Conference Agenda

Provide a clear outline of your research question and your theoretical framework. Bear in mind that

the European/international dimension is vital to the success of your submission.

up to 600 words

Topic: Standardisation, Diversity and Decolonisation: Enactment of Global Policies around Teaching Quality in Different Nations.

Research Question: How are teacher educators dealing with the tensions between different policy discourses which standardise quality teaching and the uncertainties which arose in struggles to decolonise curricula and pedagogies in universities?

Objectives: To develop theoretical and methodological resources to explore the enactment of global policies around quality teaching on teacher education programs and practices. The theoretical resources will include concepts from disciplinary fields such as decolonial studies (Critical Indigenous Studies, Asia as Method, Colonial Matrix of Power), as well as critical policy studies drawing on post-Foucauldian and post-Bernsteinian scholarship.

Conceptual Framework: The neoliberal educational scenarios projected by international organisations such as the OECD, World Bank and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has ‘led to a new way of thinking about how schools, technical colleges, universities and educational systems should be governed’ (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010, p. 117). National governments and the bureaucratic administrative state are no longer the only source of policy authority when it comes to teacher education. Increasingly international organisations, such as the OECD (2005, 2018), with their assemblage of measurement instruments, survey tools, online professional engagement videos, databases, and platforms govern teachers’ work and determine what constitutes ‘quality’ of teachers, teaching, and teacher education programs (Singh et al., 2021). Globalising discourses operate both hierarchically and heterarchically (Ball, 2016). Hierarchically, national governments may take the brunt of negative evaluation arising from publication of comparative test scores. Heterarchical effects mean that school leaders, class teachers and teacher educators can also be attacked directly through various media, including social media platforms. Moreover, the teaching workforce (including teacher educators) are held accountable and responsible for improving student performance outcomes and directed through the bureaucratic arms of the state to reform curriculum and pedagogies accordingly. The purposes of education are reconfigured in narrow instrumentalist terms, and so is the work of teachers and teacher educators, leading to the deprofessionalisation of the teaching workforce (see Robertson & Sorenson, 2018). At the same time, there are fewer people enrolling in teacher education programs and retention of teachers, particularly in schools situated in high poverty, culturally and linguistically diverse contexts is difficult. Moreover, there are increasing calls to decolonise university curriculum, which at a basic performative level, equates to a demand for more diversity in the teacher education workforce and inclusion of research by non-white scholars. In this symposium, each of the papers deals with the contradictory issues of standardisation and decolonisation of teacher education programs. The former aims to create uniform standards or norms, the latter seeks recognition for increasing cultural and linguistic diversity within nation states, and reconciliation for ongoing colonial injustices.

Reforms in initial teacher education in Australia have been driven by several interconnected global trends in education: standardisation, measurement, and processes of accountability. An increasing emphasis on standardisation in the global education reform movement (GERM) has led to the development and enactment of teacher professional standards, benchmark standards for literacy and numeracy, and national curriculum standards (Singh et al., 2021). Standardisation has been coupled with another trend, that of a growing determination to measure outcomes and to create publication league tables based on such measurements. We propose that these global policy trends, initiated by policy agencies such as the OECD, are a continuation of the colonial project of education. In this paper we outline key debates and intellectual trajectories that have shaped the field of decoloniality studies in education for the purposes of synthesising these concepts with the discipline of critical global policy studies. Decoloniality has been linked to the triad modernity /coloniality/decoloniality, which Mignolo and Walsh (2018) describe as the colonial matrix of power (CMP). The CMP commenced with the project of European expansion and imperialism, often described as modernity from the 1500s onwards, and was integrally connected to colonialisation of other lands and peoples. Despite the different trajectories of scholarship within decolonial studies, emanating from different disciplinary fields and geographic spaces, we identify the following key concerns within this corpus: (1) L/land, Lore, and Country and Relationality of Epistemology-Ontology-Axiology (see Tuck & Yang, 2012; Moreton-Robinson, 2020); (2) Situated Strategic Universalisms as Movements of Solidarity (Haraway, 1988; Kapoor & Zalloua, 2022); and (3) Anti-Racism including projects around Racisms/Sexisms against the resurgence of white supremacy (Garba & Sorentino, 2020; Le Grange, 2023). We suggest that a threshold of disciplinary knowledge around the above three concerns is central to any decolonising project in teacher education (Moodie, 2019). Such a project calls for the deconstruction and reconstruction of disciplinary knowledges, and the inclusion of marginalised voices and knowledges from the global South. We ask - what contributions can decoloniality studies make to the critical policy studies literature on quality teaching, standardisation and measurement, all core to the OECD’s policies and part of the global education reform movement? We review literature in decoloniality studies to outline key debates and emergent concepts relating to teacher education. In addition, we illustrate how we have made use of decoloniality concepts in our own teacher education program work in Australia.

Garba, T., & Sorentino, S.-M. (2020). Slavery is a Metaphor: A Critical Commentary on Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor”. Antipode, 52(3), 764-782 Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575-599. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066 Kapoor, I., & Zalloua, Z. (2022). Universal politics. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197607619.003.0001 Le Grange, L. (2023). Decolonisation and anti-racism: Challenges and opportunities for (teacher) education. The Curriculum Journal, 34, 8–21. https://doi.org/10.1002/curj.193 Majavu, M. (2023). Toppling the Racist Anglo-Saxon Politics of Cecil Rhodes. In B. Mignolo, W., & Walsh, C. (2018). On Decoloniality. Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Duke University Press. Moodie, N. (2019). Learning about knowledge: threshold concepts for Indigenous studies in education. The Australian Educational Researcher, 46(5), 735-749. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-019-00309-3 Moreton-Robinson, A. (2020). Incommensurable sovereignties. Indigenous ontology matters. In B. Hokowhitu, A. Moreton-Robinson, L. Tuhiwai-Smith, C. Andersen, & S. Larkin (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies (pp. 257-269). Routledge. Singh, P., Hoyte, F., Heimans, S., & Exley, B. (2021). Teacher Quality and Teacher Education: A Critical Policy Analysis of International and Australian Policies.. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 46(4). http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2021v46n4.1 Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonisation is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1(1), 1-40.

This paper explores the potential to teacher education, of drawing lines between professional discretion, ethics of care and inclusion as a decolonial (indigenous) practice (Gaudry & Lorenz, 2018). In the face of accountability demands, increasing diversity, and teachers expressing powerlessness, professional discretion is challenged. Inclusion understood as decentring of dominant knowledges and world views and prioritizing experiences of marginalised groups may, reveal a potential for, and possibly contribute to, change through disrupting existing power structures. The context: Norwegian teacher education has been described as existing in a field of tension between policy and research (Brevik & Fosse 2016), and between responsibility and accountability (Smith 2018). A revised national curriculum was issued in 2017, emphasising a research-based foundation and expanding the length to include a masters’ degree. The teaching profession is, despite a comparably soft version of control, similarly described as positioned between accountability and autonomy (Lennert da Silva & Mølstad 2020), and professional ethics as mired in paradox of choice between two ethical positions of which one protests the accountability system but offers no support for action, and the other offers guidance in action whilst accepting the system (Afdal & Afdal 2019). Teachers’ professional discretion (no: “skjønn”), described as making good choice in the face of uncertainty, is seen as developed in the nexus between theory and experience emphasising the intertwining of differing knowledges and contextual sensitivity (Grimen & Molander 2008), though in practice to a lesser extent found to emphasise value-based reasoning (Suzen 2024). Recent developments in initial teacher training prioritizing scientific knowledge, can be expected to prioritize research to experience and structural demands to ethical reflection. Through a document analysis of current policy documents on, and a recent evaluation of, teacher education, we uncover the understandings of, and conditions for promoting professional discretion in teacher education in a Norwegian context. Our preliminary results suggest a lack of emphasis on experiences, values, or world views within teachers' education in Norway, and professional competence as based on scientific knowledge. We discuss the findings considering research on decolonial movements in Norwegian teacher education. Building on bell hooks ideas about theory, love and dialogue (hooks 2014) we then explore the potential of a predominant ethics of care (Afdal & Afdal 2019) as a site of resistance, providing an opening to a wider set of epistemologies and counter-hegemonic ideas promoting thinking against the grain.

Afdal, H. W., & Afdal, G. (2019). The making of professional values in the age of accountability. European Educational Research Journal, 18(1), 105-124. Brevik, L.M., & Fosse, B.O. (2016). Lærerutdanning i det 21. år hundre – Tradisjoner, Utfordringer, Endringer [Teacher education in the 21st century. Traditions, challenges, and changes]. Acta Didactica Norge, 10(2), 1-10. Gaudry, A., & Lorenz, D. (2018). Indigenization as inclusion, reconciliation, and decolonization: navigating the different visions for indigenizing the Canadian Academy. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 14(3), 218-227. hooks, b. (2014). Teaching to transgress. Routledge. Lennert da Silva, A. L., & Mølstad, C. E. (2020). Teacher autonomy and teacher agency: A comparative study in Brazilian and Norwegian lower secondary education. The Curriculum Journal, 31(1), 115-131. Grimen, H. & Molander, A. (2008). Profesjon og skjønn [Professions and professional discretion]. In: Profesjonsstudier, 179–196. Universitetsforlaget. Smith, K. (2018). Accountability in Teacher Education in Norway: A Case of Mistrust and Trust. In: Wyatt-Smith, C., Adie, L. (eds) Innovation and Accountability in Teacher Education. Teacher Education, Learning Innovation and Accountability. Springer, Suzen, E. (2024). Vurdering for å lære - en skjønnsmessig vurdering som gir føringer for lærerprofesjonalitet. [Assesment for learning - a discretionary assessment that provides guidance for teacher professionalism] I: T. Werler og H. Sæverot (red). Pedagogiske handlinger. Fagbokforlaget

Quality teaching in school education has increasingly become central policy topic of the European Union (EU) stressing quality and equity in education and training, while it is closely linked to high-quality competences for in service and future teachers (Sarakinioti & Tsatsaroni, 2015). In 2020 (European Commission, 2020), teacher education policy for quality and inclusive, digital and green education was planned to be supported by Erasmus+Teacher Academies. The 27 Teacher Academies competitively funded today offer a range of collaboration, capacity building, network and learning activities, modules and toolkits for teachers and student teachers (Galvin et al., 2024). The paper problematises the emerging mode of transnational governance of partnerships among schools, teacher education institutions, universities, NGOs, etc in the framework of Erasmus+Teachers Academies, questioning the changes it introduces in the broad field of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Europe. The analysis adopts a topological genealogy approach that focuses on governing practices unfolding through the spatial/temporal operation of continuity and change, repetition, and difference in the emerging relations of transnational European governance of Erasmus+Teachers Academies and their productive effects for ITE (Martin & Secor, 2014, Decuypere & Lewis, 2023). A starting point of the topological approach is that “the spatiotemporal scales are not considered as being nested in one another (e.g., past-present-future as linearly and chronologically unfolding; micro-meso-macro as differing in size and scope), but rather in ‘the agential enfolding of different scales through one another'” (Barad 2007, 245, in Decuypere & Lewis, 2023, 4). Bernstein’s theoretical idea that social space and time are demarcated by symbolic and material boundaries which, as ‘tacit metaphors’, define the inside/outside, now/then, near/far, us/them regulating the knowledge/ power and control relations in different sites of practice (2000: 206), informs the topological analysis of the 27 Academies. The analysis conceives of Teacher Academies as governmental space(s) in/ through/ as change for ITE (Decuypere & Lewis, 2023). The paper describes the processes of stabilization of Teacher Academies’ policy/pedagogic interventions- how they “are being produced, enacted, facilitated and sustained” and what kinds of instruments, infrastructures etc, they utilise (“relations in change”). Also, it discusses the productive effects and standardisations of these interventions in/on the field of ITE (“relations through changes”). Finally, it reflects on the entire educational-infrastructural assemblage of Erasmus+Teachers Academies, whether they are becoming a “prototype” in the field of European ITE and about their footprint on teachers/ teacher educators’ work and professionalism (ibid, Robertson & Sorensen, 2018).

Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique. Revised edition. Rowman & Littlefield. Decuypere, M. & Lewis, S. (2023) Topological genealogy: a methodology to research transnational digital governance in/through/as change, Journal of Education Policy, 38:1, 23-45, DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2021.1995629 European Commission. (2020). COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS on achieving the European Education Area by 2025. COM(2020) 625 final Galvin, C., Madalinska-Michalak, J. & Revyakina, E. (2024). The European Union Erasmus+ Teacher Academies Action. Complementing and Supplementing European Teacher Education and Teacher Education Research? In V. Symeonidis, (2024) (Ed) Enhancing the Value of Teacher Education Research. Implications for Policy and Practice (170-197). Brill. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Martin, L. & Secor. A. J. 2014. “Towards a Post-mathematical Topology.” Progress in Human Geography 38 (3): 420–438. doi:10.1177/0309132513508209. Robertson, S.L., & Sorensen, T. (2018). Global transformations of the state, governance and teachers’ labour: Putting Bernstein’s conceptual grammar to work. European Educational Research Journal, 17(4), 470-488. https://doi:10.1177/1474904117724573 Sarakinioti, A. & Tsatsaroni, A. (2015). European education policy initiatives and teacher education curriculum reforms in Greece. Education Inquiry (EDUI), 6(3): 259-288. http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/edui.v6.28421

What does the decolonial turn mean to a postcolonial policy context like Cyprus and Hong Kong? In recent times, there has been a plethora of literature in the English-using scholarly community, on the need to decolonise curriculum, knowledge, and research. This sentiment is prevalent and widely shared amongst scholars, particularly in the West. Decoloniality has intersected with important research themes such as race, gender, climate justice, Indigenous studies, to name just a few common examples. In this paper, I offer a slightly different angle on the decolonial turn and what it might mean and be practised differently, based on a partial perspective from/in Hong Kong. I outline three tasks which constitute what I call difficult decoloniality: 1) the need to problematise existing research discourse about Hong Kong education policy studies published in flagship academic journals in the West; 2) the demand for a language of description to scratch beneath the surface of complex problems underlying politics and policy of education in non-Western context; and 3) a faithful and subversive extension of sociological theory that goes beyond the Western hermeneutical horizons. I draw on a couple of research articles published in Western journals and recent policy changes in relation to teacher professionalism in post-2019 Hong Kong, to illustrate these three points. While sociological knowledge produced by/in the West such as the ‘classics’ by Durkheim, Marx, and Weber has long been subjected to criticism by decolonial scholars, I focus instead on the fecundity of descriptions that theoretical enterprises and valid concerns expressed by sociologists such as Basil Bernstein, have enabled. More specifically, I turn to recent policy instruments related to teacher quality such as Professional Standards for Teachers of Hong Kong, Guidelines on Teachers’ Professional Conduct, and Guidelines for Handling School Complaints, all of which are connected to the post-2019 political crisis and complex problems such as teacher bashing, doxxing, online abuse, complaints against schoolteachers. Contrary to prevalent literature in the West on terrors of performativity and ambivalence arising from policy enactment, I argue that it is equally important to address what these policy instruments have done and enabled. In other words, two issues arise from the decolonial perspective on an Asian policy context: 1) the importance of historicity and contextuality in which theory produced in the West might speak otherwise; and 2) social and epistemic conditions under which a theory from the West is still rendered valid in the postcolonial context.

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