultimately unsatisfactory in its own way. Methodologically, context often becomes a relatively inert background, packaged in methodological nationalism or other containers for social action, with scales larger or smaller than the national remaining beyond the scope of enquiry. In this paper we start by outlining briefly how comparativists over time and from different research paradigms have come to terms with context. We consider what these conceptualisations have allowed us to see and to do, and what limitations and challenges they present in accounting for the intersections of different contextual influences and actors or the mechanisms through which they entangle in the world of the classroom. We look to other disciplines which have perhaps been quicker to grapple with and theorise these complex entanglements in ‘the spatial turn’. Where ‘context matters’ has become a mantra in sociology and comparative and international education, ‘space matters’ has become a recent adage across the social sciences more broadly (Ferrare & Apple, 2010). In the final section, we turn to an exploration of Massey’s (1994, 2005) conceptualisation of relational space, and how it was utilised in a recent study of learning across home, neighbourhood and school spaces, and the implications for pedagogy in Tanzanian primary schools (Brown, 2022). No single theory or approach can operationalise context in a way that both embraces its complexities and analyses and presents them in meaningful and digestible ways. However, we see in the work of Massey promising avenues for accounting for how context not only contains but creates social action, for managing the burden of choice in selecting aspects of contexts to explore, and for opening up and representing the dynamic and polyscalar nature of context and the multiple histories embedded in it.

Brown, R.B. (2022). Perceptions and experiences of urban school, home and neighbourhood learning spaces, and implications for pedagogy in Tanzanian primary schools. A comparative case study. PhD, School of Education, University of Glasgow. Ferrare, J., & Apple, M.W. (2010). Spatializing critical education: Progress and cautions. Critical Studies in Education 51(2): 209-221. Massey, D. (1994). Space, place, and gender. University of Minnesota Press. Massey, D. (2005). For space. Sage Publications.

Process tracing has a great (but largely untapped) potential in sociological and comparative education policy analysis. Process-tracing (PT) can be defined as an analytical strategy aimed explicitly at unearthing the process behind an outcome of interest and identifying its causal mechanisms (George & Bennett, 2005). A distinct feature of PT is its reliance on fine-grained descriptions and the concern for sequencing of events; that is, a preoccupation for the unfolding of a given phenomenon over time (Collier, 2011). Process-tracing analysis aims at reconstructing key sequences of events within a given case with the purpose of identifying the causal mechanisms shaping it. As we argue in this presentation, PT can contribute to sociological and comparative education policy analysis in different ways. Hence, PT can both “ameliorate the limitations” of the conventional approach to comparative analysis (i.e., the method of agreement and difference) and contribute to expanding the range of questions we can ask (Simmons & Smith, 2021; see also George & Bennett, 2005). By examining in detail the factors leading to a particular policy outcome, including actors’ rationales, interests, and decision-making processes, PT can help identify causal mechanisms shaping education policy processes, helping to build theory in the field of comparative policy analysis. It can be used to compare policy-making processes across different regulatory and professional regimes, and thus test hypotheses on the contextual factors that shape policy outcomes. Indeed, if long policy periods are considered, PT allows for a more nuanced understanding of the role of context and contingency in policy-making, as it allows researchers to examine the conditions under which a policy was adopted, implemented and revisited through feedback loops. Our empirical examples include country cases conducted in the context of REFORMED, a multi-year research project analysing the instrumentation and enactment of school autonomy with accountability reforms in multiple educational settings (www.reformedproject.eu). The project relied on a case-centric variant of PT (Beach & Pedersen, 2016) that does not lend itself to generalization or extrapolation purposes, but suggests certain patterns and regularities have great potential from a comparative analysis perspective. The review of the REFORMED case studies will allow us to examine the potential of PT for theory-building and theory-testing purposes in comparative education research, but also to reflect on the challenges posed by the need to translate PT principles into methodological strategies, and the compatibility of PT with the methodological and theoretical pluralism inherent to comparative education policy studies.

Beach, D. & Pedersen, R.B. (2016). Causal case study methods. Foundations and guidelines for comparing, matching, and tracing. University of Michigan Press. Collier, D. (2011). Understanding process tracing. Political Science & Politics, 44(4), 823–830. George, A.L., & Bennet, A. (2005). Case studies and theory development in the social sciences. MIT Press. Simmons, E.S., & Smith, N.R. (Eds.). (2021). Rethinking comparison. Cambridge University Press.

Conducting observations in natural settings—including within classrooms, schools, and educational organisations—is a common and fruitful approach in sociological and comparative education research. Indeed, insights gained from observations in situ often highlight how actions and social relations manifest in and across various contexts, including within a singular community or across multiple classrooms and countries. Approaches to conducting observations vary widely depending on their purpose, however. Highly structured observations typically apply standardised observation systems to capture and compare specific behaviours across many contexts, such as international studies of teaching quality (Bell et al., 2019). These studies generally seek to correlate observations and produce generalisations about large data sets, sometimes combined with student/teacher characteristics or achievement data (e.g., OECD, 2020). Ethnographic studies otherwise tend to prioritise prolonged engagement within a narrower field, where researchers may act as participant-observers and make in-depth fieldnote observations. A key purpose of these studies is to better understand the logics and experiences of individuals involved in the (arguably deeply sociocultural) processes of teaching and learning (e.g., Anderson-Levitt, 2004; Maseman, 1982). There are of course many other approaches to observation, too, some of which combine aspects of these two and draw on a similarly diverse set of epistemological and theoretical paradigms. Despite these stark differences, what all approaches to observational research have in common is some reckoning with the notion of context. In this paper, then, we draw on examples from a range of empirical studies conducted in and beyond Europe to explore three ways context may be interpreted, employed, or ignored in sociological and comparative studies utilising observation. First, context is sometimes perceived eco-systemically as occurring across macro (cultural, economic, social), meso (school, community), and/or micros levels (classroom, students) (see also Bray & Thomas, 1995). The extent to which studies engage with and across these ‘levels’ varies widely, however; some merely acknowledge their existence in passing. Second, context may refer to the specific purposes for conducting observations, sometimes beyond research projects. Structured classroom observation protocols, for example, are increasingly utilised for teacher evaluation or feedback (Liu et al., 2019). Third, context may relate to the conceptual lenses we use to understand and analyse observational data (Martinez et al., 2016), and the positionalities and standpoints of the researchers themselves. In discussing these three interpretations of context, then, we highlight in this conceptual paper how attending to ‘context’ permeates all aspects of observational studies, whether acknowledged or otherwise.

Anderson-Levitt, K. M. (2004). Reading lessons in Guinea, France, and the United States: Local meanings or global culture? Comparative Education Review, 48(3), 229-252. Bell, C.A., Dobbelaer, M.J., Klette, K., & Visscher, A. (2019). Qualities of classroom observation systems. School effectiveness and school improvement, 30(1), 3-29. Bray, M. & Thomas, R. M. (1995). Levels of comparison in educational studies: Different insights from different literatures and the value of multilevel analyses. Harvard Education Review, 65(3), 472-490. Liu, S., Bell, C.A., Jones, N.D., & McCaffrey, D.F. (2019). Classroom observation systems in context: A case for the validation of observation systems. Educational assessment, evaluation and accountability, 31(1), 61-95. Martinez, F., Taut, S., & Schaaf, K. (2016). Classroom observation for evaluating and improving teaching: An international perspective. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 49, 15-29. Masemann, V.L. (1982). Critical ethnography in the study of comparative education. Comparative Education Review, 26(1), 1-15. OECD. (2020). Global Teaching InSights: A video study of teaching. OECD. https://doi.org/10.1787/20d6f36b-en.