Conference Agenda

In the past thirty years, education systems have experienced a burgeoning of policy initiatives aimed at improving education quality and students’ performance worldwide. This shift is primarily attributable to multiple forces reshaping the educational landscape, including the imperative of aligning educational systems with the demands of economic globalization; the rapid digitalization processes sweeping through societies; the influence of international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) in educational debates; the urge to standardize and measure every educational dimension under the reigning datafication imperative (Grek et al., 2021). In response to these multiple forces, certain policies have been articulated as somewhat coherent narratives capable of addressing these demands. Scholars have termed these policies either the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) (Sahlberg, 2016) or school-autonomy-with-accountability (SAWA) reforms (Verger et al., 2019). On the one hand, autonomy embodies managerial and decentralization policies that transfer decision-making to school-level agents, argued as ‘best practices’ to drive school improvement (Woessmann et al., 2009). On the other hand, assessment and accountability instruments lie at the heart of these reform packages, including large-scale standardized assessments, school inspections, peer evaluations, or self-evaluations, as pivotal policies to monitor schools and enhance quality.

Grouped under a quality assurance paradigm for education, autonomy, assessments, and accountability policies have widely circulated among different countries. In part, their global spread is explained to the multiple purposes, rationales, and uses that these policy instruments can uptake in different settings. However, beyond an apparent global convergence towards the widespread adoption of autonomy, assessments, and accountability policies, there are significant variations among countries depending on the governance structure –i.e., Federal vs. unitary countries–; the political ideology of governing party, administrative traditions of state bureaucracies, or path-dependency dynamics emerging from pre-existing policies (Gerrard and Savage, 2022). Put differently, while several countries might have adopted large-scale assessments, the associated stakes or how governments or schools use them can vary widely.

This panel explores reforms of autonomy, assessments, and accountability from a multi-scalar perspective, addressing crucial questions for understanding their dissemination and effects among different school systems from a policy instrument approach (Lascoumes and Le Galès 2007; Béland et al. 2018; Capano and Howlett 2020). Combining the theoretical contributions of political sociology in education, and theories of enactment, the panelists collectively unpack the dynamic vernacularisation of these reform packages, illustrating (I) how policy instruments are adopted and operate within unique cultural, political, and institutional landscapes, (II) the relevance of the filtering and enactment processes in the reconfiguration and calibration of the newly adopted policy instruments.

Some papers will explore the interactions between newly adopted and existing policy instruments, and the dynamic 'policy mixes' created, with unforeseen combined effects. Others will examine the centrality of specific instruments -i.e., large-scale learning assessments- and their uses and effects at different scales, ranging from policy design to school-level practices. All contributions will address the interplay between the reform goal and the policy instruments to achieve it, and the role played by key stakeholders and constituencies. In doing so, this panel extends beyond conventional analyses by shedding light on the complex dynamics that unfold in the selection and application of policy instruments and their interaction with pre-existing arrangements in diverse settings. Through theoretical contributions from political sociology and enactment theories, this panel enriches the field of policy studies in education by exploring the configuration of quality assurance policy instruments and their effects in increasingly complex and multi-layered policy landscapes.

Over the last decades, school autonomy and accountability policies (SAWA) have been at the forefront of education reforms globally. SAWA constitutes a reform package grounded in managerial and quasi-market principles to transform school systems governance radically (Verger et al., 2019). During the 2000s, SAWA reforms were epicenter in the Global North, particularly in OECD countries (Högberg & Lindgren, 2021). However, SAWA policies have also been disseminated, to different extents, among middle and low-income countries (Hossain, 2022). In particular, SAWA policies have circulated among Latin American countries, taking precedence in school-based management and decentralization reforms during the 1990s (Barrera-Osorio et al., 2009). Literature on policy transfer in education has largely accounted why, how, and where different reforms are diffused. However, most studies focus on single instruments or specific reform aspects, such as standardized testing (Kamens & McNeely, 2010), whereas complex packages are underexplored. This study aims to fill this gap by examining SAWA’s dissemination across Latin America, a region that has served as a laboratory for multiple managerial and neoliberal reforms in the past (Meseguer, 2004). First, the study dissects SAWA into its main elements: (i) autonomy to enable decision-making by school agents –boards, principals, and teachers–; (ii) accountability and standardization to measure and monitor school outcomes; (iii) competition as a driver for improvement; and (iv) performance incentives to nudge agents’ behavior towards targetted outcomes (Verger et al., 2019). Then, it specifies 13 instruments that operationalize SAWA’s theory of change, such as decentralization laws, large-scale standardized testing, curriculum standardization, bonus payment for teachers or school league tables. Thirdly, to explore the extent of SAWA instruments dissemination throughout Latin America, it creates a self-elaborated database on SAWA policies’ adoption, at the regulatory level, for each of the 34 Latin American and Caribbean countries from 1990 until 2020. According to the World Education Reform Database, the period coincides with the peak of neoliberal reforms (Bromley et al., 2021). Following a similar methodology from prior policy diffusion studies (Bromley et al., 2021), data for this paper comes from coding country-level policy documents and international organizations publications (i.e., OECD’s Review of National Education Policies or the World Bank’s SABER publications). This paper contributes to the study of globalization and policy transfer in education by offering a cross-national and historical account of the spread of a complex reform package and its composing policies and analyzing trends in instrument diffusion throughout Latin America.

Barrera-Osorio, F., Fasih, T., Patrinos, H. A., & Santibáñez, L. (2009). Decentralized Decision-making in Schools: The Theory and Evidence on School-based Management. World Bank. Bromley, P., Overbey, L., Furuta, J., & Kijima, R. (2021). Education reform in the twenty-first century: Declining emphases in international organisation reports, 1998–2018. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 19(1), 23–40. Högberg, B., & Lindgren, J. (2021). Outcome-based accountability regimes in OECD countries: A global policy model? Comparative Education, 57(3), 301–321. Hossain, M. (2022). Diffusing “Destandardization” Reforms across Educational Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: The Case of the World Bank, 1965 to 2020. Sociology of Education, 95(4), 320–339. Kamens, D. H., & McNeely, C. L. (2010). Globalization and the growth of international educational testing and national assessment. Comparative Education Review, 54(1), 5–25. Meseguer, C. (2004). What Role for Learning? The Diffusion of Privatisation in OECD and Latin American Countries. Journal of Public Policy, 24(3), 299–325. Verger, A., Fontdevila, C., & Parcerisa, L. (2019). Constructing School Autonomy with Accountability as a Global Policy Model: A Focus on OECD’s Governance Mechanisms. In C. Ydesen (Ed.), The OECD’s Historical Rise in Education: The Formation of a Global Governing Complex (pp. 219–243). Springer International Publishing.

Since the turn of the century, data on student learning has played an increasingly prominent role in global education governance. With the proliferation of global indicators and international comparisons, the measurement agenda and data production demands have grown and spread widely in national education systems worldwide. Despite the global adoption of large-scale learning assessments (LSAs) and the growing influence of evidence-based policymaking discourses, the uses that governments make of LSAs data vary widely, being context-sensitive and contingent on political and institutional settings (Verger et al., 2019). In low-stakes accountability contexts such uses have been less explored. While the literature suggests that LSAs data is influential for agenda setting, and policy monitoring and evaluation, it is less clear the extent to which it is used by governments to inform policy formulation processes (Tobin et al., 2016). Thus, this paper explores whether and how data from LSAs is used by the national government in Argentina and the subnational government in the city of Buenos Aires to inform policy design. The Argentinean case presents a complex political scenario in which the adoption, calibration and retention of learning assessment instruments has been amid federal political interaction (Rodríguez et al., 2018). Through a qualitative vertical case study, the paper explores to what extent, how and why governments at the national and subnational levels use LSAs data to inform policy formulation (2015-2019) (Barlett & Vavrus, 2014). The empirical strategy relies on document analysis (n=55) and in-depth semi-structured interviews with policymakers (n=20). Results show that data from national large-scale assessments (NLSAs) was privileged at the national level, and from local large-scale assessments (LLSAs) at the subnational level. Data from cross-national assessments (ILSAs) was used to a lesser extent during policy formulation. Data use encompassed both instrumental and symbolic purposes, while conceptual use was less prominent and linked to other forms of educational evidence, such as qualitative studies (Coburn et al., 2009). The paper provides theoretical insights into the close relationship between the political rationales for legitimating the NLSA and the logic offered for using (or not) its data in policymaking (Addey & Sellar, 2018).

Addey, C., & Sellar, S. (2019). Rationales for (non) participation in international large-scale learning assessments. Education Research and Foresight: UNESCO Working paper. Bartlett, L., & Vavrus, F. (2014). Transversing the Vertical Case Study: A Methodological Approach to Studies of Educational Policy as Practice: Transversing the Vertical Case Study. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 45(2), 131–147. https://doi.org/10.1111/aeq.12055. Coburn, C. E., Honig, M. I., & Stein, M. K. (2009). What’s the evidence on districts’ use of evidence? In J. D. Bransford, D. J. Stipek, N. J. Vye, L. M. Gomez, & D. Lam (Eds.), The Role of Research in Educational Improvement (pp. 67-86). Harvard Education Press. Rodríguez, L. R., Vior, S. E., & Más Rocha, S. M. (2018). Las Políticas de Evaluación de la Calidad Educativa en Argentina (2016-2018). Educação & Realidade, 43(4), 1405–1428. https://doi.org/10.1590/2175-623684907. Tobin, M., Nugroho, D., & Lietz, P. (2016). Large-scale assessments of students’ learning and education policy: Synthesising evidence across world regions. Research Papers in Education, 31(5), 578–594. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2016.1225353. Verger, A., Parcerisa, L., & Fontdevila, C. (2019). The growth and spread of large-scale assessments and test-based accountabilities: A political sociology of global education reforms education reforms. Educational Review, 00(00), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2019.1522045

School autonomy policies have been cemented as a principal policy direction in state and territory education systems across the Australian federation (Gerrard and Savage 2022). These policies aim to devolve elements of school governance from centralised state bureaucracies to the local school level within publicly funded systems of education. A notable example is the Independent Public Schools (IPS) initiative, introduced in 2009 in the state of Western Australia (WA). Reflective of decentralising school reforms internationally (Keddie 2016), the IPS involved a suite of policy changes designed to increase flexibility and attune school governance to local needs, such as one-line budgets and the introduction of School Boards (Gerrard and Savage 2022). Over a decade since the IPS was first introduced, more than 80% of all students in WA government schools now attend an IPS school. Critical policy scholarship regularly positions autonomy reforms as part of a global shift towards neoliberal governance, with a particular focus on marketisation. For instance, Gobby (2016) interprets IPS as promoting neoliberal public service provision, while Fitzgerald et al. (2018) see it as intensifying market competition among schools, creating disparities. This paper extends critical scholarship, but in a different theoretical register. Rather than engaging in a critique of autonomy as an artefact of neoliberalism or marketisation, we explore the material and discursive underpinnings of the IPS through a conceptual lens centred on scalar politics. Drawing on Papanastasiou's concept of 'scalecraft' (2017), MacKinnon’s (2011) concept of scalar politics, and other critical accounts of scale as a social process (Fraser 2010; Savage, Di Gregorio and Lingard 2022), we frame scale as an epistemological tool in policymaking, used to reshape power and resource distribution. Our primary argument is that the IPS can be understood as a scalar intervention that rearranged relations between local schools, mid-level bureaucracies, and the central state department of education. Based on a synthesis of policy document analysis and interviews with senior WA policymakers, we show that scale was central to the design and implementation of the IPS and was used to legitimise its impacts. Building on existing theories of ‘scalecraft’, we make a novel contribution by introducing two new complementary concepts: ‘scalecreep’, which involved the rapid expansion of the IPS beyond the original scope envisioned by its architects; and ‘scalecrunch’, which resulted in the diminishment of the influence of regional-level bureaucrats as the relationship between principals and bureaucrats in the state’s Department of Education was prioritised.

Fitzgerald, S., et al. (2017). Devolution, market dynamics and the Independent Public School Initiative in Western Australia. Journal of Education Policy, 33(5): 662–681. Fraser, A. 2010. The Craft of Scalar Practices. Environment and Planning A, 42: 332–346. Gerrard, J., & Savage, G. C. (2022). The governing parent-citizen: dividing and valorising parent labour through school governance, Journal of Education Policy, 37(5): 744-761. Gobby, B. 2016. “Putting “the system” into a school autonomy reform: The case of the Independent Public Schools program. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 37(1): 16–29. Keddie, A. (2016). Maintaining the integrity of public education: A comparative analysis of school autonomy in the United States and Australia. Comparative Education Review, 60 (2): 249–270. MacKinnon, D. (2011). Reconstructing scale: Towards a new scalar politics. Progress in Human Geography, 35(1), 21-36. Papanastasiou, N. (2017). The practice of scalecraft: Scale, policy and the politics of the market in England’s Academy Schools. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 49(5): 1060–1079. Savage, G. C., Di Gregorio, E., & Lingard, B. (2022) Practices of scalecraft and the reassembling of political boundaries: the contested nature of national schooling reform in the Australian federation. Policy Studies, 43(5): 962-983.

Expectations for schools to use data from a variety of sources to improve the education they offer have been increasing globally (Verger & Skedsmo, 2021). Over time, what data is and means has expanded from only considering standardised national large-scale assessments. In the Italian school autonomy and accountability system, schools’ own analysis and reflection about data both received from central administration and produced locally are expected to be used for didactic and organizational improvement. In this research, the use by schools of internally and externally produced data of organisational, administrative, assessment, pedagogic nature and beyond is analysed. These include national tests, schools’ self-evaluation reports, grades, teacher observation, demographic data, and more. Research on data use in the Italian context is particularly limited. Specifically, no research has been conducted following the conceptualization of data going beyond national assessment data. Pastori and Pagani (2016) report a growing trust in the validity of data from national assessments results, but difficulty in making use of it because of time, skills necessary to analyse data, and lack of habit in engaging is such processes. This research seeks to understand to what extent and how data use processes and routines happen in Italian schools, what facilitates them, what schools consider as data and their attitudes towards it. The paper specifically analyses how school organizational and political context, individual factors, and the accountability system mediate data use, and whether and how data influences pedagogical and organizational decisions in schools. This study uses data use conceptualisations and frameworks (Coburn and Turner, 2011; Spillane, 2012) to study data use in education in a specific Southern-European low-stakes accountability context. It places emphasis on the use of data for equity purposes (Datnow & Park, 2018), through a conceptual model for critical data-driven decision making (Dodman et al., 2021), and embraces the notion of data-informed decision making rather than data-based decision making (Schildkamp et al., 2019). Methodologically, this qualitative study uses interviews of principals and teachers in 12 primary and lower-secondary schools, selected to guarantee variety of socio-economic context, in the city of Rome. Expected results include limited structured use of data, positive attitudes regarding conceptualization of data beyond national assessment results, organizational and data literacy barriers for data use. It is also anticipated that ideas of data use include data use to increase equity, but that processes for this to happen may not be structured or systematically present.

Coburn, C. E., & Turner, E. O. (2011). Research on data use: A framework and analysis. Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research & Perspective, 9(4), 173-206. Datnow, A., & Park, V. (2018). Opening or closing doors for students? Equity and data use in schools. Journal of Educational Change, 19, 131-152. Dodman, S. L., Swalwell, K., DeMulder, E. K., View, J. L., & Stribling, S. M. (2021). Critical data-driven decision making: A conceptual model of data use for equity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 99, 103272. Pastori, G., & Pagani, V. (2016). Cosa pensate dei test INVALSI? Dirigenti scolastici, insegnanti e studenti provenienti dalla Lombardia descrivono la loro esperienza. Journal of Educational, Cultural and Psychological Studies, 2016(13), 97–117. Schildkamp, K., Poortman, C. L., Ebbeler, J., & Pieters, J. M. (2019). How school leaders can build effective data teams: Five building blocks for a new wave of data-informed decision making. Journal of educational change, 20, 283-325. Spillane, J. P. (2012). Data in practice: Conceptualizing the data-based decision-making phenomena. American Journal of Education, 118(2), 113-141. Verger, A. & Skedsmo, G. (2021). Enacting accountability in education: exploring new policy contexts and theoretical elaborations. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 33(3), 391-402.