Politics, Policies and Pedagogies in Education: The Selected Works of Bob Lingard 2013001203, 9780415841450, 9780415853842, 9780203765708

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Politics, Policies and Pedagogies in Education

In the World Library of Educationalists series, international experts compile career long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces of work – extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and practical contributions – so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers will be able to follow the themes and strands and see how their work contributes to the development of the field. Bob Lingard has spent the last 30 years researching and writing in universities in Australia, England and Scotland about changing education policy issues. His work is written from a sociological perspective and with a commitment to social justice. He is the co-editor and co-author of 17 books and more than 100 journal articles and book chapters. In Politics, Policies and Pedagogies in Education, Bob Lingard provides critical sociological engagement with the politics of education. The focus is education policy and the impact of globalization, including epistemological and methodological issues necessary for researching education policy today. Topics analysed include: • • • • • •

educational restructuring new accountabilities and testing mediatization of education policy policy as numbers the global policy field and policy borrowing pedagogies.

Bob Lingard also considers the nature of educational research today. He has selected 11 of his key writings and in a critical introduction situates and contextualizes the work against key developments in the field and in the changing world. Bob Lingard is Professorial Research Fellow in the School of Education and Institute for Social Science Research at The University of Queensland, Australia.

World Library of Educationalists series

Other books in the series: Lessons from History of Education The selected works of Richard Aldrich Richard Aldrich Knowledge, Power, and Education The selected works of Michael W. Apple Michael W. Apple Education Policy and Social Class The selected works of Stephen J. Ball Stephen J. Ball Race, Culture, and Education The selected works of James A. Banks James A. Banks In Search of Pedagogy Volume I The selected works of Jerome S. Bruner, 1957–1978 Jerome S. Bruner In Search of Pedagogy Volume II The selected works of Jerome S. Bruner, 1979–2006 Jerome S. Bruner Reimagining Schools The selected works of Elliot W. Eisner Elliot W. Eisner Reflecting Where the Action Is The selected works of John Elliot John Elliot

The Development and Education of the Mind The Selected Works of Howard Gardner Howard Gardner Constructing Worlds through Science Education The selected works of John K. Gilbert John K. Gilbert Learning, Curriculum and Life Politics The selected works of Ivor F. Goodson Ivor F. Goodson Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Research The selected works of Mary E. James Mary E. James Teaching, Learning and Education in Late Modernity The selected works of Peter Jarvis Peter Jarvis Education, Markets, and the Public Good The selected works of David F. Labaree David F. Labaree Politics, Policies and Pedagogies in Education The selected works of Bob Lingard Bob Lingard

A Life in Education The selected works of John Macbeath John Macbeath Overcoming Exclusion Social Justice through Education Peter Mittler Learner-Centered English Language Education The selected works of David Nunan David Nunan Educational Philosophy and Politics The selected works of Michael A. Peters Michael A. Peters

Corporatism, Social Control, and Cultural Domination in Education: From the Radical Right to Globalization The selected works of Joel Spring Joel Spring The Curriculum and the Child The selected works of John White John White The Art and Science of Teaching and Learning The selected works of Ted Wragg E. C. Wragg

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Politics, Policies and Pedagogies in Education The selected works of Bob Lingard

Bob Lingard

First published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 B. Lingard The right of B. Lingard to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Lingard, Bob, author. [Works. Selections] Politics, policies and pedagogies in education : the selected works of Bob Lingard / Bob Lingard. pages cm 1. Education and state. 2. Education and globalization. I. Title. LC71.L56 2013 LC71.L56 2013 379—dc23 2013001203 ISBN: 978–0–415–84145–0 (hbk) ISBN: 978–0–415–85384–2 (pbk) ISBN: 978–0–203–76570–8 (ebk) Typeset in Galliard by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

For Carolynn Lingard

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements Introduction: Situating politics, polices and pedagogies in education

xii 1

Defining education(al) research 3 The necessity of theory and the necessity of the empirical 5 The usefulness of Bourdieu’s thinking tools 7 Policy research in education: considering research/policy relationships 10 The focus of my work 14 Selection principles 20 In/conclusion 21 1 Policy as numbers: Ac/counting for educational research

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Introduction 27 Excursus 28 Politics of/as numbers 29 The contemporary ‘structure of feeling’: the contexts of the rise of policy as, by and through numbers 34 The government to governance move in education policy 36 The national schooling agenda in Australia 39 Effects of policy as numbers 41 Conclusion: some implications for education(al) research 45 2 Education policy as numbers: Data categories and two Australian cases of misrecognition Introduction 51 Contextualizing the analysis 52 Numbers as a technology of governance and the category of LBOTE: misrecognition 1 54 The politics and numbers behind ‘closing the gap’: misrecognition 2 59 Concluding comment 64

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Contents 3 Policy borrowing, policy learning: Testing times in Australian schooling

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Introduction 68 Queensland 72 The global/Australian policy context of new education/al accountabilities 73 Policy learning as the basis for policy borrowing: the cases of England and Finland 76 What does the research tell us? 78 Beyond the neo-liberal social imaginary 79 Conclusion 81 4 It is and it isn’t: Vernacular globalization, educational policy, and restructuring

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Introduction 86 An emergent policy settlement in education 88 Supranational policy production in education 93 The role of the OECD 95 Globalizing educational policy and systems via the vernacular 98 5 New scalar politics: Implications for education policy

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Introduction 105 What do we mean by rescaling of educational policy and politics? 106 Rescaling and the knowledge economy: practices and discourses 109 PISA and the global education policy field 111 Conclusion 113 6 Scottish education: Reflections from an international perspective

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Introduction 118 Reference societies 121 A new scalar politics: Scotland, Britain, Europe and globalisation 125 Conclusion 128 7 Mediatizing educational policy: The journalistic field, science policy, and cross-field effects

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Introduction 131 Fielding and mediatizing policy 134 Evaluating the applicability of concepts from journalism field to educational policy field 135 The chance to change: a case study of cross-field effects 138 Conclusion 146 8 Deparochializing the study of education: Globalization and the research imagination Introduction 149 Deparochializing research 151

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Contents xi Deparochialization of the focus of educational policy studies: narrative one 153 Deparochialization of theory and methodology in educational research: narrative two 156 Conclusion 159 9 Researching education policy in a globalized world: Theoretical and methodological considerations

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Introduction 163 Purposes and positionalities 164 Questions for policy analysis 166 Research and policy analysis 168 Globalizing education policy analysis 171 Conclusion 174 10 Getting boys’ education ‘right’: The Australian Government’s Parliamentary Inquiry Report as an exemplary instance of recuperative masculinity politics

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Introduction 178 The inquiry 179 Context 180 Common sense versus research 181 Gender equity framework 183 Curriculum, pedagogy and assessment 185 Male role models 188 Conclusion: the re-masculinisation of schooling 189 11 Pedagogies of indifference

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Introduction 192 Pedagogies 197 The research: the theoretical and empirical bases of productive pedagogies 198 Findings 201 Conclusion 205 Bibliography Index

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have had a privileged life as a social science researcher working in the field of education. Many wonderful people have mentored and supported my work over time. It is important, I believe, to recognize the collaborations that lie behind all good social science research, especially in this era of neo-liberal individual self-interest and self-responsibilizing. In my case, many of those people will be very evident in lists of my co-researchers and co-authors over time. I am thinking especially in this respect of Fazal Rizvi, Sandra Taylor, Miriam Henry, and Martin Mills, who have been wonderful collaborators, from whom I have learnt so much and for each of whom I have the greatest respect and special affection. I will mention the many other people here who have helped me since 1973, when I took up my first research position as a Research Assistant to Professor Betty Watts at The University of Queensland to work on an evaluation of the secondary scholarship scheme for Indigenous Australians that she was doing for the Whitlam government at the time. Professor Watts arranged my leave from school teaching and the Department of Education, a profession to which I never returned, but for which I have the greatest respect and trust, unlike much contemporary media and policy constructions of the profession. Professor Watts was a wonderful mentor and supporter of my research career. I started in good hands! At what is now the University of Southern Queensland, Dr Ron Browne provided wonderful support and opportunities for me, as did the Dean, Ken Imison. At what is now QUT, I worked with an outstanding group of sociologists of education and philosophers too: Miriam Henry, Phil Meade, Sandra Taylor, Paul Thomas, Robert Elliott, Beryl Evans, Peter Meadmore and Colin Symes. This was a wonderful time in one sense, at least, when the Kelvin Grove Campus led much of the opposition to the truly awful Bjelke-Petersen Queensland government. At The University of Queensland, I have had many wonderful colleagues from my appointment as lecturer there in 1988 to my return in 2008; these include Paige Porter (one of my doctoral supervisors), the late John Knight, who was a wonderful collaborator and friend, John Elkins (who also taught me at school), Leo Bartlett, the late Carolyn Baker, the late Meredyth Sadler, Don Alexander, Peter Renshaw, Jane Mitchell (a great tennis opponent), Merle Warry (a wonderful research assistant and support), Liz McKinlay, Simone Smala, Amanda Keddie, Merrilyn Goos, Martin Mills, Richard Niesche, Eileen Honan, Louise Phillips, Sam Sellar, Jessica Harris, Mark Western (his father, the late John Western, whose principled pragmatism has been an ongoing guide to me), Paul Boreham (my doctoral supervisor), Brian Head and many others. During his time as Head of School at The University of Queensland, Allan Luke, most ably supported by Carolyn Baker and Peter Renshaw, created a vibrant environment for ideas and productive and creative research, as well as engagement with schools and policy makers.

Acknowledgements xiii My doctoral students over time have been a joy to me. I have learnt so much from them, including Trevor Gale, John McCollow, Georgina Webb, Martin Mills, Hazri Jamil, Kentry Jean Pierre, Joanne Ailwood, Shaun Rawolle, Sajid Ali, Farah Shaik, Ian Hardy, Marcus Weaver-Hightower, Terry Wrigley, Eduardo Ali, Sally Pitkin, as are my current doctoral students, Greg Vass, Stephen Heimans, Sue Creagh, Paula Dunstan, Faridah Awang, David Peacock, Angelique Howell, Anna Hogan, Jack Tsao, Phouvanh Phommalangsy, and Jesus Bergas Paz. It has been a pleasure working with many of these doctoral students post graduation. I mention here in particular, Shaun Rawolle, with whom I have explored the usefulness of the theorizing of Bourdieu to education policy analysis today. At Sheffield University, I was privileged to work with many excellent researchers and supportive colleagues: Jackie Marsh, Julia Davies, Wilfred Carr, Ann Cheryl Armstrong, Derrick Armstrong, Jennifer Lavia, Jon Nixon, Melanie Walker, Susie Harris, Paul Standish and Pat Sikes, my corridor neighbour. Pamela Munn encouraged me to apply for the Bell Chair at the University of Edinburgh and was a wonderful friend and supporter when I moved to Edinburgh. I had some great colleagues at Edinburgh: Martin Lawn, Jenny Ozga, Sotiria Grek, Farah Shaik, Shereen Benjamin, Lyn Tett, Terry Wrigley, David Raffe, Lyndsay Paterson and especially Sheila Riddell, who supported Carolynn and me in our move to Scotland, as well as supporting me within the University. Roger Slee has been a wonderful friend across my academic career, as has been Lyn Yates – two very good academics and great people. I have also had the pleasure of working with many others, including Pat Thomson, Jill Blackmore, Debra Hayes, Jane Kenway, Marie Brennan, Lew Zipin, Glenda McGregor, Stewart Ranson, Ingo Johanassen, Alan Reid, Meg Maguire, Sharon Gewirtz, Debbie Epstein, Miriam David, Sue Middleton, Madeleine Arnot, Julie McLeod, Terri Seddon, Barbara Comber, Cameron McCarthy, Lori Beckett, Michael Williams, Eleanor Ramsay, Aaron Koh, Hannu Simola, Risto Rinne, Kal Gulson, Matthew Clarke, Taylor Webb, Peter Renshaw, Gaby Weiner, Peter Cripps, Dawn Penney, Peter Hay, Doune MacDonald, Dave Gillborn, Deborah Youdell, Dom Wyse, Julie Allan, Jeanette Ellwood, Martin Thrupp and Joan Forbes, as well as Ian Menter, Pat Mahony and Ian Hextall, who has been one of my greatest supporters and dear friend, while Fazal Rizvi has been my collaborator, confidant and dear friend, from whom I have learnt how to be a better academic. In recent years I have had a most productive research relationship with Wayne Martino and Goli Rezai-Rashti in Canada. I have learnt much from my work and collaborations with policy makers at the Queensland Studies Authority and the Queensland Department of Education, including particularly Peter Luxton, Lyn Martinez, Maree Hedeman and Kim Bannikoff. Anna Clarkson, as Editorial Director at Routledge, has always been supportive, thoughtful and patient. Catherine Bernard is also a wonderful publisher at Routledge, New York. It has been a pleasure collaborating with my US Colleague, Greg Dimitriadis on our Routledge New York book series and on other projects. Victoria Carrington has been a joy to work with as co-editor with Martin Mills of the Taylor and Francis journal, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. Aspa Baroutsis has been a wonderful friend and a great support for this book, being my in-house editor and ICT consultant. My current postdoctoral fellows Sam Sellar and Jessica Harris are wonderful young scholars and wonderful young people. Leading researchers in my field, including Stephen Ball, Michael Apple, Lois Weis, Fazal Rizvi, Sverker Lindblad, Hannu Simola, Risto Rinne, Agnes Van Zanten, Jane Kenway, Cameron McCarthy, Simon Marginson, Michael Peters, Lyn Yates, Nicholas Burbules, Jill Blackmore, Fazal Rizvi, Roger Dale, Susan Robertson, Pat Thomson and Tom Popkewitz have been inspirations and models for me. My wife Carolynn and son Nicholas have been wonderful, loving, supportive, caring intellectual companions throughout my academic career, while

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Carolynn also brings a teacherly reality to her constructive critiques of my work, Nicholas brings an analytic legal disposition. Thanks to you all and also to those whom I have inadvertently left of these lists. I must also say that the University of Queensland has been a wonderful workplace; it is a very good University, aspiring to be even better and supportive of good work of all kinds. It is a positive as well that the University has created and supported the Institute for Social Science Research at a time when other sciences appear to be prioritized in government and university policies. I thank Sam Sellar, Carolynn Lingard and Aspa Baroutsis for their comments on earlier drafts of the Introduction to this book. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the Australian Research Council, which has funded much of the research which forms the basis of this book and all those I interviewed and observed in these various research projects. The following articles have been reproduced with the kind permission of the respective journals: Lingard, B. (2007) Pedagogies of indifference. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 11(3), 245–266. Lingard, B. (2010) Policy borrowing, policy learning: Testing times in Australian schooling. Critical Studies in Education, 51(2), 129–147. Lingard, B. (2011) Policy as numbers: Ac/counting for educational research. Australian Educational Researcher, 38(4), 355–382. Lingard, B., Creagh, S. and Vass, G. (2012) Education policy as numbers: Data categories and two Australian cases of misrecognition. Journal of Education Policy, 27(3), 315–333. Lingard, B., and Rawolle, S. (2004) Mediatizing educational policy: The journalistic field, science policy, and cross-field effects. Journal of Education Policy, 19(3), 361–380. Lingard, B., and Rawolle, S. (2011) New scalar politics: Implications for education policy. Comparative Education, 47(4), 489–502. Mills, M., Martino, W., and Lingard, B. (2007) Getting boys’ education ‘right’: The Australian Government’s Parliamentary Inquiry Report as an exemplary instance of recuperative masculinity politics. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28(1), 5–21.

The following chapters have been reproduced with the kind permission of the respective publishers: Lingard, B. (2000) It is and it isn’t: Vernacular globalization, educational policy, and restructuring. In N. C. Burbules and C. A. Torres (eds), Globalization and education. New York: Routledge, pp. 79–108. Lingard, B. (2007) Deparochializing the study of education: Globalization and the research imagination. In K. N. Gulson and C. Symes (eds), Spatial theories of education: Policy and geography matters. New York: Routledge, pp. 234–250. Lingard, B. (2008) Scottish education: Reflections from an international perspective. In T. G. K. Bryce and W. M. Humes (eds), Scottish education: Beyond devolution, 3 edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 968–981. Lingard, B. (2009) Researching education policy in a globalized world: Theoretical and methodological considerations. In T. S. Popkewitz and F. Rizvi (eds), Globalization and the study of education. Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell Malden, pp. 226–246.

INTRODUCTION Situating politics, policies and pedagogies in education

This chapter situates the book and its contents within my own research and academic field of sociology of education. I begin by commenting on my view of academic work and writing as being necessarily collaborative in character. The nature of the field of education research and the competing conception of educational research (see Yates 2004; Lingard and Gale 2010; Furlong 2013) will be considered next. I will then make some comments about the necessity of both theory and the empirical in good social science research and specifically in my education research work, before moving to a short commentary on the work of the late French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, whose theorizing (‘thinking tools’), empirical work (‘fieldwork in philosophy’) and methodological considerations (‘experiments in epistemology’) have been important to my sociology of education and policy sociology. Following on from that, I will adumbrate the various kinds of policy research in education, as the substantive focus of my work in one sense is on education policy, and certainly that is the case with this book. In this account, I also consider the relationships between policy research and the production of education policy, the research/policy relationship and the apparently disjunctive cultures between the two, framed by a ‘policy sociology’ in education approach (Ozga 1987). A categorization of my research work, as a precursor to outlining the specific selection principles I used to determine what should be included in this text, will be proffered next. References to the content of this book will be made throughout. Before outlining my view of education research, I move briefly in another direction and comment on the collaborative nature of good academic work. In critiquing the self-directing, agentive subject associated with the Enlightenment and modernity, Foucault wrote of ‘author function’ and Barthes of the ‘death of the author’. Here I play quite loosely with these notions, as I argue that in addition to the positioning of authors by discourses, what we most often have is a collaborative or collective author. Sometimes this is actual; that is, more than one author name appears at the top of the publication. At other times it is implicit, with only one name adopting the author function. Our writing is always, explicitly or implicitly, collaborative and collective in a number of ways. All research and academic writing involves ‘re-search’; that is, such writing is located in what has gone before in terms of the cognate literatures, the theoretical and methodological frameworks and possibilities, and also the empirical evidence to date. Appadurai (2001) has written about the conservative and constraining effects of this reality of re-search. We also need to recognise how this reality affects research and scholarship in many parts of the Global South, where there is no prior research, no literature to

2

Introduction

voraciously categorize and review (Lingard 2006). There is the possibility in that situation of such literature reviews functioning as forms of neo-colonialism or as a colonialism of the present (Gregory 2004), the local site simply becoming the empirical location for utilizing theory, concepts and literature developed elsewhere (see also Connell 2007; Tuhiwai Smith 1999), specifically in the high-status universities of the Global North. These matters I pursue in Chapters 8 and 9 in the context of globalization and specifically in relation to teaching international students and doing policy research today. Our work is collaborative in other ways: we collaborate with, talk with, research with, write with, think with and teach with colleagues across our various academic communities and networks. Edward Said wrote about how he learnt from teaching and that the presence of students repositioned the way he thought and interacted with his ideas and arguments. I strongly concur with Said here and stress the significance of doctoral students, our own and others, through advising and through examining, to our own academic development. The same is true of our colleagues, close-up and distal. Today, the multi-directional flows of academics across the globe strengthen global academic networks and research communities, as does of course the internet and its ready facilitation of virtual networked relations. Being an editor of a journal, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, and on the editorial boards and advisory boards of several international journals, including the British Journal of Sociology of Education, the International Journal of Inclusive Education, Critical Studies in Education, Globalisation, Societies and Education and the Scottish Education Review, has also helped me keep up with the most up-to-date research and thinking in the field and also in some small ways helped to shape it. So I am acknowledging here all those who have contributed to my academic development and research and writing agendas and I also recognize that even when such collaboration and collective learning are not acknowledged, a collective contribution is still the case. Some of my collaborators are obvious as co-authors, and I particularly acknowledge my colleague Fazal Rizvi1 here and also Martin Mills, my University of Queensland colleague, and all those listed in the Acknowledgments.2 I would note as well, though, the hidden college that we communicate with in our reading and writing, the implicit readers for whom we write.3 Chapter 2 has been written with two current doctoral students, Sue Creagh and Greg Vass. I have learnt from Sue’s facility with big data sets as well as from her work on the significance of socially constructed categories to all quantitative work, and in fact the necessity of eschewing a crude binary of qualitative/quantitative research. From Greg I have learnt about critical race theory and use of auto-ethnography as methodology. Chapter 10 was written with colleagues Wayne Martino (a professorial colleague with whom I have researched and written) and Martin Mills (a former doctoral student with whom I have also written and researched). Two other chapters have been written in collaboration with my former doctoral student and colleague, Shaun Rawolle. Our joint work with Bourdieu has been very productive (e.g. Rawolle and Lingard 2008, 2013). In outlining the concept of the collaborative or collective author, I am trying to capture what I see as the collective contributions that are made to all of our intellectual work through research and conversations with colleagues, the publications and research of others, through teaching and with doctoral students. On the latter, I see this adviser/student relationship as a collaborative and educative one with learning going in both directions and am very pleased with the change of nomenclature at my university from doctoral supervisor to doctoral adviser. I have often written with my colleagues and even when I write single-authored pieces, they have always been read by many others. Sharing ideas, discussing them

Introduction 3

and interrogating them improves them. In discussions about my work, real and virtual, I also always attempt to adopt what Habermas referred to as the ‘ideal speech situation’, where hierarchy associated with position is eschewed and we have discussions amongst equals. Pace Foucault, I see this, of course, as an aspiration rather than a reality; power flows through all relations and potentially disaffects them, including our relations in the research field.

Defining education(al) research While my research is situated in a disciplinary sense within the sociology of education, it is also located more broadly within education research and also in what I refer to as educational research. Here I will consider the nature of both enterprises, which I have pursued in a number of papers and in an edited book (Gale and Lingard 2010; Lingard and Gale 2010). Chapter 8 focuses on the issue of defining education research in changing and globalizing times. Defining the field of education research has also become a focus of the work of many other scholars (for example, Yates 2004; Furlong and Lawn 2011; Furlong 2013), particularly in this time of audits of research and publication outputs from academics and the necessity of metrics to these exercises and definitions of fields (see Hardy et al. 2011). Education research can be defined through consideration of, first, its focus or topic and, second, the intellectual resources, both theoretical and methodological, brought to bear on an understanding of that topic. In a sense then, education research might be seen as the application of social science theories and methodologies to education, assuming agreement on what we mean by ‘education’. If we simplify this, it is research on rather than for education. Following Bernstein (2001) and Thomson (2006), I would argue, given contemporary social changes associated within the emergent ‘totally pedagogized society’ and with the pedagogization of everyday/everynight life, that we have seen a de-differentiation of educational institutions (Young 1996). De-differentiation has enlarged the definition of what we might see as an educational institution and also as pedagogical practices. In the knowledge society and knowledge economy, learning is everywhere and directed through policies, both direct and indirect, around pedagogies. Indeed, we can see here how education has been more broadly defined as learning within the totally pedagogized knowledge society. Bernstein (2001) suggests what we have witnessed is ‘pedagogical inflation’. Thus we might see education research as the application of social science theories and methodologies to a topic, ‘education’, which is changing and expanding with the move towards learning and knowledge societies. The focus of education research is therefore more problematic than it might at first appear. Given the centrality of education to national economic competitiveness and of pedagogies to life-wide learning across the life span and to cultural and social reproduction, it also might be the case that theorizing about such ‘educational matters’ contributes to the move of education research towards centre stage within the social sciences. Furthermore, the myriad changes associated with globalization have also offered challenges to the social sciences, particularly to the now erroneous assumption of an homology between society and nation-state, and associated ‘methodological nationalism’ (Beck 2000; Appadurai 2001; Lingard 2006), matters also considered in Chapter 9 of this book. Returning to considerations of how we ought to define education research today: I would argue that it is also appropriate to speak of educational research and that the distinction from the nomenclature of education research carries important connotative

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Introduction

meaning (Bartlett 1989; Griffiths 1998). The educational/education distinction is somewhat akin to the research for/of education binary. When we use the descriptor ‘educational’ attached to research, it seems that we are arguing that such research has educational or educative purposes; that is, such research is progressive in the sense of seeking and desiring to improve both education policy and professional practice in education. This is an additional purpose to the contribution to knowledge and understanding of mainstream social science research, often quantified in output terms by citation measures, journal impact scores and the like. In contrast, this is a more normative and change oriented construction of research in education. Elsewhere, I have argued that this nomenclature means that educational researchers ought to have a ‘pedagogical disposition’ and as the converse, that practitioners (policy makers and teachers) ought to have a ‘researcherly disposition’ (Lingard and Renshaw 2009). In terms of this researcherly disposition, practitioners (both education policy makers and teachers) should be both research-informed and researchinforming. Interestingly, it seems that in Finland, which does so well on the OECD’s PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), teaching is a research-informed profession (Sahlberg 2011: 129). At the same time, the pedagogical disposition for educational researchers has implications for how we define education policy research and its relationship to actual policy making in education. My position, therefore, is that any type of educational policy research ought to have at the broadest level a desire to make things better in education, and, explicitly in the case of our concerns here, to improve education policy (including understanding of the policy problem), policy conceptualization and enactment towards more socially just schooling. This disposition can undergird both research of and research for education policy, more of which later in this Introduction. This is what Lauder and his colleagues (2011) call the redemptive disposition in the sociology of education. I see both education research and educational research as desirable practices; I am not giving preference to one over the other. The former is the application of social science theories and methodologies to the topic and practices of education, the latter, in my definition, seeks to improve educational practice. Impact in respect of the former is measured through citations and take-up in the academic literature, with an implicit readership of other academics. The latter is also published in academic journals and has concerns about citations and so on, but in addition it is also focused on improvement; the purpose is more about improvement and change in policy and pedagogical practices in the shorter term. I also want to make it clear that I see both as having the potential to impact on education practices in different ways. Educational research seeks to do this more speedily and directly, and practitioner research is a very good case in point as it sometimes aims for a quick impact, through take-up in schools and via particular kinds of publication outlets, like professional magazines. With the more academically and social science framed education research, the impact is possibly longer term (a percolation mode of impact on practice) and works in terms of broad take-up in the assumptive worlds of policy makers and teachers (Weiss 1989). One example of educational research that could also be considered as education research, in terms of the distinctions I make above, was the productive pedagogies research that I write about below (see also Chapter 11). This research was commissioned by a State government in Australia and it had a real impact because the productive pedagogies model was disseminated to teachers through booklets especially prepared for them by the department. That research has also had more academic impact through books, journal articles and citations. This is probably an exception rather than the rule with commissioned research.

Introduction 5

The necessity of theor y and the necessity of the empirical I have sought to make a case for the urgent necessity for theory in educational research and research training; its crucial role in epistemological decision-making; in ensuring the conceptual robustness of conceptual categories; and in providing a method for reflexivity – that is, for understanding the social conditions of the production of knowledge. (Ball 2006: 9) As with Ball, I agree on the necessity of theory in educational research and analysis, a point also cogently made by Anyon (2009) in relation to both understanding and explanation. However, I would also argue the necessity of the empirical; the necessity also of reflexivity in the application of theory to an empirical instance and the need to understand the inherent conditions of our structuring of knowledge, a stance also acknowledged in Ball’s quote above. This is Bourdieu’s telling point about the need to reject any assumptions of ‘epistemological innocence’ in social science research of any kind, while simultaneously rejecting what Ball sees as the mimetic aspirations of a scientistic or positivist social science and education research. The point being made and implied by both Bourdieu and Ball is that we need to acknowledge the way our theory and related concepts help construct the objects of our research and the empirical. As Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992: 39) note, we need to be aware of and deconstruct the ‘presuppositions inscribed in the act of thinking about the world’. Such recognition of these presuppositions and the ‘constructedness’ of our accounts, though, enhances the social scientific character of our work rather than diminishing it. This is Bourdieu’s (1990: 28) depiction of the reflexive theory/empirical relationship in his social science research work, after Austin, as ‘fieldwork in philosophy’, or Jenkins’s (2002) description of Bourdieu’s work as ‘experiments in epistemology’. This is why Bourdieu, and I accept his stance here, rejects both ‘theoreticism’ and ‘methodologism’: both theory and data are imbricated in each other. This is Bourdieu’s version of what C. Wright Mills saw as the necessity of rejecting both ‘abstracted empiricism’ and ‘grand theory’ and the need to work across and beyond this unhelpful binary. While theory is complex, it is also essential to explanation and understanding in the social sciences (Anyon 2009). However, we also need to acknowledge that the empirical is also always complex and complicated. Furthermore, if we accept a relational account of the social à la Bourdieu, as I do, the empirical world is also interconnected and interwoven, both directly or sometimes rhizomatically, as well as in social, spatial and temporal senses. Bourdieu’s approach suggests that we cannot understand or analyse a social phenomenon in its own ‘substantial’ terms, but rather we need to situate it ‘relationally’ within the fields it sits in. Anyon (2009: 2) makes a similar point, drawing on Sassen’s ‘analytics of exogeny,’ when she states that ‘one cannot understand or explain x by merely describing x. One must look exogenously at non-x – particularly the context and social forces in which the object of study is embedded’. She also adds that critical social theory is ‘a powerful tool with which to make links between educational “inside” and “outside”, between past, present and future, and between research design and larger social meanings’ (Anyon 2009: 3). Our theory needs to accept and acknowledge this empirical complexity, this reality. Indeed, the world is ‘complicated, confused, impure, uncertain’ (Bourdieu et al. 1991: 259). We must ensure that our theorizing of empirical phenomena does not do violence to this world, as Ball (2006) suggests some social science theory does. Theory ought to be a thinking tool, not a strait-jacket. This is what Bourdieu’s evocative phrase

6

Introduction

‘fieldwork in philosophy’, as a descriptor of his social science methodology, is trying to capture. This is the necessity of both the theoretical and the empirical. Jean Anyon (2009) has noted how theory is central to all stages and elements of research in the social sciences. Explicitly she observes: Theory helps us understand, expand our understanding of, and critically judge what counts as relevant knowledge, appropriate units of analysis, research questions, methods, data and analysis, and explanation. (Anyon 2009: 8) Theory is thus central to considerations of all aspects of doing research, from framing research questions, deciding the unit of analysis, concepts and theoretical frameworks, methodological choices, data collection, analysis and dissemination, as Anyon’s observation above suggests. Anyon (2009) further argues that theory is necessary for ensuring our data leave the ground and fly, so to speak. Similarly, Weis and Fine (2004) define their approach to research methods as of necessity oscillating between theory in the clouds and data on the ground. In line with Anyon, and Weis and Fine, I would also reject both methodologism and theoreticism, but see the necessary imbrications of the two and the need to align our onto-epistemologies with theory, method and topic in our research. I also stress the necessity of reflexivity and criticality in all educational research of whatever kind. Dimitriadis (2012) has written insightfully about the necessity of critical dispositions for all educational research, particularly today, in the context of the rise of new educational accountabilities, policy as numbers and attempts to define the gold standard in educational research as randomised controlled experiments. Dimitriadis also makes the important point that such criticality is central to both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Of course, how theory is used depends on the type of educational research. Gert Biesta, Julie Allan and Richard Edwards (2011: 233) acknowledge what they call ‘autonomous theorising’ in education research, which they see (following Rorty (1989)) as entailing the ‘re-description of educational processes and practices’. Their use of re-description is acknowledgement that educational policies and practices are always described in certain ways. Biesta and his colleagues (2011: 229) also talk about three different purposes of social research, namely causal explanation, interpretation and emancipation, and then go on to suggest that theory serves different purposes within each of these types of research. They argue that: • • •

the goal of explanation demands the use of theory in empirically based (often quantitative) research that finds correlations between phenomena; for interpretive research, theory deepens understandings and explanations of everyday interpretations, adding plausibility to accounts; and research geared to emancipation, framed by various versions of critical theory, seeks to expose the hidden functioning of power and interests behind everyday happenings.

We can also consider deductive and inductive uses of theory in educational research – the former interrogating data from a theoretical position, the latter developing grounded theory from the bottom up – whilst recognizing that theory is implicit in the data gathering of a grounded theory approach, as we always see the world in a mediated way, despite attempting to disregard this. In addition, some people have spoken of an ‘abductive’ approach to theory: working with data both deductively and inductively, to and fro, or oscillating between theory in the clouds

Introduction 7

and data on the ground in Weis and Fine’s (2004) terms. In its classic usage by the pragmatist philosopher C.S. Peirce, abduction is also seen as a way to generate hypotheses and tentative explanations around specific instances or occurrences.

The usefulness of Bourdieu’s thinking tools From my earliest days as a sociologist of education, I have been attracted to the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Indeed, one of the first texts I used in teaching sociology of education courses was Michael Young’s (1971) influential edited collection, Knowledge and Control, which included two interesting chapters by Bourdieu about schooling and the reproduction of inequality. I have always found Bourdieu’s work most useful for a number of reasons and in a number of ways. One obvious way was that his account, with Passeron, of reproduction through schooling (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977) provided me with insights into my own schooling experience: a working class boy who loved school and all his education for most of the time and did well. However, I always felt that I was of necessity learning two things synchronously at school and university: namely, the content of schooling/ university and how to do schooling/university (i.e. adopt the necessary disposition for success and accrue the necessary accoutrements of the required cultural capital). This entailed in Bourdieu’s terms a changing habitus through university education and work experience. Bourdieu made me aware of how, through pedagogies and the implicit capitals of formal curricula (a cultural arbitrary) and associated misrecognitions, reproduction of inequality became the default outcome of most kinds of education for most people. There was a powerful misrecognition at work here that read lack of the capitals necessary to be at ease with the unspoken requirements of doing well at school and university as a straightforward consequence of lack of ‘ability’ and its application through hard work. More broadly, we could see at work through education the ways in which the statistical probability of achieving success are reflected in the varying aspirations of different boys and girls, young men and young women from differing social class backgrounds and ethnicities. These statistical probabilities are reflected in different class based aspirations linked to habitus in terms of schooling, likelihood of university education and future career possibilities. At the same time, drawing on Bourdieu, and perhaps I am too sanguine here (James 2012), I also saw possibilities for schooling to open up opportunities, through a more equitable distribution of capitals (see Chapter 11) and rational pedagogy. This is the hope for redemption that Lauder, Brown and Halsey (2011) see as a central disposition in sociology and the sociology of education. Such redemption through equality of opportunity is more likely when there is a more equal society, a society with a low Gini coefficient of inequality. I have been interested in how the high quality, high equity performance of Finland on the OECD’s PISA meant that, for a time, Finland became a global poster boy and a significant reference society for other nations and national systems of schooling, an important source of potential policy borrowing and learning. Yet, what strikes me is that so little has been said in that literature about the low levels of inequality in Finland. Sahlberg (2011: 24) talks about this, quoting a former Director General of Education as observing that the Finnish achievement reflects an admix of ‘the legacy of liberated peasants, the spirit of capitalism, and the utopia of capitalism’. Condron’s (2011) explanation of the US’s poor comparative performance on PISA is a significant exception here in acknowledging that the extent of inequality in the US is a major factor in this outcome. He also acknowledges the significance of the degree of equality in Finland to their performance on PISA. Of course, more redistributive or

8

Introduction

positively discriminating funding of schools serving poor communities is also necessary to ensure the possibilities of the break with the default mode of reproduction. The US is a good case in point in respect of this argument (Anyon 2005; Condron 2011). Bourdieu also opened up the possibility of a rational pedagogy that was explicit, that unpacked, scaffolded and taught all the capitals necessary to academic success, especially for those students who do not bring the appropriate capitals to school. In one sense that insight underpinned the research reported in Chapter 11 on ‘pedagogies of indifference’. Bourdieu’s work attracted me for other reasons as well. He began work as a philosopher, but Calhoun (2012) suggests his national service experience in Algeria as a young man drew him away from philosophy and to anthropology and sociology, which from that time became his métier. In terms of describing his sociological approach, Bourdieu speaks of his research and analysis, and his theorizing as ‘fieldwork in philosophy’. This appeals to me greatly, because it grasps the ongoing theory/ empirical relationship in all research. Related, Bourdieu rejects ‘theoreticism’ in his sociological work, an approach that denies the necessity of the empirical. At the same time, he also rejects ‘methodologism’, an abstract empiricism. It is this recognition by Bourdieu of the need to work with and across the two in a reflexive and open-ended fashion that appeals to me as a sociologist of education. Bourdieu also utilised both qualitative and quantitative methods in his research. I would note here that his quantitative work is not much commented on in the sociology of education. Further, utilizing Bourdieu, I would argue that sociology is thought to be necessary because societies demonstrate reproduced patterns of human behaviour, what we might call structures, and mostly appear to do this effortlessly. Yet Bourdieu works hard to reject both structural determinism and a phenomenology or constructivism outside of structural effects; that is, he also rejects constructivism. Instead, he seeks to weave structuralism and constructivism together. It seems to me that sociology is at its core about the probabilities of human behaviour and practices. Hacking’s (1990) The Taming of Chance and other work on statistical reasoning have made me think that sociology comes out of the reality of probabilities in respect of human practices. These probabilities are what we might see as the recursive interweaving of structures and agency. It is this recursive relationship and our capacity for ‘socioanalysis’, as Bourdieu describes it – to reflect upon why we are as we are as individuals and collectively – that offers some grounds for a politics of hope and some human agency. Furthermore, I think if we see the necessity of sociology deriving from probabilities of practices or of certain outcomes, then we can also see the necessity of both qualitative, big data set research to sociology and the importance of more qualitative, phenomenological research. I have also learnt this from Bourdieu’s oeuvre. I would note though, that the rejection of epistemological innocence is central to both qualitative and quantitative methods in education research. We need to acknowledge our ‘positionality’ within the academic field in which our research is situated and also within the research field where we are collecting data; these concerns are taken up in Chapter 9. To make my point here more strongly: all of us in education research committed to social justice take as a given the large data sets that demonstrated quite unequivocally the ways in which schooling tends to reproduce inequalities linked to social class and other structural features of individuals, rather than reducing them. This is an important recognition and was central to the beginnings of the sociology of education in the political arithmetic tradition (Lauder et al. 2011). Durkheim, in his Rules of Sociological Method, spoke of the necessity for sociologists to regard social facts not only as things – social realities – but also as being

Introduction 9

simultaneously socially constructed. This is an important and significant methodological insight; it is necessary to work with the two conceptions simultaneously and this is difficult. We can see Bourdieu’s debt to Durkheim here as well as the significance of their observations to conducting good social science research in education. I would also make the tangential point that at times questions and issues of accessing and entering the research field tell us much about the topic we are researching (see Lingard, et al., forthcoming). We might speak in this respect of methodological issues as data. Bourdieu’s ‘thinking tools’ of field, habitus, capitals and practices are a wonderful attempt to get across the core conundrum of sociology: the agency/structure relationship (see Rawolle and Lingard 2008, 2013). Habitus is an important concept here as it represents the embodiment, the somatizing of past historical and cultural experiences in the person and helps us understand agency or practice, set against probabilities and location within various fields and their logics. I will not detail these concepts here as they are so well known in contemporary sociology of education (see Grenfell 2008). In conceptualizing the social as consisting of multiple fields with varying degrees of autonomy (stretching from the autonomous to the heteronomous) and with their own logics of practice, but overarched by a field of power and affected by practices of gender( what Connell (1987) called the ‘gender order’), Bourdieu was seeking to work across Marx and Weber. This was to recognise the deep and abiding significance of the economic, while also acknowledging the significance of other structures, including gender (for Weber, status hierarchies). The other salient factor in this conceptualization is that Bourdieu sees fields as social rather than geographical or territorial spaces; this is significant in a time of globalization and the need to reject methodological nationalism in the social sciences. This is evident in terms of the emergent global policy field in education with cross-field effects (see Chapter 7) into national education policy fields, mediated by the extent of national capital held by a given nation, which is a concept somewhat underdeveloped in Bourdieu (2003). Bourdieu’s (1999) account of texts (here, policy texts) circulating without their context of production is a useful way of thinking of relationships between the emergent global education policy field and national education policy fields. Bourdieu (1999: 221) argued that: The fact that texts circulate without their context, that – to use my terms – they don’t bring with them the field of production of which they are a product, and the fact that recipients, who are themselves in a different field of production, reinterpret the text in accordance with the structure of the field of reception, are facts that generate some formidable misunderstandings and that can have good or bad consequences. Global education policy discourses are thus vernacularized when they meet national systems of policy production; they are recontextualized in different national fields. These matters are pursued in Chapter 4 with its focus on vernacular globalization, and in Chapter 6 with its interest in how Scottish history, culture and politics mediate global discourses. Chapters 8 and 9 also interrogate these issues in relation to international students, theory and epistemologies (Chapter 8) and doing research (Chapter 9). The distinction between the logics of the field of policy text production and the logics of reception also offers insights into policy implementation in top–down approaches, offering an explanation for refractions in policy enactment. Disjunctions between the logics of practice of different fields and the significance of this framing for policy sociology in education was made apparent to me in Bourdieu’s work on the field of journalism and his concept of mediatization. This is the focus of Chapter 7, where an argument is sustained that today the logics of practice of

10

Introduction

journalism have impacted on policy text production in education. It is suggested that, today, policy texts are often produced as glossy documents, the aim of which is to sell the policy to the public rather than simply to present it for implementation by teaching professionals in schools. Policy release by ministers for education is often the same as media release. It is suggested that two logics of practice of the journalism field noted by Bourdieu, namely ‘structural amnesia’ and ‘circular circulation’, might be useful tools to think about the changing nature of policy production. The former deals with the political imperative to ever make things new, while the latter picks up on the circulation of policy ideas not only across systems but across nations as well. I have commented on the insights I have drawn from Bourdieu’s work in relation to research in the social sciences and in respect of methodological issues in the theory section above. Suffice to say here that his ‘experiments in epistemology’, as Jenkins (2002) has described Bourdieu’s approach to field research, offer multiple methodological insights for the researcher. Indeed, I concur with Jenkins that one of the most significant contributions of Bourdieu to the social sciences is that he constructed epistemology as a pragmatic matter for researchers.

Policy research in education: considering research/ policy relationships This section deals with the extent of connectivity between research and policy in respect of both actual and desired relationships. Suffice to say at the outset, that research is only ever one determining (though perhaps ‘contributing’ is a better word) factor whether we are considering education policy content, processes or professional practice. As Easton (1953) noted, policy, specifically public policy, can be seen as the ‘authoritative allocation of values’. Policy is thus much more than simply evidence based. On this topic, Head (2008) has written instructively about how all policy is framed or assembled across various mixes of the political (values), evidence (including research) and professional knowledges. So research evidence is only ever one base of any policy, which might be thought of as an assemblage suturing together values, knowledge and evidence (see Rizvi and Lingard 2011). Furthermore, the allocation of values through policy mobilizes the distribution of capitals (human, material, symbolic) of various kinds across the education system, seeking to reconstitute some imagined future in normative fashion (Luke and Hogan 2006). In this way, public policy has a narrative function, representing a ‘state ideological narrative’ (Luke 2008: 353). Power/knowledge imbrications are involved here in particular ways. We thus can begin to see the different universes of discourse of policy and academic research. The two are located within different epistemic communities (see Orland 2009). In Bourdieusian terms, they are different fields with different logics of practice, which therefore has consequences for their connectivity. Even today, with much talk about evidence-based policy, this difficulty with connectivity between policy and academic research persists. Indeed, the descriptor ‘evidenceinformed’ seems a much better way to capture the research/policy relationship, when the relationship is more or less direct and explicit. Burns and Schuller (2007: 16) in their report Evidence in Education: Linking Research and Policy (OECD 2007) suggest the evidence-based policy making construction implies ‘too tidy and rational an image of policy making as some kind of clinical and objective operation’. They thus speak instead of ‘the use of research to foster evidence-informed policy’, a construction which leaves open the actual extent of the usage of research in policy making. The mix for any given policy is dependent upon a range of factors. In terms of values and ideology,

Introduction 11

policy is linked to politics and framed by the political intentions of governments, politicians and ministers. It is thus linked to ideology but always mediated by other factors, including at times research evidence. As argued in Chapter 5 of this book, such values are often framed by globalised education policy discourses that emanate from international organizations such as the OECD, for the nations of the Global North, and the World Bank, for nations of the Global South. Policy inside nations can be seen to be the rearticulation of political intentions through the logics of practice of the state and policy makers; in Bourdieu’s (1998) terms, rearticulated through the state field’s ‘monopolization of the universal’ as ‘symbolic violence’. So research is only ever one factor shaping education policy. As Orland (2009: 115) notes: Even the most compelling and relevant research findings may fail to penetrate the policy making process and, where research influences are manifest, their contributions are likely to be both indirect and incremental. We also need to recognize that policy makers (and practitioners) can be researchers as well as utilizers of research. It would be wrong to see both as merely inert recipients and translators of research. The point that must be reiterated is that we need to acknowledge that research is only one contributing factor to education policy. Of course, there is still the question of which research is utilized by policy makers and contributes to policy. Recent work on ‘policy as numbers’ (Lingard 2011; see Chapters 1 and 2) in education gives some indication of the state’s preference for quantitative research over qualitative work, in a context of reduced legitimacy of politicians and limited political visions, weakened value consensus and politics reduced to managing the mundane (Laidi 1998: 7) in an incremental way. In the current political and policy climate of ‘evidencebased policy’, a strong refrain under New Labour in the UK and under Kevin Rudd’s (and Julie Gillard’s) Labor governments in Australia, there does seem to be a way in which this development has precipitated a new empiricism, perhaps almost a new positivism in policy production. This is evident in the rise and rise of policy as numbers nationally and globally, matters considered in the first three chapters of this book. I am somewhat sceptical that policy makers and politicians will productively use all of the data on student performance now available, through accountability systems linked to high stakes testing, to learn and modify policy settings towards more progressive ends. Nonetheless, such numbers are being used in respect of equity and quality matters, although they are also (particularly when linked to accountability issues) used as a mode of control (Wiseman 2010). In addition, they are central to the emergent global policy field in education (Chapter 5), where today the ‘global eye’ and the ‘national eye’ govern together, as comparison has become an important new mode of governance in the rescaled polity (Novoa and Yariv-Mashal 2003). Research in policy making can be used in multiple ways, including as both rationale and justification. As Orland (2009: 118) argues: To the extent it is relied on at all, educational research is much more likely to be paid attention to by educational policy leaders when it buttresses arguments about particular policy directions or prescriptions already being advocated, thus furthering a particular political/policy position. It is research as ammunition not as knowledge discovery. This is a most useful descriptor: research as ammunition or legitimation for a particular policy direction, for a policy decision taken politically. This is often also the case in

12

Introduction

terms of the externalization of national policy, where the performance of reference societies on international comparative testing is used to buttress the need for further national reforms. An example of this is revealed by the top performance of ‘ShanghaiChina’ on the 2009 PISA and the responses to this in the US, England and Australia (Sellar and Lingard, forthcoming). As implied to this point, there has been a classic distinction in education policy studies between research of/for policy (Gordon et al. 1977), which picks up on the intent of the policy research, who is defining it, who is doing it and for what purposes. In a sense, this is similar to the education/educational research binary written about earlier in this Introduction. Research of policy is the more academic pursuit, research for research’s sake, with new knowledge and understanding as the desired outcome – what we might call here an ‘enlightenment’ purpose of policy research (Trowler 2003). Doctoral research (PhDs) on education policy, for example, as a genre of research, is clearly situated within this enlightenment frame, even though professional doctoral work (EdDs) might take a for policy stance. Much academic education policy research is also positioned with the purpose of contribution to knowledge or enlightenment. Research for policy refers to that research commissioned by policy makers to assist in the production of actual policy. Here the policy problem is taken as given and any research is framed by the interests and intentions of the policy makers. This is an important defining distinction from research of policy, given that this approach takes as a first analytic step the need to deconstruct the policy problem as constructed by the policy (McLaughlin 2006; Rizvi and Lingard 2010). In contrast, and following Trowler (2003), we might see research for policy as operating an ‘engineering’ relationship between research and policy. The participants in this kind of research are usually seasoned policy researchers of a particular kind. Sometimes this research is conducted by researchers whom Ball (2006) has called ‘policy entrepreneurs’, those who make a living doing research for policy within agendas set by governments or international organizations or whatever commissioning agency. Regarding research for policy, Ball and Exley (2010: 153) suggest that think-tank research, unlike much academic research in education, tends to produce ‘simple messages that can be easily understood by politicians, policy makers and the public’. The same is true of education policy work undertaken by international consulting firms such as McKinsey (see Coffield (2012) for a stinging critique of the policy impact of the two McKinsey reports), which make generalizations and recommendations that are policy and politician friendly and which today often have more policy salience than academic research. McLaughlin (2006) has spoken of ‘the problem of the problem’ in relation to policy text production processes, to encapsulate some of the deeper discursive work of policy texts. Donor agency, think-tank and consultancy firm research is of the research for policy kind and ipso facto takes the construction of policy problems as a given and frames research within this taken-for-granted problematic field, thus neglecting the problem of the problem. In terms of research of/for policy, I would suggest it might be better to see it sitting on a continuum, as suggested by Cibulka (1994), rather than as a clearly defined binary distinction. We also need to acknowledge that research of policy can have policy effects in the longer term, and particularly in relation to policy activists involved in all stages of the policy process (agenda setting, development, formulation, implementation, delivery, evaluation and monitoring) (Yeatman 1998: 11). Activists utilize all types of research in their political activity, seeking to affect all stages of the policy process. Pressure groups also work in this way in their utilization of policy research. This utilization, however, will be filtered through their particular political lenses, as with policy makers.

Introduction 13

We see here the complexity of issues to do with research impact in respect of policy and the almost always indirect, non-linear, mediated relationship between the two. More broadly, Jenny Ozga and her colleagues (2006) have argued that, given the centrality of research to the creation of a knowledge economy, government policy now often attempts to steer academic research in particularly theoretical and methodological directions. Just as research can impact on policy through agenda setting, policy about research has sought to affect research agendas and valorize particular theoretical and methodological approaches. Luke and Hogan (2006: 170) have argued in this context that ‘current debates over what counts as evidence in state policy formation are indeed debates over what counts as educational research’.4 As they note, there are attempts around the globe to wind back gains in critical theory and methodologies as applied to education research and to tame educational research in the direction of state policy requirements. A stark example of this politics occurred in relation to Bush’s No Child Left Behind agenda in the USA, which demanded that research evaluations in relation to it be of the randomized controlled trials variety and articulated the need for ‘scientifically based research’ in education, a signifier of opposition to critical theory and qualitative methodologies. These changes were also a policy attempt to ensure a greater and more direct research contribution to education policy making (Orland: 2009). More broadly, this might be seen as an attempt to align research and policy making cultures and communities, to elide any possible incommensurability across the two fields. In his broad history of the social sciences in Australia, Stuart Macintyre (2010) talks of the social sciences as the poor relation to that science which does not require a prefix (2010: 4) and shows how market, state and academy have helped define the social sciences with implications for their impact upon policy making. I would argue, however, that economic theory of a particular neo-liberal kind has had huge impact on government policy making at the meta-policy level. There is another body of research which focuses explicitly on understanding the real impact of research on actual policy making (e.g. Weiss 1979, 1989; Vickers 1994; OECD 2007; Watson 2008; Orland 2009; Cooper and Levin 2010). Utilizing Weiss’s well-known work on the politics of knowledge utilization in policy processes, Vickers (1994), for example, outlines four types of connections and utilizations by policy makers and politicians of research knowledge: research as a warning of problems; as guidance for possible policy options; as enlightenment, which can lead to the reframing of policy problems and approaches; and as mobilization of support for a politically desired policy option. These are connections between research of policy and the actual politics of policy making. Weiss’s (1979) classic account of the impact of social science research on public policy outlined seven types of research utilization in public policy: knowledge driven (research of policy), problem solving (research for policy), interactive (involving researchers on relevant committees or as part of consultation in the policy process), political (research used as legitimation for the policy option adopted), tactical (used to delay policy action due to lack of research evidence or research still being conducted), enlightenment or ‘percolation’ (referring to the way in which the complex dissemination of research knowledge over time changes the assumptive worlds of policy makers), and intellectual enterprise (both policy research and policy development are affected by the dominant ideas of the period). Further, Weiss argued that the most profound impact of research on policy (and education research can be included here) is through her notions of enlightenment and percolation. Here, ‘research-based knowledge affects policy gradually by shaping how decision makers understand and frame a problem and decide on potential solutions’ (Orland 2009: 115). Percolation thus attempts to pick up on the longer

14

Introduction

timeframe involved for this type of research to impact upon policy. Enlightenment can take time and policy makers most often will not even be aware of the way such research over time has reframed and constituted their assumptive worlds, their policy dispositions and habitus, which come to bear in the policy process. Orland (2009) has suggested that the proclivity of policy makers to utilize education research, and the type of research they favour, will be filtered through external influences (public opinion, opinion leaders, political party beliefs), organizational culture and procedures, and personal values and dispositions. Thus research can reach and affect the policy process through its impact on opinion leaders, interest groups, activists and political leaders, as well as through more direct influence in the policy process (Orland 2009: 115). The media also play a significant role in policy and policy processes in education, a topic traversed in Chapter 7 of this book. Some implicit indication has already been provided of the disjunctive cultures between research and policy. In work on the research, policy and practice relationship in medicine and health, the concept of ‘knowledge translation’ is used, which is indicative of an account that sees research and policy (and practice) as being located within different cultures with their own vernaculars; thus the need for translation. Research for policy sits within a temporal frame defined by political or election cycles. This temporal frame is asynchronous with the temporal frame within research cultures and indeed with the accumulation of research-based knowledge and understanding over time. In terms of policy implementation or enactment, there is also a dysfunctional misalignment between political temporalities and imperatives and the time necessary for real educational change; in policy implementation in educational systems there is also the disjuncture between the universal applicability of state policy (Bourdieu’s (1998) ‘monopolization of the universal’) framed in the logics of the state bureaucratic field and the contingent specificities of school and classroom practices and their incommensurate logics (see Honig 2006; Ball et al. 2012).

The focus of my work I see my research, writing and theorizing working around three broad foci. My disciplinary disposition in all these fields is the sociology of education, while recognizing that in some parts of the contemporary world, the UK and Australia in particular, sociology of education seems to be more focused than ever on education policy, as systems are more and more steered through policy. The three areas that my research has focused on are: policy sociology in education, school reform and pedagogies, and gender and education, including an interest in gender in schooling, covering profeminism and boys’ education within national systems and globally. Framing each of these domains has been a concern for social justice in education and its changing and contested definitions and rearticulations. And, of course, the rescaling of education policy associated with globalization (Dale 2005) has placed pressure on these definitions and the possibility of their enactment. Furthermore, drawing on Bourdieu’s theorizing (Lingard et al. 2005; Rawolle and Lingard 2008) and as stated in the section above, there is always a gap between the logics of practice of the field of policy and policy text production and the logics of practice of schools and classrooms and the enactment of policy (Honig 2006; Heimans 2012; Ball et al. 2012). Nancy Fraser’s work with her three-pronged frame for social justice of redistribution, recognition and representation (Fraser 1997, 2009) has been most useful to my thinking. Redistribution links to economic equality, recognition to cultural equality, while representation picks up on democratic or participatory equality. Each is important to the redemptive project of the sociology of education.

Introduction 15

My first field of research is the domain of education policy, and in particular I have focused here on the rescaling impacts of the globalization of education policy discourses, content and processes on national education policy, moving, as globalization has spawned the rescaling of politics and ensured that the nation state functions in different ways politically, from a national policy focus (Taylor et al. 1997) to a more global and rescaled one (Henry et al. 2001; Rizvi and Lingard 2010; Lingard and Sellar 2013a, 2013b; Sellar and Lingard 2013, forthcoming). I have situated this work within what Jenny Ozga (1987) called ‘policy sociology’ in education, which she defined as being ‘rooted in the social science tradition, historically informed and drawing on qualitative and illuminative techniques’ (1987: 144). I would also add quantitative measures to this mix (Fitz et al. 2006). In Globalizing Education Policy, Fazal Rizvi and I worked with Easton’s old (1953) public policy definition of policy as the ‘authoritative allocation of values’ to argue that each element of this definition had been rearticulated by globalization and its political and policy effects. We suggested political authority now worked at multiple scales, including the national and provincial, but also regionally and globally. Here the nation state remained important in policy terms, but worked in different ways. Processes of allocation had also changed as the state had been restructured under new public management and privatizations of various kinds (Ball 2007), with the state now steering at a distance through target setting, performance indicators and performance management. We have also seen the emergence of new forms of educational accountability often linked to high stakes census testing in schooling systems as part of what Power (1997) has called the ‘audit culture’. Policy as numbers has been a related development and is enumerated in the first three chapters in this book. And, of course, values or discourses framing education policy today are very often global in origins and framed by neo-liberalism. Pasi Sahlberg (2011) has spoken of the global education reform movement (GERM), which has not only infected Anglo-American schooling systems but also those at some distance from them. This is a globalized education policy discourse, linked to the neoliberal. GERM has the following features: test-based accountability, standardized teaching and learning with a focus on literacy and numeracy, a prescribed curriculum and the use of market-oriented ideas of choice and competition. This is where policy convergence has occurred, at the level of global meta-discourses, rather than in the specificities of policy enactment in different nations or even into systems and schools; we always have some degree of vernacularization here. Stronach (2010) actually talks of ‘hypernarratives’, which he argues ‘constitute the first global language of Education and enable politicians the world over to talk nonsense about educational outcomes, while all singing from the same hymn sheet’ (2010: 1). He also notes the paradox of such hypernarratives in the context of postmodern incredulity towards narratives of this type. In my work, I have also explored the vernacularization of these global discourses, the ways the global meta-discourses or hypernarratives meet the specific cultural, political, structural and historical backdrop of given nations and systems (Chapters 3, 4 and 6 in this book) and are thus manifest in context-specific ways. Risto Rinne and his colleagues (2002), for example, have argued that neo-liberalism and new managerialism have not taken such strong roots in Finnish schooling as in other parts of that society, and, I would add, as in other parts of the world. Of course, this is why attempts at policy borrowing without a focus on policy learning are always fraught with dangers, as I argue in Chapters 3 and 4; context and culture are not transferable. It is also probably why developments in other nations are used in national systems as part of what Schriewer (1990) called ‘externalization’. This most often works by comparing national performance with that of reference societies, and using this as an additional pressure for change,

16

Introduction

usually following the path of reform already being driven by the nation. An example of this can be seen in the way many nations have turned their policy gaze on ShanghaiChina, following its outstanding performance on the 2009 PISA (see Sellar and Lingard, forthcoming). I would also note here how the OECD, in seeking to offer policy lessons to nations by drawing attention to the high performers on PISA, stresses the contribution of policy to such performance but neglects the impact of structure and history. We could view all public policies, including those in education, as being framed at one level by concerns about equity, efficiency, security, liberty and community, as suggested by Deborah Stone (2001). These concepts, though, are contested ones, meaning different things to different people. Furthermore, the assemblage of these concepts into a policy framework can be done in many ways (see Rizvi and Lingard 2011). So Sahlberg’s GERM is manifested in varying ways in different national contexts with different assemblages of elements. This is vernacularization of the global policy discourse and is the focus of Chapters 4 and 6. I have been concerned with the emergence of a global education policy field (see Chapter 5), documenting its effects in given national systems. While my work has demonstrated these policy effects flowing from the global field, I note that bilateral and multilateral policy borrowing still continues (Steiner-Khamsi 2004), the concern of Chapter 3. Globalization has significance for the methodology for doing policy research today, raising the need to reject methodological nationalism. Globalization also affects epistemologies, with implications for the internationalization of the higher education student body. These matters are taken up in Chapters 8 and 9. My second body of work concerns school reform and pedagogies (Lingard et al. 2003; Hayes et al. 2006; Lingard 2007, 2010; Wrigley et al. 2012a, 2012b; Thomson et al. 2012a, 2012b). This is the attempt at a positive or redemptive thesis derived from a large empirical study I conducted in Queensland in the late 1990s and early 2000s with a large group of colleagues. This work drew on our long-term commitment to social justice in and through schooling, in terms of systemic funding, systemic policies, and school and classroom policies and practices. What was different was the very large empirical database that the Queensland pedagogies research created. I should also note that this research tried to work across the binary in pedagogical research between that which is focused on the empirical and practical and that of a critical pedagogy kind that is most often exhortatory in character (Lingard 2010). We designed an empirical study focused on mapping what was actually going on in classroom pedagogies, but framed this with a political commitment derived from the critical pedagogies literature of various kinds (Hayes et al. 2006). This research, the Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS), was commissioned and funded by the state government and initially drew on work conducted in the US by Fred Newmann and his colleagues (1996) on ‘authentic pedagogy’ and ‘authentic assessment’. We attempted to recontextualize that US study to the Queensland situation and, while the Newmann research focused on academic outcomes from schooling, we extended their approach to include social outcomes. We researched twenty-four schools (half primary, half secondary) over three years, observing approximately 1000 lessons (250 teachers each teaching four times). We developed a classroom observation manual and mapped teacher pedagogies in these classrooms. From our mapping, we derived from factor analysis a four-dimensional model of ‘productive pedagogies’ that appeared to make a difference to learning outcomes, both social and academic, for all students. The four dimensions were intellectual demand, connectedness, supportiveness and working with and valuing difference. We found a huge amount of support in classrooms and pedagogies, but not enough of the

Introduction 17

other three dimensions that constituted our model of productive pedagogies. Indeed, we found an apparent trade-off between care and support (supportive demandingness) and intellectual demand. This constituted a misrecognition of what was required for pedagogies to open up opportunities for the more disadvantaged in society, who came to school without the requisite capitals for success. Indeed, following Bourdieu’s work on social reproduction and schooling, we hypothesized that these pedagogies were even more important for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, so as to ensure a fair distribution of those capitals necessary to educational and work success. We set our productive pedagogies research against an extensive review of the literature on the possibilities of schooling for opening up opportunities for all, irrespective of social class background and other differences. We subsequently wrote a book on the productive pedagogies (Hayes et al. 2006):Teachers and Schooling Making a Difference. The indefinite article was important here and we resisted our publisher’s desire for the definite article, ‘the’, to be used instead. Our use of ‘a’ signified that schools could make some difference, a difference, but not all of the differences, given both the extent of inequality within the society and the different capitals that students from different backgrounds brought to school in their actual and virtual school bags. We were acknowledging reproduction as the default mode of schooling and that, for the achievement of equality through schooling, we need a more equal society and more equal and redistributive funding of schools. This is particularly so at this moment when ‘quality teachers’ is the major mantra driving education policy, a decontextualized mono-causal explanation of a complex aetiology. This is important, but societies also need to confront inequality broadly and through schooling (Anyon 2005; Condron 2011). Teachers and schools cannot achieve this alone. As noted already, I would suggest that the US’s poor comparative performance on PISA, reflects the extent of inequality in that society (which is growing) and the inequitable funding of schools located in different social class communities with varying tax and funding bases (see Condron 2011). This is an important lesson to learn from the success of Finland on PISA. The high quality and high equity performance of Finland has many factors in its aetiology. One of these is that Finland is a very equal society (Sahlberg 2011; Simola 2005), with schooling being seen as central to the nation’s future, a situation similar to that of Singapore where human capital is perceived to be their only resource. These systemic and national dispositions were well to the fore in these two countries, long before the current focus on education as human capital production became one dominant trope in a global education policy discourse. The QSRLS also considered the factors of effective leadership in schools (Lingard et al. 2003) and our research led to us writing a book, Leading Learning. At that time in Australia, when schools were subject to regular and fatiguing systemic restructurings, there was a discourse concerning how school principals were being employed simply as generic managers of educational institutions. What our research demonstrated unequivocally was the central importance of the work of school principals in leading learning. There were specific and idiosyncratic features of effective educational leadership that we tried to pick up on in our concept of ‘productive leadership’. At one level, as well, we thought about leadership practices as a form of pedagogy, acknowledging that good schools were saturated in pedagogies (Thomson 2009). Drawing on Bourdieu’s thinking tools, we also thought about the principal as having to be multilingual in working across various fields with their cross-field effects (see Chapter 7) and different logics of practice. These included the field of policy production at systemic level, the fields of the school and that of the school’s multiple and variant communities. The productive pedagogies work became very influential in Queensland, New South Wales (which put in place a Quality Pedagogy policy for their system),

18

Introduction

elsewhere in Australia and in other parts of the globe. A reason for the impact and influence of this research was an activist minister, who liked the research and thought that it could assist progressive improvements in Queensland schooling, and who supported its dissemination in various forms. In the first instance, a very competent, confident and committed Director-General of Education also supported the research and the active dissemination of its findings to schools and into policy, as well as to the academic research community through publications. Another direct policy impact of the productive pedagogies research was the experiment with the New Basics curriculum in about fifty Queensland schools. This innovative curriculum utilized the QSRLS as a backdrop and attempted to align its curriculum content, the New Basics, with these pedagogies and new assessment practices called ‘rich tasks’. I have written elsewhere about the New Basics (Rizvi and Lingard 2010: Chapter 5) and its fading from the Queensland educational landscape against the emergence of a national curriculum in Australia following the election of the Rudd Labor government in 2007 (Lingard and McGregor 2013). Particularly significant, though, in the demise of the New Basics approach was the introduction of national testing in literacy and numeracy, the National Assessment Plan – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), for all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 and Queensland’s poor comparative performance on those tests in the first year (2008) of their use (Lingard and Sellar 2013a). These national policy developments and their effects are matters considered in Chapter 3 of this book. My third field of research deals with gender and focuses on policy and schooling for both girls and boys, with a particular emphasis on boys’ issues (Lingard et al. 2009) and the attempt to develop a coherent pro-feminist stance regarding gender and schooling in a context of the rise of a recuperative masculinity politics (Lingard and Douglas 1999). I had an interest in gender and schooling from the outset of my academic career. Indeed, the Schools Commission report in Australia, Girls, School and Society (1975), coincided with my early years as an academic, teaching sociology of education. This was a report framed by liberal feminism and was an outcome of the engagement in Australia of second wave feminism with the state, reflecting the state-centric character of the Australian polity (Eisenstein 1991, 1996). I was interested in policy developments for girls in schooling that emerged in Australia, culminating with the publication of the National Policy for the Education of Girls in Australian Schools (1987). Queensland was the only state not to sign up to this national policy. This was a time of a far right wing (and corrupt) Queensland government. Indeed, well before the rise of the ‘what about the boys?’ call in the 1990s, Queensland’s gender policy included both boys and girls and functioned on the presumption of equality between men and women, denying structural inequality associated with patriarchal intersections with class structure. One of my early academic papers was written with colleagues Miriam Henry and Sandra Taylor (Lingard et al. 1987) and published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education, analyzing Queensland’s reactionary stance. I also worked with femocrats in the state and federal bureaucracies to try to strengthen policy and practice for girls in schooling and to research and intervene in the backlash against feminist interventions in schooling that emerged in Australia and elsewhere over the following years. From the early 1990s, I was part of the push to ask the question, ‘Which girls and which boys?’ performed well and poorly at school, set against the rise of a discourse about boys as the new disadvantaged in schooling, emphasizing the need to disaggregate the category of boys, taking account of class, race, indigeneity and other intersecting factors. I researched media coverage of the boys’ issue, which also tended to frame boys as the new disadvantaged, calling for more male teachers and

Introduction 19

so on. I argued that media representations in the policy vacuum of the period after the National Policy in Australia became for schools and teachers de facto policy (Lingard 2003). In 1999, with anti-domestic violence activist and pro-feminist, Peter Douglas, I wrote a book entitled Men Engaging Feminisms: Pro-feminism, backlashes and schooling, which conceptualized the boys’ backlash in schooling – ‘What about the boys?’ – as linked to a broader agenda of recuperative masculinity inherent in men’s rights and mythopoetic movements. These reactionary movements sought to return to a period prior to second wave feminism and its policy impacts and effects on interpersonal relations and in the domestic sphere. We asked the question in our book: Which feminisms should pro-feminist men be pro? We also attempted to work across competing pro-feminisms, in particular the arguments of Connell (2005), which focused on supporting feminism and women, and that faction (Seidler 1991) that argued the need to reconstitute masculinities. Our stance was that men needed to change, and to support women, to change social structures and open up opportunities for all. Indeed, our argument was that some boys’ risk-taking, aggressive and disruptive behaviours in schools and classrooms, and their poor reading performance, and so on, reflected the disaffecting hegemonic practices of masculinity and that masculinity therefore needed change through a specific focus in gender equity policies in schooling. In Boys and schooling: Beyond structural reform (Lingard et al. 2009), we synthesized much of the research that we had undertaken individually and collectively on boys’ education within a pro-feminist, anti-homophobic framework. We argued against structural reforms that seemed to dominate the boys’ debate at the time, namely the calls for more male teachers and for single sex classrooms in co-educational schools. Rather, we argued the need for different classroom pedagogies, drawing on the productive pedagogies research (also see Keddie and Mills 2007), and the need to reconstitute masculinities while supporting girls and rejecting homophobia. We argued a need for more male teachers, not on the grounds of boys needing more male role models (for a critique, see Martino and Rezai-Rashti 2012), but because men should play a larger role in child care and education. In more recent research on elite girls’ and boys’ schools in Scotland, we documented the attempts by a boys’ school to reconstitute hegemonic masculinity and create a softer, more caring practice thought to be necessary to the professional futures of these boys within increasingly global labour markets (Lingard et al. 2012a, 2012b). That research also demonstrated the impact of feminism on middle class girls, who now aspired to academic success and professional futures globally as well. I hypothesized that social class intersected with gender in different gendered and class based spatio-temporalites. Now, in terms of this book, the focus is on policy. I could have included my analysis of media constructions of the ‘what about the boys?’ debate as de facto policy on gender, but the argument about the mediatization of education policy is taken up specifically in Chapter 7. As noted above, my co-authored, Boys and schooling (2009) is a summative account of my research on gender and schooling, drawing on research conducted with colleagues Wayne Martino and Martin Mills. So, as a ‘taster’ of my pro-feminist gender work in education, I have included a paper written with those two colleagues, which presents a policy analysis, set within pro-feminism, of a Parliamentary inquiry into boys’ education in Australia. While this is an Australian case with its own specificities, the focus on boys’ education has flowed across the globe, a part of the ideoscapes associated with cultural globalization (Appadurai 1996), so the chapter should have salience for those located elsewhere.

20

Introduction

Selection principles Raymond Williams, the great British literary and social theorist, introduced the concept of the ‘selective tradition’ to describe how the literary canon was constructed and for explaining the bases on which decisions concerning inclusions and exclusions were made. Very productive and creative use of this theory was made by Michael Apple (1979) in his book Ideology and Curriculum in which he referred to the selective principles, both articulated and unsaid, in making the choices from culture and knowledge disciplines to construct and create school curricula. Why this concern with selection? Well, I want to articulate here my rationale for what I have included in this book, and also the rationale for what has been excluded. I want to expressly articulate my selection principles as an entrée for the reader to this collection of my research writing. As we know from policy analysis, the unsaid, the silent, the excluded is often as telling as the said, the spoken, the clearly explicated, an observation clearly confirmed from critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2003), but also by Williams and Apple in respect of the knowledge made public in education through curricula. Above, I have outlined the three specific foci of my research agenda over time. In making the selection for this book, however, I have decided on consistency and just a single focus – education policy. I want these papers to offer a coherent account of my practices of policy sociology in education. Given the policy focus of this book, I want to move to a consideration of Chapters 10 and 11 because, respectively, they fit better within my gender work (Chapter 10) and school reform and pedagogical research work and writing (Chapter 11). I want to make a couple of quick observations here about the rationale for their inclusion in a book ostensibly about education policy. The gender chapter, chapter 10, is policy focused in its analysis of the Boys: Getting it Right report of a Parliamentary inquiry in Australia. The substantive policy content is about gender, but it is a piece of policy work. The report focused on boys’ education in a context of boys at the time being constructed as the new disadvantaged (see Lingard et al. 2009; Weaver-Hightower 2008), through an identity politics of the powerful (Robinson 2000) and a strategic essentialism (Spivak 1990). This critical analysis is underpinned by a pro-feminism (see Lingard and Douglas 1999), a commitment to social justice and a desire for a more equitable schooling system and society. The chapter argues the necessity of asking ‘Which boys and which girls?’ when we are contemplating policy and practice issues to do with gender and schooling and in the context of backlashes against the feminist reform agenda. I would reiterate the point here that critical policy analysis in education, in my approach at least, is underpinned by an often explicit, always implicit commitment to social justice and moving towards a more socially just society. Chapter 11 deals with productive pedagogies, which I call ‘pedagogies of indifference’, to pick-up on the trade-off between care and intellectual support that we found in the QSRLs research on which I have already commented (p. 16ff). Policy is both text and processes: policies refer to actual policy texts but also to the processes that have preceded the text, from agenda setting through to text production; policy is also about policy practices, policy enactment (Ball et al. 2012) or may be understood in the context of the policy practice element of Ball’s (1994) policy cycle approach. In formal, structured public policy making there may be an evaluation phase of the implementation stage, which in an ideal model is fed back so as to rearticulate the text and ensure supporting funding and strategies are in place, thereby achieving greater fidelity in implementation. If we are concerned with schooling policy, the greatest possible policy effect will be through classroom practices. Now, of course, there are policies about structures, about funding, about social justice. These are all necessary and important. However, after conducting the productive pedagogies research I came to the strong

Introduction 21

view that social justice policies for schools also needed to impact upon pedagogies in order to ensure a more equitable distribution of the capitals that enable access to opportunities and thus lead to improved outcomes for all students. However, in a Bourdieusian sense I acknowledged the disjunction between the logics of practice that underpin policy text production inside the state and those that underpin teacher pedagogies, with their contingencies and specificities. So I would make the point here that the productive pedagogies research made me aware of other ways to conceptualize the gap between policy intention and policy outcomes (see Honig 2006; Heimans 2012). This chapter on pedagogies of indifference is in one sense about policy enactment (Ball et al. 2012) and a recognition that, drawing on Bourdieu, ‘refractions’ – slippages between policy texts and policy enactment – can be seen at one level as a reflection of the disjunctions between the logics of policy text production within the policy field and its universalistic claims (the right to apply the universal in Bourdieu’s (2003) terms), and the variant and contingent logics of practice of classroom pedagogies. It is in this way that the final chapter in this book fits with a policy focus.

In/conclusion Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye says: ‘What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it’. I hope Politics, Policies and Pedagogies in Education provokes a similar response and engagement with my work by my academic community of sociologists of education and policy sociologists, through reading it, critiquing it, working with it, and extending it through theoretically informed empirical work of multiple kinds.

Notes 1

2

3 4

For a commentary on my writing collaboratively with Fazal Rizvi see Thomson and Kamler (2013), Chapter 8, where I acknowledge the significance of working with Fazal to achieving my own ‘voice’ and recognizing the significance of argument structure to writing, while Fazal acknowledges my sociological contribution to his way of thinking and writing that now recognizes materiality and the necessity of the empirical. Most recently I have had a full-time postdoctoral fellow working with me and funded out of two of my research projects, Dr Sam Sellar. This has been another very productive collaboration for me and made me recognize how in the social sciences, and specifically in the field of educational research, we do not have enough postdoctoral fellows, which it seems to me would be an important way forward for strengthening the field. (See here Lingard and Sellar 2012, 2013a, 2013b; Sellar and Lingard 2013, forthcoming.) I note Susan Sonntag’s point here about reading as central to the practices of writing. Specifically, she meant that we read and re-read what we have written as we write and rewrite. I would also add the additional idea of the reading of others’ work as contributing to our writing. Luke and Hogan (2006) seek to reconstitute an approach to evidence-based policy drawing upon both qualitative and quantitative research data and the insights from critical educational research and theory. In so doing, they describe an approach to the research/policy relationship being put in place, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, in contemporary Singapore. I note, though, that much of this very good research is not publically available.

References Anyon, J. (2005) Radical possibilities: Public policy, urban education, and a new look social movement. New York: Routledge. Anyon, J. (2009) Theory and educational research toward critical social explanation. New York: Routledge.

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Introduction 23 Fairclough, N. (2003) Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge. Fitz, J., Davies, B., and Evans, J. (2006) Educational policy and social reproduction. London: Routledge. Fraser, N. (1997) Justice interruptus: Critical reflections on the ‘postsocialist’ condition. New York: Routledge. Fraser, N. (2009) Scales of justice: reimagining political space in a globalizing world. New York: Columbia University Press. Furlong, J. (2013) Education – an anatomy of a discipline: Rescuing the university project. London: Routledge. Furlong, J., and Lawn, M. (eds), (2011) Disciplines of education: Their role in the future of education research. London: Routledge. Gale, T. and Lingard, B. (2010) Educational research by association: AARE presidential addresses and the field of educational research. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Gordon, I., Lewis, J., and Young, R. (1977) Perspectives on policy analysis. Public Administration Bulletin, 25, 26–35. Gregory, D. (2004) The colonial present. Oxford: Blackwell. Grenfell, M. (ed.) (2008) Pierre Bourdieu: Key concepts. Stocksfield Hall: Acumen Publishing. Griffiths, M. (1998) Educational research for social justice: Getting off the fence. Buckingham: Open University Press. Hacking, I. (1990) The taming of chance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hardy, I., Heimans, S., and Lingard, B. (2011) Journal rankings: Positioning the field of educational research and educational academics. Power and Education, 3(1), 4–17. Hayes, D., Mills, M., Christie, P., and Lingard, B. (2006) Teachers and schools making a difference. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Head, B.W. (2008) Three lenses of evidence-based policy. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 67(1), 1–11. Heimans, S. (2012) Coming to matter in practice: Enacting education policy. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 33(2), 313–26. Henry, M., Lingard, B., Rizvi, F. and Taylor, S. (2001) The OECD, globalisation and education policy. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Honig, M.I. (ed) (2006) New directions in education policy implementation: Confronting complexity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. James, D. (2012) How Bourdieu bites back. Paper presented to the Annual Conference of the British Educational Research Association, Keynote Symposium, September. Jenkins, R. (2002) (2nd edn). Pierre Bourdieu. London: Routledge. Keddie, A. and Mills, M. (2007) Teaching boys: Developing classroom practices that work. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Laidi, Z. (1998) A world without meaning: The crisis of meaning in international politics (J. Burnham and J. Coulon, Trans.). London: Routledge. Lauder, H., Brown, P., and Halsey, A.H. (2011) The sociology of education as ‘redemption’: A critical history. In J. Furlong and M. Lawn (eds), Disciplines of education: Their role in the future of education research. London: Routledge. Lingard, B. (2003) Where to in gender equity policies after recuperative masculinity politics? International Journal of Inclusive Education, 7(1), 33–56. Lingard, B. (2006) Globalisation, the research imagination and deparochialising the study of education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 3(2), 287–302. Lingard, B. (2007) Pedagogies of indifference. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 11(3), 245–66. Lingard, B. (2010) Towards a sociology of pedagogies. In M. Apple, S.J. Ball and L. Gandon (eds) The Routledge international handbook of sociology of education. London: Routledge. Lingard, B. (2011) Policy as numbers: Ac/counting for educational research. Australian Educational Researcher, 38(4), 355–82. Lingard, B., and Douglas, P. (1999) Men engaging feminisms: Profeminism, backlashes and schooling. Buckingham: Open University Press. Lingard, B., and Renshaw, P. (2009) Teaching as a research-informed and research-informing profession. In A. Campbell and S. Groundwater-Smith (eds), Connecting inquiry and professional learning. London: Routledge, pp. 26–39.

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Lingard, B., and Gale, T. (2010) Presidential address as pedagogy: Representing and constituting the field of educational research. In T. Gale and B. Lingard (eds), Educational research by association: AARE presidential addresses and the field of educational research. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Lingard, B., and Sellar, S. (2012) A policy sociology reflection on school reform in England: From the ‘third way’ to the ‘big society’. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 44(1), 43–63. Lingard, B., and McGregor, G. (2013) High stakes assessment and new curricula: A Queensland case of competing tensions in curriculum development. In M. Priestley and G. Biesta (eds), Reinventing the curriculum. London: Bloomsbury. Lingard, B., and Sellar, S. (2013a) ‘Catalyst data’: Perverse systemic effects of audit and accountability in Australian schooling. Journal of Education Policy. Lingard, B., and Sellar, S. (2013b) Globalization and sociology of education policy: The case of PISA. In R. Brooks, M. McCormack and K. Bhopal (eds), Contemporary debates in the sociology of education. London: Palgrave. Lingard, B., Taylor, S. and Henry, M. (1987) A girl in a militant pose: A chronology of struggles in girls’ education in Queensland. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 8(2), 135–52. Lingard, B., Hayes, D., Mills, M. and Christie, P. (2003) Leading learning: Making hope practical in schools. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Lingard, B., Taylor, S., and Rawolle, S. (2005) Bourdieu and the study of educational policy: Introduction. Journal of Education Policy, 20(6), 663–9. Lingard, B., Martino, W., and Mills, M. (2009) Boys and schooling: Beyond structural reform. London: Palgrave. Lingard, B., Forbes, J., Weiner, G. and Horne, J. (2012a) Multiple capitals and Scottish independent schools: The (re)production of advantage. In J. Allan and R. Catts (eds) Social capital, children and young people. Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 181–98. Lingard, B., Mills, M. and Weaver-Hightower, M. (2012b) Interrogating recuperative masculinity politics in schooling. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 16, 4: 407–21. Lingard, B., Martino, W. and Mills, M. (forthcoming). Managing oppositional masculinity politics: The gendering of a government commissioned research project. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. Luke, A. (2008) Using Bourdieu to make policy: Mobilizing community capital and literacy. In J. Albright and A. Luke (eds) Pierre Bourdieu and literacy education. New York: Routledge. Luke, A., and Hogan, D. (2006) Redesigning what counts as evidence in educational policy: The Singapore model. In J. Ozga, T. Seddon and T. Popkewitz (eds), World yearbook of education 2006: Education research and policy: Steering the knowledge-based economy. London: Routledge. Macintyre, S. (2010) The poor relation: A history of the social sciences in Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Martino, W. and Rezai-Rashti, G. (2012) Gender, race, and the politics of role modeling. New York: Routledge. McLaughlin, M. (2006) Implementation research in education: Lessons learnt, lingering questions and new opportunities. In M. Honig (ed.), New directions in education policy implementation: Confronting complexity. New York: State University of New York Press. Newmann, F.M., and Associates (1996) Authentic achievement: Restructuring schools for intellectual quality. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Novoa, A., and Yariv-Mashal, T. (2003) Comparative research in education: A mode of governance or a historical journey? Comparative Education, 39(4), 423–38. OECD. (2007) Evidence in education: Linking research and policy. Paris: OECD. Orland, M. (2009) Separate orbits: The distinctive worlds of educational research and policymaking. In G. Sykes, B. Schneider, D. Plank and T. Ford (eds), Handbook of education policy research. New York: Routledge, pp. 113–28. Ozga, J. (1987) Studying education policy through the lives of policy makers. In S. Walker and L. Barton (eds), Changing policies, changing teachers: New directions for schooling? Philadelphia: Open University Press. Ozga, J., Seddon, T., and Popkewitz, T. (2006) Introduction: Education research and policy: Steering the knowledge-based economy. In J. Ozga, T. Seddon and T. Popkewitz (eds), World Yearbook of Education 2006. London: Routledge, pp. 1–14. Power, M. (1997) The audit society: Rituals of verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Introduction 25 Rawolle, S. and Lingard, B. (2013) Bourdieu and educational research: Thinking tools, relational thinking, beyond epistemological innocence. In M. Murphy (ed.) Social theory and educational research: Understanding Foucault, Habermas, Derrida and Bourdieu. London: Routledge. Rawolle, S., and Lingard, B. (2008) The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and researching education policy. Journal of Education Policy, 23(6), 729–40. Rinne, R., Kivirauma, J. and Simola, R. (2002) Shoots of revisionist education policy or just slow readjustment? Journal of Education Policy, 17(6), 643–59. Rizvi, F., and Lingard, B. (2010) Globalizing education policy. London: Routledge. Rizvi, F., and Lingard, B. (2011) Social equity and the assemblage of values in Australian higher education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 41(1), 5–22. Robinson, S. (2000) Marked men: White masculinity in crisis. New York: Columbia University Press. Rorty, R. (1989) Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sahlberg, P. (2011) Finnish lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? New York: Teachers College Press. Schriewer, J. (1990) The methodology of comparison and the need for externalization: Methodological criteria and sociological concepts. In J. Schriewer and B. Holmes (eds) Theories and methods in comparative education. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 25–83. Seidler, V. (1991) Recreating sexual politics: men, feminism and politics, London: Routledge. Sellar, S. and Lingard, B. (forthcoming). Looking East: Shanghai, PISA and the reconstitution of reference societies in the global education policy field. Comparative Education. Sellar, S., and Lingard, B. (2013) Expanding PISA and the role of the OECD in global educational governance. In H.-D. Meyer and A. Benavot (eds), Who succeeds at PISA and why? The role of international benchmarking in emerging global governance. Oxford: Symposium Books. Simola, H. (2005) The Finnish miracle of PISA: Historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education. Comparative Education, 41(4), 455–470. Spivak, G. (1990) The post-colonial critic. New York: Routledge. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (ed.) (2004) The global politics of educational borrowing and lending. New York: Teachers College Press. Stone, D. (2001) Policy paradox: The art of political decision-making. New York: Norton. Stronach, I. (2010) Globalizing education, educating the local: How method made us made. London: Routledge. Taylor, S., Rizvi, F., Lingard, B., and Henry, M. (1997) Educational policy and the politics of change. London: Routledge. Thomson, P. and Kamler, B. (2013) Writing for peer reviewed journals: Strategies for getting published. London: Routledge. Thomson, P. (2006) Policy scholarship against depoliticisation. In J. Ozga, T. Seddon and T. Popkewitz (eds), World yearbook of education 2006: Education research and policy: Steering the knowledge-based economy. London: Routledge. Thomson, P. (2009) School leadership: Heads on the block? London: Routledge. Thomson, P., Lingard, B., and Wrigley, T. (2012a). Ideas for changing educational systems, educational policy and schools. Critical Studies in Education, 53(1), 1–7. Thomson, P., Lingard, B., and Wrigley, T. (2012b). Reimagining school change: The necessity and reasons for hope. In T. Wrigley, P. Thomson and B. Lingard (eds), Changing schools: Alternative ways to make a world of difference. London: Routledge, pp. 1–14. Trowler, P. (2003) (2nd edn). Education policy. London: Routledge. Tuhiwai Smith, L. (1999) Decolonising methodologies research and indigenous peoples. London: Zed Books. Vickers, M. (1994) Cross-national exchange, the OECD, and Australian education policy. Knowledge and Policy, 7(1), 25–47. Watson, L. (2008) Developing indicators for a new ERA: Should we measure the policy impact of education research? Australian Journal of Education, 52(2), 117–128. Weaver-Hightower, M. (2008) The politics of policy in boys’ education: Getting boys ‘Right.’ New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Weis, L., and Fine, M. (2004) Working method research and social justice. New York: Routledge. Weiss, C. (1979) The many meanings of research utilization. Public Administration Review, 39(5), 426–31.

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CHAPTER 1

POLICY AS NUMBERS Ac/counting for educational research Bob Lingard Originally published in: Australian Educational Researcher, 2011, 38(4): 355–3821

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? (T.S. Eliot, The Rock, 1960) . . . a layman’s version of the de facto impossibility of ever achieving a complete measure of any given system is provided in a note by Borges. An emperor wishes to have a perfectly accurate map of the empire made. The project leads the country to ruin—the entire population devotes all of its time to cartography. (Lyotard 1984, p. 55)

Introduction This chapter adumbrates and critiques the emergence or indeed dominance of policy as numbers in contemporary education policy. The chapter draws out the implications for both education policy and educational research. This analysis is set in the context of globalisation, the rescaling of political authority and the continuing dominance, despite the global financial crisis, of neo-liberal political frameworks. Perhaps ‘re/emergence’ might be more appropriate than emergence, so as to recognise the early twentieth century significance of the ‘political arithmetic’ approach to progressive public administration, particularly within the British tradition, which utilised statistical data very effectively for egalitarian politics; for example, in respect of the extent and location of poverty and the necessary policy interventions to ameliorate it and its effects. We could, of course, look as far back as the founding of sociology, and consider Durkheim’s (1894) observation concerning sociological method: ‘The first and most fundamental rule is: Consider social facts as things’. As Desrosieres (1998, p. 2) suggests, this means we can accept that social facts are things or simply in a methodological sense treat them as if they were things, a distinction I will return to later in this chapter. Another of the founders of sociology, Comte, spoke of positivist sociology as akin to ‘social physics’, a felicitous phrase picking up on all of the ontological and epistemological nuances of such sociology and its conception of the social and society. Additionally, the development of statistics paralleled the emergence of the nation-state as we have come to know it. Professor Richard Selleck’s 1988 Radford Lecture dealt with the formation of the Manchester Statistical Society and the related creation of social science research. In that lecture, he showed how the social scientists at the time used the new statistics to put themselves at the service of the powerful and of governments. It is a salutary observation today in respect of policy as numbers, the focus of this chapter, and in respect of the role of social scientists and

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educational researchers in relation to this phenomenon. I mention political arithmetic, social facts, social physics, statistics and Professor Selleck’s Radford Lecture because of my sensitivity to what I see as, using Bourdieu (1998), the almost ‘structural amnesia’ inherent in much social science research and theory, but also linked to my argument that the use of numbers in education policy has taken a new turn and a new significance. So I am recognising that numbers, statistics, rankings, comparisons, data, etc., have been central to state functioning since the rise of the nation-state in the eighteenth century. These have, through state science and state grids, made the nation ‘legible’ for governing, in Scott’s (1998) evocative term. This feature of the modern state is evidenced in the etymology of the word ‘statistics’ and their centrality to the governing practices of the state. My argument, however, is that today policy as numbers has become the reductive norm for contemporary education policy at all levels of rescaled political authority and for new geographies of governance, across local, provincial, national, regional and global fields. Policy as numbers is an exemplification of a policy technology associated with the move from government to governance (Rhodes 1997; Rosenau 1997, 2005). This transition has been framed by the global dominance of neo-liberal politics and policies in the period since the end of the Cold War, signified by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The chapter will also seek to understand these technologies of governance in relation to what Lyotard (1984) called the death of meta-narratives, or what Laidi (1998) refers to as a ‘world without meaning’, a disposition entrenched by the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the dominance of global neo-liberalism, and facilitated by new public management and the fiscal necessity of efficiency, effectiveness and accountability of contemporary public policy. Policy as numbers, I will argue, is set against this incredulity towards meta-narratives and lack of an horizon of expectation, a manifestation of what Laidi (1998, p. 7) refers to as the reduction of contemporary politics to ‘managing the ordinary present’ or what Berger (2007) would see as our contemporary inability to imagine a more positive future. Policy as numbers also constitutes the audit culture of neo-liberal governance (Power 1997) and the governmentalities associated with the new individualism endemic in neo-liberalism. The chapter proceeds in four steps. First, I deal with this phenomenon that I am calling ‘policy as numbers’ framed by politics of/as numbers. I move, secondly, to consider the contemporary ‘structure of feeling’, to use Raymond Williams’ (1966, 1983) felicitous concept, as the backdrop to the rise of policy as numbers in education and its reductive politics. Thirdly, I look at the neo-liberal policy framing of contemporary education policy and policy processes. The effects of policy as numbers as a technology of governance producing new patterns of governmentality in education are next analysed. This policy analysis focuses on education policy developments in the national schooling agenda in Australia as evidence of a policy as numbers approach, and numbers as central to evidence-based policy. The argument will also be that policy as numbers has helped constitute, after Bourdieu (2003), what we might call a ‘global education policy field’. The chapter concludes by briefly considering the implications of my analysis for educational research. Next, though, I turn to what the chapter is not doing.

Excursus I want to add a brief excursus here on what the chapter is not doing or implying. I am not proffering a critique of quantitative methodologies in educational research or the social sciences. Indeed, I recognise that the research traditions of critical sociology of education and policy sociology in education, that I come out of, are based on multiple quantitative analyses of the socially unjust and unequal functioning of education in

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relation to the (re)production of inequalities and their legitimation. I also recognise that data have been collected by governments for progressive political purposes, particularly in the period after the Second World War with the creation of the Keynesian welfare state. Spufford (2010) in his ‘factional’ novel, Red Plenty, satirises the failure and unintended effects of the application of maths and science—the rational mind—in the creation of the Planned Economy in the Soviet Union. In that book a young professor is reflecting on the role of reason: True, reason was a difficult tool. You laboured with it to see a little more, and at best you got a glimpse, partial truths; but the glimpses were always worth having. True, the new consciously chosen world still had rough edges and very obvious imperfections, but those things would change. This was only the beginning, the day after reason’s reign. (Spufford 2010, p.12) All social science research gives us glimpses of ‘truth’: derived from both quantitative and qualitative data. The knowledge we produce is thus partial, positioned and provisional, with limitations when applied as an evidence base to policy production (Hammersley 2002). Making nations legible for governing through such evidence and political commitments squeezes out many real life realities and always ensures resistances of various kinds, as Spufford’s (2010) novel and Scott’s (1998) research on centralised state planning demonstrate. Additionally, I reject any suggestion that the unhelpful quantitative/qualitative divide parallels, in a homologous fashion, a right/left political divide (Dimitriadis 2008; Kamberelis and Dimitriadis 2005). A wonderful contemporary case in point is Wilkinson and Pickett’s (2009) book, The Spirit Level: Why equality is better for everyone, which demonstrates through myriad quantitative and statistical data, and with progressive political intent, the relationship between economic inequalities of multiple kinds (e.g., wealth and income) and inequalities in multiple social domains, including education. In terms of the quantitative/qualitative binary, Bourdieu’s sophisticated theoretical and methodological approaches are a very good exemplification of what I am advocating here: methodology that is complementary to one’s onto-epistemologies and the research topic, framed by endemic researcher reflexivity. I would also accept, following Bourdieu (1999), that we must, whatever our methodological approach and its underpinning onto-epistemological assumptions, reject a naive stance of ‘epistemological innocence’ and instead acknowledge the need to reflexively articulate our positioning in data collection of any kind, so as to provide a more transparent and socially scientific account. I am recognising, however, that all social facts derived through research are social constructions—not only social constructions, but social constructions nonetheless— while also representing an extant social reality outside their construction.

Politics of/as numbers There is an extensive and growing literature about politics of/as numbers, both generally and in education. For analytical purposes we can probably divide this literature into that which deals with the functioning and place of numbers in politics (theoretically and practically) more generally and that which deals with the role of numbers through statistics. Numbers have long been significant to the functioning of the state apparatus. This has been particularly the case since the rise of the nation-state in the late eighteenth century and the parallel development of statistics. As Desrosieres (1998, p. 8) observes: ‘As the

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etymology of the word shows, statistics is concerned with the construction of the state, with its unification and administration’. Numbers, including statistics, have thus long been significant technologies of governance. The argument here will be that the governance turn associated with neo-liberalism has enhanced the significance of numbers and statistics as technologies of governance, as central to what Power (1997) calls the rise of the ‘audit society’ and what Neave (1998) has called ‘the evaluative state’. Ozga (2009, p. 150) has observed that: Data production and management were and are essential to the new governance turn; constant comparison is its symbolic feature, as well as a distinctive mode of operation. As a policy instrument data grew—and continue to grow—in strength, speed and scope. The shift to governance is, in fact, heavily dependent on knowledge and information, which play a pivotal role both in the pervasiveness of governance and in allowing the development of its dispersed, distributed and disaggregated form. Data support and create new kinds of policy instrument that organise political relations through communication/information and hence legitimize the organisation. Data here can be seen as synonymous with numbers and linked to the rise of the evidencebased policy movement across the public sector (Wiseman 2010). The Economist (2010) captured this enhanced significance of policy as numbers in a special report, ‘The Data Deluge’ (27 February–5 March 2010), which stressed the exponential growth in the availability of data and the significance in this respect of our enhanced digital and computer capacities.

Numbers in politics In a quite abstract, theoretical, but nonetheless useful way, Appadurai (2006) has written about the ambivalent place of numbers in liberal political theory, while stressing how both numbers and the categories they utilise are important to the actual governance practices of liberal democracies. Numbers thus work both theoretically and practically in politics; that is, they both inform and are technologies of governance: numbers for and as policy. For Appadurai, there are two important numbers in liberal political theory, namely one and zero. One is important because this integer represents the individual, who lies at the heart of liberalism, with the polity regarded as an aggregation of individuals. The individual is also central to contemporary neo-liberalism. Zero is significant because it is the addition of multiple zeros to the integer one that conjures the concept of the masses. Appadurai goes on to see one and zero, individuals and masses, as each harbouring particular problems for liberal democracy in practice. The masses can be seen in some senses as the denial of the individual, with the potential for fascism and totalitarianism. At the same time, small numbers can be seen to reference elites, oligopolies, minorities. Appadurai (2006, p. 41) also argues that the concepts of majorities and minorities in respect of a nation’s demographics are ‘the products of a distinctly modern world of statistics, censuses, population maps, and other tools of state’. Globalisation has had a significant impact on the nation-state, with significant consequences for numbers, categories and the technologies of governance within the nation. Appadurai’s argument is that, in the context of the global and the various cultural flows or ‘scapes’ associated with it (including ‘policyscapes’): ‘The nation-state has been steadily reduced to the fiction of its ethnos as the last cultural resource over which it may exercise full dominion’ (2006, p. 23). It is in this context that the fear of small numbers

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of refugees and asylum seekers, and the narcissism of minor differences, grows and is fertilised by the paranoid actions of governments, which strengthen a national (rather than global) citizenship focus in schools, as endemic in their control of ethnos. Appadurai juxtaposes a vertebrate, hierarchical, bureaucratic politics associated with the nationstate, which he says thrives on singularity and difference, with the emergence in the context of the global of what he refers to as cellular, horizontal, networked politics which flow across nations. These networked cellular flows parallel what Thrift (2005) has called the ‘cultural circuits’ of new global capitalism and in Vertovec’s (2009) terms function ‘transnationally’. All of these things, Appadurai (2006, p. 6) avers, mean some aspects of the bureaucratic modern state, as envisaged and theorised by Weber in terms of formal technical rational procedures, clear-cut categories of people and predictability, as well as spatial boundedness, have been challenged. Remember that Weber saw bureaucratic dominance working through knowledge (e.g., numbers, data, and statistics) as central to its claim to substantive rationality. Indeed, knowledge has long been a tool for governing. This is Hacking’s (1995) observation: that the technologies of governance through numbers and the creation of categories actually ‘make up people’, and then have ‘looping effects’ back on to the social. Porter (1995) notes that ‘numbers create and can be compared with norms, which are among the gentlest and yet most pervasive forms of power in modern democracies’ (p. 45). As such, he argues, ‘Numbers turn people into objects to be manipulated’ (p. 77). Scott (1998) likewise sees numbers, data and categories as central to making the space of the nation legible for governing. These processes continue, but have become somewhat problematic in the context of globalisation, with its effects on human categories spawned by cross-national mobilities, in effect enhancing demographic diversity within nations. Thus, Appadurai (2006, p. 6) notes, ‘the idea of a sovereign and stable territory, the idea of a containable and countable population, the idea of a reliable census, and the idea of stable and transparent categories—have come unglued in the era of globalization’. The classificatory categories upon which statistics and ‘state science’ depend have to be complexified to ensure effective legibility for governing. We will see the significance of this observation concerning the ungluing of stable categories when considering the categories of student performance on (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy), particularly in relation to the Language Background Other Than English (LBOTE) students and the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) (see Lingard et al. (2011)). A range of scholars (e.g., Hacking 1990; Porter 1995) have drawn attention to ‘the simplifying moves that are needed to convert the messy realities of people’s personal attributes and behaviours into the objective, tractable language of numbers’ (Jasanoff 2004, p. 27). The paradox, in my view, is that the contemporary rise and rise of policy as numbers is set against many of the challenges (cultural, epistemological, ontological, visceral, phenomenological) associated with globalisation, but that it is much more difficult for the state to create effective and meaningful technologies because of the increasingly complex categorisation of people, which constitutes the population and which forms the basis of national statistics. People’s personal attributes are messier, more hybrid than ever and thus more difficult to make tractable in and through numbers—the legibility of governing becomes more complex and difficult at the national level in the context of globalisation. Rose notes that ‘Numbers have achieved an unmistakable political power within technologies of government’ (1999, p. 197). He enumerates four types of political numbers. First, he talks about how numbers confer political power and legitimacy. He then talks of numbers as a diagnostic element in contemporary politics, referring specifically to

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opinion polls, but one could just as readily think of focus groups, which governments and political parties utilise today to test policy possibilities. Thirdly, Rose notes that ‘numbers make modes of government both possible and judgeable’ (p. 197). They help constitute ‘the object domains upon which government is required to operate’ (p. 197). Numbers also make government itself judgeable, ‘because rates, tables, graphs, trends, numerical comparisons have become essential to the critical scrutiny of authority in contemporary society’ (pp. 197, 198). Finally, he points out that today, numbers are central technologies of government. In relation to these four types, Rose makes three general points about ‘political numbers’ that are relevant to my argument here. The first is that numbers and politics are ‘mutually constitutive’ (p. 198). Related, he notes that acts of ‘social quantification are “politicized”’ because political decisions determine what will be measured, how, how often, and the nature of the presentation and analysis of such measurements or data. Think here of NAPLAN in Australia, and Ball’s (2006, p. 144) observation that ‘the issue of who controls the field of judgement is crucial’. As an aside, I would note Novoa and Yariv-Mashal’s (2003) point that comparison, most often using data, numbers and performance indicators, has become central to governance, on both national and global scales—a point that will be returned to when I consider the governance turn and neo-liberalism. Secondly, Rose points out that numbers act as ‘inscription devices’ and ‘actually constitute the domains they appear to represent’ (p. 198). In this way the ‘domain of politics is made up numerically’. The function of numbers as inscription devices is an important observation in relation to contemporary education policy. Thirdly, Rose argues that numbers help depoliticise some domains of politics through what he refers to as the ‘technicization of politics’. As such, numbers ‘redraw the boundaries between politics and objectivity by purporting to act as automatic technical mechanisms for making judgements, prioritizing problems and allocating scarce resources’ (p. 98). Two other insights from Rose (1999) on numbers in politics are worth noting in respect of the overall argument of this chapter. Rose suggests that one way of thinking about contemporary politics, and I would add policy making, is as a network of numbers ‘connecting those exercising political power with the persons, processes and problems that they seek to govern’ (p. 99). This is a central feature of the contemporary governmental state and I would add that such networks are now transnational in character, part of Appadurai’s cellular politics and of Thrift’s cultural circuits of global capitalism. In respect of political numbers, Rose also talks about the significance of the single number, particularly in domains of weak political authority. Specifically, he observes: Numbers are resorted to in order to settle or diminish conflicts in a contested space of weak authority. And the ‘power of the single figure’ is here a rhetorical technique for ‘black boxing’—that is to say, rendering invisible and hence incontestable—the complex array of judgments and decisions that go into a measurement, a scale, a number. The apparent facticity of the figure obscures the complex technical work that is required to produce objectivity. (Rose 1999, p. 208) This power of the single figure and its ‘black boxing’ effects—the obscuring of the technical work involved in the production of objectivity—is a very important insight. As Selleck (1989, p. 7) argued, data ‘are not given; they are made’. Such ‘black boxing’ means that these technically derived numbers are ‘scarcely vulnerable to challenge except in a limited way by insiders’ (Porter 1995, p. 42). There is an important role for educational research here: to research how objectivity is constituted in policy making. I must

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stress that this does not necessarily imply a social constructivist stance or a relativist epistemology, but rather the recognition of the human production of facts and objectivity and the central work of numbers, particularly single numbers, in hiding this productive, human work. Desrosieres (1998, p. 1) makes a similar point about statistics and statistical categories when commenting on Durkheim’s concept of ‘social facts’: ‘it is difficult to think simultaneously that the objects being measured really do exist, and that this is only a convention’ (italics in the original). Think of SES, think of poverty, think of student performance and the measures used to capture these. There is a reality here, but also a construction of reality. Specifically on statistics, Desrosieres (1998, p. 2) states: ‘History makes us understand how social facts became things, and accordingly, how they become things for everyone who uses statistical techniques’. There are clear implications in all of this for educational research broadly, but also specifically in relation to researching education policy as numbers.

Statistics, politics and policy As already noted, statistics emerged and national statistical systems were created as part of the constitution of the nation-state in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Hacking (1990) has written about this emergence in some detail, documenting how probability measures challenged deterministic accounts of human behaviour. Porter (1995) and Desrosieres (1998) have also written about the parallel emergence of statistics and the modern nation-state. Likewise Selleck (1989) in his Radford Lecture wrote about this symbiotic relationship in his history of the formation of the Manchester Statistical Society in the 1830s. As Porter (1995, p. 37) notes, from this time, ‘the concept of society was itself in part a statistical construct’,2 while Desrosieres (1998) argues in a complementary way that national statistics and statistical systems helped create the nation as a ‘space of equivalence’, for, as Porter insightfully notes, ‘quantification is a technology of distance’ (p. ix). Porter adds: ‘Quantification is well suited for communication that goes beyond the boundaries of locality and community’ (p. ix). On this very point, he argues that the creation of Europe as a ‘unified and business and administrative environment’ (p. 77) will be achieved more through the ‘language of quantification’ than through the usage of English as a common language. Later in the chapter, when considering the governance turn and the emergence of a global education policy field, I will argue that statistics and numbers have been central to the constitution of this field as technologies of distance. In a similar fashion, Porter argues that numbers and statistics have been central to creating the global field of science research. In terms of the character of such measures, Porter notes (1995, p. 29) that: ‘There is a strong incentive to prefer precise and standardizable measures to highly accurate ones’. As Porter (1995, p. 44) argues, ‘a plausible measure backed by sufficient institutional support can nevertheless become real’. The sub-title of Porter’s book is The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. In this title he is acknowledging the symbiotic relationship in contemporary politics and policy between numbers, statistics, and the norms of the state. Desrosieres (1998, p. 8) argues that statistics actually combine ‘the norms of the scientific world with those of the modern, rational state’. Relatedly, Porter argues that numbers, because of their putative objectivity, are very attractive to bureaucrats. He states: ‘The appeal of numbers is especially compelling to bureaucratic officials who lack the mandate of popular election’ (p. 8). I would add here that in the contemporary structure of feeling, which I will deal with next, politicians have also been drawn to the legitimacy offered by policy as numbers, as demonstrated in the mantra of ‘evidence-based’ policy, one function of which is political control (Head 2008; Wiseman

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2010). On the numbers/political legitimacy relationship, van Zanten (2008, p. 259) argues: ‘faced with a crisis in the model of political authority based on personal status, knowledge is seen as the best way to legitimize policy choices and leaders’ exhortation to change’. The rise of evidence-based policy is another response to these challenges to political legitimacy. There is a specific character to these policy numbers and their political use and necessary commensurabilities. Porter notes, for example: The remarkable ability of numbers and calculations to defy disciplinary and even national boundaries, and link academic to political discourse, owes much to this ability to bypass deep issues. In intellectual change, as in properly economic transactions, numbers are the medium through which dissimilar desires, needs, and expectations are somehow made commensurable. (Porter 1995, p. 86)

The contemporar y ‘structure of feeling’: the contexts of the rise of policy as, by and through numbers In this section I will offer some reflections on what I will call, after Raymond Williams (1961, 1983), the contemporary ‘structure of feeling’ (see also Lingard and Gale 2007). This concept works across structure/agency, structure/culture, rationality/affectivity, as well as potentially across national borders in our globalised age and thus is very useful for my heuristic purposes here. Thrift (2005) also accepts that Williams’ concept well encapsulates our rational, intellectual, cultural, phenomenological, bodily, visceral and emotional experiences of contemporary global change, changes that Thrift suggests are at the very edge of ‘semantic availability’. The argument here is that policy as numbers in contemporary politics is set against this structure of feeling and works as a legitimating device in this increasingly globalised and deterritorialised context. They become a politics of non-politics within this setting. I am speaking here about the post Cold War world, while acknowledging the ambivalent meanings of ‘post’, when used in a number of ways in contemporary theorising: for example, postmodern, post-colonial and post-Enlightenment. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were a number of influential texts trying to pick up on the core of this epochal change, attempting to articulate the contemporary ‘structure of feeling’. Fukuyama’s (1996) The End of History was one, which argued that the end of the Cold War presaged the end of history and an end to ideological politics, with liberal democracy framed by global capitalism as the endpoint of political history and struggle. I strongly reject this account, for all of its negativity, its limited conception of human aspirations and agency, and its parochial US centrism. Huntington’s (1996) Clash of Civilizations was another book arguing that the clash of capitalist and socialist ideologies redolent of the Cold War had now been replaced by a ‘clash of civilizations’, including Islam versus the West, supposedly evidenced in subsequent acts of terror, particularly September 11. I vehemently reject this account as well, again because of its US-centric positioning and its essentialising of Islam and the West. As post-colonial theorists have argued (e.g., Said 2004), both are unified fictions. Here I prefer Appadurai’s (2006) talk of us being in a ‘worldwide civilization of clashes’ (p. 18). These events have nonetheless precipitated much ontological insecurity for the privileged, a backdrop to the rise of policy as numbers. My point in touching on these dangerous accounts is to suggest that they evidence the seeking for new political understandings and narratives. This seeking has been set against the end of the Cold War, the rise of fundamentalist terrorism and the global dominance of neo-liberal capitalism, despite the global financial crisis, which has

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witnessed the emergence of a global economy, facilitated by new technologies and a ‘data deluge’. In this context, Lyotard (1984) argued that meta-narratives are dead. Indeed he defined postmodernism as ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives’. Such meta- or grand narratives he saw as including any teleological accounts of progress in history, and science’s aspiration to a theory of everything, which would synthesise the current gap between macro theories of the universe and micro understandings of particle (and subparticle) physics. In their place, in what he saw as our cybernetic world, were micro narratives as part of a plurality of language games in Wittgenstein’s sense. For Lyotard, what legitimates knowledge today is how well it performs, not whether it is true or false. Performativity, a concept central to Lyotard’s argument, is defined as the ‘best possible input/output equation’ (p. 46). The production of proof, which is in principle only part of an argumentation process designed to win agreement from the addressees of scientific messages, thus falls under the control of another language game, in which the goal is no longer truth, but performativity—that is, the best possible input/output equation. (Lyotard 1984, p. 46) Lyotard (1984) emphasizes, in defining performativity, the demand to ‘be operational (that is, commensurable) or disappear’ (p. xxiv). Ball’s (2006, 2008) concept of performativity, while derived from Lyotard, uses it in a fuller sense in his policy sociology, where performativity is referred to as a technology of contemporary governance. Here Ball augments the concept and defines it in the following way: Performativity is a technology, a culture and a mode of regulation that employs judgments, comparisons and displays as means of incentive, control, attrition and change—based on rewards and sanctions (both material and symbolic).The performances (of individual subjects or organisations) serve as a measure of productivity or output, or displays of ‘quality’, or ‘moments’ of promotion or inspection. As such, they stand for, encapsulate or represent the worth, quality or value of an individual or organisation within a field of judgment. (Ball 2006, p. 144) Numbers, categories, data and statistics are central to this technology, are central to achieving cybernetic input/output equations demanded by the contemporary neo-liberal state. They also sit against the structure of feeling where meta-narratives are at least dying; they also provide legitimation and are intimately linked to the individualism of neo-liberalism, what Rose (1999) has called the self-responsibilising and self-capitalising individual, whose political project is the performative self. They are also linked to social complexity and information overload that the state now has to deal with (Yeatman 1994, p. 117). While Lyotard spoke of the death of meta-narratives, Laidi (1998) talks of a ‘world without meaning’ and our lack of an ‘horizon of expectations’. Binde (2003) speaks of our ‘temporal myopia’ in which we live almost in a permanent state of emergency. Yet as Laidi also points out, ‘the need to project ourselves into the future has never been so strong, while we have never been so poorly armed on the conceptual front to conceive this future, which leaves a gap between the historic rupture that confronts us and our difficulty in interpreting it’ (Laidi 1998, p. 1). Laidi, noting the global character to this, observes: ‘It is as if this accelerated globalisation, this uprooting, both territorial (loss of

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national reference points) and ideological (loss of final goal) were projecting us into a shapeless planetary space that no expectation could dominate’ (1998, p. 7) (italics in original). It is in this context that performativity as a technology of governance, numbers and data becomes so central. Politics becomes incremental managerialism. In Giddens’ (1994) terms, this managerialist politics has to manage the ‘manufactured uncertainties’, which have resulted from earlier modernist interventions in both the natural and social worlds. Laidi grasps this key element of the contemporary structure of feeling in respect of politics, when he dryly observes: ‘Political actions no longer find their legitimacy in a vision of the future, but have been reduced to managing the ordinary present’ (p. 7). Policy and politics as numbers are central to ‘managing the ordinary present’ as visionary politics have been eviscerated. They are also central to the neo-liberal state and its new regulatory technologies that function through ‘controlled decontrol’ (Du Gay 1996); these are considered in the next section.

The government to governance move in education policy Neo- liberal political settlement To this point the nature of neo-liberalism and its impact on education policy and policy processes has been largely implied. Here I want to outline this situation with some reference to the specific education policy situation in Australia. Neo-liberalism has been the dominant political ideology globally, post Cold War, and was often called ‘economic rationalism’ in Australia after Pusey’s influential (1991) book. Neo-liberalism appears as well to have remained largely unshaken, despite the global financial crisis. This is interesting in Australia, where the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (2009) wrote a scathing critique of neo-liberalism in The Monthly magazine, while his government’s social policies, although being underpinned by a rearticulated version of equity and social justice, still appeared to be framed by neo-liberalism and the use of quasi-markets in public service delivery areas such as education, health and welfare. This policy setting is also framed by new forms of regulation to oversee these quasi markets; this regulation operates through heavy use of evidence-based policy and numbers for auditing. In the previous section, I have outlined the central features of the contemporary structure of feeling which, I have argued, has provided a backdrop to a strengthened policy as numbers. The hegemony of neo-liberalism is also a central feature of this structure of feeling. As an ideology or discourse it gives priority to the individual pursuing his/her self interests over considerations of the collective or common good. Aggregated individual choices are seen as the way towards the best society. Sennett (1998) has argued that this new individualism is reflected in the ‘corrosion of character’, with its assumption that aggregated individual self-interest will lead to the strongest economy and a good society. Neo-liberalism also gives priority to the market over the state, a stance which can be contrasted with the development of Keynesianism from the Depression and as instantiated in the Keynesian Welfare State (KWS) after the Second World War and through until the mid 1970s. This KWS saw intervention by the state against the market as necessary to ensure equality of opportunity, the common good and a good society. In this new neo-liberal era we have instead ‘the competition state’ (Cerny 1990), which replaces the KWS and through destatisation involves privatisations of multiple kinds in respect of public policy and public policy delivery, resulting in a more polycentric state (Ball 2007, 2008). Quasi markets and a discourse of citizens as consumers exercising choice are central features of this competition state and its modus operandi. Furthermore, while the KWS was focused internally on the nation and the national economy, the competition state reworks the nation strategically in the context of the

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globalisation of the economy, as national economic sovereignty has been compromised. It is in this context that we have seen the rise of what I am calling ‘policy as numbers’ as a technology of governance within the competition state as part of its ‘new regulatory regime’ (Jessop 2002); this phenomenon operates globally and nationally. The restructuring of the state in the face of neo-liberal globalisation has been manifested politically around the globe in what has been called the move from government to governance (Rhodes 1997; Rosenau 1997, 2005). Like all such transitions, what we probably have in reality are still residues of the older settlement, with the neo-liberalism dominant and perhaps some other developments emergent. However, just as we need to speak of ‘vernacular globalization’ (Appadurai 1996) to refer to the specific ways globalisation in its myriad forms is played out in any given society, mixing in context productive and context generative ways (Appadurai 1996), global pressures with national and local histories, cultures and politics, so too we need to speak of ‘vernacular neo-liberalism’. What we see is particular vernacular expressions of this around the globe, and in Australia. This vernacular neo-liberalism is also inflected at any time by the politics of the party controlling the state—thus compare the Howard and Rudd/Gillard governments on education. The governance move refers to at least three explicit changes in the functioning of the state and its bureaucratic structures and is positioned within the broad assumptions of neo-liberalism outlined above. The first refers to the rescaling of political authority in the context of globalisation, postnational politics (Appadurai 1996) and transnationalism (Vertovec 2009); the second to the reconstitution of a competition state and new regulatory mechanisms associated with ‘new public management’; the third involves moves to privatise aspects of public policy and public policy delivery through multiple forms of privatisation (Ball 2007).

Rescaling The first move links to the rescaling of political authority (Brenner 2004; Robertson et al. 2006) in the context of post Cold War globalisation, so that multiple spheres of political authority now work across global, regional, national and provincial spaces. The EU is a good example of this rescaling in Europe, as is the work of the World Bank in relation to nations of the Global South. For rich countries, the OECD is an important agent of this rescaling, with its role now more as policy actor in its own right (Rizvi and Lingard 2006), rather than simply functioning as a think tank for rich nations, functioning largely through suasion. The OECD has policy effects in member and nonmember nations across the globe, largely through the constitution of globalised education policy discourses, but also through the epistemic communities and networks which it constitutes (Kallo 2009), and through multilateral surveillance involving national policy reviews and international comparative performance measures such as the programme for international student achievement (PISA). More recently, in the face of globalisation and the enhanced significance of the EU and other agencies, the OECD has reconstituted itself as the international agency par excellence with the technical expertise in global comparative performance measures. This is policy as numbers writ global, or what Torrance (2006) has referred to as ‘globalizing empiricism’. The broad congruence of what we can see as globalised education policy discourses across these international organizations results in what Ball (2008, p. 39) calls a ‘generic global policy ensemble’. What we see are globalised education policy discourses, globalisation as constituting particular policy imperatives and the globe as a ‘space of equivalence’ and comparative performance. This is a globalising discourse seeking to instantiate the matters I am considering here associated with the governance turn in national policy

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regimes. With the globalisation of the economy, PISA’s international comparative school system performance measures become in effect a surrogate measure of the potential international competitiveness of the national economy (Brown et al. 1997). The enhanced role of a range of international, supranational and regional organisations in respect of the rescaling of political authority has been noted. In my view there is an even stronger move in this rescaling in terms of what I have called, in work with Shaun Rawolle and Fazal Rizvi, and drawing on a Bourdieusian approach, the emergence of a ‘global education policy field’ (Rawolle and Lingard 2008; Lingard and Rawolle 2009, 2011; Rizvi and Lingard 2010). This is still under construction, but has been brought into being through the technologies of distance, the numbers associated with comparative international student/school performance on the OECD’s PISA, in the OECD’s Indicators Work as published annually in Education at a Glance and in their Global Education Indicators project in respect of the nations of the Global South. The work of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), which conducts the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study (PIRLS), is also significant here, as is the alignment of statistical categories across the OECD, UNESCO and the EU. This has had an impact in various nations in terms of their statistical collection categories as well, for example in Portugal and Greece in the reworking of their statistical systems for alignment purposes, and works through a ‘magistrature of influence’ (Lawn and Lingard 2002). This global education policy field is being constituted through a global empiricism and international comparative performance (Torrance 2006). As Novoa and Yariv-Mashal (2003) argue, today comparison is central to governance and functions, globally as well as nationally. They speak of how the ‘national eye’ today governs through comparisons and the assistance of the ‘global eye’. Statistics, comparative performance measures, international data—the measurement work of the OECD and IEA—are central to the operations of this global eye and unify the global space through measurement. This global field helps constitute a global education policy habitus, including networks of politicians and policy makers with similar policy dispositions and related epistemic communities (Kallo 2009), and pulls increasingly large numbers of national education systems and powerful policy makers into a global field of comparison. In comparative education terms, what we see are new processes of externalisation and policy borrowing and the reconstitution of reference societies for national education systems. The proselytising of particular policy discourses also frames this policy habitus and helps constitute the global field of education policy. Wiseman (2010) has well encapsulated the effects and character of this new space of policy making: But what widely available international data on education has done is create an intellectual space where educational policymaking is not geographically or politically bounded but is instead bounded by the extent of the legitimated evidence used to support one decision or policy versus another. (Wiseman 2010, p. 18) What Laidi (1998) referred to in respect of post Cold War globalisation as ‘a shapeless planetary space that no expectation could dominate’, is now in education pulled into a unifying space of measurement in a way homologous with the role of statistics in the creation of nations dealt with earlier. In terms of the new and rescaled spatialities of policy making, Strathern (1995, p. 179) well describes the imbrications of the local and the global in the new policy habitus functioning within the global field:

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From this point of view it makes no sense to go along with the literalism, that ‘global’ is bigger than ‘local’. It is simply where one is at. But if one never leaves the local, where is the global? It has to be the infinitely recurring possibility of measurement—not the scales but the capacity to imagine them. (Italics in original) The global education policy field comes out of just this capacity to imagine, out of this emergent policy habitus. This rescaling of political authority also has effects on the internal structure of nations. I would thus argue that the attempted reconstitution of federalism in Australia from the 1980s and most recently through Rudd’s ‘cooperative federalism’ has been in part about reconstituting the nation, through ‘national’ rather than federal policies, in the face of globalisation. This is evidenced as well in strong national moves in respect of schooling, which putatively at least remains the Constitutional responsibility of the States and Territories, facilitated by the high degree of vertical fiscal imbalance within Australian federalism. This move also reflects the economisation of education policy in the context of weakened national sovereignty in relation to the economy: education policy thus functions as surrogate economic policy, as evidenced by the role of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) and the concept of productivity in respect of the Rudd/Gillard national schooling agenda.

New managerialism and privatisation The second shift associated with the governance turn is that of new public management—in effect, the ecumenical application of private sector management practices in the public sector, which affects the structure and modus operandi of the state. Data have become central to new modes of regulation, which accompany the steering at a distance of the competition state. New forms of accountability and an audit culture are central to this steering at a distance, while evidence-based policy has become a global phenomenon, central to policy legitimation and control (Wiseman 2010). The stress now is not so much on inputs to policy domains, but on outputs, measured by performance indicators, data, numbers and targets. As Ball (2008, p. 40) argues, this new public management produces or seeks to produce ‘new values, new relationships and new subjectivities’. Indeed, Power (1997) argues that the audit culture is central here and operates on the basis of mistrust, perhaps reflecting the self-serving individual endemic to neo-liberalism, which affects in turn relationships and professional identities. The new public management thus challenges bureaucracy and professional knowledges and ushers in a culture of performativity. The final shift associated with the governance turn is privatisation of some policy processes, policy delivery and policy, which is central to the competition state and closely aligned with the new public management and polycentric state. Ball (2008, p. 37) suggests that private sector interests are also now part of the policy community.

The national schooling agenda in Australia The changes associated with the governance turn and neo-liberal hegemony outlined in the previous section have played their way out in Australia in particular ways. Campbell et al. (2009) have demonstrated the significant impact of school choice policies in Australian schooling over the past thirty years or so, but particularly during the period of the Howard government (1996–2007). Specifically, they show how government policy has reconstituted the concept of the good parent from ‘one who trusted and supported government education’ to one who is now ‘an informed chooser of schools’ (p. 4).

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Federal government funding of schools during the Howard era also was predicated on the assumption that choice was a more important value to underpin public policy than the necessity of the state ensuring equality. In a sense, what we saw was some upwards redistribution of federal funding towards non-government schools and the creation of a quasi-market. The non-government school sector has been highly supported financially by the federal government to such an extent that Campbell et al. (2009) suggest we should speak of ‘government’ and ‘government assisted schools’, rather than of ‘government’ and ‘non-government’ schools. As they note, drawing on Watson’s (2004) research: ‘In 2004 more than a quarter of state-assisted non-government schools charged more in fees per student than the resources allocated per student in a governmentprovided school’. This funding settlement remains in place and is currently being reviewed by the Gillard government. This is the policy bedrock of quasi markets in schooling, framed by national education policy and driven as well by new forms of accountability linked to the central components of the Rudd/Gillard governments’ national agenda in schooling. It is important to note here how significant Australia’s PISA performance, characterised in terms of ‘high quality, low equity’,3 was in the 2007 election campaign in respect of Labor’s education policy platform. Rudd committed to higher quality and more equitable schooling. Barry McGaw, a former director of education at the OECD, was subsequently appointed by the Rudd Labor government to chair the national body, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), to oversee the government’s ‘education revolution’ and national agenda. Early on in its tenure, the Rudd government was faced with the global financial crisis and responded rapidly and effectively in an almost Keynesian way with the building education revolution, investing about $16 billion in enhancing school infrastructure across the nation. The speed of this intervention inhibited the possibility of such a building revolution being framed by educational considerations. Anyway, the government’s education policy ensemble instantiated an Australian vernacular version of the globalised neo-liberal policy discourses. In this we borrowed from elsewhere and built on Howard policy changes. We did not learn in this global policy transfer (Lingard 2010) from the negatives which have been documented in nations such as England, which have had this policy approach for longer, with very negative educational consequences (Alexander 2009). This Rudd/Gillard national approach includes a national curriculum, currently under construction, new national accountabilities associated with NAPLAN and a number of national partnerships (Literacy and Numeracy, Teacher Quality, Low SES School Communities) between the federal government and the states and territories. The national partnership on low socio-economic status school communities is the centrepiece of the government’s redistributive and social justice in schooling agenda. I would note that accountability associated with this national partnership relies largely on targeting improved NAPLAN scores. To be fair, there is real redistributive funding involved in this National Partnership, but linked to narrow educational targets, framed by narrow accountabilities and salary rewards for school principals for committing to the agenda and achieving improved NAPLAN target scores. Equity here is rearticulated through a neo-liberal lens and policy as numbers. A related and significant national development has been the creation of ACARA’s My School website, which lists a school’s results on NAPLAN against national averages, and also the school’s performance, measured against approximately 60 statistically similar schools across the nation on the ICSEA, developed by ACARA. The website went online on 28 January 2010, against much opposition from the teacher unions and educators around the country, while being very strongly supported by the Murdoch press, which

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has been fulsome in its praise of this policy initiative and of the then Minister for Education and Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, for pushing it through against teacher union opposition. While the Murdoch press has attempted to almost crucify Gillard around the waste of funds in terms of the ‘building revolution’ in education, they have simultaneously sought to beatify her in respect of NAPLAN and the My School website. Union and professional opposition has been based on the validity of the data and its ‘fit for purpose’, likely negative—that is, reductive and defensive—effects on curricula and pedagogy; the likelihood of newspapers developing league tables of performance, and the related potential for the ‘naming and shaming’ of poorly performing schools, which most likely will be situated in poor communities and which would fail to recognise the very strong relationship between socio-economic status and both student and school performance. The Rudd/Gillard national school agenda is an educational policy manifestation of the reconstitution of the nation in the face of globalisation. The statistically similar schools measures and comparative performance on NAPLAN are helping constitute a national system of schooling. This is so, despite a federal political structure and the significance of schooling policy to State identities. This production of a national schooling system can be compared with the ways in which, historically, national statistics helped build the nation and the ways in which a global policy as numbers is creating a global education policy field. This national policy ensemble, while recognising that teacher classroom practices and students’ socio-economic background are the most powerful ‘determinants’ of student learning, is nonetheless underpinned by neo-liberal policy verities. This is evident in the choice discourse and quasi-markets in schooling, the role of NAPLAN and like school measures linked to parental choice discourses, and in the narrow NAPLAN framing of educational accountability as a single score as part of the steering at a distance of the competition state. This policy ensemble demonstrates the role of numbers in assisting a neo-liberal form of national control (cf. Wiseman 2010). During the 2010 federal election, the incumbent Labor government and the opposition both promised more autonomy for school principals, given the pressure on them to improve test scores on NAPLAN, a manifestation of the recognition by both sides of politics that a national approach to schooling is necessary in the context of the globalisation of the economy, with education conceived of now as a central arm of national economic and productivity agendas. It is this economistic reframing, along with the reductive effects of testing regimes and narrow construction of educational accountability, which will have negative effects on schools and their social justice purposes, and which must be the focus of educational research.

Effects of policy as numbers There have been multiple effects of this phenomenon of global and national policy as numbers. These effects work across reframed education policy discourses and also have real effects in the practices of schooling. There is, of course, now a broad and excellent literature that has documented the extensive effects of the neo-liberal policy regime that I have considered throughout this chapter. There has also been so much written and observed about teaching and leading to the test. An example from a research project I was involved in, in the UK and continental Europe, demonstrates these effects very well (Ozga et al. 2011). In a research interview with a senior person at a local education authority, I was told that interviews for appointment as a head teacher in that authority now only involved the candidates’ responses to a set of student performance data about

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a hypothetical school and how the prospective leader would respond strategically in both the short and long term: leading to the test and by numbers (Anderson 2009). Taubman (2009) has documented the effects of policy as numbers in teacher education and in teaching in the USA in his evocatively entitled book, Teaching by Numbers. In my own work I have also outlined and considered the effects of NAPLAN and the My School website on schooling systems, policy, schools, principals and teachers (Lingard 2011). The Masters Report in Queensland (Masters 2009), commissioned by the Premier in response to Queensland’s poor comparative performance on NAPLAN 2008 (and TIMSS 2007), is a good example of a powerful policy effect in Australia, as also evidenced in Queensland’s plans to move Year 7 into the secondary school in 2014, in an attempt to boost NAPLAN performance by aligning age and year levels with those in New South Wales and Victoria. Alexander (2009) has shown the negative impact of such a high stakes testing culture on primary schooling in England, driving out those curriculum areas not tested, and narrowing pedagogies.4 What is counted is what counts; this aphorism raises issues about whether or not the broader and social purposes of schooling ought to be measured as part of a richer and more intelligent form of education accountability (e.g. Ladwig 2010). Hursh (2008) has written about the decline of teaching and learning in the USA as a consequence of high stakes testing, including in New York, as has Lipman (2004). Darling-Hammond (2010) similarly is critical of the testing status quo in the US and interestingly calls for a richer, more intelligent form of educational accountability that is cognisant of the broad purposes of schooling. She also demands that the accountability gaze be reversed so that it works upwards as well as in its now dominant downward form: that is, from the bottom-up, so that schools, their communities, are given a voice and thus are able to demand of politicians, policy makers and systems, ‘opportunity to learn standards’. Stobart (2008) has also written about the long shadow of narrow test-framed accountability and its reductive and negative effects in terms of schools and teachers. Specifically, drawing on ‘Goodhart’s Law’, he writes instructively about the negative effects of simplified, single figure forms of educational accountability and the distorting consequences of measures becoming targets. I would add that once comparative league tables of performance are created, it is almost inevitable that outcome measures become targets and result in game-playing as a response to manage performativity, rather than working more deeply to change practices—with possible effects on both policy and practice. I would also add that this is a potential effect of both global and national league tables at both national and school levels. Stobart details some amusing, yet disturbing, effects of such an approach. One example he proffers is how a hospital in England improved its performance indicator measure on time taken to see patients by having the local bus company move the bus stop some distance from the hospital so that patients arrived at different times, so they could thus be seen within the targeted time. There is a lot of evidence internationally (e.g., Gillborn and Youdell 2000), and some evidence in Australian states, of schools manipulating variables linked to the publication of league tables of school performance and system-set performance targets. For example, in Queensland there is evidence that some secondary schools are excluding particular students from being eligible for a tertiary entrance score in the final semester of secondary schooling, as they attempt to manage the public representation of their performance on newspaper league tables. There is also some evidence concerning a sizeable number of students who do not sit for the core skills test, without legitimate and documented reasons. In 2005, the Queensland government allowed newspapers to publish league

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tables of schools’ tertiary entrance scores, while the state department focused on schools enhancing the percentage of their year 12 cohort achieving tertiary entrance scores (overall position [OPs] in Queensland), with a target of improving the numbers with a 1–15 score on what is a 1–25 scale. Both policy decisions have had the impact of enhancing school game playing in respect of who is entered for a tertiary score, and the provision of alternative curricula. Similar things are happening with NAPLAN. Now, all of this work is very important in critiquing contemporary policy as numbers moves. There is much to be learnt for contemporary Australian school policy. However, what I want to do here is to deal with the effects of both global and national policy as numbers in broader policy ways, demonstrating that this phenomenon has discursive effects that reduce the policy imagination and potentially, as well, the educational research imagination. Let’s think for a moment of how the concept of social justice, a contested concept that has deep roots in multiple political and philosophical traditions of various kinds, has been reduced to high quality and equitable performance on the OECD’s PISA. Think, in contemporary Australia, how social justice and equity are now seen as good performance against statistically similar schools. Such a measure, of course, has the effect of almost putting a ceiling on the possibility of top flight performance for schools serving poorer communities. This almost ‘naturalises’ the strong correlations between students’ social class backgrounds and likelihood of school success, producing what has been called a ‘fatalism towards inequality’ (Power and Frandji 2010). Power and Frandji (2010) have argued that in England, such sophisticated and well intended, in terms of ‘disadvantaged schools’, value-added measures of comparative school performance dislocate schools from their contexts. Further, they deny a necessary politics of redistribution and naturalise comparative educational failure. These effects fail to confront structural inequalities and define them outside of considerations for policy. The national partnership on low SES school communities frames accountability for significant redistributive monies around targeted and improved NAPLAN performance, with no understanding of the distorting effects when measures become targets. Paradoxically, the impact of this form of targeted accountability in schools serving poor communities will be to widen the curriculum gap between such schools and those in better-off areas where NAPLAN targets have less effect. There are serious social justice consequences here. We see social justice rearticulated in terms of numbers: comparative performance against statistically similar schools on NAPLAN. Suspitsyna (2010) illustrates how this form of policy as numbers accountability in the US reflects and reinforces a neo-liberal policy setting and in the US context will fail to achieve the goals of Bush’s No Child Left Behind or Obama’s Race to the Top; nor will it improve opportunities for low income and minority students. As well as rearticulating the definition of social justice and reducing the breadth of the purposes of schooling in actual classroom practices, policy as numbers has also provoked much ‘gap talk’ in education policy and within the education policy community (Gillborn 2008, p. 65).5 Gillborn suggests that gap talk takes the focus away from gross disparities in educational performance and focuses instead on the gap in performance, thus potentially leaving the conditions that have ‘caused’ the gap intact and unaddressed. Gillborn (2008, p. 65) insightfully notes that ‘Talk of “closing” and/or “narrowing” gaps operates as a discursive strategy whereby statistical data are deployed to construct the view that things are improving and the system is moving in the right direction’. This gap talk functions in terms of global policy as numbers, as evidenced in PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS comparative performance and also in relation to correlations between various categories of students (e.g., low SES, Indigenous, LBOTE) and performance on national tests, such as NAPLAN in Australia. Now I am not going to document this gap talk in great detail here, but I note that it is a significant effect of policy as numbers and that it also reduces

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our policy imagination and often hides deep-seated inequalities and their reproduction. I will provide a couple of examples here. First, I will document gap talk in relation to the global field.

Global gap talk: Malaysia If we look, for example, at the most recent Malaysian Ten Year Plan (Malaysian Government 2010) and turn to the fifth chapter on ‘Developing and Retaining a FirstWorld Talent Base’, we see examples par excellence of gap talk within the global field, framed by the globalised education policy discourse of human capital as at ‘the core of innovation and a productive high income economy’.6 It is interesting that the listed reference societies for Malaysia in terms of the comparative talent base are Singapore, South Korea, Finland, the US, Australia, the UK and Hong Kong. A table is headed: ‘Malaysia needs to close the gap to achieve the characteristics of a first-world talent base’. Comment in the text (p. 193) on this table notes that Malaysia is at risk of falling behind. Comment is also made on Malaysia’s declining performance on TIMSS (p. 193), but no mention is made of the possible contribution of the earlier government decision to teach maths and science in English, a decision now rescinded, largely on the basis of declining TIMSS performance—an effect of the global education policy field. There is a featured text panel of Korea’s story of advancement through human capital development. This evidence of Korea as perhaps the ‘new Finland’, particularly in Asia, is a result of its improving quality performance on PISA.7

Indigenous education policy in Australia If we look at Indigenous education policy in Australia, we see that it is replete with ‘gap talk’. In Queensland for example, the Indigenous education policy is actually called Closing the Gap: Education strategy (Department of Education 2009), while the federal strategy, as with the national partnership low SES schools, is supported by strong political commitments and redistributive funding, but is constructed largely in terms of closing the gap on NAPLAN (and other measures) for Indigenous Australians. In Indigenous public policy the availability of statistical databases from the 1970s, after the recognition of Indigenous Australians as citizens, on a range of public policy matters (e.g., health and schooling) has helped constitute Indigenous policy in terms of closing gaps and achieving ‘statistical equality’ (Altman 2009), a technology of state governance. Altman and Fogarty (2010) are very critical of this ‘technical managerialist’ policy response that abjectly fails to acknowledge difference, deep inequalities, the colonial present, and education debts. In current national policy for Indigenous students, we have gap targets linked, amongst other things, to NAPLAN performance. There are various effects of this. At one level this denies different identities and deep historical and structural inequalities—the ‘education debt’ that Ladson-Billings (2006) has so evocatively written about in the US context. In a sense, what we have is a surreptitious form of assimilation, with whiteness the implicit norm. To use the argument of Power and Frandji (2010) alluded to above, we can see here in Fraser’s (1997) terms, a policy of recognition of difference that actually works to deny difference. Klenowski (2009) has also raised issues of the ‘cultural fairness’ of the NAPLAN test itself. Altman (2009, p. 1) notes, broadly in relation to closing the gap strategies in public policy on Indigenous Australians: Over time, I have used economics and official statistics to highlight socioeconomic disadvantage and neglect, while at the same time using anthropology to critique any

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approach that uses mainstream social indicators that only reflect the dominant society’s social norms. Altman (2009, p. 13) further comments on the closing the gap strategy in Indigenous policy with real implications in relation to national schooling policy: ‘I have argued that, at a broad level, the pragmatic politics of equality is over-determining Indigenous affairs public policy in contemporary Australia, while the more complex and subtle politics of difference and diversity is being excessively subordinated’.

LBOTE Earlier in this chapter, when considering the politics of numbers, I noted the ways in which globalisation had made the task of creating useful and meaningful statistical categories much more complex. Appadurai (2006, p. 6) has pointed out how globalisation has ‘unglued’ ‘the idea of stable and transparent categories’. A good example here is the ‘Language Background Other than English’ (LBOTE) category in relation to NAPLAN performance. When aggregated nationally, this category of students does better than non-LBOTE students on numeracy and about the same as non-LBOTE on literacy. Given this outcome, we might hypothesise that the category aggregates vastly different student groups, as the definition of the category is simply the usage of a language other than English at home. Thus, the category probably aggregates recent middle class, well-educated bilingual entrepreneurial migrants with refugee young people, who perhaps are not even literate in their own language and who may have never attended school. In relation to NAPLAN, students doing the tests self-classify as LBOTE by ticking the appropriate box on the test form. In relation to NAPLAN and for policy purposes, the LBOTE category is not very helpful and is perhaps potentially dangerous in terms of the disadvantages experienced in schooling of recently arrived illiterate refugee children. I would also note how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student numbers are a variable included in ACARA’s ICSEA, while those with poor English are not. In the construction of ICSEA Mark 1 the ‘percentage of people who do not speak English well ‘(ENGPOOR)’, an official ABS category, was excluded from the variables included in the regression equation used in the statistically similar schools category. It is interesting that about two million Australians failed to address this box in the 2006 National census. All of this serves to demonstrate how important good data are, how dependent they are on good categories, and that significant critical research about these matters is desperately needed.

Conclusion: some implications for education(al) research I want to move to another register now, as required by the genre of the Radford Lecture, and reflect upon my argument in relation to the field of educational research. Policy as numbers and evidence-based policy both have potentially reductive effects on educational research, to pick up on the commitment of the latter to progressive improvements in educational policy and practice. As Luke and Hogan (2006, p. 170) have noted, in relation to the rise of ‘evidence-based’ policy in contemporary education policy, which is a component of policy as numbers: ‘current debates over what counts as evidence in state policy formation are indeed debates over what counts as educational research and what should count as curriculum and pedagogy’. This move valorises quantitative research over all other forms and appears to reject qualitative work, constituting in the process a false and very unhelpful binary. The research evidence for such policy production also

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almost inevitably takes as a given the taken for granted normative assumptions and policy priorities of governments: that is, it ‘takes’, rather than ‘makes’ research problems. Educational research must do both. It also must critique policy, as well as provide useful knowledge and evidence for policy and practice. Like Lyn Yates (2010, p. 2), ‘I want to preserve a space in education research for research that is about ideas, or is critical, or is concerned with bigger picture perspectives and not cede all the space to research that produces evident short-term applied instrumental answers.’ Thus, in educational research terms, I am rejecting what Luke (2010, p. 178) has referred to as ‘a binary distinction: between qualitative ‘critical work’ which has been portrayed as scientifically ‘soft’, politically correct and ideological by the press, politicians and educational bureaucrats and empirical, quantitative, scientific research, which is presented as unbiased, truthful and the sole grounds for rational policy making’. As he suggests, this is a caricature, a debilitating mythology; both inform our understandings and have implications for policy and practice in education. We need research of policy and practice and research for policy and practice. My argument is that we, meaning all of the inclusive ‘we’ of the educational research community, must defend the broadest definition of the topics of educational research, as well as supporting theoretical, methodological and epistemological diversity. The latter implies the significance of theory and the shortcomings of empty empiricism in both research and policy (Anyon 2009). We must also recognise that ‘we’ can be dangerous as well, functioning in an exclusionary fashion. Relatedly, we need to develop multiple measures of quality within this eclecticism and recognise the necessity for reflexivity and the rejection of epistemological innocence, whatever the methodology. Further, we need to contemplate the significance of globalisation for matters of ‘generalisability’ of quantitative data and not fall into the trap of methodological nationalism. We should recognise as well that what Bernstein (2001) called the ‘totally pedagogised society’ opens up myriad spaces and places for educational research, but also understand that this phenomenon is part of the policy production of the self-responsibilising individual of neo-liberalism. More specifically, part of the educational research agenda needs to acknowledge that data in policy and research are made, fabricated—not in the sense of falsified, but in the sense of constructed, put together; these matters need to be a focus of our research as well. Their use as a technology of governance, which I have documented in this chapter, suggests one line for further educational research. While policy is the authoritative allocation of values, given the contemporary structure of feeling, and the dominance of the neo-liberal social imaginary and lack of an horizon of expectation, numbers have almost substituted for values. Taking the national agenda in Australian schooling as an example, we need research in a philosophical vein about the purposes of schooling in today’s globalised world and about what knowledges are of most use. Indeed, we need research of multiple kinds to contribute to a new social imaginary well beyond the contemporary dominance of a neo-liberal imaginary. We need research that seeks to make the NAPLAN test a better test. We need research that works to improve ICSEA, but we also need research which deconstructs these very things and shows how their objectivity is made up or constituted. We need research on the effects of the national agenda, in addition to that which seeks to improve it. We need to research the social justice impacts of this agenda. We also need to recognise, as Head (2008) has demonstrated, that we can only ever have evidence-informed policy, as policy is always an admixture of evidence, values and professional knowledges. As Habermas (1996) noted, the translation of ‘facts to norms’ involved in evidence-informed policy is of necessity an interpretive process. Torrance (2006, p. 834) also observes: ‘Producing knowledge on which we can act requires an interpretive framework and a values orientation by which choices can be defended’.

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We also need to recognise how policy as numbers affects our own work as researchers in education; how research accountability and productivity mechanisms such as ERA and journal rankings, statistical categories of research classification, are of a piece with what I have been talking about here—that is, they are technologies of governance—and how we are also being made to be calculating, calculable and calculated (Hardy et al. 2011; Harvey 2010) through a culture of performativity.

Notes 1

2

3 4

5

6 7

This chapter was delivered as the Radford Memorial Lecture at the 2010 Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education. I would like to thank my colleagues Sam Sellar, Ian Hardy, Greg Vass, Stephen Heimans, Sue Creagh, Aspa Baroutsis, Fazal Rizvi and Shaun Rawolle for their various contributions to this chapter, especially Sam with his assistance in editing and also Carolynn Lingard. Anderson (1991) argues that universal literacy, a function of the mass systems of elementary schooling created in the nineteenth century, was central to creating the ‘imagined community’ of the nation. I would argue that mass numeracy was also central to this creation. This was perhaps the best way of encapsulating Australia’s PISA performance in 2000; subsequent performance has been best exemplified as high quality and mid-range equity. I acknowledge that NAPLAN is a not a classic high-stakes test in that its effects are most directly felt by educational bureaucrats, principals and teachers, rather than with direct consequences for those who sit the test, but I would argue that such effects are deflected down the line onto students as well. Some of this section on gap talk draws on the work of my doctoral students, Greg Vass and Sue Creagh, which deals with such talk and its effects in relation to Indigenous students and LBOTE students respectively [see also Chapter 2]. My PhD student Faridah Awang alerted me to this plan and its ‘gap talk’. There is some suggestion in the global education policy community that Korea’s enhanced performance on PISA has been a result of policy directed explicitly at improving test scores—a national teaching to the test approach, perhaps.

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Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. London: Routledge. Robertson, S., Bonal, X., & Dale, R. (2006). GATS and the education service industry: The politics of scale and global reterritorialization. In H. Lauder, P. Brown, J.-A. Dillabough, & A. H. Halsey (Eds.), Education, globalization, and social change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosenau, J. N. (1997). Along the domestic–foreign frontier: Exploring governance in a turbulent world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosenau, J. N. (2005). Globalization and governance: Bleak prospects for sustainability. In A. Pfaller & M. Lerch (Eds.), Challenges for globalization (pp. 201–216). Piscataway: Transaction. Rudd, K. (2009). The global financial crisis. The Monthly. Retrieved February, 20–29, 2009. Said, E. W. (2004). Humanism and democratic criticism. New York: Columbia University Press. Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Selleck, R. (1989). The Manchester Statistical Society and the foundation of social science research. Australian Educational Researcher, 16(1), 1–15. Sennett, R. (1998). The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism. New York: W. W. Norton. Spufford, F. (2010). Red plenty. London: Faber and Faber. Stobart, G. (2008). Testing times: The uses and abuses of assessment. London: Routledge. Strathern, M. (1995). New accountabilities: Anthropological studies in audit, ethics and the academy. In M. Strathern (Ed.), Audit cultures: Anthropological studies in audit, ethics and accountability. London: Routledge. Suspitsyna, T. (2010). Accountability in American education as a rhetoric and a technology of governmentality. Journal of Education Policy, 25(5), 567–586. Taubman, P. M. (2009). Teaching by numbers. New York: Routledge. The Economist. (2010). The data deluge. Technology section. The Economist, 394(8671), 11. Thrift, N. (2005). Knowing capitalism. London: SAGE. Torrance, H. (2006). Globalising empiricism: What, if anything, can be learned from international comparisons of educational achievement?’ In H. Lauder, P. Brown, J. Dillabough, & A. H. Halsey (Eds.), Education, globalisation and social change (pp. 824–834). Oxford: Oxford University Press. van Zanten, A. (2008). Competition and interaction between research knowledge and state knowledge in policy steering in France: National trends and recent effects of decentralisation and globalization. In J. Ozga, T. Seddon, & T. Popkewitz (Eds.), Education research and policy: Steering the knowledge-based economy (pp. 259–269). London: Routledge. Vertovec, S. (2009). Transnationalism. London: Routledge. Watson, L. (2004). The total operating resources of Australian private schools in 2004. Canberra: University of Canberra. Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2009). The spirit level: Why more equal societies almost always do better. London: Allen Lane. Williams, R. (1961). The long revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Williams, R. (1966). Culture and society. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Williams, R. (1983). Towards 2000. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Wiseman, A. (2010). The uses of evidence for educational policy-making: Global contexts and international trends. In A. Luke, J. Green, & G. Kelly (Eds.), What counts as evidence and equity? Review of research in education. AERA: New York. Yates, L. (2010). Research building versus research auditing: The ERA intervention in Australia. Paper presented at European Council of Education Research Conference, Helsinki, 25–27 August. Yeatman, A. (1994). Postmodern revisionings of the political. New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 2

EDUCATION POLICY AS NUMBERS Data categories and two Australian cases of misrecognition Bob Lingard, Sue Creagh and Greg Vass Originally published in: Journal of Education Policy, 2012, 27(3): 315–333

Introduction Much has been written in policy sociology in education about the move from government to governance (e.g. Ball 2008; Ozga 2009; Ozga et al. 2011). This involves three interrelated elements: the instantiation of new public management to produce a de-regulated yet re-regulated state through steering at a distance, the enhanced involvement of the private sector in public policy through privatisations, public/private partnerships and the like, and a rescaling of governance to include what might be seen as global policy fields. This transition from government to governance has had significant implications for policy-making in education within the nation. The move has seen the strengthening of particular technologies of governing, which in turn have been reframed by the dominance, perhaps even hegemony, despite the global financial crisis, of neo-liberalism (Ball 2008) and the rise of the related ‘audit culture’ within state policy regimes (Power 1997). Ball (2008) writes of new managerialism, markets and performativity as the three central technologies of governance within education within this neo-liberal education policy regime. The argument of this chapter is that data and numbers are central to this new mode of governance, as is the rise of the related demand for ‘evidence-based policy’ (Wiseman 2010). It is these technologies, more specifically policy as numbers, which are the focus of this chapter, exemplified through two Australian cases in education policy, linked to the national schooling reform agenda. The argument also demonstrates how the changed political and economic conditions, which have catalysed these new modes of governance, including flows of people associated with globalisation, also complexify the nation state’s capacity to establish stable and meaningful categories around which data and numbers can be constructed and used. Naming and classifying are central to the policy as numbers move and to policy approaches using evidence to address equity issues in relation to education (Lucas and Beresford 2010), as the two cases will demonstrate. While numbers, data, statistics and national statistical systems have been central technologies of governing (Desrosieres 1998; Hacking 1990; Porter 1995; Rose 1999; see Chapter 1.) since the emergence of the nation state and its bureaucratic administration, these technologies take on greater significance in the neo-liberal policy settings and state restructurings of the present. Further, enhanced computer capacity has facilitated the rise of policy as numbers. The steering at a distance of the restructured state and rescaled processes of policy production within the broader audit culture operate through a new de-regulated regulatory regime that relies very heavily on numbers, data and data flows

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(Ozga 2009; Ozga et al. 2011; Simola et al. 2011) governing as and through numbers. Numbers are central to the steering at a distance of this state regime, often manifest in key performance indicators. Comparative data have also become central to governing and the governance turn, with comparison as a form of governance (Novoa and Yariv-Mashall 2003). There is a global as well as national scale to governing by numbers (Grek et al. 2009a, 2009b), as Novoa and Yariv-Mashall put it, today the ‘global eye’ and the ‘national eye’ work together in making the nation state (and the globe) legible for governing. The chapter proceeds through three steps. The first contextualises the analysis provided in two ways: first, in terms of some recent theorising and empirical work on policy as numbers and secondly in terms of the new or emergent policy framework in Australian schooling being created by the Rudd and Gillard Labor federal governments. Our two specific cases of policy misrecognition (after Fraser 1997) sit within this emergent national policy framing for Australian schooling. It is these two cases which are the third and fourth steps in our analysis. The first case deals with the category of students called Language Backgrounds Other than English (LBOTE) in Australian schooling policy – students with LBOTE. The second deals with the ‘closing the gap’ approach to Indigenous schooling in this policy setting. The cases demonstrate the significant semiotic work involved in creating categories (here LBOTE and Indigenous) that lie at the basis of the policy as numbers approach and how these categories work, perhaps paradoxically, as misrecognitions while ostensibly seeking to give effect to a policy of recognition. The chapter closes by briefly drawing out the implications of these specific manifestations of policy as numbers in Australian schooling and comments as well on the contribution to the field made by the analysis, extending and confirming the recent arguments of Power and Frandji (2010) and Gillborn (2008, 2010).

Contextualising the analysis One: the literatures and research Within the social sciences generally there has been interesting work conducted on the rise of statistics paralleling the rise of the nation state and the significance of ‘statistical reasoning’ (e.g. Desrosieres 1998; Hacking 1990) and of numbers in politics (Porter 1995; Rose 1999). More recent work has focused on the enhanced significance of policy as numbers associated with the governance turn linked with post-Cold War neoliberalism and the restructuring of the state (e.g. Higgins and Larner 2010; Rose 1999) and the ‘calculating of the social’ necessary to the new form of governance, both within and across nations. Appadurai (2006) has also written most insightfully about the politics of numbers in the context of the flows of people (‘ethnoscapes’) across the globe linked to globalisation and how this has ‘unglued’ stable categories as the basis for state policy. Within that policy setting, there is now a burgeoning literature on policy as numbers in education working to constitute an emergent global education policy field or in relation to the emergent European education policy field (Grek et al. 2009a, 2009b; Lingard 2010; Ozga et al. 2011). There is recent literature dealing with the effects of policy as numbers within national schooling policy;1 for example, the work of Gillborn (2008, 2010) on ‘gap talk’ as central to the reworked policies on the schooling of racial minority groups in England that works around policy as numbers, and that of Power and Frandji (2010) that considers a ‘new’ politics of recognition in schooling policy that reconstitutes social justice and equity as value added performance, that is taking account of initial performance and contextual effects and measuring gains, which has the effect of decontextualising schools, displacing a politics of redistribution and basically ‘naturalising’ educational and broader social inequalities. Gillborn (2008, 68) similarly writes of the

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effects of ‘gap talk’ that result from policy as numbers in respect of the schooling of racial minorities in England; he notes how incremental changes in attainment ultimately ‘disguise a situation where pronounced racial inequalities of attainment are effectively locked-in as a permanent feature of the system’. These literatures provide an important backdrop to the argument of this chapter, as does the research and theorising of Ball (2006, 2008) on performativity, which extends and recontextualises to the education policy context the work of Lyotard (1984) on peformativity, which sees its rise set against the incredulity towards meta-narratives in contemporary politics. For Lyotard the passing of meta-narratives sees an emphasis on input–output equations that keep the system functioning and commensurate. Specifically, the analysis of the LBOTE category and of ‘gap talk’ in contemporary Indigenous schooling policy in Australia utilises the work of Gillborn, and Power and Frandji, and less directly other literature on ‘gap talk’ (Hall and Parker 2007; Kirkland 2010; Singham 1998; Snyder and Nieuwenhuysen 2010; Steele 1997; Teale, Paciga, and Hoffman 2007). The cases well illustrate the ‘new politics of recognition’ that Power and Frandji write of and also how ‘gap talk’ following Gillborn functions to deny a necessary politics of redistribution and decolonising approach to Indigenous schooling. The cases also extend their analyses in deconstructing the construction of categories central to policy as numbers and the politics of recognition, while also demonstrating how this semiotic category work also functions in the cases as misrecognitions.

Two: the emergent Australian schooling policy context Australia has a federal political structure in which schooling remains, according to the Constitution, a ‘residual power’ of the States and Territories. However, since the 1970s, as with most social policy domains, the federal government has increased its involvement in schooling. This has been possible largely because of the greater revenue raising capacity of the federal government compared with that of the States and Territories – ‘vertical fiscal imbalance’, but there have also been ideological and changing context factors that have contributed. In the first instance during the Whitlam Labor government period (1972–1975), this enhanced federal involvement was about equity and systematising federal funding of both government and non-government schools on a needs basis. During the period of the Hawke and Keating Labor federal governments (1983–1996) there was a strengthened federal move in schooling for economic reasons, also accompanied by the first steps towards national curriculum frameworks and a series of national policies in schooling. ‘National’ here was most often the signifier that the policy was one worked out through bargaining and negotiation at the Ministerial Council consisting of Federal, State and Territory education Ministers. The Rudd and Gillard Labor governments after 2007 have strengthened further the national involvement in schooling with their so-called ‘Education Revolution’. In response to the global financial crisis the Rudd government in a quasi-Keynesian manner invested about $16 billion in the ‘Building the Education Revolution’ project, whereby a nation-wide school building project was conducted, driven by economic rather educational agendas. Federalism in Australia is lubricated by a number of institutions. At the most macrolevel is the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), which consists of the Prime Minister, State Premiers and Territory Chief Ministers and a representative of Local Government. The Rudd government used COAG in the first instance to set a national agenda in schooling, framed by a broader human capital and productivity argument. Thus the emergent national schooling agenda was set at a high level of meta-policy framing. More specifically within education, the relevant Ministerial Council – the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs

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(MCEECDYA), consisting of the relevant Federal, State and Territory Ministers, has had carriage of the national schooling agenda. It should also be noted here that the move towards a national curriculum and national testing basically has bipartisan political support. This relates to the reframing of education as a central national economic policy in the context of globalisation and the need for global economic competitiveness. It is also interesting that in the 2007 election campaign, then Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd used effectively Australia’s performance on the OECD’s PISA as ‘high quality, low equity’ as a central campaign issue. This is policy as numbers writ global. The policy architecture of Labor’s national schooling agenda has seen the creation of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) to oversee the national schooling agenda, including testing and curriculum. The Australian Institute for Teachers and School Leaders has the functions of developing national professional standards for teachers, moving towards national rather than state-based teacher registration and enhancing the status of the teaching profession. ACARA is in the process of developing a national curriculum, but its slow development and implementation reflect the changed political complexion of State governments: when Rudd won government, all governments in Australia were Labor, while this is no longer the case. In reality, the States and Territories still jealously protect their role in schooling, and provide about 90% of the direct funding for government schools. ACARA is also responsible for NAPLAN, the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy, whose tests in literacy and numeracy are taken by all Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 each year. In January 2008 the government through ACARA developed the website My School, as part of their transparency and accountability framework. This has been controversial and by and large opposed by teachers and their unions. The website publishes the performance of every school in the country on the tests, against national averages and benchmarks. As well, ACARA has developed an Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) that allows the My School website to publish each school’s scores against 60 or so other ‘like schools’ (now ‘similar schools’) across the nation as determined by scores on ICSEA. This works in the ways that Power and Frandji (2010) have referred to as the new politics of recognition. Further, we would argue that this national comparison is an example of governance through comparison and also helps constitute a national school system de facto through a politics of numbers – numbers as a technology of distance (Porter 1995, ix). Social justice policies in Australia have been rearticulated as ‘closing the gap’ on NAPLAN performance for Indigenous students and for improving school performance in low socio-economic status (SES) communities, with a focus in these schools on improving performance against ‘like’ or ‘similar’ schools. We see here the effects that Gillborn, and Power and Frandji have written about. Our cases that follow deal with LBOTE students and Indigenous students set against NAPLAN and the policy usage of the My School website.

Numbers as a technology of governance and the categor y of LBOTE: misrecognition 1 Australia is a country of diverse cultures and while data are currently unable to provide an accurate figure, it has been estimated that 15% of the Australian school population are from LBOTE (Davison and McKay 2002). These students are referred to variously as English as Second Language (ESL) learners, or of Non-English-speaking background and, more recently, in a deliberate effort to move from a deficit label, as belonging to a category termed LBOTE. The LBOTE category merely identifies whether or not the student or their parents speak a language other than English at home and lacks the detail

Education policy as numbers

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of the census language variables provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which measure language spoken at home in combination with proficiency in spoken English (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2007). Whilst these ABS categories have specialist committees associated with them, LBOTE is a category that has been developed within the education community to avoid deficit talk and as such is not an ‘official’ ABS category with its associated research and expert base. It should also be noted that Australian education data are not disaggregated on the basis of ethnicity, except in the case of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, so the LBOTE category also serves as a broad ‘quasi-ethnicity’ category, and unlike data categories in other countries, including the USA and the UK, is not further disaggregated to allow identification of specific ethnic groups. As this case will demonstrate, much of the problem with policy as numbers in respect of LBOTE stems from the source of the category itself. As noted earlier, processes for measurement of student progress and for ensuring accountability at the local level of educational governance have been instigated through national testing (NAPLAN) and public displays of school results (the My School website), in order to enable what the government defines as transparency of school performance, for parents who are both better informed and empowered enough to demand high-level educational services for their children, regardless of education system or location. This is part of the school choice discourse central to neo-liberal educational policy framing. The Australian government has instigated processes whereby data can be gathered, both to disaggregate learner background, and to ensure that the changes which are occurring will remedy what Fraser (1997) would define as the economic injustices of maldistribution and the cultural injustice of misrecognition. Indeed, the purpose of disaggregation of data on student background characteristics is fundamental to the COAG reform agenda, which includes a commitment to promoting social inclusion in schooling, and reducing educational disadvantage (MCEECDYA 2010, ‘Section One: the literatures and research’). However, and as will be shown, disaggregation to the category LBOTE also works as an aggregation of disparate groups of students with very different English language needs. This might be seen as a form of recognition that results in misrecognition. For students for whom English is a second or additional language, it would be assumed that disaggregation of data in relation to language background is a form of recognition that language background (LBOTEness) may have an impact on school and NAPLAN performance. The LBOTE category could be seen as representative of students who have a language learning need, because English is not their first language, and this language learning need could impact on their school progress, or on their NAPLAN test results. Identification of such a need would have the corollary effect of informing language policy around level of need and required provision of service to address such need. At the school level, data are captured on enrolment and, since 2005, the federal government has provided a data manual (MCEECDYA 2010) to ensure standardised definitions for gender, Indigenous status, socioeconomic background, language background and geographic location. Language background has been captured in questions related to country of birth and language spoken in the home by the student, and/or their parents/guardians. However, these data, on their own, do not indicate level of language ability and simply provide a ‘flag’ for schools and systems, requiring additional follow-up processes in order to determine the extent and nature of language learning need. In the NAPLAN test, data are disaggregated for gender, Indigeneity, and LBOTE. A student is defined as LBOTE if they or their parents speak a language other than English at home (ACARA 2009). In the annual NAPLAN report, results of the NAPLAN test

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Education policy as numbers

are presented that enable comparison and ranking of State and Territory education systems, but also present these comparisons in relation to the areas of disaggregation. In the case of the LBOTE category, data and tables are presented which compare the performance of LBOTE with non-LBOTE students in each section of the test (writing, reading, spelling, grammar and punctuation, numeracy). By way of illustrative example, the following figure (Figure 2.1), adapted from the NAPLAN report (2009), compiles the national results for Year 9 LBOTE and non-LBOTE students, in each section of the test. In Year 9, Band 6 represents the national minimum standard and students at Band 5 and below are below the national minimum standard. For the horizontal bar for each row of the figure, the middle line represents the mean scale score. The outer left edge of the bar represents the fifth percentile, and 5% of students performed below this line. The outer right edge represents the 95th percentile and 95% of students performed below this line. The inner lines represent the 20th percentile (left) and 80th percentile (right).

Figure 2.1 Year 9 National NAPLAN results for each component of the test, comparing LBOTE and Non-LBOTE for 2008 and 2009. Year LBOTE status

LBOTE Non-LBOTE

LBOTE Non-LBOTE

LBOTE Non-LBOTE

LBOTE Non-LBOTE

LBOTE Non-LBOTE

Ator above national minimum standard (%)

Achievement scores

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86.7

574.3

90.7

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86.8

572.3

87.2

2008

87.9

570.0

82.1

2009

88.1

568.3

78.1

2008

90.0

570.7

71.9

2009

88.8

572.9

72.6

2008

93.9

580.7

65.3

2009

93.2

582.4

64.2

2008

89.5

582.3

80.4

2009

89.3

590.2

83.9

2008

90.3

576.8

70.4

2009

90.0

573.4

70.3

2008

88.5

573.0

78.9

2009

86.7

568.9

17.8

2008

90.7

570.0

67.9

2009

91.4

574.9

66.6

2008

93.0

594.8

80.9

2009

93.9

604.4

80.6

2008

94.2

581.1

67.3

2009

95.3

585.6

62.4

LBOTE: language background other than English Source: Adapted from ACARA (2009).

Writing

Reading

Spelling

Grammarand punctuation

Numeracy

Education policy as numbers

57

Sixty percent of all students performed between these two lines. Standard deviation for each group, for each year, is given in the final column. In writing, spelling and numeracy, LBOTE mean scale scores are higher than nonLBOTE students, whilst non-LBOTE students outperform LBOTE on the other two categories of the test. However, the tails indicate a broader range of NAPLAN results for LBOTE students, although it is impossible to identify which LBOTE learners are represented in the spread of results. One might hypothesise that this broader spread of LBOTE results is indicative of the pooling together in the category of disparate students with varying language needs and differing educational, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. National LBOTE performance figures only help to substantiate a particular perspective which was hegemonic in the 1980s schooling policy, suggesting that students of migrant background enjoy ‘ethnic success’, particularly because of high-parental aspirations (Windle 2004). This, coupled with the dominance of literacy pedagogy, embodied in national educational policy documents in the 1990s, and which continue to be enacted today, has seen a significant decline in policy recognition of ESL learners. This is amplified in the failure of the NAPLAN category to reveal the scope of language need and language background. It is not clear ‘who’ is in the LBOTE data but potentially this group could include: new arrivals with limited English; Indigenous students whose first languages are not Standard Australian English; students who do not have a language learning need but are competently bilingual; students whose parent/s speak another language at home but the student speaks English; students who are speakers of creoles (e.g. Indigenous, African); and students who are experiencing some kind of language shift (possibly, Indigenous students and students from the Pacific islands). It is equally possible that students in the latter two groups may not be included in LBOTE at all, if their language use is simply considered to be ‘poor English’, in need of literacy support. In order to be captured in the LBOTE category, a section of the cover page of the NAPLAN test must be completed by teachers, indicating that the student is LBOTE. This therefore requires that teachers administering the test have this data themselves. If this data is unavailable to them, either from school records or from the students themselves, then it is possible that students will not be captured in the category. Further, in terms of socio-economic experiences, it also might be the case that LBOTE aggregates the children of middle-class, highly educated, entrepreneurial migrants who are competently bilingual and recently arrived refugee children who are poor and perhaps have never attended school. In relation to the dysfunctions of the LBOTE category, in June 2010 the Australian Council of TESOL Associations (ACTA) made a joint submission – with the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA) and Australian Linguistic Society (ALS) – to the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committee Inquiry into the administration and reporting of NAPLAN testing (28 June 2010). In this document they state: The LBOTE group includes unspecified numbers of students who are fluent or virtually monolingual in English, although other languages are spoken in the home. Indigenous students with complex language backgrounds may or may not be included under this heading, depending on the level of language awareness of systems, schools, teachers and community members in identifying these backgrounds. The ACTA submission suggests that in fact, the category of LBOTE should be defined as ‘those students who are in the process of learning (Standard Australian) English’ (ACTA et al. 2010).

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Education policy as numbers

The My School website presents individual school NAPLAN performance, in comparison with approximately 60 other statistically like or similar schools, to ensure similarity and thus comparability of student populations in ‘like/similar schools’, based on educational advantage. In the first iteration of a scale which would allow this like school comparison in an educational context, a number of variables were selected from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and correlation with school performance identified most appropriate variables for inclusion in ICSEA. In recognition of the impact of language on performance, one of the variables initially included in the Index construction was the ‘percentage of people who do not speak English well (ENGPOOR)’. However, this variable was found to be statistically insignificant and was omitted from further analyses. In the 2006 census, the ABS census category itself shows that of a total Australian population of approximately 20 million people, a little more than one million people did not even provide a response to this question, and a further 560,000 indicated that they did not speak English well or at all, thus questioning the very veracity of the category ENGPOOR. In response to considerable pressure, ICSEA was revised for the 2011 release of a new version of My School and 2010 NAPLAN data. The new formula for ICSEA is now based on direct student data (where available from enrolment data), in lieu of ABS census data. In addition, there is recognition of impact of remoteness, Indigeneity (also recognised in the previous ICSEA version), but with the re-inclusion of a variable labelled LBOTE disadvantaged. Each of these three variables carries negative weights in the ICSEA formula. In 2008, COAG decided upon a new model for federal financial relationships, which resulted in State and Territory education funds previously linked to approximately 90 specific payments, being collapsed into five new national Specific Purpose Payments (COAG 2010). This development was linked to the creation of so-called ‘cooperative federalism’, pursued by the Rudd government as a way of working pragmatically with the complexities of Australian federalism in schooling. The five broad specific purpose payments across all service delivery areas include: health, education (national schools), national skills and workforce development, national disability services and national affordable housing (COAG 2010). In addition, the federal government provides additional funds in the form of National Partnership Payments, targeting identified reform (COAG 2010). In relation to education these National Partnership Payments are aimed at teacher quality, literacy and numeracy, and schools in low socio-economic communities. For education, these implementation arrangements between the Commonwealth and the States are contained within a National Education Agreement, in which each State provides an implementation plan, outlining how they will address the Commonwealth’s reform priorities and, further, they are required to demonstrate progress towards achieving national outcomes as expressed in COAG goals (COAG 2008). Within the COAG goals there are no performance indicators which explicitly relate to students for whom English is a second or additional language. With no COAG goals which explicitly target ESL learners, and no provision of targeted funding for ESL programmes (federally targeted New Arrivals ESL funding for the government school sector disappeared in the new financial arrangements), the responsibility for providing an ESL service rests with the States and Territories. In the current national agreements, ESL and language learning need are not prioritised. However, there is a requirement to improve NAPLAN performance data (Smarter Schools National Partnership 2010). NAPLAN data show that the LBOTE category students are doing well comparatively. The critiques of NAPLAN, and indeed of all high-stakes testing, are concerned with the impact of the test on classroom pedagogy, which is undermined by extensive time

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being dedicated to test preparation, and on a narrow test-focused curriculum. In the case of students for whom English is a second language, teachers need specific pedagogical knowledge and skills in order to provide differentiated learning experiences, which can significantly and positively impact on the capacity of this group of students to access classroom learning, while developing their English as a second or additional language (ESL/EAL). In fact, for students who are developing English language skills the validity of any test results is highly questionable as the tests are really only language tests (Koretz 2008; Stobart 2008). Given therefore the unhelpful data presented on the LBOTE category and its failure to truly represent the range of learner needs in the group, the trickle down effect on funding allocation, teacher professional development and classroom pedagogy could work against the ongoing provision of essential ESL/EAL programmes. In fact our argument is that no defensible conclusions can possibly be drawn from the current LBOTE data on NAPLAN performance. Until data collection relates to language learning need, the desire to recognise students with language learning needs will remain misrecognition. Whilst misrecognition remains, appropriate distribution of resources will be impossible. So what we have here is a case of policy recognition with the LBOTE category, but which really amounts to a misrecognition because of the aggregated, ‘catch all’ character of the LBOTE category. Potentially, this will lead to a lack of redistributive funding to ensure inclusion and equality of educational opportunity, especially for recently arrived refugees and asylum seekers, many of whom may have never attended school. Here we see a potentially negative impact of policy as numbers in policy relating to the varied language needs of the student population. This specific case of policy recognition actually works to misrecognise differences; the category of LBOTE aggregates across difference. We would also note that even if a category were developed to better represent the language needs of students, there would still be educational issues resulting from the effects of high-stakes testing such as NAPLAN.

The politics and numbers behind ‘closing the gap’: misrecognition 2 In this section, we shift attention towards consideration of recent education policy responses to the enduring achievement disparities of Indigenous students when compared with non-Indigenous students. Renewed interest in this disparity coincides with the introduction of NAPLAN, which has served to yet again clearly emphasise the numerical differences in achievement between these two groups. Luke (2009, p. 2) suggests that the current political climate represents an ‘unprecedented moment of . . . bipartisan support for a strong focus on reform and renewal in the education of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders’. Certainly, discursively, the Rudd Government’s apology to Indigenous Australians was a powerful symbolic moment in Australian political history. In early 2009 the federal government unveiled a national ‘closing the gap’ policy approach to Indigenous ‘disadvantage’ (sic), with six ‘ambitious targets’ that focus on health, education and employment (Moran 2009, p. 3). Later in the year the National Indigenous Reform Agreement (NIRA) was launched, which in association with a series of National Partnership Agreements, committed ‘unprecedented’ finances towards redressing Indigenous ‘disadvantage’ (Altman and Fogarty 2010, p. 111). In the same year, Education Queensland, the State Department of Education in Queensland, released Closing the Gap: education strategy, which focused on specific targets within this national agenda. In many respects, the initiatives represent a pledge which appears to be trying to align a politics of recognition alongside, and supported by, a politics of redistribution. However, a closer reading of the policy linke d with NAPLAN suggests that the testing

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regime may operate in ways that serve to undermine much of the aspiration implied by the ‘closing the gap’ strategies. The remainder of this case study is organised into three sections. First, the discussion will contextualise concerns with ‘Indigenous education’ in Australia and its links with ‘gap talk’ (Gillborn 2008). Then, we will draw on Power and Frandji’s (2010) critique of the ‘three perils’ underpinning the ‘new’ politics of recognition, namely, the separation of education from a broader context, the displacement of the politics of redistribution, and the naturalisation of educational failure. All three of these concerns have resonance within the Australian context with regards to the education of Indigenous students. Lastly, it will be argued that the ‘new’ politics of recognition evident in the government response to the education ‘gap’ represents a continuance of assimilationist thinking (in a surreptitious form) designed to protect ‘white’ privilege.2 The push to ‘close the gap’ is associated with the broader Educational Revolution campaign trumpeted by the Rudd government, what it refers to as an ‘unprecedented investment in schooling’ (Australian Government 2010). The gusto surrounding the marketing of the policy warrants a degree of scepticism, however, as the aspiration to ‘close the gap’ is not unprecedented. Statistical comparisons between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples on a variety of socio-economic indicators have become increasingly commonplace since the early 1970s, with targets pursuing ‘statistical equality’ becoming a feature of government policy since the 1980s (Altman 2009). Good statistical data on Australia’s Indigenous population have only been available since they were fully recognised as citizens following a 1967 Referendum. Herein of course lies a paradox: people want to be counted so that they count, but many difficulties of counting arise, especially in relation to the creation of the category as the unit of counting – here ‘Indigenous’. Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that statistical data that clearly illustrated disparities in areas such as health, incarceration, poverty and education were powerful in their capacity to help shed light on the debilitating effects that years of the politics of maldistribution and the politics of misrecognition had contributed to creating. It was in 1985 that the ‘National Aboriginal Education Committee’3 presented the first national policy statement on education for Indigenous peoples, a document which continues to influence Indigenous education policies (Beresford 2003). From this statement emerged the 1989 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy.4 In many respects, the 1980’s policy through to the current ‘closing the gap’ approach can be viewed as subscribing to a politics of recognition that Fraser (2000, 109–10) describes as fitting the ‘identity model’: It proposes that members of misrecognised groups reject such images in favour of new self-representations of their own making, jettisoning internalised, negative identities and joining collectively to produce a self-affirming culture of their own – which, publicly asserted, will gain the respect and esteem of society at large. This somewhat naive tactic has a further negative corollary, Fraser goes on to highlight, as it contributes to displacing the politics of redistribution. That there has not been a significant improvement in the education outcomes of Indigenous students (when compared with non-Indigenous students) over the last 40 years supports the suggestion that the ‘identity model’ is an ineffectual approach for a politics of recognition, and this, in part, has enabled a continuance of a politics of maldistribution.5 Recognition of this limited improvement provided impetus for the federal government move towards the current ‘closing the gap’ strategy. However, the explicit connection between NAPLAN testing and the ‘closing the gap’ strategy has the potential to undermine this process, and hence enables the shift to be viewed as an example of Power

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and Frandji’s (2010) ‘new’ politics of recognition. One of the key targets of the federal government is to halve the ‘gap’ in reading and writing on the NAPLAN tests within a decade (Australian Government 2010), and while being an admirable objective, there is not a strong track record of improvement to suggest that this is a realistic target (Altman 2009). Of further concern is the potential harm regarding the narrowing of broader holistic learning philosophies that can surface when linking high-stakes testing (i.e. NAPLAN) with achievement outcomes, potentially giving rise to a broadening of the gap regarding the width and quality of the curriculum being implemented. Critical of this type of approach and offering a cautionary example, Giroux and Schmidt (2004) condemn the negative pedagogical and curriculum effects associated with ‘closing the gap’ in achievement in the USA. An additional and perplexing corollary when focusing on reducing the achievement ‘gap’ is that attention is deflected away from scrutinising the issues that may be underpinning the educational disparities in the first place (for more critique of ‘achievement gap’ discourse see Hall and Parker 2007; Kirkland 2010; Ladson-Billings 2006; Singham 1998; Snyder and Nieuwenhuysen 2010; Steele 1997; Teale, Paciga, and Hoffman 2007). In an approach that suggests that the deflecting effects of ‘achievement gap’ discourses are not entirely accidental, Gillborn (2008, p. 65) describes this process as ‘gap talk’, and argues that this discursive strategy also enables the actual size and scope of the disparities to be overlooked – the focus is simply on improvement. In agreement with this, Altman (2009) argues that, for Indigenous Australians, emphasis on ‘gap talk’ becomes ‘rhetorical and hollow’ when not adequately supported by careful consideration of the socioeconomic circumstances behind the creation and maintenance of the educational disparities, or if the targets fail to heed Indigenous aspirations and cultural rights. In response to this misplaced emphasis, following on from Ladson-Billings (2006) and then Bishop (2010), we would agree in the call for ‘gap talk’ to be supplanted by acknowledging the ‘education debt’ owed to Indigenous peoples. The strategic deployment of ‘gap talk’ to draw attention away from the ‘education debt’ is closely related to the first ‘peril’ of the ‘new’ politics of recognition. Power and Frandji (2010, p. 391) caution that this ‘peril’ arises from decontextualising schooling from the broader socio-economic, political and cultural settings within which it is located. In respect of Indigenous schooling, this also includes decontextualising from a history of colonisation and its continuing effects in what has been referred to as ‘the colonial present’ (Gregory 2004). From this perspective, the reliance on a problematic or universalising category like ‘Indigenous student’ (representing questionable analytical value), coupled with the pursuit of ‘closing the gap’ (in terms of educational performance), enables a narrow focus on educational ‘success’ at the expense of broader social and education policies. Hence, this ‘new’ politics of recognition fails to recognise the distinct and contextually diverse challenges faced by many Indigenous students within educational settings (Altman and Fogarty 2010, p. 122). The follow-on logic leads to the second ‘peril’, the (continuing) displacement of a politics of redistribution. While ‘closing the gap’ nominally acknowledges the ongoing inter-generational effects of dispossession, the ‘stolen generation’, political marginalisation and economic exclusion (for example), it appears unlikely that this recognition will supplant the emphasis placed on the actual NAPLAN results. In other words, in emphasising the achievement ‘gap’, the education system is able to measure and celebrate relative ‘success’, while continuing to overlook the ongoing effects of relative poverty and ongoing (post-)colonial violence. From this perspective, NAPLAN can be viewed as a magnet that will draw resources towards it and away from the other socioeconomic concerns that impact on Indigenous engagement in education, supporting the claim that this policy is likely to sustain the maldistribution of resources.

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Power and Frandji’s final ‘peril’ is a further inevitable extension of this process, the ‘naturalisation’ of education failure. Emphasising relative ‘success’ is accompanied by an acceptance that genuine equality may be unachievable. As Altman (2009) points out, the objective of ‘closing the gap’ by half may actually take decades, while simultaneously accepting that a large disparity will still be present once this goal is achieved. This supports Power and Frandji’s (2010, p. 393) assertion that this ‘new’ politics of recognition is set up to ‘accept rather than contest structural inequalities in education systems’. From this reading, the alignment of ‘closing the gap’ with the NAPLAN assessment regime can be viewed as contradictory and counterproductive, and furthermore raises questions regarding the ideas, beliefs and motivations underpinning the education policy itself. In respect of Indigenous students in Australia, gap talk also serves to ignore past and present practices of (post) colonisation. Of interest here is the apparent continuance of deficit thinking, resulting in a ‘studentas-problem’ framing of education policy focused on ‘Indigenous education’. Identifying the challenges faced by educators and policy makers, Beresford (2003, 26) argues that negative race-based assumptions continue to foreground responses, such as the enduring belief that, ‘as a result of incompetent child rearing, children are seen as coming to school without the basic skills for success’. In Queensland, Closing the Gap (2009) alludes to this perspective, with two (of the three) targets focused on attendance and Year 12 retention;6 the policy somewhat simplistically renders the ‘gap’ a technical issue that can be remedied by care-givers being supported in overcoming the barriers that have curtailed higher levels of participation to date. In practical terms, placing emphasis on measurable and incremental improvements in attendance and retention displaces discussion of the circumstances underpinning why education itself is viewed as a context to be avoided in the first place by many Indigenous students. A closer look at the deployment of NAPLAN data and My School is further illustrative of why this may indeed be the case. This website is designed to equip parents with relevant knowledge to make informed decisions when comparing prospective schools. The ICSEA rating is ‘a measure that enables a meaningful and fair’ way of comparing similar schools. The reductive assumptions underpinning the belief in equating school effectiveness with a number is worrying in itself, an issue beyond the scope of this discussion. Important here are the 10 variables included in the construction of the first iteration of the Index that constitutes the basis of the comparisons, with the heaviest weighted ‘disadvantaging’ variable being the number of Indigenous people living in the community where the school is located (note that LBOTE disadvantaged is also negatively weighted to a lesser extent, but for Indigenous students who are also LBOTE disadvantaged, there is a greater negative measure for that particular school’s ICSEA ‘score’). A correlation is therefore established, linking high numbers of Indigenous students with a lowering of school status. That policy-makers maintain and propagate a belief that Indigenous students (and communities) are a ‘problem’ that negatively impacts on the educational outcomes points to a far greater concern regarding the politics of recognition in the contemporary Australian education policy setting. In taking up Fraser’s argument, Power and Frandji (2010, p. 394) demand a more sophisticated understanding of the link between enduring cultural injustices of misrecognition and the sustained economic injustices of maldistribution. Fraser (2000, p. 119) does however take up this discussion herself, arguing that the ‘social status model’ enables a view of social justice as encompassing recognition with distribution. She posits that: . . . only by considering both dimensions together can one determine what is impeding participatory parity in any particular instance; only by teasing out the

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complex imbrications of status with economic class can one determine how best to redress the injustice. The shift of focus to the issue of status is significant and allows attention to turn towards considering the effects of ‘race’ within education. In taking up a Critical Race Theory (CRT) reading of this, ‘participatory parity’ is impeded by the ‘possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty’, as described by Moreton-Robinson (2004), a strategy that is designed to protect the privilege and status of ‘whiteness’ by controlling the pedagogy, curriculum and assessment encountered.7 Illustrating this point, Klenowski (2009) is critical of the validity and cultural ‘fairness’ of testing such as NAPLAN, drawing on Bourdieu to argue that in its current form, this type of ‘high-stakes’ assessment serves to reproduce a stratified and inequitable society with maldistribution of multiple capitals. While linking ‘closing the gap’ with NAPLAN is defended on the grounds of ensuring accountability, this discussion has explored how the discourse operates as a technology of governance, designed and deployed to displace domestic and international critiques of government (Altman and Fogarty 2010, p. 125). As such, the initiatives reveal the deployment of ‘interest convergence’, as they represent concessions which safeguard the long-term interests of white power by offering (or at least allowing) incremental gains for non-white groups (Gillborn 2008; Taylor 2009). The concerns discussed here raise questions regarding the underlying intent of NAPLAN style testing and ‘closing the gap’ policy. Gillborn (2008, p. 86) insists that race-based inequities persist in education because of an absence of any serious commitment to its eradication; instead, ‘policymakers have paid most attention to social control, assimilation and pandering to the feelings and fears of White people’. Also critical and questioning of underlying motivations, Kirkland (2010) emphasises that the focus on the achievement ‘gap’ operates as a mechanism aimed at normalising ‘whiteness’, whilst concurrently shifting attention away from historical and ongoing effects of racial oppression. Worryingly, the coupling of ‘closing the gap’ with NAPLAN establishes the achievements of (mostly) ‘white’ students as the benchmark, with the flip side being that failure to reach these standards enables ‘blame’ to be directed towards Indigenous students. A result that Leonardo (2007, p. 275) argues was already emerging in the USA in response to the (failed) George W. Bush No Child Left Behind policy, an initiative he suggests should be read as a ‘racial narrative’ that has turned whiteness into policy. As a means of identifying and rewarding student achievement, the position taken up here supports the assertion that NAPLAN testing in its current form sets out to reward those capable of demonstrating suitable quantities of ‘white’ cultural capital. This is a concern identified by Altman and Fogarty (2010, p. 113), who suggest that the logic underpinning NIRA (and by extension ‘closing the gap’) has clear links with assimilationist tendencies; the ‘similarities between 1961 and 2009 indicate adherence to a highly problematic form of evolutionary thinking linked to the modernisation paradigm’. These fears appear well founded, as it is worth pausing to consider whether testing such as NAPLAN would maintain the influence that it seemingly does if it did not separate academic ‘success’ from ‘failure’. As with case one of misrecognition in relation to LBOTE students (p. 000), the ‘closing the gap’ linkages with NAPLAN high-stakes testing constitutes a ‘new’ recognition politics, which actually serves to misrecognise Indigenous students, and in its universalising misrecognition, works to deny a politics of redistribution both within education and broader social policy. In its comparative work with the non-Indigenous population, it also essentialises the White Other, denying inter alia socio-economic differences within that population (Luke et al. 1993).

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Concluding comment We should make clear in our concluding remarks that we are not opposed to the use of data and numbers in politics and policy processes. Nor are we opposed to quantitative approaches to research. Rather, we have been concerned to document, in the contemporary Australian schooling policy context, the ways in which policy as numbers works as a central technology of governance within a restructured state – central to steering at distance and contemporary forms of accountability, set against contemporary politics as managing the ordinary everyday. The national schooling agenda in Australia works at one level through policy as numbers. Indeed, we have suggested ‘like school measures on NAPLAN performance, as published on the My School website, help to constitute a national system of schooling as a manifestation of quantification as technology of distance. The ‘like school’, now ‘similar school’ comparison consists of 60 like schools across the nation, most unknown to each of the 60 schools. Our two cases of policy misrecognition, one about the LBOTE category, the other about ‘closing the gap’ in Indigenous education, confirm and extend the arguments of Power and Frandji (2010) on a new politics of recognition and of Gillborn (2008, 2010) on the effects of gap talk. The LBOTE case demonstrated an attempt at recognition, but one that fails to create a category useful for policy makers and teachers in relation to the language needs of Australian students. The LBOTE category, while deriving from wellintentioned moves in educational policy discourses, actually misrecognises the category of students with real and pressing language needs. This misrecognition in the changed policy and funding context we have outlined, as part of the attempt to rework federalism in Australian schooling policy, will also result, we fear, in neglect of a necessary policy of redistribution with effects into classrooms. Our Indigenous case of policy misrecognition confirms Gillborn’s analysis of gap talk and its effects; a focus on closing the gap, as with Power and Frandji’s new politics of recognition, elides structural inequalities and their causes. In respect of this case, there is a misrecognition that essentialises the category of Indigenous students and that denies Indigenous knowledges, epistemologies and cultural rights. There are also implications of both forms of misrecognition for a politics of redistribution for Indigenous students in Australian schooling. Gillborn demonstrates how gap talk denies structural inequities; our case demonstrates how gap talk in Indigenous education also denies a history of colonisation and the contemporary cultural rights of Indigenous Australians. Both cases also show that policy as numbers depends upon category-making and category-making involves semiotic work, work that is often neglected by policy-makers and policy sociologists, given the ‘black-boxing’ that occurs with the use of numbers in social policy (Rose 1999). Rose sees this as hiding the technical work that goes into the creation of numbers for policy, but there is also important semiotic production that goes into the creation of categories that are central to both policy as numbers and evidencebased policy (Lucas and Beresford 2010). In drawing on Durkheim’s description of sociological method as treating social facts as things, Desrosieres (1998), in writing about the politics of large numbers also talks of how the categories in data are simultaneously conventions, but also really exist. We would suggest that policy sociology in education needs to deconstruct category-making in the situation of policy as numbers and evidencebased policy and thus challenge a ‘technisation’ of politics. The contribution of the chapter then to policy sociology is twofold: first in showing how ostensive politics of recognition can work as misrecognition with the potential to deny redistribution and secondly that we need to be aware of the socially constructed nature of categories that underpin contemporary policy as numbers and evidence-based policy so that we can understand their multiple effects and work to ameliorate their negative educational impact.

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Notes 1

2

3 4

5

6 7

Earlier feminist research in Australia on girls’ education policy also dealt with similar issues regarding how to measure the disadvantages of girls compared with boys, how to evaluate success of policy interventions and the ways in which distributive equity defined as ‘equal outcomes’ ignored the significant contribution that the content and processes of schooling made to gender inequality (see e.g. Kenway 1991; Yates 1993). This discussion takes up a Critical Race Theory view of ‘whiteness’ as not being linked with identity per se; rather it is a way of talking about a political and legal framework grounded in the ideologies of Western ‘supremacy’ and the impact of colonialist processes (Taylor 2009, p. 4). This committee was created in the 1970s and consisted of Indigenous peoples only. This policy continues to be the over-arching national policy on ‘Indigenous education’. See Luke et al. (1993) for a discourse analysis of this policy showing the ways the category functions and also denies intragroup differences amongst the White Other. The Secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Moran (2009, pp. 4–5), raised concerns about 40 years of federal funding being mismanaged by State governments in delivering cohesive and efficient services to Indigenous peoples and communities. The third target is to halve the gap in Year 3 literacy and numeracy. In her article, Moreton-Robinson reveals the deployment of race ‘neutral’, colour-blind and meritocracy strategies within a High Court ruling. The case served to protect the privilege and power of ‘white’ investment in ‘property’. In referring to this here, the pedagogy, curriculum and assessment can be viewed as ‘property’, with NAPLAN and the debates associated with it serving to reify a socially and economically stratified structure.

References ACARA (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority) 2009. National assessment program: Literacy and numeracy achievement in reading, writing, language conventions and numeracy. http://www.naplan.edu.au/verve/_resources/NAPLAN_2009_National_Report. pdf [available online in 2013 at http://bit.ly/112ldfJ] ACARA (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority). 2011. Guide to understanding ICSEA. http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Guide_to_understanding_ ICSEA.pdf [available online in 2013 at http://bit.ly/WOcQ62] ACTA (Australian Council of TESOL Associations), Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA), and Australian Linguistic Society. 2010 Submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Administration and Reporting of NAPLAN Testing. http://www.tesol. org.au/files/files/145_ ACTA_ALAA_ALS_submission_NAPLAN.pdf [accessible in 2013 at http://bit.ly/j2fqmJ] Altman, J. 2009. Beyond closing the gap: Valuing diversity in Indigenous Australia. CAEPR Working Paper, No. 54, 2009, ANU. Altman, J., and B. Fogarty. 2010. Indigenous Australians as ‘No Gaps’ subjects: Education and development in remote Australia. In Closing the gap in education?: Improving outcomes in southern world societies, ed. I. Snyder and J. Niewenhuysen, 109–28. Victoria: Monash University Publishing. Appadurai, A. 2006. Fear of small numbers an essay on the geography of fear. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2007. 0 – Information Paper: Census of Population and Housing: ABS views on content and procedures, 2011. http://www.abs.gov.au/AUS-STATS/[email protected]/ Latestproducts/5C5E4429075FC19FCA25737F001682F6 [available online in 2013 at http://bit.ly/YA7QMD] Australian Government. 2010. Budget 2010-11. http://www.budget.gov.au/2010-11/content/ ministerial_statements/indigenous/html/ms_indigenous-03.htm [available online in 2013 at: http://bit.ly/15aQ6eP] Ball, S. 2006. Education policy and social class. London: Routledge. Ball, S. 2008. The education debate. Bristol: Policy Press. Beresford, Q. 2003. The context of aboriginal education. In Reform and resistance in aboriginal education: The Australian experience, ed. Q. Beresford and G. Partington, 10–68. Perth, WA: University of Western Australia Press.

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Bishop, R. 2010. Closing the gap in education by addressing the education debt in New Zealand. In Closing the gap in education?, ed. I. Snyder and J. Niewenhuysen. Melbourne, Victoria: Monash University. COAG (Council of Australian Governments). 2008. National Education Agreement. http://www. coag.gov.au/intergov_agreements/federal_financial_relations/docs/IGA_ScheduleF_national_ education_agreement.doc-2849k-[doc][available online in 2013 at http://bit.ly/Zgw0yK] COAG (Council of Australian Governments). 2010. Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) on Federal Financial Relations. http://www.coag.gov.au/intergov_agreements/federal_financial_ relations/index.cfm [available online in 2013 at http://bit.ly/Z6hOVR] Davison, C., and P. McKay. 2002. Counting and dis-counting learner group variation. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 12, no. 1: 77–94. Department of Education and Training. 2009. Closing the gap: Education strategy. Brisbane, QLD: Queensland Government. Desrosieres, A. 1998. The politics of large numbers: A history of statistical reasoning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fraser, N. 1997. Justice interruptus. New York, NY: Routledge. Fraser, N. 2000. Rethinking recognition. New Left Review 3: 107–20. Gillborn, D. 2008. Racism and education: Coincidence or conspiracy?. Abingdon, New York, Oxon: Routledge. Gillborn, D. 2010. The colour of numbers: Surveys, statistics and deficit-thinking about race and class. Journal of Education Policy 25, no. 2: 253–76. Giroux, H., and M. Schmidt. 2004. Closing the achievement gap: A metaphor for children left behind. Journal of Educational Change 5: 213–28. Gregory, D. 2004. The colonial present. Oxford: Blackwell. Grek, S., M. Lawn, B. Lingard, J. Ozga, R. Rinne, C. Segerholm, and H. Simlon. 2009a. National policy brokering and the construction of the European education space in England, Sweden, Finland and Scotland. Comparative Education 45, no. 1: 5–21. Grek, S., M. Lawn, B. Lingard, and J. Varjo. 2009b. North by northwest: Quality assurance and evaluation processes in European education. Journal of Education Policy 24, no. 2: 121–33. Hacking, I. 1990. The taming of chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, J., and L. Parker. 2007. Rethinking no child left behind using critical race theory. In Facing accountability in education: Democracy, and equity at risk, ed. C. Sleeter, 132–44. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Higgins, V., and W. Larner, eds. 2010. Calculating the social: Standards and the reconfiguration of governing. London: Palgrave. Kenway, J. 1991. Gender and education policy a call for new directions. Geelong: Deakin University Press. Kirkland, D. 2010 ‘Black Skin, White Masks’: Normalizing whiteness and the trouble with the achievement gap. Teachers College Record, http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 16116 (accessed August 17, 2010). Klenowski, V. 2009. Australian indigenous students: Addressing equity issues in assessment. Teaching Education 20, no. 1: 77–93. Koretz, D. 2008. Measuring up: What educational testing really tells us. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ladson-Billings, G. 2006. From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in US schools. Educational Researcher 35, no. 7: 3–12. Leonardo, Z. 2007. The war on schools: NCLB, nation creation and the educational construction of whiteness. Race, Ethnicity and Education 10, no. 3: 261–78. Lingard, B. 2010. Policy as numbers: Ac/counting for educational research. Annual Radford Memorial Lecture, AARE Conference, University of Melbourne, November. Lucas, S.R., and L. Beresford. 2010. Naming and classifying: Theory, evidence and equity in education. In What counts as evidence and equity. Review of research in education, ed. A. Luke, J. Green, and G. Kelly, 34. New York, NY: AERA, Sage. Luke, A. 2009. Introduction: On indigenous education. Teaching and Learning 20, no. 1: 1–5. Luke, A., M. Nakata, M. Garbutcheon Singh, and R. Smith. 1993. Policy and the politics of representation: Torres Strait islanders and aborigines at the margins. In Schooling reform in hard times, ed. B. Lingard, J. Knight, and P. Porter, 139–52. London: Falmer Press. Lyotard, F. 1984. The postmodern condition. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

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MCEECDYA (Ministerial Council for Education Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs) 2010. 2010 Data Standards Manual. [No longer available online in 2013] Moran, T. 2009 Forging new partnerships to address Indigenous disadvantage in Australia. Delivered at the Reconciliation Australia: Closing the Gap Lecture, at the State Library of Victoria (Melbourne). http//: www.reconcilliation.org.au/home/get-involved/events/ closing-the-gap/mr-terry-moran.ao [available online in 2013 at http://bit.ly/ZS9bk3]. Moreton-Robinson, A. 2004. The possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty: The High Court and the Yorta Yorta decision. Borderlands e-journal, 3(2). http://www.borderlands.net.au/ vol3no2_2004/moreton_possessive.htm Novoa, A., and Y. Yariv-Mashal. 2003. Comparative research in education: A mode of governance or a historical journey? Comparative Education 39, no. 4: 423–38. Ozga, J. 2009. Governing education through data in England: From regulation to self-evaluation. Journal of Education Policy 24, no. 2: 149–62. Ozga, J., and P. Dahler-Larsen, C. Segerheolm, and H. Simola, eds. 2011. Fabricating quality in education: data and governance in Europe. London: Routledge. Porter, T. 1995. Trust in numbers: The pursuit of objectivity in science and public life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Power, M. 1997. The audit society: Rituals of verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Power, S., and D. Frandji. 2010. Education markets, the new politics of recognition and the increasing fatalism towards inequality. Journal of Educational Policy 25, no. 3: 385–96. Rose, N. 1999. Powers of freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Singham, M. 1998. The Canary in the Mine. Phi Delta Kappan 80, no. 1: 9–15. Simola, H., J. Ozga, C. Segerholm, J. Varjo, and V.N. Andersen. 2011. Governing by numbers. In Fabricating quality in education: Data, governance in Europe, ed. J. Ozga, P. Dahler-Larsen, and C. Segerheolm, 96–106. London: Routledge. Smarter Schools National Partnerships. 2010. Queensland Annual Report for 2009. http:// education.qld.gov.au/nationalpartnerships/pdf/ssnp-agrements-report.pdf [available online in 2013 at http://bit.ly/XhWqO6] Snyder, I., and J. Niewenhuysen, eds. 2010. Closing the gap in education?: Improving outcomes in southern world societies. Victoria: Monash University Publishing. Steele, C. 1997. A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance. In The foundations of critical race theory in education, ed. E. Taylor, D. Gillborn, and G. Ladson-Billings, 163–89. New York, NY: Routledge. Stobart, G. 2008. Testing times: The uses and abuses of assessment. Oxon: Routledge. Taylor, E. 2009. The foundations of critical race theory in education: An introduction. In Foundations of critical race theory in education, ed. E. Taylor, D. Gillborn, and G. Ladson-Billings, 1–13. New York, NY: Routledge. Teale, W., K. Paciga, and J. Hoffman. 2007. Beginning reading instruction in urban schools: The curriculum gap ensures a continuing achievement gap. Issues in Urban Literacy 61, no. 4: 344–8. Windle, J. 2004. The ethnic (dis)advantage debate revisited: Turkish background students in Australia. Journal of Intercultural Studies 25, no. 3: 271–86. Wiseman, A. 2010. The uses of evidence for educational policymaking: Global contexts and international trends. In What counts as evidence and equity? Review of research in education, vol. 34, ed. A. Luke, J. Green, and G. Kelly, 1–24. New York, NY: AREA, Sage. Yates, L. 1993. The education of girls policy, research and the question of gender. Melbourne: ACER.

CHAPTER 3

POLICY BORROWING, POLICY LEARNING Testing times in Australian schooling Bob Lingard Originally published in: Critical Studies in Education, 2010, 51(2): 129–147

Introduction The election of the Rudd federal Labor government in late 2007 has seen the strengthening of the national presence in schooling in Australia, despite Australia’s federal political structure and Constitutional arrangement, whereby schooling is a residual power of the States and Territories and, indeed, central to their political identities and one of their major policy responsibilities. This national approach includes new national accountabilities and testing, a national curriculum, currently under construction, and a range of National Partnerships between the federal government and the States and Territories. The latter include the National Partnership on Low Socio-Economic Status Schools, the centrepiece of the government’s redistributive and social justice in schooling agenda. The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) was established to oversee the national curriculum and testing and accountability. Perhaps the most significant recent national development has been the creation of ACARA’s ‘My School’ website, which lists a school’s results on the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) against national averages and also the school’s performance measured against 60 ‘like-schools’ across the nation on a socio-economic scale (divided into quartiles) developed by ACARA. These national engagements have grown out of a new cooperative federalism in respect of schooling, facilitated – at least in the early stages of the Rudd government – by Labor governments in all the States and Territories and have been central to what the government calls its ‘education revolution’. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG), consisting of the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and State and Territory leaders, has been central to the achievement of the national agenda. The My School website has now been developed and gone online (28 January, 2010) against much opposition from the teacher unions and educators around the country, while being very strongly supported by the Murdoch press, which has been fulsome in its praise of this policy initiative and of the Minister for Education, the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, for pushing it through against teacher union opposition.1 Union and professional opposition has focused on the validity of the data, the fitness for purpose of the test, the likely negative effects on curricula and pedagogy, the likelihood of newspapers developing league tables of performance and the related potential for the ‘naming’ and ‘shaming’ of poorly performing schools, which most likely will be situated in poor communities and which would fail to recognise the very strong relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and student performance. NAPLAN is the most obvious manifestation of the strengthened national presence in schooling and new national accountabilities and the central data on the My School website.

Policy borrowing, policy learning 69 It entails yearly full-cohort standardised testing in literacy and numeracy at Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 conducted in all schools and school systems in Australia. All Australian schools, government and non-government, participate in NAPLAN and have their performance recorded on the website. The outcomes of these results gain a great deal of media coverage in terms of cross-State and cross-school comparisons. The My School website has heightened interest of various kinds in school comparisons. The amount of media coverage given to the website following it going online on Thursday 28 January, 2010, has been extraordinary, as have been the number of ‘hits’ on the site itself (the government has suggested 4.5 million hits on day one). This situation has led the government to suggest huge parental demand for such accountability and the Prime Minister has promised, if re-elected, to add additional data on bullying, extracurricular activities and parental satisfaction data to the site. It is interesting how the government has used the media (Murdoch press support) and the web to circumvent teacher union opposition to the publication of NAPLAN data, in effect working a different politics in the information age. The teacher unions also want data on expenditure on schools, both government and non-government, from all sources, to be made available and linked to school performance. Despite claims to the contrary, the literacy and numeracy tests that underpin the website have quickly become high-stakes, with all the potentially negative effects on pedagogies and curricula as evidenced in other national systems (Alexander, 2009; Darling-Hammond, 2010; Hursh, 2008; Rezai-Rashti, 2009; Stobart, 2008). The Queensland government’s response to Queensland’s apparently ‘poor performance’ on NAPLAN in 2008, whereby a review was commissioned and its recommendations quickly implemented, demonstrates that the tests have become high-stakes – a matter returned to in the next section of this chapter. One likely outcome of these high-stakes tests and consequential accountability is an ‘uninformed systemic prescription’ from above and mistrust of teachers and schools, ushering in an ‘uninformed professionalism’ (Schleicher, 2008), which is the norm in poorly performing national school systems as measured on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), for example (Darling-Hammond, 2010). What we will most likely see is test-focused schooling, with a consequent narrowing of curricula and pedagogies, with this having its most egregious effects in low SES schools. The Deputy Prime Minister and federal Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, responds to this specific criticism by arguing that a narrowed focus on literacy and numeracy is what is required. Yet, such narrowing will not produce the sorts of outcomes now deemed necessary for a globalised knowledge economy and will potentially reduce the curriculum of schools in poor communities, while not having such impact in schools serving more advantaged students. Bernstein’s (1971) sociology of the curriculum demonstrated the ways in which what he referred to as the three messages systems of schooling – namely curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation – sit in symbiotic relationships with each other, with change in one affecting the practices of the others. In policy terms, across recent times, the evaluation message system, or more specifically high-stakes, census testing at the national level, has arguably become the major steering mechanism of schooling systems (Rizvi and Lingard, 2010). This process is now underway in Australian schooling, while comparable policies and practices have had a profound impact on curricula and pedagogies in the UK (or more accurately, England) and in the USA, where schooling has been driven by highstakes testing and consequential accountability for a long time (Alexander, 2009; Au, 2009; Darling-Hammond, 2010; Taubman, 2009). As Stobart (2008) notes: A key purpose of assessment, particularly in education, has been to establish and raise standards of learning. This is now a virtually universal belief – it is hard to find

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This has become a globalised educational policy discourse; the evaluation message system (manifest as high-stakes national census testing) has taken the upper hand in many schooling systems around the world with England as the best (or worst?) case in point. However, we also need to recognise that national and provincial uptakes of this discourse always occur in vernacular ways mediated by local histories, politics and cultures. Witness, for example, how educational federalism mediates all schooling policy developments around national curriculum and testing in Australia, even when there is political alignment across the tiers of government. Yet, I would argue that NAPLAN and related developments in Australian schooling are catalysing the emergence of a ‘national system of schooling’. Think about the like-school comparisons of NAPLAN performance. The like-schools scale operates nationally, not within state boundaries. Thus, for some schools most of their 60 like-school comparators are located in other states. This is one significant step towards a national policy field in Australian schooling. Histories of statistics, for example, have demonstrated the close connections between the development of national statistical systems and creation of state administrative structures at the national level; such statistical systems helped unify administration over the space of the nation helping to constitute it in the process (Desrosieres, 1998; Porter, 1995). The historical unification of the imagined and real space that is the nation was partly constituted by the establishment of a statistical space of equivalence across national territories and the associated dispositions and epistemic communities that accepted the nation as a space of equivalence. Porter (1995) argues ‘quantification is a technology of distance’ (p. ix) or in Gulson’s (2007) terms, statistics are a ‘spatial technology’ ensuring the possibility of governance across distances. In my view, NAPLAN and the My School website, through similar mechanisms and other developments, are ushering in a national system of schooling in Australia. National accountability in schooling will have a more profound ‘nationalising’ effect than other earlier federal approaches to schooling in Australia attempted through other mechanisms (utilised by earlier federal Labor governments, for example those of Whitlam, Hawke and Keating), such as targeted funding and weak versions of national curriculum frameworks (Lingard, 2000). At a broader level, this nascent national schooling system is part of the strategic reconstitution of the nation in the face of globalisation and transnationalism. Elsewhere, Shaun Rawolle and I (Lingard & Rawolle, 2009, 2010) have argued that global comparisons of national school performance such as the OECD’s educational indicators and PISA are similarly constructing a commensurate global space of measurement and an as yet still inchoate global education policy field. In Australia, similarly, we are seeing the constitution of a national education policy field. Above, I suggested globalised education policy discourses are always mediated in their generative effects within national systems of schooling. If we think about ‘policy borrowing’ (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004) or ‘externalization’, as Schriewer (1990) calls it, and the more often neglected ‘policy learning’ (Phillips, 2000), the same ought to be true in a normative sense. To be effective, policy borrowing must be accompanied by policy learning, which takes account of research on the effects of the policy that will be borrowed in the source system, learning from that and then applying that knowledge to the borrowing system through careful consideration of national and local histories, cultures and so on. In my view this has not happened with the Rudd government’s new school accountabilities framework, which functions through NAPLAN and the My School website and which draws on schooling policy developments in the USA, particularly

Policy borrowing, policy learning 71 New York, and in England, a contemporary policyscape facilitated by flows of politicians and policy makers. Furthermore, we know that policy is the authoritative allocation of values, which means that ideology (values) is an important component part of any policy – evidence which might result from real policy learning and from a thorough perusal of research is only ever one contributing factor in policy production (Head, 2008). Ideology might override these; it certainly forms a policy pastiche with the other factors (research knowledge and professional knowledge) involved in policy construction. And so it seems that this is the case in contemporary Australia with the resulting testing times for schools and teachers, as will be demonstrated throughout this chapter. And, as will also be shown, while the Rudd government very successfully and quickly intervened in a quasiKeynesian manner to the global financial crisis and while there is an impressive redistributive element in the National Partnership on Low SES Schools, the accountability frames associated with what the government calls their ‘educational revolution’ (NAPLAN and My School) are still located within neo-liberal frameworks and market-choice discourses. A basic assumption is that competition between schools and parental pressures will push up standards and strengthen accountabilities. There is also at times a parental market choice discourse underpinning the policy. These are all neo-liberal policy frames (Ball, 2008). In this chapter I consider the impact of these new accountabilities and policies, set against an evaluation of the negative effects of similar policy regimes in England and the USA. The specific focus is on testing and the website, but these must be seen in the context of the other elements of the national policy ensemble mentioned above. In calling for better policy learning and rejecting blind policy borrowing, I accept the need for new educational accountabilities, but these need to be richer and more intelligent and must be linked to a new social imaginary (Taylor, 2004) of the place of schooling and future society beyond neo-liberalism. Evidence from the highest performing schools systems, such as Finland, suggests the need for ‘informed prescription’ at the systemic level and support for ‘informed professionalism’ at the school level within a culture of trust, innovation and ongoing learning for all in schools (Schleicher, 2008). This evidence suggests the need for intelligent forms of accountability (Darling-Hammond, 2010; Sahlberg, 2007). Further, very successful schooling systems such as that in Finland do not have high-stakes, standardised testing; rather they have highly educated teachers with a high degree of professional autonomy practising intellectually demanding pedagogies for all students (Sahlberg, 2007; Simola, 2005). We know that it is teacher practices of all ‘school variables’ that have the greatest impact on student learning (Hattie, 2009). New, richer forms of educational accountability need to recognise this research evidence so we can move to an evidence-informed policy regime. At the same time, there needs to be recognition that individual schools need to work in different ways in respect of their specific communities as a move towards rich accountabilities. The next section of this chapter deals with the Queensland situation as government responses in Queensland demonstrate how NAPLAN has rapidly become high-stakes with potential effects on other aspects of the schooling system in that state. The subsequent section contextualises the new accountabilities within the restructuring of the state under new public management, with its stress on outcomes rather than inputs. It also locates these developments globally and within a culture of performativity. The cases of England and Finland are then dealt with so as to enhance policy learning and to provide a contextualised assessment of the likely outcomes of Australia’s reforms. The research evidence on the strength of school and contextual variables affecting student performance is then dealt with. Hattie’s (2009) recent research synthesis on school variables provides a most useful account here. The chapter then considers how the Rudd reforms

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are situated within a neo-liberal imaginary, despite the Prime Minister’s (Rudd, 2009) stinging critique of neo-liberalism. The chapter concludes with a call for richer forms of accountability located between informed prescription and informed professionalism and local community involvement. This will entail real policy learning rather than simple policy borrowing and a rejection of high-stakes testing and a competitive schooling market as the way to better and more equitable student outcomes.

Queensland Despite years of conservative government in Queensland (1957–1989), schooling in the State has had many distinctive progressive aspects in respect of assessment and other features. The first was the abolition of all public examinations following the Radford Report of 1969. Since the early-1970s, senior secondary assessment in Queensland has been school-based and teacher-moderated with a core skills test providing the final element of moderation, adding another dimension of equity and accountability to the system. The core skills test assesses students’ capacities in relation to higher order core curriculum goals of senior secondary school curricula.2 In this way, the Core Skills Test is unusual in that its effects on pedagogy have been to stretch teaching, curricula and students, rather than reducing to a lowest common denominator. This system is highly lauded by assessment experts across the globe (e.g. Darling-Hammond, 2010), with less positive evaluations across Australia. The Howard government, for example, was exceedingly critical of this approach, desiring a return to public exams in Queensland, perhaps linked to ambitions regarding a national curriculum. What is somewhat surprising, perhaps, is the lack of a strong professional and academic voice defending this laudable and highly commendable and educationally defensible form of secondary assessment. (Though, as an aside, the Queensland Studies Authority [2009] ought to be congratulated for its excellent summary of the research on the effects of high-stakes testing on schooling and teacher practices.) Furthermore, research (e.g. Lingard et al., 2001) has demonstrated that upper secondary teachers in Queensland are highly assessmentliterate. School-based, teacher-moderated senior assessment has been a profound form of ongoing teacher professional development and learning. What we have seen at this level of schooling has been informed professionalism and practices of informed teacher judgement. Unfortunately, research also demonstrated that this assessment-literacy did not stretch to other parts of the schooling system (Lingard et al., 2001). This Queensland senior secondary approach is atypical in the Australian schooling context, with only the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) operating a similar approach. Across all other levels of schooling, however, the professional judgement of teachers has been central to dominant assessment practices and reporting until quite recently. It is interesting to speculate on the potential impact of a national curriculum on different state approaches to end-of-schooling assessment practices. From the late-1990s Queensland also saw a plethora of progressive changes and reforms in schooling. The Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS) (Lingard et al., 2001) documented pedagogies that made a difference to student learning across various curriculum domains and year levels of schooling, naming these ‘productive pedagogies’. Such pedagogies were intellectually demanding, connected and supportive, and worked with and valued differences. These pedagogies were geared to achieving better academic and social outcomes from schooling for all students. The research found the need for more intellectual demand in pedagogies. Following the QSRLS, Professor Allan Luke, a researcher on the QSRLS, was seconded as Deputy Director-General to the State department and given a remit to rethink schooling, particularly in relation to the message systems of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment for the twenty-first century.

Policy borrowing, policy learning 73 This led to the New Basics trial, which developed a new trial curriculum for schooling from Years 1–9 to be aligned with productive pedagogies and assessment practices called ‘rich tasks’. This was another exciting reform moment in Queensland schooling. The rich tasks were exemplary of their kind, involving assessment experts such as Dr Gabrielle Matters in their construction, who had also been involved long-term in refinements of the senior secondary mode of assessment. The rich tasks were geared to ensuring high intellectual demand in pedagogies and assessment practices, which were thus more closely aligned with high-order curriculum goals. In sum, the New Basics was about aligning curriculum, pedagogy and assessment and recognising that investment in teachers (both pre-service and in-service) and their professional knowledges and skills was central to enhancing learning outcomes for all students across primary and secondary schools and, importantly, for achieving more socially just outcomes across schools serving different socio-economic communities. Informed teacher professional judgements were also seen to be central to effective assessment practices. The New Basics were also about what were deemed to be the central knowledge domains thought necessary to twentyfirst-century futures. The evaluation of the New Basics trial was very positive and affirming, documenting its very positive effects on the intellectual demands and effects of schooling. Again, this was a reform in primary and lower secondary assessment practices that was lauded around the globe. As but one example, I have recently worked in Scotland where a number of the country’s most elite independent schools and some government schools and one local authority are basing their assessment practices on the rich tasks that emerged from the Queensland experiment. The advent of NAPLAN as high-stakes testing and the State government responses, as with the Masters Review, have challenged these progressive reforms (see Masters, 2009). The state government appointed the head of the Australian Council for Educational Research, Professor Geoff Masters to report on and recommend changes in Queensland schooling as a way to enhance Queensland’s comparative performance on NAPLAN. One central outcome of the Masters Report was much more time spent in schools preparing students for the tests. This was the major interim recommendation of the review. The publication of the My School website and its use of NAPLAN data will only see a strengthening of this teaching to the test. While Queensland’s 2009 performance was better than that of 2008, all other states had improved as well, perhaps suggesting much more time spent on preparing students for NAPLAN in all Australian schools. In the longer term, NAPLAN and the national curriculum also represent potential challenges to the Queensland form of school-based, teacher-moderated assessment and its implicit trust of teachers.

The global/Australian policy context of new education/al accountabilities ‘Accountability’ literally means to give an account. In arguing for intelligent and rich accountabilities, I employ this definition. However, ‘accountabilities’ as have been constructed in systems of government over the last two decades have been linked to a range of changes, including the new public management (NPM),3 which has restructured the state and its modus operandi. The emphasis now is much more on outputs and outcomes, rather than inputs and processes. Sometimes the new accountabilities seek to create input/output equations as forms of policy learning and accountability. The emphasis within this NPM is on outcomes – especially outcomes that can be measured. Here we come up against all of the difficulties of measurement associated with schooling, particularly in relation to measuring outcomes in respect of the multifarious purposes of

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schooling. Schools have both long-term and short-term goals and effects. Both the longand short-term goals and effects of schools are much broader than test results and test results on a particular construction of literacy and numeracy. However, given the current fetish for outcome measures, measurement has become very important in policy work and accountabilities in the public sector, with the implicit danger of measuring what is easy to measure, rather than what is significant in terms of public sector organisations such as a schooling systems. This is, of course, a danger and difficulty in all forms of measurement. And those in education know only too well that what is counted is what ultimately counts. There is the additional problem picked up in the old aphorism that ‘you don’t fatten a pig by weighing it!’ A focus on improving test scores can lead simply to enhanced capacity to take tests, rather than enhanced and authentic learning across a broad and defensible range of schooling purposes. The twenty-first century demands high-order outcomes for all students in terms of the individual purposes of schooling and in terms of opportunity, economic and democratic outcomes; it does not require schooling reduced to better test taking on a narrow subset of school curricula. The eminent US educator Linda Darling-Hammond (2010) has recently argued this case very strongly in relation to needed reforms in US schooling. The NPM ‘steers at a distance’ through a range of outcomes measures in a culture of low trust of those street level professionals who deliver the service (Clarke, Gewirtz, & McLaughlin, 2000). In relation to such outcomes indicators, what we have seen is the emergence of what has been called ‘policy as numbers’ and a new empiricism in respect of policy, which help instantiate governing through data (Ozga, 2009; Rizvi and Lingard, 2010). There is also a global aspect to this outcome measure focus and the new policy as numbers. This is especially true in relation to schooling, but one can also think of global league tables of universities as an example. In relation to schooling: think for example of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). There has thus been a globalising of the policy-asnumbers approach. As Novoa and Yariv-Mashal (2003) observe: today the ‘global eye’ and the ‘national eye’ govern together through comparison. Such global measures create a global commensurate space of measurement, while testing such as NAPLAN does the same at national level, helping to constitute a national system of schooling. Global and within-nation comparisons are today a central feature of governance, making the globe and the nation legible for governance. Global measures are also linked to neo-liberal globalisation and the emergence of a post-Westphalian4 political reality, which has witnessed a reworking of national sovereignty and the role of the nation-state in relation to globalisation of the economy and the enhanced policy relevance of a number of international organisations to national policy making and related globalised educational policy discourses. This is more than older forms of policy borrowing, it is also evidence of a trend towards global policy convergence, at least in macro educational policy terms and the ways in which we talk about educational policy. Schooling, and more broadly education, are seen to have as their central purposes the production of the requisite quantity and quality of human capital within a given nation. That human capital is in turn regarded as necessary to ensuring the international competitiveness of the national economy (the boundaries of which, of course, are melting into a global economy). Policy in education thus has been economised. This can be seen in the Australian context with the central education policy role now of COAG, rather than the pre-eminence of the Ministerial Council in education, in pursuing the national schooling agenda and linking it to matters of economic productivity. The (neo-liberal) globalisation of the economy and the reworking of the nation

Policy borrowing, policy learning 75 and its political functioning demand new global comparisons of student performance as a surrogate measure of the quality of the nation’s schooling, training and university systems. They demand new forms of outcome accountability and comparison. While more traditional perceptions of teachers might have seen them as servants of the state, this policy construction perhaps reconstitutes teachers as ‘servants of the global economy’ (Menter, 2009, p. 225). So the global policy convergence in schooling has seen the economisation of schooling policy, the emergence of human capital and productivity rationales as meta-policy in education, and new accountabilities, including high-stakes testing and policy, as numbers, with both global and national features. In this context, Stephen Ball (2008) has suggested there are three new policy (neo-liberal) technologies at work in English schooling.5 These technologies include market mechanisms to do with ‘consumer’ choice (in schooling policy, school choice), new steering-at-a-distance forms of public management and what he calls ‘performativity’. Ball (2006, p. 144), drawing on Lyotard (1984), defines performativity in the following way (here describing it in a generic fashion, as applied to the working of the NPM and its outcomes focus): Performativity is a technology, a culture and a mode of regulation that employs judgements, comparisons and displays as a means of incentive, control, attrition and change – based on rewards and sanctions (both material and symbolic). The performance (of individual subjects or organisations) serves as a measure or productivity or output or displays of ‘quality’. As a consequence, struggles over educational policy now move to matters to do with who controls the field of judgement. Again in Ball’s (2006) words: ‘The issue of who controls the field of judgement is crucial. One key issue of the current educational reform movement may be seen as struggles over the control of the field of judgement and its values’ (p. 144). This is clearly evident in contemporary Australia around debates about national forms of testing and accountability (NAPLAN) and the My School website – almost the profession versus governments concerning high-stakes testing and its educational effects. One can also speculate about where parents sit here. It often appears to be the case that the media are driving the agenda more than the electorate and parent groups, although as mentioned earlier, the Rudd government seems to have worked politics in the information age most adeptly in respect of the My School website. The useful and connotative concept of performativity thus picks up on the distorting effects of the policy-as-numbers approach necessitating school league tables as part of the NPM and parental choice agendas. What we see is a focus on ‘being seen to perform’ – or fabrication – as much as authentic performance and outcomes. This culture of performativity is particularly evident in the English schooling system, where markets, NPM and performativity have seen policy targets for improvements structured around national forms of testing. And as we know (see, e.g., Hursh, 2008; Queensland Studies Authority, 2009; Stobart, 2008), when a measure becomes a target, it seriously distorts the measure. In particular, we need to distinguish between the short-term and long-term effects of high-stakes accountability testing. While this kind of testing and the professional responses to it can provide gains in the short term and a refocusing on the basics of literacy and numeracy, the long-term effects are degrading of schools and teachers’ work, reductive in curricula terms, and are ultimately counterproductive (Stobart, 2008, p. 116). As Stobart (2008) notes, the focus on a narrow indicator always ‘distorts what is going on’ (p. 116). Alexander and colleagues’ (2009) report on English primary schooling demonstrates starkly the distorting effect of the policy regime operating there.

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The most benign effect perhaps is the culture of performativity – being seen to perform and ‘glossifying’ school achievements – while the most venal is outright fabrication and cheating. Koretz and colleagues (2001) have suggested seven kinds of teacher response to schooling systems structured around high-stakes testing: providing more teaching time on tested subjects; covering more material; working more effectively; cheating; reallocating teaching time; aligning teaching with test-based standards; and teaching to the test. Stobart argues persuasively that while the introduction of highstakes tests might have the initially positive effect of focusing on what matters (in the NAPLAN case, literacy and numeracy), in the longer term their effects distort the educative process. He suggests that the focus needs to shift quickly to enhancing the quality of teaching and learning, which demands a culture of trust in relation to teachers and investment in the enhancement of teacher skills and capacities. The erosion of trust in teachers also – obviously enough – affects teachers’ professional lives and sense of professional worth. Ball (2006) has written about how the impact of high-stakes testing and a culture of performativity in English schooling has affected the very souls of teachers, who feel they can no longer practise authentic pedagogies or authentic assessment practices aimed at learning across a wide curriculum, but are framed by the evaluation message system as mere technicians, implementing a centralised and standardised and somewhat reductionist curriculum. As Ball starkly demonstrates, this changes what it means to be a teacher. The culture of performativity and the distorting impact of high-stakes testing are also evident in the USA. There, high-stakes testing (including most recently at the federal level, the bipartisan No Child Left Behind [NCLB] Act of 2001) has also seen a performative distortion of schooling. As Hursh (2008) notes, NCLB has led to a decline in the quality of teaching and learning in US schools and a narrowing of focus in schools serving disadvantaged students, which further disadvantages them in the education and labour markets. There is now an expanding critical US literature about these matters (Au, 2009; Cuban, 2009; Darling-Hammond, 2010; Lipman, 2004; Taubman, 2009).

Policy learning as the basis for policy borrowing: the cases of England and Finland England To this point I have implied the policy regime framing schools and schooling practices in England. To elaborate: in England students sit for Standardised Assessment Tests (SATS), linked to the national curriculum, taken at the end of Key Stage 1 (age 7/Year 2), Key Stage 2 (age 11/Year 6), Key Stage 3 (age 14, Year 9) in English, Maths and Science. The SATS at Key Stage 3 has been abolished because of the failure of the private contractor to deliver analysis of the test results on time. Students sit for the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) at Year 11 (age 16), with the gold standard measured as 30% of students gaining an A–C grade, with schools rewarded and punished according to their achievement or otherwise of the gold standard. At this moment approximately 50% of schools reach this benchmark, but the government wants this figure to rise. ‘A’-levels at the end of schooling also provide another set of league tables of school performance. All of this has seen the rejection of mixed-ability teaching and the use of tight streaming in all schools, as well as a triage effect, with schools focusing on those students close to achieving test targets (Gillborn and Youdell, 2000). What we have seen is the transfer of authority from professional teachers to standardised testing instruments and the creators of such tests – a fraction of the middle class who have benefited in career terms from this policy regime.

Policy borrowing, policy learning 77 A further stage in schooling policy in England is articulated in the policy document, Making good progress: How can we help every child to make good progress at school? (DfES, 2006). This policy is designed to ensure ‘even better ways to measure, assess, report and stimulate progress in schools’ (p. 1). This policy is about retaining the focus on ‘absolute attainment’, with the addition of a new focus on ‘progress’. Making good progress requires target setting for schools in relation to attainment, but also progress at both school levels and individual pupil level. There is also a focus on students whose progress is ‘blocked’. Additionally, there has been the development of sophisticated measures of school effects or ‘value added’ and even more sophisticated accounts, which acknowledge the socioeconomic context of a school’s catchment, developing the concept of ‘contextual value added’. These are better measures, but perhaps their sophistication might limit their policy use in relation to schooling policy alone. For a whole range of reasons – including policy borrowing, the flows of individual policy advisors between the countries and political alignments – the English situation has had real policy salience in Australia. But we should see the English situation as a warning, not as a system from which to learn. The Robin Alexander (2009) directed independent ‘Cambridge Primary Review’, for example, has provided a devastating attack on the effects of the English policy regimes on primary schools there, its goals, ambience, pedagogies and curricula (the Review is published as Children, their world, their education). In policy and political terms, there is now some belated recognition of the negative effects of the dominant policy regime, with also some stepping-back from the absolute emphasis on high-stakes testing. Despite this, there remains an incapacity to move beyond the dominant policy paradigm of seeking to achieve better educational and equity outcomes through targeting linked to league tables of performance on high-stakes testing. The motivation for the Blair and Brown New Labour schooling reforms has been laudable, namely to improve educational outcomes for all students – and, specifically, to improve the outcomes from schooling of the most disadvantaged students so as to enhance their life chances. However, there has been a failure to recognise that it is the quality of teacher classroom practices that count most in terms of school effects upon student learning, and especially in relation to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Recognition of the importance of teacher classroom practices demands informed prescription at the policy centre, working with a culture of trust and respect of teachers and full support for teachers to develop and practise their professional judgements. In other words: the quality of classroom practices is what counts; that is, if one holds student social class background constant the most significant ‘determining’ factor in student performance is teacher practices. We also need to recognise that neo-liberal policy regimes have witnessed a growth and concentration of poverty in the UK with consequent impact upon school performance. The evidence is very clear that high-stakes testing produces ‘defensive pedagogies’ (McNeil, 2000), rather than pedagogies of the kind described in the productive pedagogies research (Lingard et al., 2001), which make a real difference to the quality of schooling outcomes for all students. The effects of the English policy regime are negative: de-professionalisation of teachers with reductive effects on schools, which means it is difficult for them to achieve their policy goals. These negative effects have emerged despite the admirable focus on disadvantage, on early-years provision and so on.

Finland Finland represents a counterpoint to the English experience. Finland is the outstanding achiever on the OECD’s PISA, achieving high quality and high equity outcomes.

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Interestingly, while student scores on SATS and GCSE in England have improved across the period of performativity, England’s results on PISA still lag with mid-range outcomes, which have not changed over time, and with continuing low equity in terms of the tail of performance and its link to socio-economic disadvantage. The contrast between improvements on national tests and exams and stagnation on PISA is telling – indicative probably of the teach-to-the-test reality of English schooling. Sahlberg (2007) has provided a good account of the key features of the Finnish policy regime, which he contrasts with ‘global education reform trends’. England represents an extreme version of these trends. We can think of an Anglo-American model of school reform, and also speak of ‘English exceptionality’ in policy terms. It is interesting in the UK context that Scotland and Wales have sought to distance their school policy regimes from the English approach. The global trend – represented by the Anglo-American model – has been towards standardisation, while Finland retains flexibility and comparatively ‘loose standards’. The global trend has been towards a narrowed focus on literacy and numeracy, while Finnish schooling continues to emphasise broad learning combined with creativity. Sahlberg suggests that the global education reform trend has been towards ‘consequential accountability’ where negative consequences flow from the failure to meet targets, while Finland works with intelligent accountability and trust-based professionalism. Moreover, Finnish teachers have high status; teaching is a highly respected profession and an attractive career option for high-achieving students at the end of secondary schooling. Teachers in Finland are comparatively well paid. They also have Masters degrees, with a good number of principals having doctorates. There is a real valuing of learning for all associated with schooling. Teachers have a considerable degree of professional autonomy. There is no high-stakes testing. While teacher pedagogies appear to be teacher-centred, they are intellectually demanding. There are only government schools: in a sense, all students attend the same school. Finland has a low Gini coefficient of social inequality; that is, it is a relatively egalitarian society with a high degree of equality. This is important: it is those societies with low Gini coefficients of overall inequality that have the most undifferentiated student outcomes in relation to social class background (Green, Preston, & Janmaat, 2006). But Finland is also a small and relatively ethnically homogeneous society. This suggests the need for some caution in borrowing or learning from Finland. Nonetheless, the central lessons to be learnt from Finland are the importance of social equality and the significance of teachers and their professional practices to achieving both high quality and high equity outcomes. A high status profession practising intellectually demanding pedagogies, with a lot of school-based support for learning, are key features of the Finnish system of schooling located in a relatively socio-economically equal society.

What does the research tell us? The Finnish case confirms what we know from educational research about the major factors impacting on student performance at school. We know that the social class or socio-economic background of students is a major ‘determining’ factor in student outcomes from schooling. More broadly, societies with a low Gini-coefficient of inequality are those societies in which there is a less substantial effect of social class of origin on probability of good school results and career success (Green et al., 2006). Such societies also have a small gap between top and bottom performing students. Finland is a good case in point. The lack of economic capital is accompanied most commonly by a lack of that type of cultural capital which is necessary to successfully negotiate the demands of schooling. Those from poor families lacking the requisite cultural capital have to learn many things at school. Learning to do school is one aspect here. Effective schools in such communities engage with and recognise the strengths of these

Policy borrowing, policy learning 79 communities – they engage with their capitals if you like, but also attempt explicitly to give these students access to the cultural codes necessary to successfully negotiate the academic requirements of schooling. In assessment and pedagogical terms, this demands a high degree of explicitness and scaffolding. So, out-of-school factors, economic and cultural, are important when considering schools and school and individual performance on high-stakes tests, as are particular forms of pedagogy. At the same time, we know that of all the school factors it is teachers’ practices – their pedagogies and assessment practices (both formative and summative), which have the most effect on student learning (Hattie, 2009). This is particularly the case, as demonstrated in the seminal Coleman Report of 1966 in the USA, for ensuring equal educational opportunities for disadvantaged students: teachers are very important for the learning of disadvantaged students. Teachers have more effect than the whole school on student learning outcomes and they have the most effect with disadvantaged students. Any emphasis on school leadership as a policy strategy, as is the case with the Rudd government’s National Partnership on Low Socio-economic Status Schools whereby school principals get substantial salary increases set against achieving better school results of various kinds, must ensure a focus on leadership as ‘leading learning’ targeted at enhancing the learning of all in schools. Townsend (2001, p. 119) has summarised the research on school and teacher effects, noting that about 5–10% of the variance in student performance is due to whole school effects, while 35–55% of such variance is due to teacher effect. We know that in terms of teacher effects it is pedagogies of the kind described in the productive pedagogies research that make the difference. The defensive pedagogies that result from high-stakes testing and consequential accountability limit teacher effects in terms of high-order educational outcomes and thus also limit the possibility of achieving the kinds of outcomes all would see as necessary for meeting the demands of the knowledge economy. Such tests do not require the cognitive approaches that are necessary for higher order learning (Darling-Hammond, 2010). Julia Gillard, Deputy Prime Minister and Federal Minister for Education, in various speeches has acknowledged this research evidence: accepting the salience of social class background and good, intellectually demanding teaching to student outcomes and especially in respect of outcomes for disadvantaged students. The million-dollar question, of course, is: how ought the federal and state governments respond in both policy and funding terms to these research-based realities? How should they respond to this evidence in policy terms? It is here that we come upon a range of difficulties. As with New Labour in England, the policy intentions of the Rudd federal government are for better school outcomes for all with a renewed focus on more socially just outcomes. This is to be lauded, after the benign neglect of social justice matters by the Howard government and its prioritising of school choice as the main policy goal and related redistribution towards non-government schools. We must recognise the substantial redistributive element of the low SES schools national partnership. My concern is with the reductive effects of the overall accountability agenda and its effects broadly, as well as in relation to how the low SES schools national partnership will be affected by an outcomes approach. In addition, a more equitable base for the funding of non-government schools is also necessary. A new and it is hoped more equitable non-government school funding regime will have to be negotiated by the federal government by 2012.

Beyond the neo- liberal social imaginar y I will move to a different register for a moment as a way to understanding the difficulties of recognising what the research says about schools, attainment and opportunity and

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moving to a more productive schooling policy frame. Globalisation as experienced over the past 30 years or so has been neo-liberal globalisation, an ideology that promotes markets over the state and regulation and individual advancement over the collective good and common well-being. We have seen a new individualism with individuals now being deemed responsible for their own ‘self-capitalising’ over their lifetimes. Common good and social protection concerns have been given less focus. The global financial crisis has challenged many of the taken-for-granteds of neo-liberal globalisation. Certainly we have witnessed global and national attempts at re-regulation. However, my argument is that in social policy terms, and in relation specifically to education policy, we still remained trapped within a neo-liberal imaginary (see Rizvi and Lingard, 2010) The Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd (2009), has written a scathing and most intelligent critique of neo-liberalism, one with which I agree. He states: ‘The great neoliberal experiment of the past thirty years has failed . . . the emperor has no clothes. Neoliberalism, and the free market fundamentalism it has produced, has been revealed as little more than personal greed dressed up as an economic philosophy’ (p. 23). After this observation, he then goes on to comment re the post-neo-liberal period: With the demise of neo-liberalism, the role of the state has once more been recognised as fundamental. The state has been the primary actor in responding in three clear areas of the current crisis: in rescuing the private financial system from collapse; in providing direct stimulus to the real economy because of the collapse in private demand; and in the redesign of a national and global regulatory regime. (p. 25) The federal government expenditure on schooling infrastructure is a central component for providing stimulus to the economy. However, the issue with that aspect of the education revolution is that it has been connected more to attempts to stimulate the economy than to other educational aspects of the revolution. We also see here the binary divide between a neo-liberal focus on individual self-interest, the market and deregulation as opposed to a social democratic emphasis on the collective or common good, the state over the market and re-regulation. Rudd (2009) notes: ‘social democrats maintain robust support for the market economy but posit that markets can only work in a mixed economy, with a role for the state as regulator and as a funder and provider of public goods’ (p. 25). It is, however, in the Prime Minister’s important observation about the role of social justice within the social democratic political project in this post neo-liberal era that the potential for a post neo-liberal social imaginary (Taylor, 2004) to frame social policy lies (Rizvi and Lingard, 2010). However, the observation also indicates how we or the government find it difficult to move beyond neo-liberal precepts. On social justice and the social democratic project, Kevin Rudd states: Social justice is also viewed as an essential component of the social democratic project. The social-democratic pursuit of social justice is founded on a belief in the self-evident value of equality, rather than, for example, an exclusively utilitarian argument that a particular investment in education is justified because it yields increases in productivity growth (although, happily, from the point of view of modern social democrats, both things happen to be true). (Rudd, 2009, p. 25) Rudd goes on to acknowledge that in terms of social justice ‘all human beings have an intrinsic right to human dignity, equality of opportunity and the ability to lead a fulfilling

Policy borrowing, policy learning 81 life’ (p. 25). However, I think the Prime Minister has it wrong when he suggests that Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize winning economist, argues freedom is the way to achieve economic stability and growth. In his 1999 book, Development as freedom, Sen argues that the purposes of economic development in the Global South are freedom and more democracy rather than economic benefits. As an aside, I would add that schooling must be seen as more than good results on national literacy and numeracy tests. In all of this, there are important implications for the meta-framing of schooling policy in Australia in relation to both the funding issues and more substantive educational matters to do with the message systems of schooling, curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation. When combined with Julia Gillard’s recognition of the significance of inequality and teachers to improving educational opportunities for all, there is the potential basis for a new social democratic post global financial crisis educational policy settlement, but . . .

Conclusion This chapter has situated Australian national developments in schooling, particularly NAPLAN and the My School website and related accountabilities, within a consideration of the restructured state, globalised education policy discourses, policy borrowing and learning and social democratic as opposed to neo-liberal policy frames. The chapter has suggested that NAPLAN, along with analysis of it, in relation to socio-economic likeschool comparisons, has been a manifestation of the reconstitution of the nation, through a construction of a national schooling system, set against the effects of globalisation and the economisation of education policy as part of the national productivity agenda. The like-school comparisons of NAPLAN data on the website are cross-national comparisons, not located within state boundaries, and just as the global measures of comparative national school performance, such as PISA, have constituted the globe as a commensurate space of measurement and ushered in a global education policy field, NAPLAN and related analyses will help usher in a more national schooling system in Australia. The NAPLAN and related developments will also enhance policy convergence in schooling across state and territory borders. This is evident to date, with Queensland recently putting out a Green Paper for discussion on the desirability of restructuring primary and secondary education to a Year 1–6 and Year 7–12 configuration, in line with most other states. The intergovernmental council, COAG, has played a central role in the achievement of the national agenda to date, an indication of the centrality of schooling policy nationally to the economic productivity agenda. The other significant factor in the politics surrounding the Rudd government’s accountability agenda for schools. as demonstrated in the My School website, is how the government has successfully utilised a form of information age politics to circumvent the strong, and justifiable in my view, opposition of the teacher unions to the publication of comparative school performance data, with all of the potential negatives which might flow from that. This is a difficult politics, as any critique of the database included on the website inevitably elicits the response that further data will be added, for example, full per-pupil expenditure in all schools or a ‘value added’ measure on school effects, and who could be opposed to these? Opposition can also appear to be about restricting access to knowledge and thus can appear to be nondemocratic. There is also probably a distinction to be made here between knowledge that is useful for effective policy interventions and knowledge that ought to be publicly available. In terms of policy borrowing, much of the accountability agenda has been borrowed from England and the USA, specifically New York City. Accountability and testing

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reforms there have been subject to devastating criticisms (Hursh, 2008) and I would note that Australia does much better on PISA than either the UK or the USA. It is interesting to hypothesise why these are the ‘reference societies’, when it seems that the creation of a global space of measurement of national schooling systems has constituted new and significant reference societies such as Finland and, of relevance to Australia, Canada. Policy as the authoritative allocation of values probably offers some explanation of why Australia has chosen particular reference societies to borrow from, rather than others. The focus of this chapter has been a contextualised analysis of NAPLAN and the My School website, which are elements in a broader policy ensemble. The Rudd government and the Minster, Gillard, should be congratulated for the important and highly redistributive National Partnership on Low SES Schools and also for the National Partnership on quality teachers/teaching. (It will be very telling to see the Government’s stance when the non-government school funding policy has to be renegotiated in 2011.) However, as my account has shown, the accountability agenda has the potential to inhibit the achievement of the sort of social democratic goals of equality of educational opportunity one would hope a Labor government would be pursuing. Certainly, there is the potential for defensive and scripted, rather than productive, pedagogies to result and for them to work with reduced and narrowed curriculum coverage, particularly in schools serving low SES communities. While there is much to commend in the Rudd government’s so-called ‘education revolution’, particularly enhanced funding overall and the focus on increased resourcing for low SES schools, as I have also demonstrated, there is a way in which the accountability agenda still fits within a neo-liberal framework with potentially negative educational effects and with potential negative effects in these very low SES schools to which extra funds are being committed. In a recent paper revisiting the ethnographic curriculum research of Jean Anyon, Allan Luke (2010) has suggested that high-stakes testing will lead to ‘scripted pedagogies’ in schools and thus ‘risk offering working-class, cultural and linguistic minority students precisely what Anyon presciently described: an enacted curriculum of basic skills, rule recognition and compliance’ (p. 180). Such a likely outcome will deny equality of educational opportunity to such students and thus fail a social democratic reform agenda. New richer forms of accountability are required, which are linked to a policy framework that recognises the importance of SES to students’ performance and seeks to reduce poverty and its effects, while also acknowledging the importance of intellectually demanding teaching to student learning and social justice and quality agendas. Here pedagogies would scaffold from the capitals of low SES communities to those valorised in schools, valorised cultural capital in Bourdieu’s terms. I acknowledge there is a lot of policy learning that is required to rethink a social democratic school reform agenda. This requires policy learning, not inert borrowing from elsewhere, especially the USA. Linda Darling-Hammond’s (2010) recent swingeing critique of US school reform approaches might be one good place to start, as would be an attempt to develop rich and intelligent forms of educational accountability linked to a socially just schooling agenda. These forms would: • • • •

recognise the responsibilities of all actors, including governments, systems, schools, students, communities and parents to learning outcomes; acknowledge the broad purposes of schooling; reject the view that improved test results on NAPLAN are indicative of improved schooling or a more socially just school system; reject the top-down, one-way gaze upon teachers as the sole source and solution to all schooling problems;

Policy borrowing, policy learning 83 • •

recognise the centrality of informed teacher judgement and quality of pedagogies to achieving better learning outcomes for all students; and recognise the need to address poverty.

Darling-Hammond (2010) also notes the need for education systems to be accountable to students and in so arguing suggests that such accountability should focus on the competence of principals and teachers, the quality of pedagogy, the adequacy of funding and ‘the capacity of the system to trigger improvements’ (p. 301). She encapsulates this form of accountability – perhaps a first go at a system of rich accountability – in the following way: In addition to standards of learning for students, which focus the system’s efforts on meaningful goals, this will require standards of practice that can guide professional training, development, teaching, and management at the classroom, school, and system levels, and opportunity to learn standards that ensure appropriate resources to achieve the desired outcomes. (p. 301) What is urgently needed is a new social democratic imaginary to underpin a school reform agenda and related rich accountabilities that would challenge the current hybrid model and the testing times being created for Australian schools and teachers.

Acknowledgement The research upon which this chapter is based has been developed from an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded Discovery Project (DP1094850), Schooling the nation in an age of globalization: National curriculum, accountabilities and their effects.

Notes 1

2 3 4

5

For example, Glenn Milne (2010), columnist for the Murdoch Press’s Sunday Mail, observed of the My School website: ‘As millions of parents put their mouse where their vote is, Julia Gillard can bask in the phenomenal success of one of the Rudd government’s landmark initiatives’ (31 January, 2010, p. 62). An editorial (19 January, 2010, p. 13) in Murdoch’s national paper The Australian, stated in relation to the website and publication of school performance data on NAPLAN: ‘Ms Gillard is to be praised for defying the education unions, and everybody who believes in equality of opportunity should endorse her determination to ensure schools account for their performance’. There are multiple tests of various kinds that seek to ascertain performance on the crosscurricular higher order cognitive goals of senior syllabuses. While the NPM dovetails with and complements broader neo-liberal social imaginaries, it is an organisational form and set of practices distinct from neo-liberalism. The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 set the legal framework for the sovereignty of nations. By ‘postWestphalian’ I mean the ways in which political authority today is not only located within the borders of the nation state, but also has been rescaled, creating another layer beyond the nation, including a large range of international governmental and non-governmental organisations. The nation remains important, obviously, but works in different ways and with different influences. The argument here is derived from that in my book with Fazal Rizvi (2010), Globalizing education policy.

References Alexander, R. (Ed.). (2009). Children, their world, their education: Final report and recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review. London: Routledge.

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Au, W. (2009). Unequal by design: High-stakes testing and the standardization of inequality. New York: Routledge. Ball, S.J. (2006). Education policy and social class. London: Routledge. Ball, S.J. (2008). The education debate. Bristol: The Policy Press. Bernstein, B. (1971). On the classification and framing of educational knowledge. In M.F.D. Young (Ed.), Knowledge and control. London: Collier-Macmillan. Clarke, J., Gewirtz, S., and McLaughlin, E. (Eds.). (2000). New managerialism, new welfare? London: Sage. Cuban, L. (2009). Hugging the middle: How teachers teach in an era of testing and accountability. New York: Teachers’ College Press. Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). The flat world and education: How America’s commitment to equity will determine our future. New York: Teachers’ College Press. Department for Education and Skills (2006). Making good progress: How can we help every pupil to make good progress at school? London: DfES. Desrosieres, A. (1998). The politics of large numbers: A history of statistical reasoning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gillborn, D., and Youdell, D. (2000). Rationing education: Policy, practice, reform and equity. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Green, A., Preston, J., and Janmaat, J.G. (2006). Education, equality and social cohesion: A comparative analysis. Basingstoke, Hants: Palgrave. Gulson, K. (2007). Neo-liberal spatial technologies: On the practices of educational policy change. Critical Studies in Education, 48(2), 179–195. Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London: Routledge. Head, B. (2008). Three lenses of evidence-based policy. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 67(1), 1–11. Hursh, D. (2008). High-stakes testing and the decline of teaching and learning. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Koretz, D., McCaffrey, D., and Hamilton, L. (2001). Towards a framework for validating gains under high-stakes conditions. CSE Technical Report, 551. Lingard, B. (2000). Federalism in schooling since the Karmel Report (1973). Schools in Australia: From modernist hope to postmodernist performativity. Australian Educational Researcher, 27(2), 25–62. Lingard, B., and Rawolle, S. (2009). Rescaling and reconstituting education policy: The knowledge economy and the scalar politics of global fields. In M. Simmons, M. Olssen and M. Peters (Eds.), Rereading education policies: Studying the policy agenda of the twenty-first century. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Lingard, B., and Rawolle, S. (2010). Globalization and the rescaling of education politics and policy: Implications for comparative education. In M. Larsen (Ed.), New thinking in comparative education: Honouring the work of Dr Robert Cowen. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Lingard, B., Ladwig, J., Mills, M., Hayes, D., Luke, A., Gore, J., et al. (2001). The Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study. Brisbane: Queensland Government. Lipman, P. (2004). High stakes education: Inequality, globalization and urban school reform. London: Routledge-Falmer. Luke, A. (2010). Documenting reproduction and inequality: Revisiting Jean Anyon’s ‘Social Class and School Knowledge’. Curriculum Inquiry, 40(1), 167–182. Lyotard, F. (1984). The postmodern condition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Masters, G. (2009). A shared challenge: Improving literacy, numeracy and science learning in Queensland primary schools. Melbourne: ACER. McNeil, L. (2000). Contradictions of school reform: Educational costs of standardised testing. New York: Routledge. Menter, I. (2009). Teachers for the future: What have we got and what do we need? In Gerwitz, S., Mahony, P., Hextal, I., and Cribb, A. (Eds.), Changing teacher professionalism. London: Routledge. Milne, G. (2010). Julia, Principal of Policy and Politics. Sunday-Mail, p. 62. Novoa, A., and Yariv-Mashal, T. (2003). Comparative research in education: A mode of governance or a historical journey? Comparative Education, 39(4), 423–438. Ozga, J. (2009). Governing education though data in England: From regulation to self-evaluation. Journal of Education Policy, 24(2), 149–162.

Policy borrowing, policy learning 85 Phillips, D. (2000). Learning from elsewhere in education: Some perennial problems revisited with reference to British interest in Germany. Comparative Education, 36(3), 297–307. Porter, T. (1995). Trust in numbers: The pursuit of objectivity in science and public life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Queensland Studies Authority. (2009). Student assessment regimes: Getting the balance right for Australia (Draft discussion paper). Brisbane: Queensland Government. Rezai-Rashti, G. (2009). The neo-liberal assault on Ontario’s secondary schools. In C. LevineRasky (Ed.), Canadian perspectives on the sociology of education. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rizvi, F., and Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. London: Routledge. Rudd, K. (2009, February). The global financial crisis. The Monthly, pp. 20–29. Sahlberg, P. (2007). Education policies for raising student learning: The Finnish approach. Journal of Education Policy, 22(2), 147–171. Schleicher, A. (2008). Seeing school systems through the prism of PISA. In A. Luke, K. Weir and A. Woods (Eds.), Development of a set of principles to guide a P-12 syllabus framework. Brisbane: Queensland Studies Authority. Schriewer, J. (1990). The method of comparison and the need for externalization: Methodological criteria and sociological concepts. In J. Schriewer (Ed.), Theories and methods in comparative education. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Simola, H. (2005). The Finnish miracle of PISA: Historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education. Comparative Education, 41(4), 455–470. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (Ed.). (2004). The global politics of educational borrowing and lending. New York: Teachers’ College Press. Stobart, G. (2008). Testing times: The uses and abuses of assessment. London: Routledge. Taubman, P. (2009). Teaching by numbers: Deconstructing the discourse of standards and accountability in education. New York: Routledge. Taylor, C. (2004). Modern social imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. The Australian (2010) Editorial. January 19, p. 13. Townsend, T. (2001). Satan or saviour? An analysis of two decades of school effectiveness research. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12(1), 115–129.

CHAPTER 4

IT IS AND IT ISN’T Vernacular globalization, educational policy, and restructuring Bob Lingard Originally published in: N. C. Burbules and C. A. Torres (eds), Globalization and education (pp. 79–108). New York: Routledge, 2000

Introduction Within the vernacular we sometimes describe the complexities of a social phenomenon by the use of: “Well, it is and it isn’t.” This seems to be a productive way to think about globalization generally, as well as its playing out in educational policy and restructuring. The recent restructuring of educational systems can aptly be explained by recourse to an understanding of globalization. However, we also need to understand the microhistories, microcultures, and micropolitics of local practices of educational restructuring as they are implicated in the multiple flows of globalization. The dominant reading of globalization within contemporary neoliberal or right-wing politics has been one of the supposed inevitability (and desirability) of market liberal ideology and its manifestation in both the structures and policies of governments. Paradoxically, some Left readings assume a similar inevitability, albeit more critically. There is an important distinction to be made between the ideological and empirical effects of globalization, particularly in policy terms, because policy is often concerned to construct policy problems in given ways. In this chapter the “myth of the powerless state”1 in the face of globalization—indeed the reification of globalization as a causal explanation—is rejected. The nation-state still retains some capacity, if at times it lacks the will, to do more politically than simply facilitating economic globalization. Further, the argument here sees globalization and its specific manifestation within given nation-states, localities, and in educational restructuring as more nuanced than this and rejects any accounts that see globalization as simply resulting in top-down homogenization of both politics and culture. As Robertson notes, globalization has seen cultural tendencies for both homogenization and heterogenization in “mutually implicative” tension.2 The stance in this chapter is to recognize the emergence of another period of laissez-faire economics and politics, albeit on a global scale, but mediated by history, politics, contingency, and complexity, along with these cultural tensions between homogenization and heterogenization and political tensions between integration (beyond nations) and fragmentation (within nations).3 In terms of educational restructuring then, it is and it isn’t a result of globalization. The “big policies in a small world”—the apparent educational policy convergence across nations facilitated by greater global inter-connectedness and a nascent global educational policy community—are mediated, translated, and recontextualized within national and local educational structures.4 The cultural flows of globalization are experienced more directly by self-managing schools and their students, as well as in a mediated fashion via educational policy and restructuring. It is within schools in restructured educational

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systems that there is a tension between what Arjun Appadurai calls “context-productive” (top-down and policy driven) and “context-generative” (localized) practices, all nested within the flows of globalization.5 “Vernacular globalization” is the notion developed by Appadurai to pick up on these nuanced outcomes of the clash of the context-productive with context-generative practices and to reject globalization as meaning only Westernization, Americanization, commodification, and homogenization. For Appadurai, context-generative micronarratives “allow modernity to be rewritten more as vernacular globalization and less as a concession to large-scale national and international policies.”6 Vernacular globalization in this sense carries resonances with the idea of “glocalization”: the way local, national, and global interrelationships are being reconstituted, but mediated by the history of the local and the national and by politics, as well as by hybridization, an important resulting cultural feature of the multidirectional flows of cultural globalization and the tension between homogenization and heterogenization. While nations and cultures have to relativize their stance in relation to the capitalist West,7 and while the most powerful economic interests have more capacity to affect global politics and cultures (out of the world’s one hundred largest economies, forty-seven are multinational conglomerates8), globalization has seen a move beyond a center/periphery relationship in these matters, with multiple centers now across the globe and the periphery “speaking back” to these centers in a variety of (postcolonial) cultural and political ways. While mostly metropolitan elites (including policymakers) participate in global networks, there is broader recognition that “the constraints of geography are receding”9 with “the phenomenal world” of most people, including policy elites and school students, being “truly global.”10 In considering vernacular globalization in educational policy and restructuring, an analysis is provided of how the structures in which educational policy is produced and practiced have been reorganized, as political factors associated with the globalization of the economy pressure for a managerialist restructuring of the state, including education. Yeatman has argued that the transition from multinational to transnational capitalism in the sixties and seventies resulted in a disjunction between the “needs” of such a form of capital and the organizational structure and policy regime of the (nation-) state. She suggests that Keynesian-informed bureaucratic state structures and policies, which emphasized top-down expenditure as the solution to “social problems” resulting from the fallout of market economics and marked the end of the first period of laissez-faire, became “out of sync” with the emergent “needs” of transnational capital.11 Michael Pusey likewise has noted how any move by national governments to “globalize” their economies “presupposes a closer functional incorporation of the ‘political administrative’ system (the state, and with it the obligatory conditions of elected governments) into an augmented economic system.”12 Habermas has made a similar observation to those proffered by Yeatman and Pusey concerning the implications of the globalization of the economy for state structures and policies: While the world economy operates largely uncoupled from any political frame, national governments are restricted to fostering the modernization of their national economies. As a consequence, they have to adapt national welfare systems to what is called the capacity for international competition.13 The politics surrounding the attempts to bring transnational capital and state organizational form into “sync” have seen the restructuring of the state in most Western societies, variously under the rubric of “new public management” or “corporate managerialism.” State restructuring has been intimately implicated in the facilitation of a global economy by national governments. This development has been accompanied by talk in the literature of the emergent “evaluative,”14 “competitive,”15 “managerial,”16 or

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“postmodern” state,17 which takes as its chief policy focus the internationalizing of putative national economies; such economic restructuring has taken on “metapolicy” status, reframing educational policies in the process.18 As a consequence, educational administration and policy have lost their erstwhile sui generis character and the voices of the profession have become somewhat muted, with teachers becoming the objects, rather than the subjects, of educational policy production. This chapter seeks to understand and analyze the resultant educational restructurings, that is, the playing out of vernacular globalization in what amounts to new forms of governance in education. However, policy production in education is not only framed by these new structures within nations but also by the emergence of supranational political structures. Appadurai speaks of a number of cultural scapes of globalization, referring largely to the flows of people (for example, migrants, refugees, tourists, politicians, students, intellectuals, policy elites) and the rapid flow of media images and ideas via new technologies, and argues that, within diasporic public spheres, where politics are played out across national boundaries, we are seeing the emergence of a “postnational political order.”19 He believes that today in the context of cultural globalization the hyphen between the nation and the state has become somewhat attenuated, with each now the project of the other. While he overplays the demise of the nation-state, some other globalization theorists underplay the extent to which local, national, and global interrelationships are being reconstituted.20 The position taken in this chapter is that the local, the national, and the emerging global structures sit in “mutually constitutive” relationships with each other.21 Wiseman has suggested, “The processes of globalization are helping to create a world of ‘nested locales’ in which households, neighborhoods, cities, provinces, nations and regions sit inside the wider global relationships like Russian Babushka dolls.”22 A second focus in this chapter then deals with supranational policy production in education and an emergent global policy community,23 drawing on a study that has sought to understand the mutual and interdependent relationships between the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), globalization, and educational policy production in Australia.24 As such, this chapter makes a contribution to the study of the policy implications of globalization for supranational and transnational policy, a heavily underresearched and undertheorized domain.25

An emergent policy settlement in education Within the sociology of education there has been broad agreement about the educational policy consensus in Western nations that accompanied the postwar boom period, the era of economic nationalism (1945–1973).26 Education was seen as central to the production of economic prosperity and equality of educational opportunity within the nation. The organizational form of educational systems was the classical bureaucracy as defined by Weber, which was underpinned by technical rationality, whose pervasiveness was an element in social cohesion and control. Globalization has resulted in the “breakdown of economic nationalism” and the emergence of a new policy consensus globally within education.27 The globalization of the economy has reduced the apparent policy tools of national governments, destabilized the postwar policy settlement, and witnessed the restructuring of the mechanisms for the delivery of a different range of policies. Brown and Lauder have suggested that what we have seen is a “global auction” in respect to investment by transnational corporations.28 In respect to this auction, national governments have had to ensure the provision of infrastructure, including a suitably multiskilled and flexible workforce, reductions in corporate taxation levels, and a meaner and leaner welfare system. This call for international competitiveness has weakened the capacity of nation-states to provide social protection for their citizens.29

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The rapidity of change, the move to post-Fordist production approaches, niche rather than mass production, service rather than manufacturing orientation, along with tighter budgets have waged a sustained attack on the state bureaucratic form that accompanied the Keynesian policy regime of demand management, evident in waves of educational restructuring. Whereas in the earlier period the bureaucratic paradigm was seen as the model of efficiency and fairness, the bureaucratic form came under strong critique as the globalized economy took hold and a new global educational policy consensus emerged. What was now required, so the argument went, was a flatter organizational arrangement geared toward the production of clearly stipulated outcomes at the lowest possible cost. This was also necessary given the speed of change; the sclerotic red-tapeism of the traditional state bureaucracies was deemed to be inappropriate in this context,30 as was promotion according to seniority rather than merit. This has seen new private-sector management structures and practices incorporated into the public sector, reflecting what Waters calls a global “organizational ecumenism.”31 In education a new state form geared to delivering more narrowly defined goals at a cheaper cost has been the result. However, and herein lies a paradox, while the structural formation of educational systems has been remade as flatter, leaner, and meaner, there is an emergent consensus that within the globalized economy the production of an educated workforce “judged according to international standards” is more important than ever, part of the stateprovided infrastructure necessary to the competitive advantage of nations.32 At the very moment that nations were losing some control over economic policies and were cutting expenditures, educational policy took on even greater significance. This renewed significance of education as an element of an effective (national) economic policy was reflected in the structures of its production and delivery, but not in expenditure terms. Educational policy became an element of economic policy framed by a microeconomically focused and rearticulated version of human capital theory linked to the changing structure of the economies and labor markets in the postindustrialized nations of the globe. In the film Primary Colors, the President of the United States (a.k.a. Bill Clinton) talks to a group of manual workers about the way the U.S. economy is changing from being based on muscle power in manufacturing to being based on brainpower in the service sector as transnational corporations have relocated manufacturing work to the developing world. With this alignment between education and demand for a more highly skilled and flexible labor force, the politicization and ministerialization of educational policy production has been one significant outcome, with policy production in education removed to a considerable extent from the policy grip of the educational policy community.33 One way to illustrate this new global educational policy consensus and vernacular globalization at work is to consider two Australian policy settlements, namely, that of social democratic Labor Party governments (1983–1996) and that of their successor coalition governments (1996–present; for an account of subsequent developments under post-2007 Labor governments see Chapter 2). Both settlements were framed by the new global educational policy consensus. However, despite their broad discursive similarity, there were still differences between their responses, reflective basically of party ideological differences and their differing electoral support bases—an indication of vernacular globalization at play. Labor governments under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating sought to create a nationally integrated education and training system geared toward the production of an upwardly skilled workforce. Given Australia’s federal political structure and its high level of vertical fiscal imbalance—the federal government has much greater revenue-raising capacity than the states, while the states are ostensibly responsible for the delivery of the expensive social services such as schools, hospitals, and policing—there was a complex politics at

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work in achieving a range of national educational policies, particularly in schooling. Schooling is constitutionally the responsibility of the states and jealously guarded by them. Despite that reality, Labor achieved a considerable range of national educational polices in schooling in the late eighties and early nineties.34 These included equityfocused policies such as the National Policy for the Education of Girls in Australian Schools and a National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy. They also included some national policies that went more to the heart of schooling, such as National Goals for Australian Schools and National Curriculum Statements and Profiles, as well as those that were more economically focused such as the National Asian Languages and Cultures Strategy, which was linked to the attempt to integrate the Australian economy more closely with that of the Asian region. Labor also sought more national control over technical and adult education through a national education and training reform agenda and attempted to integrate schooling and vocational training in the postcompulsory years. Given the federal government’s financial and policy control over higher education, there was consolidation of the number of universities and very considerable expansion of university places, resulting in a move from elite to mass provision. However, these places were to be funded to an increasing extent by student fees, whereas from the mid-seventies until that time university education in Australia had been free. The government sought to improve retention to the end of secondary schooling and increase the numbers in both technical and adult education and in universities. This increased educational participation had two rationales: it was linked to the collapse of the teenage labor market and to the perceived need to upskill the workforce, with both sourced in different ways to the globalization of the economy. Labor’s policy regime was thus a hybrid mix of social justice concerns and a tightening of the economy-education nexus with the introduction of user-pays practices in universities and technical and adult education. Since the defeat of the Keating Labor government in 1996, the Howard Coalition governments have kept the broad framing of the Labor Party educational policy settlement (a specific manifestation of the global educational policy consensus), but reconstituted it through their party’s ideological lens, including a more antagonistic relationship with the trade union movement. Equity concerns as articulated in Labor’s hybrid approach have been considerably downgraded, while the concept of group disadvantage has been rejected as the basis for equity-focused policy interventions. Allan Luke has referred to the return of the individual deficit subject as the underpinning value of the Coalition’s schooling policies, framed by an even stronger commitment to social disinvestment.35 Welfare has been redefined as a privilege, rather than a right, within a framework of mutual obligation and the goal of individual self-sufficiency, rather titan dependence on the “nanny state.” Schooling policy at the national level has become narrower and more focused as part of a further hollowing out of state structures, and is very much outcomes oriented. Literacy testing and math testing have been introduced nationally. Technical and adult education has been pushed even further down the market track and there have been attempts to put schools, both public and private, in competition with each other. The fees for students in higher education have been increased and universities have been required to generate even more funds from nongovernment sources—from the sale of research, consultancies, and courses (often to international students). In contrast to Labor’s facilitative relationship with the trade union movement, the Coalition has regarded the unions as an impediment to desired policy changes. This comparative example is given to show how party ideology still mediates educational policy developments across party lines. However, it also illustrates the discursive shift from the conceptualization of education policy inherent in the Keynesian settlement

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in the era of economic nationalism to that of the era of the globalized economy. Contemporary Australian educational policy is and isn’t a result of globalization. Other examples could have been used to illustrate this point: for example, a crossnational one comparing the educational policies of Labor governments in Australia with the Thatcherite revolution in English education. Some good points of comparison would have been the more fulsome embrace of the market solution by Thatcher, or the way a unitary form of government “allows” political strategies different from those possible within a federal arrangement, but even more stark would have been the comparison between the hybrid equity/instrumentalism framing in Australia under Labor with the National Curriculum in England and Wales, following the Education Reform Act of 1988, with its resurrection of the “curriculum of the dead.”36 Labor sought to (post) modernize curriculum and integrate schooling and training, while the Thatcherite settlement wanted to return to a culture of little Englandism, one element of broader cultural restorationism (a dynamic similar to that of the United Kingdom can be seen in New Zealand).37 One could also compare the policies in education that have resulted in the United States from President Clinton’s claim that he wanted to be the “Education President” with those in England and Australia; in each context one would see in their different policies the playing out of the new global educational policy consensus. Comparative case studies of different systems and schools within and across those nations would demonstrate even more starkly this phenomenon, the generative intersection of micronarratives, microcultures, and microhistories with the effects of globalization— vernacular globalization. The analysis provided to this point has possibly been a little too deterministic in emphasizing the effects of economic globalization as mediated by state restructuring to the neglect of the cultural flows. The rapid flows of people associated with globalization, as well as the facilitation of diasporic public spheres across national boundaries by new technologies,38 have also seen the development of hybrid cultural identities. Furthermore, economic globalization and the predominance of the neoliberal response to it have seen the meaner and leaner state less able to ameliorate the growing inequalities within the so-called “advanced” nations, the growing gap between “the haves” and “the have nots,” the gap between those reveling in conspicuous consumption and those struggling with conspicuous deprivation. Capitalism in its globalized, disorganized form has dented the social security and cohesion that were the effects of the Keynesian settlement associated with economic nationalism. In contrast, we are experiencing today a “manufactured uncertainty”39 and pervasive insecurity,40 even among those who are currently employed, instabilities that are inherent in contemporary structures of feeling. In this context, the progressive politics that have had most success in the last two decades have been those associated with the recognition of difference—identity politics—and new social movements,41 rather than the politics of redistribution, which were central to the earlier Keynesian policy regime. Thus governments of various persuasions have introduced a range of affirmative action, equal opportunity, and antidiscrimination legislation. In Australia, where neoliberalism has been usually referred to as “economic rationalism,” this range of recognition legislation has been called “social rationalization.”42 In a context where the two occur together—economic and social rationalization—where career preference is dependent upon educational success and credentialing for work in globalized primary labor markets, and where the gap between those so credentialed and those without has grown substantially, there have been a number of political backlashes. These have encompassed backlashes against affirmative action and the politics of difference and those against feminist policy gains. In Australia there has been the emergence of backlash national chauvinisms evident in the rise of the far-right-wing political party, One Nation, and echoes of such resentment politics around

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the world with, for example, Le Pen and the neo-Nazis in Europe and the right-wing white, male, working-class militias in the United States. Schooling policy has thus become a site of culture wars in the last decade or so, a site of the politics of resentment,43 manifest, for example, in attempts to redefine boys as the new disadvantaged in schooling,44 and in debates about schooling and citizenship, related to Appadurai’s point about the state and the nation now being the project of each other. In Australia, Labor governments at the national level (1983–1996) worked a politics of recognition through multiculturalism and attempted reconciliation with indigenous Australians. The subsequent conservative coalition governments have exploited backlashes against these Labor policies and sought to attract the vote of the disaffected white working-class men who traditionally have supported Labor governments. These coalition governments have hollowed out their involvement in schooling, emphasizing a narrower range of outcomes and rejecting affirmative action and concepts of group disadvantage. National literacy testing has been one response. However, the conception of literacy underpinning this government’s literacy benchmarks appears to be underpinned by monoculturalism as opposed to a multicultural theorizing of multiliteracies necessary to effective citizenship in a globalized world. These abuses of literacy have been as much about creating a literacy crisis, justifying further social disinvestment in education, and imposing a rearticulated monoculturalism, as about literacy goals themselves.45 We are currently seeing the emergence in the policies of the Blair government in the United Kingdom, and in those of the European Union, the OECD, and UNESCO, of a concern for social inclusion, as national policy regimes give priority to internationalizing their economies. Thus they apparently have limited capacity to overcome unemployment and growing inequality. Calls for a “third way” in policy in the United Kingdom between the Keynesian welfare state and market liberalism are a further indication of increasing policy concern about growing inequalities, social exclusion, social disharmony, and their consequences.46 George Soros, a doyen of the transnational capitalists, has also expressed concern at the implications of these social effects for future investment and economic development. Nonetheless, in terms of social policy and talk of the need for social inclusion, such concern appears to manifest itself in a focus on “employability,” that is, the continual retraining of those made socially redundant, rather than with the creation of jobs and pursuit of equality through redistributive expenditure. In support of the vernacular globalization argument being put forth here, it is necessary to recognize that the third way carries different implications for various European countries. Think for example of what the third way might mean under Blair’s New Labour Party built upon the deep and pervasive neoliberal market revolution of Thatcher and what it might mean in France, where there has been no such revolution. There is another cultural element in educational policy that is linked to globalization and related hybridization and creolization of identities and cultures. The postmodern movement, a cultural effect of globalization, has been characterized by an epistemological critique of the rational subject and universalist bodies of knowledge,47 a critique that recognizes the importance of the positionality of the knowledge producer in relation to the nature of the knowledge produced. All knowledge is deemed to be perspectival and claims to the universal are deemed to be appropriated as an exercise of power.48 Thus the supposed neutrality of technical rationality endemic to bureaucracy, as well as dominant canons of knowledge, have been challenged. We have “no operative consensus concerning the ultimate or transcendental grounds of truth and justice”49—resulting in the foregrounding of what Lyotard calls a (postmodern) culture of performativity, which emphasizes the instrumental and operational, rather than truth claims.50 Restructured educational systems have been pervaded by this culture of performativity through the imposition of performance indicators as the new linking mechanisms

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between the “policy-producing center” and the “policy-practicing peripheries,” which have been granted more autonomy to achieve preset goals.51 As such, “Performativity is a systems-orientation: Instead of the state appearing as the enlightened and paternal command of shared community, the state is equated with the requirements of a system for ongoing integrity and viability.”52 Performativity is also symbiotic with the “needs” of the restructured state in the face of an increasingly complicated and diverse political environment. In this way, Yeatman suggests that performativity works as a “principle of selective closure in respect of the information overload and social complexity” that confronts the restructured state.53 Specifically in relation to educational policy, the school-effectiveness literature has floated globally between nations (and supranationally) and seeks in a decontextualized and performative way to discover what schooling practices have desired effects (improved student performance on a range of skills), and as such is synergistic with the “needs” of restructured educational systems and policy.54 This synergy is a specific example of Bourdieu’s general point about the correlative relationship between the philosophy of the state and “demand for knowledge of the social world.”55 In that context, Ball speaks of the “magical solutions” offered by school effectiveness and other educational “policy entrepreneurs.”56 The new hollowed-out structures and cultures of performativity within educational systems are “increasingly drained of normative and communal content.” What we are left with is “an overarching shell of abstract instrumentalism” in the face of social disharmony and the hybridization of cultures and identities.57 The OECD, UNESCO, APEC, and other supranational bodies have been important in instantiating the culture of performativity within restructured educational systems and support for a human capital conception of schooling within a neoliberal market ideology, to which they are complementary. However, Deacon et al. have argued that such supranational bodies also provide some potential for supranational policies of a more protective and socially progressive kind,58 as an element of what David Held has called “cosmopolitan democracy.”59 It is to a consideration of supranational policy production that this chapter now turns, with a particular focus on the OECD.

Supranational policy production in education Within the educational policy literature there has been some analysis of policy borrowing across nations.60 There is no doubt that the capacity for such cross-national policy borrowing has been greatly enhanced by the various flows of globalization. However, the literature on policy borrowing is fairly grounded in a preglobalization account of nations and the relations between them. While such borrowing continues in an enhanced fashion, there are also emergent postnational relationships within the educational policy community. Appadurai argues that we are entering a postnational era in which there are serious disjunctions between economy, culture, and politics as they are affected by, and implicated in, globalization. To pick up on these disjunctions he speaks of a number of “scapes,” including “ethnoscapes,” “technoscapes,” and “ideoscapes.” These are useful as a way to move to some understanding of supranational and postnational policy flows or “policyscapes.” Ethnoscapes refer to the large and rapid movement of peoples across the globe and between nations for a variety of reasons, evidencing the rhizomic and deterritorialized, rather than grounded and territorialized, nature of much of contemporary experience. This movement, “peoplescapes,” includes politicians, policy elites, and policy intellectuals, with the effect of reducing the distance between elites. Technoscapes have allowed for instant communications as part of the time-space distanciation of globalization,61 facilitating communication between policymakers and thus enhancing

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the likelihood of a global educational policy field and community. Ideoscapes refer to the rapid global flows of ideas—in our case, of educational policy ideas, contributing to the diaspora of key policy terms and concepts—recontextualized in different national and local contexts. Taken together these scapes indicate the emergence of a postnational educational policy community, consisting of globalizing bureaucrats,62 senior public servants, policymakers, policy advisers, and policy intellectuals (and entrepreneurs). The policy ideas flowing globally are also linked to international political organizations, which will be considered below. There is something of a disjunction between the way the global economy works today, with nation-states seen as complicating and mediating entities, and the way politics are organized, still largely within the boundaries of nations, despite talk of the emergence of postnational politics working in diasporic public spheres. Today national, cross-national, postnational, and supranational politics are occurring simultaneously as a result of globalization. Globalization has seen the creation of some supranational political organizations at the subglobal level, with the European Union being the best example. Other international organizations such as the World Bank, IMF, UN, UNESCO, and OECD are multilateral international organizations also being affected by globalization, as well as being, in some cases (such as the World Bank and IMF), largely “institutionalizing mechanisms” for market-liberal versions of global economics.63 Some (such as: NAFTA, APEC, and the EU) also represent the new regionalism emerging in global politics in response to the globalization of the economy. Together, these bodies constitute what Waters has referred to as “a complex and ungovernable web of relationships that extends beyond the nation state.”64 Most of the literature on this ungovernable web of relationships has emphasized these bodies’ support for neoliberal market economics on a global scale, unimpeded by national boundaries, which they seek to make more porous. The proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), initially sponsored by the OECD, exemplifies this argument. Yeatman suggests there is no other way to regard this agreement than “as the fruit of organised, concerted and conscious effort on the part of transnational corporate capital” as mediated by an international organization.65 As Karl Polanyi once said, Laissez-faire was planned! The adoption of this agreement, strongly sponsored by the United States, would weaken even further the capacity of nations to control investment and protect social and environmental interests at the national and local levels. Yeatman explains its link to the OECD this way: “The reasoning behind the MAI, in starting with OECD or rich and developed nations, is that if they signed on, there would be much stronger leverage to bring the developing countries into a similar treaty regime.”66 She suggests that this is perhaps the best example of “a pro-transnational business or capitalist agenda” working at the likely expense “of national citizen communities and their sustainability.”67 There has nonetheless been opposition to the MAI and, at this point, it appears the OECD has failed to secure its adoption. Care needs to be taken against being too deterministic and one-dimensional in the approach to international organizations while not denying their economic significance. The local institutionalization of their proposals often has unpredictable outcomes— manifest as vernacular globalization. Mention has already been made of the social disharmony resulting from the production of the socially redundant, as the capacity of nations to protect their populations has been reduced in the face of economic globalization and its sponsorship by some international organizations. However, there has also been recognition, at a number of political levels, that the long-term interests of transnational capitalism will not be served by social ruptures and instabilities. Similarly, Deacon et al. call the emergence of global social policy enacted through supranational bodies in response to the globalization of the economy68 “cosmopolitan democracy” in an embryonic and

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inchoate form.69 They talk of the possibility of supranational social policies of “regulation,” “redistribution,” and “provision,”70 show how such policies along with supranational concepts of citizenship are beginning to emerge in the European Union, and argue the need for other international organizations to intervene in national politics in the interests of social protection. In their words, “The other side of the coin of the globalisation of social policy is the socialisation of global politics.”71 They note that there are such possibilities within the policy regimes and approaches of some other international organizations, even including those such as the IMF and World Bank, with a neoliberal economic focus. Such possibilities, they argue, are supported by the emergence of “global social reformists” who are working to counteract the influence of the “global laissez-faire economists,” and to push an agenda of socially regulated capitalism globally.72 In a somewhat optimistic but perhaps not unrealistic vein, they observe: The threat posed by global economic competition and global economic migration to the social democratic and social market economy achievements of Europe and elsewhere might impel an articulation of global reformism, just as the threat posed by the poor within one nation to the stability of capitalism impelled national social reformism a century ago.73 Herein lies the contested complexity of postnational politics set against the globalization of the economy. In the remainder of this section of the chapter I will provide a brief account of the OECD as an illustrative example of how globalization has affected an international policy body, which itself has been an instrument of a contested conception of globalization in education.74

The role of the OECD The OECD is a globalizing institution developed in 1961 out of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, which was created by the United States in the context of the Cold War to reconstruct Europe through the Marshall Plan. The United States has taken a less prominent position since that time, perhaps playing a behind-the-scenes role in agenda setting, for example, in relation to the OECD’s influential educational indicators project and in some senior appointments. However, it was the United States that strongly promoted and funded the Center for Cooperation with Economies in Transition, established within the OECD in 1990, to secure America’s position of influence in the former Eastern bloc, following the end of the Cold War, Further, the United States, together with Japan, provides about half the funding of the organization. At the overarching level, then, but always in a contested way, changing conceptions of United States market liberalism have been influential within the agenda setting of the organization. The attempt to achieve the MAI through OECD sponsorship is an exemplary case of this economic focus. Nonetheless, there are often tensions within OECD policy debates between Anglo-American neoliberalism and European social democracy. The organization also has social policy interests beyond the economic, but these are linked directly or indirectly to the causes and purposes of economic growth—the organizing principle of horizontality. Concerning educational policy, Papadopoulos argues that the OECD has “an inferred role for education, both for the contribution it can make to economic growth and as a means by which the purposes of such growth, namely an increase in general well-being, can be given reality.”75 Unlike other international organizations, the OECD has no prescriptive mandate over its member countries, largely the rich countries of Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, along with newer members such as Korea, Mexico (whose

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membership was sponsored by the United States), and the Czech Republic. The OECD describes itself as a kind of international think tank that helps governments “shape policy” by exerting influence through “mutual examination by governments, multilateral surveillance and peer pressure to conform or reform.”76 Thus the OECD works through moral suasion as a broker of policy ideas linked some way or other to economic concerns. There are two membership criteria: namely, a commitment to a market economy and to pluralistic democracy. Following the end of the Cold War many more nations meet these criteria and have been pushing for inclusion. In recognition of globalization, the organization expresses its commitment to promoting a “postindustrial age” whereby OECD economies are integrated into a “more prosperous and increasingly service-oriented world economy,”77 which clearly reflects its orientation toward the concerns and interests of richer countries. Organizationally, education is situated within the Directorate of Education, Employment, Labor, and Social Affairs (DEELSA). While the Education Committee of the OECD sets the broad program for education and represents the consensually negotiated interests of member nations, the Center for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) works with the educational research community in a nongovernmental fashion and as such provides an alternative network of policy influence. The two other specialist education programs of Educational Buildings and Institutional Management in Higher Education work in different fashions again, with the former linking to provincial levels of government and the latter dealing directly with institutions. Education has no permanent status within the organization, with its work being mandated every five years by the council around an organizing theme. While the OECD is largely an intergovernmental organization, it is thus also linked in education to member countries in a nongovernmental way. The OECD is also part of the network of global organizations, with something of a global policy community operating in and across them in terms of careers and policy ideas. For instance, there have been connections between the OECD’s educational indicators project and a similar project within APEC,78 and a recent interest in lifelong learning across a number of international organizations. While the major focus of the OECD is economic policy, Deacon et al. suggest it is not possible to ascribe to it “a meta-policy on economic and social matters,”79 apart from its broad support for a liberalized world economy. They distinguish between the IMF-flavored economics secretariat and the social orientation of DEELSA. As the world economy has been globalized, the economics secretariat has become a stronger proponent of a neoliberal view of the world economy. This has fed into educational policy, but has been resisted to varying extents. Papadopoulos notes how, since the creation of DEELSA in 1974, education policy has had “to be ‘protected’ against narrow economic and instrumentalist perceptions of its role.”80 Context and dominant economic policy ideas have been important in the balance between the social and economic aspects of education, a balance affected also by which version of human capital theory has dominated. The changing balance between these two aspects within OECD policy formulations parallels that within many nations, namely, the move from the social democratic framing of education, linked to social goals and economic nationalism, to a focus more on the economic benefits of education to nations and individuals in the context of a globalized economy. The OECD stance here is both reflective and determinative of these national developments. The changing balance was obvious in the first OECD education ministers’ conference held in 1978, “Future Educational Policies in the Changing Social and Economic Context,” which strongly supported educational restructuring in the context of a globalizing economy. In 1988 at another OECD intergovernmental conference, “Education and Economy in a Changing Society,” the economic and social purposes of education were explicitly linked, with education now subsumed as an element of economic policy.

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Deacon et al. document similar tensions within the social policy orientation of DEELSA, but indicate a recent shift in the opposite direction from a neoliberal view of social welfare as an expenditure burden to one of welfare as investment.81 Overall, then, in terms of this economics/social tension, they suggest, “Taken together these orientations reflect that, in contrast to the US-influenced IMF and World Bank, the economic and social policy of the OECD represents a much more balanced set of economic and social considerations typical of mainstream European social and economic policy.”82 How then has OECD influence worked? One way is through its distinctive approach to educational policy, which Istance suggests has the following characteristics: • • •

•

educational policy making must be framed at least in part in relation to the other social and labor market policies that address people; focus on people is integral to economic prosperity apart from any social or cultural benefits; academic and political insights should be combined in “policy-relevant” analysis, rather than the educational community setting itself up in opposition to “politicians”; and national policies and practices should be informed through reference to those of other countries, learning from their achievements but not blindly copying.83

In this way, through an effective admixture of the subtly normative with the apparently disinterested, the OECD influences educational policy agenda setting and production within member nations. This OECD policy genre is also responsible for the social cachet contributing to its effectiveness. In terms of influence, Papadopoulos suggests that the OECD has a “catalytic function”84 in relation to educational policy production within its member nations, observing that it does not generate new ideas, but rather picks up on new ideas and agendas from members and the research community. Taylor’s account of the OECD as a “knowledge mediator” has resonances with Papadopoulos’s catalytic function.85 The interdependence between the OECD’s educational indicators project and a concern with efficiency and effectiveness in educational systems is a good case in point of the OECD serving a catalytic function and being a knowledge mediator.86 More broadly, the OECD has sponsored neoliberal economic approaches and a microeconomically focused account of the role of education in ensuring the competitiveness of national economies. The indicators project ties in with such a framing (“How competitive are the educational outputs of member nations?”) and links closely with the OECD’s sponsorship of new public-sector managerialism.87 The latter has contributed to overcoming the disjunction in member nations between state form and apparent needs of transnational capital. For Papadopoulos, educational policy production remains largely a national activity. The veracity of his observation is being challenged, if the argument being put in this chapter carries any validity, and only holds today if we supplement his observation with the concept of vernacular globalization. In a somewhat similar but more global view of international organizations, McNeeley and Cha argue that they “have been an important catalyst in spreading world cultural themes and accounts” and that conceiving of them as “institutionalizing mechanisms” can provide useful insights.”88 Globally, the OECD has been an institutionalizing mechanism for neoliberal economics and the new managerialism. Its educational indicators project, while strongly supported and influenced by the United States, has sat in a synergistic relation to its support for new public management and has been one significant catalyst for the performativity now pervading restructured national educational systems. Most significant, however, has been the OECD’s role (along with other international organizations) as an institutionalizing mechanism for the

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new global educational policy consensus, which stresses the centrality of an educated and multiskilled labor force to the competitive advantage of nations. Archer has suggested that international organizations function as instruments of policy, as policy-making arenas, and as policy actors in their own right.89 This is a useful way to think of the OECD and its relationship with member nations and to think further about how its policy influence might work. As a policy instrument the OECD’s stance is used by some politicians in member nations to justify particular national or local policy developments. Vickers notes how this was the case in relation to higher education reforms in Australia in the late eighties.90 OECD policy was basically used to legitimate policy developments in Australia, with globalization constructed as the contextual backdrop and justification for both policy narratives. The OECD also provides an arena in which nations can discuss policy issues and possible responses, while the OECD, as policy actor, can be a policy player in its own right through conferences, reports, and national and cross-national thematic reviews. While the OECD has been an institutionalizing mechanism for economic globalization, the organization itself has been substantially affected by globalization,91 as have its relationships with member countries, given the other sets of postnational networks now emerging. The EU is now a member of the OECD, which raises questions about the OECD’s continuing significance to EU countries. Furthermore, the OECD has established relations with “the dynamic economies of Asia” and the “advanced economies of Latin America,” and has also been involved in the Partners in Transition Program in Eastern Europe. The latter has precipitated a number of questions concerning the longterm function and purposes of the OECD in a globalized post-Cold War world: Is it a new Marshall Plan for former Eastern bloc countries serving American and transnational capital’s interests or is it a policy think tank for the rich nations of the world? Globalization has also seen the emergence of new regional trading blocs, for example, APEC, “a government-led forum for facilitating private sector-led economic integration,”92 and NAFTA. This raises questions about how the OECD can continue to meet the interests of all its members and where it sits in relation to these new regional identities and relationships. It was suggested earlier that all nations now must relativize their stance in relation to Western capitalism, raising questions about the extent to which globalization is a new form of Western hegemony, more specifically US hegemony in a post-Cold War era, and what role the OECD plays in achieving and legitimating, or alternatively in contesting or mediating, such hegemony. When compared with other international organizations such as the IMF and World Bank, we can see that there has been some contestation of a straightforward human capital conception of education and concern now for the social disharmony that results from a particular form of national response to the globalization of the economy. However, it would appear that such concerns are also beginning to appear on the agendas of these organizations as well, because such disharmony is deemed to be against the interests of global capitalism, although this is still a long way from Deacon et al.’s “socialization of global politics.”

Globalizing educational policy and systems via the vernacular An account has been provided of the global and other factors precipitating the restructuring of educational systems and emergent educational policy settlements within the “developed” nations, resulting in apparent convergence across nations. These enabling factors, however, do not result in straightforward, top-down, context-productive outcomes. On the contrary: microhistories, micropolitics, microcultures, and contextgenerative practices within education at the national, provincial, and school levels result

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in hybridized effects in complex, mutually constitutive plays between nested locales within global relationships. Some of these plays are facilitated by supra- and postnational politics and the nascent global educational policy community. The outcome of the intersection of context-productive and context-generative policies and practices is divergence within and across national educational systems. The resultant hybrid outcomes are nonetheless an effect of globalization in all its economic, political, and cultural forms. They are framed by state restructuring that has been catalyzed by supranational political strategies, which in turn relate to the emergent disjunction between the workings of transnational or global capitalism and the earlier bureaucratic state form. Within the new postbureaucratic state structures of education, policy now steers at a distance with changed center-periphery relations. The new state form, however, is no less important than its predecessor in educational policy production terms or as a site of political contestation. Rather, in a context of globalization it simply works in different ways through a regulatory/deregulatory mix toward narrower ends. These narrower goals are one element of an emergent global educational policy settlement, which is framed by the transition from education linked to a bounded economic nationalism to education conceived in relation to internationalizing national economies. Following that transition, education is constituted as one element of economic policy and deemed to be vital to the competitive economic advantage of nations. As a consequence, education elites have become less important in framing educational policy, but educators remain centrally important in generating local manifestations of this policy in practice. Educational relationships have also changed within nations, which sit in mutually constitutive relationships with the multifaceted processes of globalization. For example, in Australia there have been ambitious attempts to reconstitute federalism so as to create an efficient national economic infrastructure in the context of a neoliberal reading of desirable responses to globalization of the economy. This strategy was evident in the moves toward national approaches in schooling, which still remains the constitutional prerogative of the states and territories. There have also been changes, for example, in the operation of federalism in the United States with respect to schooling policy, while a unitary form of government in New Zealand has seen perhaps the most substantial restructuring and deregulation of schooling in any nation. In England and Wales there has been the move to a national curriculum and testing and partial dismantling of local education authorities, all facilitated by a unitary form of government. The different playing out of these structural changes, and indeed of the new global educational policy consensus, is indicative of vernacular globalization at work. In line with the argument of Taylor et al., this chapter has shown how globalization is now taken into account and used as a contextual justification in the establishment of educational policy priorities within national and provincial educational systems.93 The way in which political organizations beyond the nation are also helping to frame such policies, through the example of the OECD, has also been demonstrated. A global educational policy community is emerging and is both an effect and facilitator of globalization and policy convergence across national education systems. Political organizations beyond the state and global policy community are potential sites for a challenge by global social reformers to the powerful influence of global laissez-faire economists. It seems that we are in a policy moment when there is at least some recognition that unfettered neoliberal economic policies result in growing inequality and social disharmony, while in contrast, social harmony is acknowledged as a necessary prerequisite for the growth of transnational capitalism—a situation propitious for the global social reformers. Finally, in depicting schools and educational systems as sites of culture wars, it has also been shown how globalization is affecting the cultural field within which educational policies and practices now operate.

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What does all of this mean for theorizing educational policy? Taking as given a national, rather than globalized, context, Stephen Ball and his colleagues have developed a policy cycle approach to understand and explain policy relationships within restructured educational systems.94 This recognizes three contexts in the policy cycle, namely: (1) the context of influence that works directly and indirectly on both the policyproducing center of the education state and schools; (2) the context of policy text production within that policy center; and (3) schools as the context of policy practices influenced by the other two contexts. A mutually interactive, nonlinear relationship is then postulated between state education policy and its rearticulation in the practices of schools. As Ball notes, “Policies are always incomplete insofar as they relate to or map on to the ‘wild profusion’ of local practice.”95 Now, while we might want to quibble with the policy cycle’s view that the three contexts have parity of power, this is nevertheless a useful way to reconceptualize what the traditional policy literature has seen as a linear and top-down relationship between policy production and implementation. In terms of the argument made throughout this chapter, however, modifications have to be made to the policy cycle account to acknowledge global processes and their varied effects and to recognize that the state remains important despite its restructuring. In effect, the policy cycle account has to be globalized because its initial formulation was grounded in the bounded space of the nation. Globalization in all its forms, but certainly globalization as mediated in the new global educational policy consensus, has affected these three policy contexts and their interrelationships. With respect to the latter, consider the way a quasi-market take-up of restructuring reconstitutes the relationships between parents and schools as they become consumers, rather than citizens. Think of how the globalized culture of performativity affects teachers’ work and schools’ relationships with their communities and educational systems. The effects of globalization on the state, educational policy, and schools are mediated yet again by local cultures, histories, and politics. Globalization maps onto local practice in contingent, contested, inflected, and thus unpredictable ways. Nonetheless, there is also a way in which globalization (an element of the context of influence) affects schools in a less-mediated fashion through their students—the new cyborgs and hybrids in the classroom, embryonic global citizens whose phenomenal world, certainly in the developed nations, is very much global. While being affected by the state’s new steering capacity, as well as by global action at a distance through postnational politics and international organizations, educational policy remains a palimpsest. It is always being reread and rearticulated against the micronarratives of schools and locales, which are nested within sets of mutually constitutive relationships globally. What is occurring in specific manifestations of educational restructuring and the new policy consensus is and isn’t the effect of globalization; rather, this chapter has suggested that we are seeing the effect of vernacular globalization. Vernacular globalization is thus the conceptual device used throughout this chapter to account for both educational policy convergence and divergence, globally. While not denying the power of transnational capital and “McCulture,” this analysis of vernacular globalization is suggestive of the multilayered ways political strategies need to be organized today— locally, nationally, globally—to ameliorate inequalities resulting from a neoliberal response and to work toward a reconceptualized version of social justice through schooling that seeks to pull together a politics of difference with a politics of redistribution.

Notes and References 1 Linda Weiss, “Globalisation and the Myth of the Powerless State,” New Left Review 225 (1997): 3–27.

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2 Roland Robertson, “Glocalisation: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity,” in Global Modernities, ed. Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson (London: Sage, 1995), 27. 3 Anna Yeatman, “Trends and Opportunities in the Public Sector: A Critical Assessment,” Australian Journal of Public Administration 57, no. 4 (1998): 38–147. 4 Stephen Ball, “Big Policies/Small World: An Introduction to International Perspectives in Education Policy,” Comparative Education 34, no. 2 (1998): 119–30. 5 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 193. 6 Ibid., 10. 7 Malcolm Waters, Globalisation (London: Routledge, 1995). 8 Mark Latham, Civilising Global Capital: New Thinking for Australian Labor (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 199S), 11. 9 Waters, Globalisation, 3. 10 Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1991), 187. 11 Yeatman, “Trends and Opportunities.” 12 Michael Pusey, Economic Rationalism in Canberra: A Nation Building State Changes Its Mind (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 210–11. 13 Jürgen Habermas, “The European Nation-State—Its Achievements and Its Limits: On the Past and Future of Sovereignty and Citizenship,” in Mapping the Nation, ed. Gopal Balakrishnan (London: Verso, 1996), 292. 14 Guy Neave, “On the Cultivation of Quality, Efficiency and Enterprise: An Overview of Recent Trends in Higher Education in Western Europe, 1968–1988,” European Journal of Education 23, no. 1–2 (1988): 7–23. 15 Philip Cerny, The Changing Architecture of Politics: Structure, Agency and the Future of the State (London: Sage, 1990). 16 John Clarke and Janet Newman, The Managerial State Power, Politics and Ideology in the Remaking of Social Welfare (London: Sage, 1997). 17 Bob Lingard, “Educational Policy Making in a Postmodern State: An Essay Review of Stephen J. Ball’s Education Reform: A Critical and Post-Structural Approach,” The Australian Educational Researcher 23, no. 1 (1996). 18 Anna Yeatman, Bureaucrats, Technocrats, Femocrats: Essays on the Contemporary Australian State (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990). 19 Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 22. 20 For example, Paul Hirst and Graham Thompson, Globalisation in Question (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1996). 21 Carl Reus-Smit, “Beyond Foreign Policy: State Theory and the Changing Global Order,” in The State in Question: Transformations of the Australian State, ed. Paul James (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1996), 161–95. 22 John Wiseman, Global Nation? Australia and the Politics of Globalisation (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 14. 23 Leslie Sklair, “Conceptualising and Researching the Transnational Capitalist Class in Australia,” The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 32, no. 2 (1996): 1–19. 24 Miriam Henry, Bob Lingard, Fazal Rizvi, and Sandra Taylor, The OECD, Globalisation and Education Policy Making (Oxford, England: Pergamon Press, 2001). 25 Bob Deacon with Michelle Hulse and Paul Stubbs, Global Social Policy, International Organisations and the Future of Welfare (London: Sage, 1997), 1. 26 Phillip Brown, A. H. Halsey, Hugh Lauder, and Amy Stuart Wells, “The Transformation of Education and Society,” in Education Culture Economy Society, ed. A. H. Halsey, Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown, and Amy Stuart Wells (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 1–44. 27 Ibid. 28 Phillip Brown and Hugh Lauder, “Education, Globalization, and Economic Development,” in Education: Culture, Economy and Society, ed. A. H. Halsey, Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown, and Amy Stuart Wells (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 172–92. 29 Deacon et al., Global Social Policy. 30 Yeatman, Bureaucrats, Technocrats. 31 Waters, Globalisation. 32 Brown et al., Education Culture, 8.

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33 John Knight and Bob Lingard, “Ministerialisation and Politicisation: Changing Structures and Practices of Educational Policy Production,” in A National Approach to Schooling in Australia? ed. Bob Lingard and Paige Porter (Canberra: Australian College of Education, 1997), 26–45. 34 Bob Lingard and Paige Porter, eds., A National Approach to Schooling in Australia? (Canberra: Australian College of Education, 1997), 26–45. 35 Allan Luke, “New Narratives of Human Capital: Recent Directions in Australian Educational Policy,” The Australian Educational Researcher 24, no. 2 (1997): 1–21. 36 Stephen Ball, Education Reform: A Critical and Post-structural Approach (Buckingham, England: Open University Press, 1994). 37 Roger Dale and Jenny Ozga, “Two Hemispheres—Both New Right? Education Reform in New Zealand and England and Wales” in Schooling Reform in Hard Times, ed. Bob Lingard, John Knight, and Paige Porter (London: The Falmer Press, 1993), 63–87. Terry Eagleton illustrates this admixture of the market and cultural restorationism in commenting on some British politicians, presumably Tories: “It is not unusual to find British politicians who support the commercialization of radio but are horrified by poems which don’t rhyme.” Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism (Oxford, Eng.: Blackwell, 1996), 132. 38 Appadurai, Modernity at Large. 39 Anthony Giddens, Beyond Left and Right (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994). 40 Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodernity and its Discontents (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1997). 41 Nancy Fraser, “From Redistribution to Recognition: Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’ Society,” New Left Review (July–Aug. 1995): 68–93. 42 McKenzie Wark, The Virtual Republic: Australia’s Culture Wars of the 1990s (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997). 43 Cameron McCarthy, The Uses of Culture Education and the Limits of Ethnic Affiliation (New York: Routledge, 1998). 44 Bob Lingard and Peter Douglas, Men Engaging Feminisms: Pro-feminism, Backlashes and Schooling (Buckingham, England: Open University Press, 1999). 45 Allen Luke, Bob Lingard, Bill Green, and Barbara Comber, “The Abuses of Literacy: Educational Policy and the Construction of Crisis,” in Education Policy, ed. James Marshall and Michael Peters (Oxford, England: Edward Elgar, 1999). 46 Beyond Left and Right, the book by Anthony Giddens (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), has been an influential source of third-way thinking in the United Kingdom. In many ways, however, it seems to represent a rather pallid version of old social democracy, inflected by environmental concerns. It is also important to recognize that the old Keynesian welfare state was a third way between the command economies of state socialism and North American market liberalism. See also a more recent book by Anthony Giddens, The Third Way (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1998). 47 For example, Sandra Harding, The “Racial” Economy of Science (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); and Sandra Harding, Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms and Epistemologies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998). 48 Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1998). 49 Anna Yeatman, Postmodern Revisionmgs of the Political (London: Routledge, 1994), 106. 50 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1984). 51 The culture of performativity also helps produce a new form of governance in education, namely self-governance, a new form of governing apparently without government. [Compare R. A. W. Rhodes, Understanding Governance Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity and Accountability (Buckingham, England: Open University Press, 1997); and Tom Popkewitz, “Rethinking Decentralisation and State/Civil Society Distinctions: The State as a Problematic of Governing,” Journal of Education Policy 11, no. 1 (1996): 27–51.] There is an interesting and different analysis that could be developed here seeing governance as inclusive of the older notion of government and the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, with performativity then seen as a new form of governmentality contributing to new practices of governance. 52 Yeatman, Postmodern Revisionings, 110. 53 Yeatman, “Trends and Opportunities,” 117. 54 Bob Lingard, James Ladwig, and Allen Luke, “School Effects in Postmodern Conditions,” in School Effectiveness for Whom? Challenges to the School Effectiveness and School Improvement

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58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

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Movements, ed. Roger Slee, Gaby Weiner, and Sally Tomlinson (London: The Palmer Press, 1998), 84–100, Bourdieu, Practical Reason, 39. Ball, “Big Policies/Small World.” Michael Muetzelfetdt, “Democracy, Citizenship and the Problematics of Governing Production: The Australian Case,” in Labour, Unemployment and Democratic Rights, ed. Ray Jureidini (Geelong, Australia: Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights, 1995), 44. Deacon et al., Global Social Policy. David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1995). For example, David Halpin and Barry Troyna, “The Politics of Education Policy Borrowing,” Comparative Education 31, no. 3 (1995): 303–10. Giddens, Beyond Left. Sklair, “Conceptualising.” Connie McNeeley and Yveite Cha, “Worldwide Educational Convergence through International Organisations: Avenues for Research,” Educational Policy Analysis Archives 2, no. 14 (1994). Waters, Globalisation, 113. Yeatman, “Trends and Opportunities,” 149. Ibid., 146. Ibid. Deacon et al., Global Social Policy. Held, Democracy. Deacon et al., Global Social Policy, 2. Ibid., 3. Ibid., 5. Ibid. This section draws heavily on research and writing conducted with Fazal Rizvi, Miriam Henry, and Sandra Taylor. See, for example, Taylor et al., Educational Policy, 68–71; Taylor, “The OECD”; Miriam Henry and Sandra Taylor, “Globalisation and National Schooling Policy in Australia,” in A National Approach to Schooling in Australia?, ed. Bob Lingard and Paige Porter (Canberra: Australian College of Education, 1997), 46–59; Bob Lingard and Fazal Rizvi, “Globalisation and the Fear of Homogenisation in Education,” Change: Transformations in Education 1, no. 1 (1998): 62–71; Robert Lingard and Fazal Rizvi, “Globalisation, The OECD, and Australian Higher Education,” in Universities and Globalization: Critical Perspectives, ed. Jan Currie and Janice Newson (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1998); and Miriam Henry, Bob Lingard, Fazal Rizvi, and Sandra Taylor, “Working With/Against Globalisation in Education,” Journal of Education Policy 14, no. 1 (1999). Our book, Miriam Henry, Bob Lingard, Fazal Rizvi, and Sandra Taylor, The OECD, Globalisation and Education Policy Making (Oxford, England: Pergamon Press, 2001), deals with these issues in a more detailed and extended way. George Papadopoubs, Education 1960–1990: The OECD Perspective (Paris: OECD, 1994), 11. OECD, OECD Brochure Outlining the Functions and Structure of the OECD (Paris: OECD, undated), 10. Ibid., 6. Meng Hongwei, Zhou Yiqun, and Fang Yihua, eds., School Based Indicators of Effectiveness; Experiences and Practices in APEC Countries (The People’s Republic of China: Guangxi Normal University Press, 1997). Deacon et al., Global Social Policy, 70. Papadopoulos, Education, 12. Deacon et al., Global Social Policy. Deacon et al., Global Social Policy, 72. David Istance, “Education at the Chateau de la Muette,” Oxford Review of Education 22, no. 1 (1996): 94. Papadopoulos, Education, 203. Sandra Taylor, “The OECD and the Politics of Education Policy-making: An Australian Case Study” (paper delivered at the Australian Sociological Association Conference, December, 1996). Andreas Schleicher, “Developing Indicators on the Performance of Education Systems in an International Context: The OECD Education Indicators,” in School Based Indicators of Effectiveness: Experiences and Practices in APEC Countries, ed. Meng Hongwei, Zhou Yiqun,

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and Fang Yihua (The People’s Republic of China: Guangxi Normal University Press, 1997), 251–64. OECD, Governance in Transition: Public Management Reforms in OECD Countries (Paris: OECD, 1995). McNeeley and Cha, “Worldwide Educational Convergence.” Clive Archer, Organising Europe: The Institutions of Integration, 2d ed. (London: Edward Arnold, 1994). Margaret Vickers, “Cross-National Exchange: The OECD and Australian Education Policy,” Knowledge and Policy 7, no. 1 (1994): 25–47. Robert Lingard and Fazal Rizvi, “Globalisation, The OECD, and Australian Higher Education.” Bob Catley, Globalising Australian Capitalism (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 205. Sandra Taylor, Fazal Rizvi, Bob Lingard, and Miriam Henry, Educational Policy and the Politics of Change (London: Routledge, 1997), 61. Ball, Education Reform; and Richard Bowe, Stephen Ball, and Anne Gold, Reforming Education and Changing Schools: Case Studies in Policy Sociology (London: Routledge, 1992). Ball, Education Reform, 10.

CHAPTER 5

NEW SCALAR POLITICS Implications for education policy Bob Lingard and Shaun Rawolle Originally published in: Comparative Education, 2011, 47(4): 489–502

Introduction Globalisation has had implications for research in the social sciences in terms of suitable theories and methodologies, resulting from the impact of globalisation on national sovereignty and the emergence of some postnational realities related to the strategic reworking of national politics (Appadurai 2001). Many social science theories and methodologies have assumed that the social is synonymous with nation, which resulted in a bounding of research into national groups – an emphasis that has been described as ‘methodological nationalism’ (Beck 2000). Globalisation has also had real implications for comparative education, particularly in relation to policy developments emanating from beyond the nation-state (Arnove and Torres 1999; Crossley and Watson 2003; Dale 2005). The importance of globalisation for comparative education concerned specifically with education policy is that it has challenged the assumed reality of sovereign policy formation as territorially bound within nation-states. This occurrence has contested the implicit methodological nationalism of traditional comparative education. What we have witnessed has been the emergence of a postnational polity associated with globalisation (Appadurai 1996), part of which we discuss as an emergent global education policy field. Related to this emergence is a rescaling of politics that has developed as a result of the imbrications between national policy fields and the global policy field (Brenner 2004; Robertson, Bonal, and Dale 2006). Another productive way of conceptualising this rescaling is in respect of the relocation of political authority – ‘outward toward supranational entities and inward toward subnational groups’ (Rosenau and Czempiel 1992, 2–3). The theoretical and methodological challenges to comparative education that we are concerned with in this chapter relate to another scalar layer of complexity added to the operation of nation-states. We also recognise that these processes reconstitute national/ local relations within nations, but our focus is on global/nation relationships. The argument that we develop is that theories and methodologies that guide comparative education research focused on education policy need to be reconsidered in light of this rescaling of political authority that reconstitutes national sovereignty and relations between nations. Specifically, and drawing on Bourdieu’s work on social fields as structured and contested social spaces (both territorial and deterritorial), we contend that the rescaling of authority beyond the nations now works in education policy through a ‘global education policy field’ (Lingard, Rawolle, and Taylor 2005). The constitution of this global/postnational education policy field challenges many comparative education assumptions, theories and methodologies.

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Our point of departure is the usage of the thinking tools of Bourdieu, particularly field theory, to understand the rescaling of the politics of contemporary education policy. We suggest a productive task for comparative education concerned with education policy might be to research and theorise this emergent global education policy field and the way it affects national policy and policy processes through what we might see as cross-field effects (Lingard and Rawolle 2004). In order to develop and illustrate this argument, we draw on studies of two rather different, but coalescing, policy developments that are difficult to understand without considering this complexity and the rescaling of the politics of education. Specifically, the examples which are used to illustrate the emergence of the global educational policy field and rescaling of policy effects are, first, the emergence and adoption of national knowledge economy policies in Australia, and second, the effects of PISA as a global scale metric of comparison between national education systems. Both cases demonstrate the significant role of the OECD as a transnational policy actor in the construction of this global education policy field and a new sphere of political authority, which affects the political authority of nations and the ways education policy is now conceptualised and produced. Our focus is education policy for two reasons: first because it has traditionally been seen as derived from national political authority alone and secondly because understanding globalisation requires a specific empirical focus, rather than non-grounded and broad generalisations (Dale 1999, 2005; Tikly 2004).

What do we mean by rescaling of educational policy and politics ? The complexity of the postnational reality has resulted in some researchers arguing the need to talk about a transition from government to governance in policymaking (Rosenau 1997, 2005; Rosenau and Czempiel 1992; Rhodes 1997). This is related to the rescaling of politics. In this argument, government refers to hierarchical, public decision-making bound within nations and state structures, while governance refers to networked decisionmaking that is inclusive of the private sector and of organisations beyond the nation-state. Appadurai (2006) speaks of the former as vertebrate relations expressed in the traditional hierarchical relations of the bureaucratic state within nations, while he classifies the latter as cellular relationships that work in networked ways and often transnationally. The transition from government to governance refers to three explicit changes: first, in relation to nations and global politics; second, in relation to policymaking within nations; and third, the heavier involvement of the private sector in policy changes. The first change associated with the transition to governance is a move towards multi-layered or ‘pluri-scalar’ (Dale 2005) policy and decision-making involving agencies beyond the nation. Another way of conceptualising this is as the relocation of political authority to what we call ‘transnational policy’. This relocation results in spheres of authority functioning beyond the nation, as well as at the national level (Rosenau and Czempiel 1992). For example, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), among other international organisations,1 has effects within national polities through discourses, practices, its epistemic communities (Kallo 2009), and multilateral surveillance, such as the effects of its PISA testing and national indicators of the knowledge economy and associated global policy discourses. The second change associated with the move to governance picks up on the impact of new public management on the structural arrangements and modus operandi of the state at the national level. Wiseman (2010) argues that the rise of new public management has been accompanied in education by new forms of accountability. In this context, he suggests that, ‘Evidence-based educational policymaking has become a global phenomenon’ (2010,

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3). These changes have seen an emphasis in numerous fields, including education, on outputs (measured by indicators and statistics) rather than inputs in state policy regimes, as well as new forms of outcomes accountability that are used to steer professional practice. In the context of globalisation, these outcome accountabilities also include national performance on global, comparative measures of school/student performance. The final change associated with the shift to governance picks up on the heavier involvement of the private sector in a variety of ways in this restructured state, involving privatisation, outsourcing and public/private partnerships (Ball 2007, 2008). What we have as a consequence are new forms of political authority within the nation and a more dispersed state. The combined effects of these changes associated with a rescaling of politics have been a related rescaling of educational policy, which now sees the impact and effects of transnational policy actors and institutions on national policy production in education through globalised policy discourses, multilateral surveillance and work of global epistemic communities associated with global education policy networks. The point of this expression – rescaling of educational policy – is to identify the simultaneous working of national and postnational regimes in contemporary politics and policymaking. The nation-state remains important, but now works in very different ways (often strategically) with an aim to position the national economy in an advantageous position in the global economy (Rizvi and Lingard 2010). Rosenau and Czempiel (1992) encapsulate this reality of rescaling in their talk of multiple spheres of political authority, above and within the nation, in addition to more traditional forms of national political authority. Novoa and Yariv-Mashal (2003) have argued that comparison has become central to contemporary forms of governance and that comparison today is global, as well as operating inside nations, and at both levels works through numbers. In their terms, the ‘national eye’ today governs through comparison with the assistance of the ‘global eye’, a globalised policy as numbers. At another level, all of these data, national and international, which are reflective of policy as numbers (Rose 1999), are also linked to the rise of what Power (1997) has called the ‘audit culture’, which accompanies quality assurance and the steering at a distance of the new public management, which has hollowed out the old bureaucratic structures of the nation-state. Apropos our argument, this audit culture has both global and national features. Reference societies, important comparator nations in terms of education policy borrowing and learning, are now positioned within the global field of comparative performance, thus reworking processes of externalisation and policy transfer and challenging historically based reference societies for many nations in respect of schooling systems (see Steiner-Khamsi 2004). We suggest, drawing on Bourdieu (2003), that one way that differential national effects of global policy pressures might be understood is through the amount of ‘national capital’ possessed by a given nation. The amount of national capital that a nation is able to mobilise may be a significant factor in the nature and extent of such national mediation and how a given nation is positioned in respect of the emergent global education policy field. National capital here refers to factors that count as assets that nations draw on in mediating the effects of globalisation, such as democratic governance, national levels of education or quantity and quality of a nation’s human capital as the contemporary economisation of education policy would put it. These assets help secure a given nation’s positioning within geo-politics or within various emergent global fields and help mediate pressures from above the nation and new forms of deterritorialised, postnational political authority. Indeed, in this political context a specific educational and economic policy goal of nations is to enhance their national capital through a focus on strengthening both the

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quality and quantity of the nation’s human capital. This change has led to the ‘economising’ of education policy at the macro level within nations. This constitutes a broader global (discursive) policy convergence and a global education policy discourse associated with specific practices. Such discourses and practices have been promoted by a range of international organisations (transnational policy actors), including the OECD and World Bank. It is the growing importance of this hybrid mix of global and national factors that we refer to as a rescaling of educational politics and policies, into which national policies and their effects are increasingly drawn and reconstituted in a global field of comparison. This is evidenced in multiple spheres of political authority and complex relations between a global field and national fields. Additionally, there is the complementary rejigging of national/state or national/ provincial relations within nations. On this latter, witness the attempts by Labor governments post-2007 in Australia to create a national system of schooling, despite the states holding constitutional responsibility for schooling (Lingard 2010). This internal rejigging is also apparent in the USA in attempts by President Obama to establish national maths and science standards for schools and was evident in President G.W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation, which had the effect of enhancing federal power vis-á-vis state and local authority in schooling in the US. In sum, and extending Bourdieu’s (2003) work on an emergent global economic field, one of the effects of globalisation in relation to education policy processes is the emergence of this global education policy field. Education has become a central economic policy tool for nations, geared to the strengthening of national capital for enhancing global competitiveness, and has become positioned as a foil against the uncertainty that global market dynamics produce. The OECD, amongst other international organisations, has been important in creating a global meta-policy consensus about these matters. This economistic reframing of education policy has also seen a need within nations for international comparative performance data and comparative indicators in relation to national education and training systems (Brown et al. 1997) as measures of likely economic prosperity. Thus international comparative measures of school and student performance become in effect surrogate measures of the potential global competitiveness of national economies and are also ‘perceived as indicators of modernization and economic productivity’ (Wiseman 2010, 11). This is where a globalised version of policy as numbers comes into play. Our argument, though, is that this policy as numbers approach within nations has now also been globalised as part of the rescaling of policy and pluri-scalar governance – the rescaling and relocation of political authority, and as a way of nations measuring and comparing their educational performance globally against that of other nations. Cusso and D’Amico (2005) demonstrate the alignment of statistical categories across UNESCO, the OECD, EU and World Bank, which we see as central to the constitution of the global field and multilateral surveillance through the use of a range of international testing and indicators (Mundy 2007). The OECD, seeking a new role in the context of globalisation, has moved to establish itself as the international organisation par excellence in terms of technical expertise regarding international educational indicators and measurement of educational performance globally (Rizvi and Lingard 2006, 2009). In relation to schooling and PISA, it is a global epistemic community of test experts that the OECD has relied on to constitute the emergent global education policy field. However, prior to examining the influence of the OECD on the emergent global education policy field, this chapter turns to the emergence of the knowledge economy in Australia, illustrating the effects of the OECD’s work on national education policy fields, and thus cross-field effects between national and global education policy fields.

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Rescaling and the knowledge economy: practices and discourses The knowledge economy emerged as a policy concept (a globalised policy discourse) within the global education policy field during the 1990s, alongside other competitor concepts such as the knowledge society and learning society (see Kenway et al. 2006; Peters and Besley 2006). These competitor concepts were developed and proselytised by a number of competing international organisations or transnational policy actors (e.g. the OECD and the World Bank). The OECD’s (1996) The Knowledge-based Economy was a centrally significant policy document in this respect. The emergence of an Australian policy version of the knowledge economy, in the form of Batterham’s review (2000), provides an example of the effects of the rescaling of educational policy. This policy review illustrates the translation of a specific global policy discourse to a specific set of national circumstances (see also Dale 2005; Robertson 2005). The differences between the account presented and other research is that we consider the ways in which the knowledge economy became embedded in one national education policy field, as a strategic move by national policymakers, and linked to a global education policy field, a globalised education policy discourse and specific policy text. We draw on Bourdieu’s theory of social fields specifically to emphasise the relationships between different national and global education policy fields, and what we refer to as ‘cross-field effects’. While we will not provide an extended treatment of policy fields, the concept of fields, pace Bourdieu, will be used to refer to different social spaces, both territorial (e.g. national) and deterritorialised (e.g. the global field), in which agents compete for specific stakes. In particular, we will discuss the ‘field of print journalism’, the ‘field of policy’, the ‘field of politics’, the ‘field of higher education’ and the ‘field of business’. Cross-field effects are used here as a way of highlighting the effects (in practice and discourse) that policy developments produce in fields beyond the policy field and vice versa, and between different scales of policy fields, national and global. In our example, we focus specifically on a subclass of cross-field effects which we call ‘looping effects’, drawing on Hacking’s conceptual work (1975, 1995, 2003, 2004) and an application of these effects within Bourdieu’s theory of fields. Looping effects propose a mechanism of cross-field effects, which result from agents in one field (such as journalists or policymakers) diagnosing specific social problems that involve naming groups of agents, categorising their roles and providing an imperative to intervene and change the practices of some named groups. These effects can be identified as looping effects because the responses of groups of people to their diagnosis are in fact the effects in practice. Consequently, looping effects represent one type of causal mechanism to explain and explore cross-field policy effects. To begin the discussion of Australia’s adoption of knowledge economy policies, we will describe the specific tensions and pressures between different fields in which Batterham’s review can be represented as an intervention. In addition, it is necessary to describe the tensions and pressures that contributed to the emergence of Australia’s version of the knowledge economy. Discussion of these tensions and pressures provides a basis for explaining the kinds of cross-field effects produced by Batterham’s review. The major sources of tension for the review were provoked by a series of newspaper articles from a range of journalists produced prior to the announcement of Batterham’s review. These reports documented considerable dissatisfaction with the government’s funding of research, higher education and innovation and reflected concerns from a number of fields, including higher education, business, science and industry. Some of the reported dissatisfaction resulted from the Australian government’s seeming refusal to

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offer increased funding to these fields. However, one recurring topic was that, on measures used by the OECD, Australia’s performance in knowledge production and innovation was falling behind other OECD and competitor countries. Australia’s policies on higher education were, therefore, being drawn into a global policy field of multilateral comparison through emerging themes carried in articles and as a result of the practices of journalists. These practices produced a comparison of Australia’s performance against other OECD nations based on two major measures: since 1996, a lowering expenditure on universities in comparison to other nations and reduced funding specifically focussed on research and development (particularly government expenditure on research and development). We can view this as an illustration of comparison as a form of governance. This suggested that Australia was falling behind in its capacity to compete with other OECD nations in knowledge-based industries. Yet, despite the seemingly comprehensive decline in Australia’s position on these OECD measures, when Batterham’s review was announced, the terms of reference were limited to the extent to which Australia’s science, engineering and technology capabilities could contribute to the economy. The terms of reference that guided Batterham’s review provided a diagnosis of the problem and an avenue for addressing Australia’s declining OECD comparative performance. Specifically, the terms of reference suggested that the ‘science base’, inclusive of Australia’s science, engineering and technology institutions, was the vital connection between innovation, knowledge production and the community, rather than other aspects of education or even other disciplines in higher education. It was the science base, therefore, that provided a basis on which Australia’s capacity for economic competitiveness could be improved. However, throughout the course of Batterham’s review, emerging themes carried in newspaper articles continually challenged these limited terms of reference. Journalists reported updated figures released by the OECD in their articles, highlighting an even greater decline in Australia’s comparative expenditure performance. This reporting applied additional pressure on the limited terms of reference and the overall direction of the review. Moreover, this reporting continued to direct the mediatised policy debate into a global field of comparison. Batterham attempted to resolve the tensions between the field of politics and the field of print journalism by offering a final diagnosis which provided direct associations with the OECD’s knowledge-based economy policy. To deal with the emerging themes from the fields of print journalism and politics, Batterham diagnosed and represented the problem to be a series of blockages within a number of specific fields that prevented innovation from occurring in Australia. One location of these blockages was represented as a government view of funding to the science base and other knowledge institutions as expenditure without returns. Batterham proposed in response to this aspect of the problem that such funding should be viewed as an investment with specific and measurable returns. Another location of these blockages was the lack of incentives for interactions between people situated at different points within Australia’s innovation system. From Batterham’s perspective, the result of this blockage was that much new knowledge produced in Australia’s research institutions did not have an avenue for commercialisation. Batterham’s response to this aspect of the problem was to aim for increased funding, with the intention of keeping Australia competitive with other OECD nations. However, Batterham also identified the need for Australia to be strategic in the allocation of funds so that the benefits of funding research would lead to commercialisation and more researchers staying in Australia. This brief summary of the events within the field of journalism and the field of policy over the course of Batterham’s review demonstrates how policy production in Australia around the concept of knowledge economy was mediated by the field of journalism. Furthermore, this summary narrative provides evidence of particular cross-field effects,

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namely looping effects. This can be viewed as the mediatisation of policy production in Fairclough’s (2000) sense, in that it suggests ‘a new relationship between politics, government and mass media . . . which means that many significant political events are now in fact media events’ (2000, 3) and is an important development in the production of contemporary policy. The case also shows how comparative indicators from the OECD in relation to Australia’s investment in the science base were a significant factor in the final policy outcome, as was the need to justify investment in the science base and higher education. This latter justification was framed by and linked to the globalised discourse of science and education investment as being central to the global competitiveness of the national economy, a discourse proselytised by a range of international organisations, including importantly in this case, the OECD.

PISA and the global education policy field The knowledge economy discourse was a globalised education policy discourse produced within the global field by a number of transnational policy actors, particularly the OECD; its 1996 report was very influential globally. As shown in the previous section, OECD global comparative indicators on expenditure on research and development were also influential in Australia’s uptake of the knowledge economy discourse. The broader story of the OECD’s educational indicators, which are published annually in Education at a Glance, has been elaborated elsewhere (Henry et al. 2001). These indicators attempt to deal with input–outcomes relationships in education systems. As already noted, the OECD is also involved with the World Bank and UNESCO in the creation of World Education Indicators, a project which seeks to create indicators in education for nations of the global south, as a complement to its educational indicators, which deal largely, but not wholly, with its 30 member nations. We would also note the alignment of statistical categories across the OECD, Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, UNESCO and the World Bank. Rutkowski (2007) has also written about the creation of a multilateral global space of measurement in relation to the OECD’s numbers work and that of the World Educational Indicators, which, he argues, contribute to ‘soft policy convergence’ in education across the globe. These are spatial technologies of governance, which help constitute the global field of education policy. The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which was established in the late 1990s, has been conducted four times now (2000, 2003, 2006, 2009) and seeks to measure students’ literacy, numeracy, science literacy and sometimes problem solving capabilities and potential for lifelong learning at the end of compulsory schooling (approximately aged 15 years). [See Grek (2009) for a history of the development of PISA.] In 2006, 57 countries participated, while in 2009 the number was almost 100. These tests, commissioned from experts and expert agencies, purport to be noncurricula based. In a way they constitute the globe as a space of equivalence with the emphasis being much more upon standardised measures rather than on accuracy of measurement, even though we would concede that the tests are probably as technically good as they could be, as is the analysis of them. However, their policy use as points of comparison between nations gives priority to their standardisation over their accuracy. Expert consensus and the creation of a cognate epistemic community also grant legitimacy to this standardisation work of the OECD. The relevant global epistemic community takes an active role in helping to constitute and reconstitute national policy focus (Kallo 2009). This cognate epistemic community produces a particular policy habitus, which enhances cross-field effects between the global education policy field and specific national fields and which pulls politicians and policymakers into the global field.

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Kallo (2009) also suggests that today the self-description of the OECD as an intergovernmental agency has been superseded by this actor role. Indeed, she argues that the OECD can also be seen as a ‘transgovernmental organisation’ (2009, 56) to refer to the connections between agencies of different governments facilitated by the OECD. She also argues that the OECD has some supranational features in relation to the ways its views and recommendations feed into national legislative changes. Additionally, Kallo (2009) draws on the research on ‘epistemic communities’ to argue another way the OECD today exerts influence. She suggests that the OECD works as a de facto transnational policy actor through the interwoven global and national policy roles of experts. Here she utilises Haas’s (1992, 3) definition of epistemic community to refer to ‘networks of professionals with recognised expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge’. Such epistemic communities – transnational policy actors – are central to the constitution of the global education policy field and provide evidence of the rescaling of political authority. In national responses to PISA results, politicians often briefly raise questions of test validity (particularly when a nation has done poorly), but quickly move to considerations of the necessary policy responses, thus granting validity to PISA. We would note as well how this policy as numbers work has also rearticulated other aspects of the OECD’s educational work. So, for example, the recent National Review of Scottish education is entitled, Quality and Equity of Schooling in Scotland (OECD 2007). The title reflects the dual mode of analysis of PISA results the OECD offers: a quality measure (comparative performance scores) and an equity measure (the strength of the effects of socio-economic status on student performance and the width of the gap between top-performing and poor-performing students). Quality and equity as defined by PISA tests and analysis have become important policy devices within national education systems – another example of the cross-field effects of PISA. As an aside, in addition to quality and equity, Wiseman (2010) argues that control is often a central purpose of evidence-based policymaking and policy as numbers. We concur and suggest that this motive can be seen in the national developments in schooling in Australia and the USA, already referred to, set against concern about international comparative performance of schools. Some international donor agencies now also require participation in PISA by nations of the global south as the quid pro quo or conditionality for donor funding. Furthermore, the educational systems of nations such as Finland, which achieve both quality and equity on PISA, have become important references for most national education systems. Korea is beginning to work in a similar way in respect of Asian societies. In terms of our overall argument, these might be seen as postnational reference societies considered on a global space of equivalence, as opposed to earlier, nation to nation comparisons. The global education policy field then is being constituted through a globalised approach to policy as numbers, utilising various technologies that we have outlined in a somewhat skeletal fashion and as suggested by scholars such as Rutkowski (2007). More empirical research and theorising are required into this specific element of the rescaling of education policy production, relocation of political authority and pluri-scalar governance within education. Consideration also needs to be given to policy as numbers approaches at other supranational levels, for example, in the indicators work in relation to education within the EU (Grek et al. 2009a, 2009b) and the comparative educational performance measures developed by other agencies such as the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). There are also a range of other international comparative measures of educational performance; for example, TIMSS and PIRLS conducted by IEA. However, we have concentrated in this brief case study on

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the OECD’s indicators and PISA work, because it is the OECD which has sought to create a global space of equivalence through both.

Conclusion In our cases we have begun to outline the contours of the new scalar politics as evident in the new production rules for education policy, which are symbiotic with the rescaling of the political authority associated with globalisation and in the strategic education policy work of nations today. In so doing, we have also sketched the imbrications of the global and the national in education policy production and the emergent global education policy field as elements of the rescaling of educational politics and the relocation of political authority. In so doing, we have drawn on the tools of Bourdieu. Both cases represent the synchronous interweaving of national and postnational political pressures in education, of the global and national education policy fields and cross-field effects. The concept of rescaling educational policy advanced in this chapter goes beyond the ‘common world education culture’ (Dale 2005) argument proffered by the world polity theorists such as Meyer (e.g. Meyer, Benavot, and Kamens 1992). In relation to a global education policy field, we documented the significance of a global articulation of policy as numbers and comparison as a new form of governance, as well as the ways in which these help constitute the global education policy field through the creation of a commensurate global space of measurement in a fashion comparable to the ways in which nationbuilding and state statistics were imbricated in each other (Porter 1995; Desrosieres 1998). Thus our argument has moved beyond the governance without government and rescaling of political authority thesis outlined by Rosenau and Czempiel (1992) and others to suggest that within the domain of education policy there has emerged a global education policy field that has policy effects within national education policy and policy processes. This is a specific manifestation of the relocation of some political authority outside the nation with effects inside the nation and might be seen as an emergent form of meta-governance (Whitehead 2003). The first policy case presented an account of the ways in which national policy fields draw on the resources offered by the global education policy field. The focus was on the OECD’s concept of a knowledge-based economy and its global agenda setting work. This case outlined ways in which both the field of policy and the field of print journalism drew on global policy discourses and comparative indicators offered within the global education policy field to challenge the then Australian government’s representation of problems related to knowledge production and economic competitiveness. The role of the field of print journalism over the course of this review illustrated what, after Fairclough (2000), we called the mediatisation of policy, in that media coverage offered alternative diagnoses of problems facing knowledge production in Australia, but also introduced emerging themes around the importance of global comparisons of performance. We would also note that the field of journalism is being globalised (Rawolle and Lingard 2010). The second case proposed an argument more directly about the development of an emergent global education policy field, which acts as a global field of comparison, in which the educational performance of nations is reduced to a limited range of numbers and indicators as a surrogate measure of economic competitiveness. Testing, indicators and metrics developed by international organisations take on a much broader political significance as a result of the emergence of this field, which is constituted by their policy as numbers work, and which reconstitutes national education policy against and within a new scale of equivalence. In acknowledging the global character of these developments, Wiseman (2010, 18) observes:

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Our argument is that the rescaling of education policy and the relocation of political authority hold particular importance for comparative education in relation to the flows and shaping of global policy discourses, practices and concepts from international organisations such as the OECD. Such flows are exemplified in the national or vernacularised versions of policy concepts such as the ‘knowledge economy’, a concept that attained an identity within Australian national policy through the policy, discursive and indicators work of the OECD (1996). Yet, these changes hold specific challenges for methodologies suited to researching comparative education focused on education policy. Thus, to do effective policy analysis in education today, we need to take account of the pluri-scalar character of educational governance, the tiered nature of political authority in addition to that located nationally. This includes new forms of educational multilateralism, restructured national policy processes, enhanced policy borrowing and transfer, and new regionalisms. Our argument, though, suggests that in addition to these there is the emergence of an as yet inchoate global education policy field, which needs to be added to the conceptual toolbox for doing education policy analysis. Drawing on Bourdieu’s thinking tools, we need to research and theorise the actors, capitals, habitus and logics of practice of the global education policy field and the way, through cross-field effects, in which it reframes policy processes and content within national education systems. This becomes an important task for comparative education and the work of comparison. This will contribute to ensuring that comparative education is more than a mode of governance as critiqued by Novoa and Yariv-Mashal (2003). We believe the argument and the cases offered in this chapter confirm Crossley and Watson’s (2003) stance and the argument proffered by Dale (2005) that developments associated with globalisation, particularly in its neo-liberal form, demand a rethinking of the theories and methodologies of comparative education, given that the nation-state is no longer fully sovereign in matters of education and particularly in respect of education policy production and focus. However, the current global financial crisis has also thrown out some challenges to neo-liberal globalisation with attempts at both national and global financial re-regulation, which might also have implications for the analysis we have provided in terms of restructuring both the global and national education policy fields.2 The concluding point we would make in relation to rethinking comparative education policy analysis is that Bourdieu’s bundles of concepts, including social field, habitus, capitals (especially national capital), practices and logics of practice within a field, might be very usefully applied in education policy studies within a comparative education framework (van Zanten 2005; Rawolle and Lingard 2008). Bourdieu’s work certainly allows for theorising and empirical research about the emergent global education policy field, whose emergence throws out a challenge to comparative education, and affects the national education policy field. We have used Bourdieu in an indicative fashion throughout. Now we need more empirical work to develop the concept of a global education policy field and how it works in relation to specific education policy developments in particular nations and transnationally.

Acknowledgement We would like to thank Dr Kate Johnstone for her very useful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter and on its overall argument.

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Notes 1

2

Other examples of these types of international organisation (transnational policy actors) include the World Bank, European Union, the United Nations (UN), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). In this context, some (e.g. Whitehead 2003) have spoken of ‘meta-governance’ to refer to the government of governance, which might be an interesting way to refer to attempts at re-regulation, nationally and globally.

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CHAPTER 6

SCOTTISH EDUCATION Reflections from an international perspective Bob Lingard Originally published in: T. G. K. Bryce and W. M. Humes (eds), Scottish education: Beyond devolution, third edition (pp. 968–981). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008

Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation. (Alasdair Gray)

Introduction This quotation from the Scottish novelist Alasdair Gray appears on the exterior of the Scottish Storytelling Centre on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. The aphorism seems to exemplify the continuing primacy of Enlightenment aspirations in contemporary Scotland and signifies the enduring centrality of storytelling to the constitution of collective narratives. As Arthur Herman (2001) argues in The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots’ Invention of the Modern World (New York: Crown), the Enlightenment created and institutionalised a view of human beings as rational beings who, through the application of science to both the natural and social worlds, could ensure human and social progress: ‘Political progress could take place in the same way it took place in mathematics or chemistry: by exhaustive investigation and research, by developing a clear theory that explained the facts, and then applying it’ (p. 259). Crucial here is the role of education. Gray’s aphorism can also be seen to imply the importance of education to such a project through the pedagogic work it does on the exterior of this building, It is interesting in this respect as well, that the new Scottish Parliament, further down the Royal Mile from the Storytelling Centre, also has the words of writers, albeit all male writers, displayed in this way on the exterior of the building. Indeed, as far back as 1696, prior to the Act of Union with England in 1707, the Scottish Parliament passed the Education Act, which required the establishment of an elementary school in every parish where one did not then exist. An effect was that, by the end of the eighteenth century, Scotland’s literacy rate was higher than in any other country on earth. As Herman notes, ‘Scotland became Europe’s first modern literate society’ (2001, p. 23) with the creation of a reading public beyond the intellectual classes. Significant here too have been the universities, seen as public institutions, and the fact that the endowed secondary schools that existed prior to the creation of a mass system of state secondary schooling in the twentieth century were also very much public institutions, a distinctive inheritance and distinct from the English situation (Paterson, 2003). The creation of a Scottish system of comprehensive secondary schools from the 1960s, reflective of developments at the time across Europe, albeit with a mainly academic curriculum, can also be seen to mirror this history. It constructs specific Scottish conceptions of the relationship between schooling and democracy as well as between individual opportunity and collective well-being. This has been linked with a strong meritocratic

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ideology of equal opportunities for all, academic curricula being deemed central to providing such opportunities. The Presbyterian Church as the established church in Scotland has also supported or complemented these core egalitarian tendencies with common provision linked to individual opportunities. This conception of the individual can be sharply contrasted with that of the neoliberal individual underpinning public policies, and specifically education policies, during the Conservative (1979–97) and New Labour (1997 to date) periods of government at Westminster. In fact, Paterson (2003) argues that the Scottish vote for devolution in the 1997 Referendum reflected at one level opposition to the neo-liberal, competitive, individualistic and market-orientated education policies being introduced by the Conservative Westminster government. This chapter suggests that this idiosyncratic and progressive Scottish Enlightenment and educational heritage is under pressure today from a number of developments. These are associated with globalisation, the emergence of supranational political entities such as the European Union, the flows of globalised educational policy discourses and perhaps an emergent global education policy field. We can see significant residues of the Scottish past in contemporary education policy. There is also a dominant social democratic conception of education concerned with a distinctively Scottish culture, and with opportunity, social cohesion and inclusion delivered through an academic curriculum in comprehensive schools. Moreover, there are some emergent trends linked to the global pressures, such as the significance of education to the competitiveness of the Scottish economy. What is offered here are my impressions of education in Scotland, based on long experience of living in and researching education in Australia, with a brief period of two years working at the University of Sheffield in the English context, and now having lived and worked in Scotland for about two years. These perspectives are set specifically against the concept of ‘reference societies’ (Schriewer and Martinez, 2004) in relation to Scottish education and the broader policy effects of globalisation. They are also used as lenses through which one can think about contemporary Scottish education. While there are homogenising pressures and tendencies resulting from globalisation, these pressures always come up against the specificities of local culture, histories and politics. This is what has been called ‘vernacular globalisation’, which makes us aware of globalisation from below (within the nation) as opposed to globalisation from above (beyond the nation). The argument applies very much to Scotland, which was described, prior to devolution, as a national entity within a unitary state. McCrone (2005) makes a similar point when talking about the concept of the nationstate in relation to Scotland, where nation refers to cultural signifiers and state to the political apparatus, and where the concept suggests a homology between the cultural and the political. This concept is interesting when applied to post-devolution Scotland, where economic policy is made at Westminster, but education and cultural policies (as well as health) are devolved powers of the Scottish Parliament. There are interesting interplays and overlays between the cultural and the political in contemporary Scotland. In this context, McCrone speaks of Scotland as an ‘understated nation’. He makes the relevant point for this chapter that, even prior to devolution, ‘The separateness of Scottish systems of education, law, religion, in short, civil society, are what marks it out as a quasi-state, a semi-state’ (p. 74). In a complementary way, Paterson (2003) has argued persuasively that, in the absence of a separate state after the Union of 1707, Scots developed a specific sense of the public which was ‘rooted in civil society rather than the state’ (p. 29). McCrone argues that it is this distinctive form of governance, strengthened postdevolution, and the importance of civil society, which are in many ways the sources of Scottish sentiment. On education, he notes: ‘In other words, people think of themselves

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as Scottish because of the micro-contexts of their lives reinforced by the school system’ (p. 74). For McCrone, governance is the basis of Scottish sentiment, and it might be argued that schooling has been a central civil institution in the production of this Scottish sentiment. There is also a way in which devolution in Scotland is a product of globalisation mixing with these historical and local political factors, a matter which will be pursued later. And of course Scotland is still part of the UK and thus a member of the European Union, itself both a reflection of and response to globalisation. With the Scottish National Party under Alex Salmond now in government in Scotland, there are further moves towards Scottish independence, another reflection of globalisation pressures mixing with the local and the historical. The Labour Party in Scotland, defeated at the 2007 election, is also talking about the need for more powers to be devolved. Moreover, there have been some tentative moves to strengthen Scotland’s standing in Europe by the Salmond government and to strengthen Scotland’s presence at the UN. What we see at work here is a Scottish exemplar of pressures from above and below on the contemporary nationstate (here the UK, given the semi-state status of Scotland and the tensions between nation and state in respect of Scotland). In terms of politics, one can think of the lack of Tory success in Scotland during the long period of Conservative government from 1979 to 1997 in the UK, with little Tory political representation in Scotland. Paterson (2003) suggests that this period in fact strengthened commitments to Scottish distinctiveness in public policy, including those in education. One often hears the observation that Scots are social democrats at heart and that Scotland is best thought of as a northern European nation of social democratic temperament, more akin to the Scandinavian countries than to its southern neighbour, England. McCrone (2005) in fact argues that ‘social democratic values were in Scotland badged as “Scottish” ’, while Paterson (2002) shows that those in the political centre in Scotland are closer to the left than is the political centre in England, which is more aligned with the right. These social democratic values are important in terms of the framing of educational structures and policies in Scotland. Furthermore, I think we can see that the Labour Party in Scotland and the Scottish National Party both sit within a social democratic spectrum. And we do well to remember that the Labour Party was in government in Scotland in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, another signifier of the broad social democratic consensus in Scottish politics. Lack of distancing from Blair’s New Labour could be seen to be one factor in Scottish Labour’s defeat at the polls in 2007. I have spoken to this point of Scotland as a whole, but there are differences between the various parts of Scotland and between its major cities and towns, and Highlands and Islands. Edinburgh, for example, is the capital city, a city long the centre of financial and political power in Scotland, as well as the home of Scottish Enlightenment figures such as David Hume and the economist, Adam Smith. This Enlightenment heritage almost seems to be manifest materially in the architecture of Edinburgh, where educational buildings, the University of Edinburgh for example, Robert Adam’s cupola in particular, and a number of independent schools, all make a significant mark on the cityscape, occupying a certain space and helping to define the place. Furthermore, while only 4 per cent of Scottish young people attend independent schools, at the secondary level the figure for Edinburgh is 25 per cent, a signifier of the class structure of contemporary Edinburgh, which can perhaps be contrasted with that of Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow, which was an industrial powerhouse in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This also is a demonstration of the centrality of education in the Scottish psyche; the continuing residues of the Scottish Enlightenment. It is significant to note, though, that the figure of 4 per cent of students in independent schools has been constant for decades,

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demonstrating overall public and middle-class support for state schools and the comprehensive model. Education, then, has been central to the construction of Scottishness. It remains so, but is today being challenged by the multifarious pressures resulting from globalisation, including flows of people and ideas, neo-liberal economic policies and pressures, globalised education policy discourses, and policy effects of the UK and EU levels of governance. It is to these matters that the argument now turns through a consideration of the concept of ‘reference societies’ and the effects of globalisation.

Reference societies Schriewer and Martinez (2004) developed the concept of ‘reference societies’ to refer to those nations/societies which any given nation regards as significant comparator nations. For Scotland generally, and in relation to education, the significant reference society is England – England as Scotland’s ‘other’, as it were. This is a negative construction of the reference society rather than a positive aspiring one. In post-devolution Scotland, this referencing is in some ways comparable to the USA as Canada’s other, Australia as New Zealand’s other and perhaps Singapore as Malaysia’s other. In respect of Scotland and England, England is the negative other; Scotland is not England, while both are subject to the always mediated effects of globalisation. In some ways, these love/hate and semiotic relationships remain central to the defining of the national characteristics of the smaller nation in relation to its referent, and often remain at the level of the unspoken and unsaid, but always subconsciously present. These relationships are central to the selfdefinitions of the smaller nation. The advertising and tourism slogan for Scotland, ‘the best small country in the world’, utilised during the period of the McConnell Labour government in Scotland, captures well this aspect of the Scottish psyche, as well as reflecting the diminutives redolent in Scottish colloquial language. Perhaps ‘the best wee nation in the world’ would have better captured this aspect of the Scottish psyche, with ‘wee’ doing different semantic work from that of ‘small’ and signifying a Scottish nuance in the language. There is an element here of a small peripheral nation seeking its own identity through stark contrast with the other. In relation to the negative referent England, one is drawn to contemplate Freud’s idea of the narcissism of small differences. In education in Scotland, England as the other is evident in the rejection by the previous Labour government of top-up fees for university students – and, while being politically astute and popular, the decision precipitates questions about ongoing funding levels for the Scottish universities, especially in the future when it seems likely that limits on such fees will be lifted in England. This political decision also reflected the attempt by Scottish Labour to distance itself from the New Labour government in Westminster, as well as reflecting something of the egalitarian ethos of Scotland. The distancing for Scottish Labour was clearly not great enough, given the outcome of the 2007 election. However, the change of government resulted in the continuation of a range of social policies sitting along the social democratic spectrum, with a greater populism and acknowledgement of local differences across the country, and a stronger push for Scottish independence. My own experience at the University of Edinburgh would suggest that it is a university that recognises its identity as an international university, a great European university, and then a Scottish one, with professional and ideological functions in respect of the production and reproduction of the Scottish professional and governing elites. The British or UK context seems to be airbrushed from this self-representation – and this is the antithesis in many ways of the talk of the current Labour prime minister, a Scot, who

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apparently feels it necessary to use ‘British’ in almost every public utterance, in defence of the Union. Both are indicative of England as Scotland’s other and Scotland’s ambivalent positioning within the United Kingdom. The Tory project in education, in England at least (1979–97), saw the weakening of local authority influence in schooling and, through a discourse of derision, an attack on the supposed ‘provider capture’ of school policies and practices by teachers. New structural arrangements between central government and bureaucracy, local authorities and schools were created, a trend continued under New Labour post-1997. Indeed, local authority influence was considerably weakened. This has not been the case in Scotland, where there remain many powerful institutions in educational governance and continuing professional framing of education policy. I am thinking here of national bodies such as the Education Directorate within Scottish Government, Learning and Teaching Scotland, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, the General Teaching Council, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate and the local authorities. What strikes me about this administrative arrangement is the multiplicity of agencies in a small nation of five million people. We see here an older-style state structure and a dispersal of power, different from the contemporary governance of education in England, where neo-liberal politics have witnessed changed structures and purposes of the state through an outcomes focus and steering at a distance from the centre. I am also interested in the division between curriculum development and examinations and the relative absence of pedagogical concerns from the structure in the Scottish context. These features probably reflect the professional standing of teachers and the lack of a discourse of derision in relation to them – a real distinguishing feature from England. This discourse broke trust relationships within schooling policy in England at least and involved people other than educators centrally in policy production. Policies such as the Literacy Hour in England also carried messages about the required pedagogical practices to push up attainment. There was no comparable hostility directed towards Scottish teachers during that period or subsequently, following devolution of education to the Scottish Parliament after 1999. Indeed, teachers in Scotland appear to have retained status and the trust of the public and of politicians and policy makers, something seemingly long lost in English schooling. Furthermore, Scottish teachers through the McCrone Agreement are highly paid compared with teachers in Europe, and have an entitlement to professional development built into their working lives. They are not subject to a culture of performativity, or a relentless policy focus on the continual improvement of pupil attainment, which is central in the framing of contemporary education policy in England. The development of the Chartered Teacher model from McCrone to allow for teacher promotion within the classroom and the centrality of universities to the delivery of Chartered Teacher Masters degrees, linked to pay increments, is also a strong manifestation of Scotland/ England differences regarding the policy positioning of teachers. Policy documents in education in Scotland genuinely support teacher professionalism. This is very evident in the large curriculum reform instigated under the previous Labour government, Curriculum for Excellence, and indeed in the related assessment reform, Assessment is for Learning. The GTCS has a much longer provenance than its sister organisation in England and is very strict about teacher registration in specific subject domains. Secondary teachers with a four-year Scottish degree in a discipline are usually only eligible for registration in one teaching subject (sometimes two, depending on the content of their degree), reflecting the traditional academic character of Scottish secondary schools. Scotland has also eschewed the plethora of national tests linked to league tables which ensure defensive pedagogies geared to meeting attainment targets and encourage teaching to the test (Hartley, 2003; Ranson, 2003). This testing regime was created to

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provide information for parents as part of the construction of a quasi-market linked to a policy of school choice. League tables were thus central to the discourse of parental choice and the establishment of a market in schooling. The English policy ensemble viewed parents and students as consumers, thus weakening notions of the public or common-good function of schooling and encouraging new self-capitalising individuals rather than democratic citizens. This consumerist and individualistic construction has also been accompanied by a human capital theory justification of education policy – the view that investment in a nation’s human capital is central to its global economic competitiveness. The inspectorate in England played an important role during the Conservative era in helping to instantiate this quasi-market through the ‘naming and shaming’ of ‘failing schools’. School choice discourses and the introduction of a quasi-market have been much less evident in the Scottish context, with the comprehensive ideal remaining the norm at the secondary level, a situation institutionalised from the 1960s (Paterson, 2003) This is in stark contrast to the proliferation of different types of secondary institutions in the English context including the City Academies, which has been part of a broader critique of the comprehensive model and of mixed-ability teaching. Scottish school structures and provision seem more akin to Scandinavian models, where it has been said that in each country there is a single rather than a differentiated school system, with the notable exception perhaps of the role of the independent schools in Edinburgh, as already noted. The Inspectorate in Scotland has played a supportive rather than a punitive role in relation to schools and introduced new forms of intelligent accountability. While the use of schooling to construct the neo-liberal subject has not been evident, a human capital discourse as a broad policy rationale for a raft of education policies is, however, apparent. This is an effect of globalised educational policy discourses in the context of the world economy and seen as central to the emergent knowledge economy, where knowledge becomes almost intrinsic to the production process itself. Ozga (2005) has encapsulated the distinctiveness of Scottish schooling compared with its reference society of England in the following way: To summarise differences from England, there is a broader conceptualisation of educational purposes, a much less prescriptive take on curriculum and pedagogy, acceptance of the professional voice in policy making (including the strong place of local authorities), and very little promotion of the parent as consumer. This follows directly from continued adherence to comprehensive organisation of schooling and to the principle of common provision that it represents. One significant way in which neo-liberalism has affected Scottish education in line with developments in England is through the use of private-finance initiatives (PFI) to fund new infrastructure in Scottish schools and colleges, with unknown future consequences in terms of expenditure on schooling. The difference perhaps with PFI developments in England is that in Scotland such ‘privatisation’ and financial indebtedness to the private sector has only occurred in relation to infrastructure and has not affected the actual provision of schooling as appears to be the case in England (Ball, 2007). The concept of reference societies has been extended in the context of globalisation and now works in different ways in relation to the emerging global education policy field. Comparative school and educational performance surveys operate above and across nations in this respect. These include: •

The OECD’s Educational Indicators, published annually in Education at a Glance (see Henry et al., 2001);

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Scottish education The OECD’s World Educational Indicators, jointly supported by UNESCO and the World Bank (see Rutkowski, 2007); The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA); The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS); and The Lisbon Declaration Indicators of the EU.

On the World Educational Indicators, which are being developed in relation to the nations of the Global South (as a complement to the OECD’s Educational Indicators developed in relation to OECD member nations), Rutkowski (2007) speaks of soft education policy convergence flowing from the creation of such indicators. He also talks about the creation by UNESCO in the 1970s of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) and its subsequent modification in 1997, in conjunction with the OECD and Eurostat (the statistical agency of the EU), and how this has also contributed to soft convergence. Lawn and Lingard (2001) have demonstrated how some ‘semiperipheral’ Mediterranean member nations of the OECD and the EU, namely Greece and Portugal, modified their national statistical collections to bring them into line with OECD requirements. A ‘magistrature of influence’ above the nation is used to describe these supranational education-policy effects. This institutionalisation of international performance data of various kinds links to the new scalar politics now rearticulating and recontextualising national educational policies, as the nation-state is pressured from above and below, with the state itself morphing into an altered form under new public management. The new corporate managerialism has witnessed attempts to instantiate private sector management structures in an ecumenical way inside the public sectors of nations. The state steers this at a distance through the use of comparative performance data. A novel form of educational governance is emerging and perhaps, with it, a global education policy field. It is interesting, in respect of new global policy spaces, that Scotland has separate representation in Brussels and, while being considered as part of the UK for PISA, it paid to be represented as a separate ‘nation’ with its own national sample for the 2006 survey. Despite its vernacular specificities, Scotland does not remain immune from this magistrature of influence or from soft convergence pressures in education policy. As Novoa and Yariv-Mashal (2003) insightfully argue, the ‘global eye’ of comparative performance data assists the ‘national eye’ in governing. Within this global space of comparative educational performance, Finland has become a reference society in terms of educational performance for most nations on the planet (Simola, 2005). Indeed, Finland has been at the top of the international league table of PISA performance across the 2000 and 2003 surveys. It is also interesting that the Nordic Ministers of Education work with a large amount of comparative data on PISA across these countries and note the limited socio-economic effects on school performance in that group of countries, unlike the situation in Anglo-Celtic-American countries, where social class (and ethnicity) remains an important ‘determinant’ of educational performance. It is also interesting, in relation to the argument being advanced here about an emergent global education policy field, that for PISA 2006 fifty-seven nations participated, while OECD has only thirty member nations. PISA creates a space of equivalence across these nations as part of the measurement of students’ capacities at the end of secondary schooling to apply literacy skills, science and maths competencies, as well as problem-solving skills, in real-life situations. Singapore, in respect of TIMSS, has also become in educational terms another of the new educational reference societies. Scotland, as with other nations, sees these international results as an important global reference for indicating the quality of schooling. Its representation in Europe and its

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desire for separate nation status in respect of PISA are also demonstrative of broader independence sentiments within Scotland, or at least for a strengthened post-devolution Parliament. Education policy in Scotland is located within these pressures, set against historical residues in terms of ethos as well as structures – but, as already noted, its education policy does not remain unaffected by soft convergence pressures. It is to a consideration of the associated new scalar politics that this chapter now turns.

A new scalar politics: Scotland, Britain, Europe and globalisation Globalisation has become the new ‘planet speak’ (Novoa and Yariv-Mashal, 2003), and social sciences have been revitalised through a focus on its description, analysis and effects in a whole range of public policy domains, including education. These effects have been evident in Scotland and in Scottish education policy. While globalisation has pressured political forms, often through the restructuring of the state under new public management, it has also affected the content of public policy. The usual historical account is to recognise a move from a dominant Keynesian welfare state form until the 1980s and then its reconstitution as a neo-liberal state subsequently. There is some veracity in such an account, but we also need to understand the specificities of particular nation-state responses. For example, the East Asian states such as Singapore and Malaysia have pursued developmentalist state strategies in the face of globalisation, while China and Vietnam have pursued market-socialist approaches. Thus we need to emphasise and recognise the specificities of a given national response. This is certainly the case with Scotland, which has had 300 years of political union with England while having a devolved Parliament since 1999, with a party now in power committed to holding a referendum in this term of office on independence from Westminster. Education until devolution was mediated and run from the Scottish Office. These specificities also connect with an idiosyncratic Scottish educational history linked to the self-image of the Scottish nation, as suggested earlier. So, while there are convergent pressures stemming from what we might see as neo-liberal globalisation, these pressures are localised and rearticulated to result in what has been called ‘vernacular globalisation’. This is particularly pertinent to considerations of Scottish education, which has a powerful history of schooling for all, produced well before the emergence of mass elementary schooling systems in the nineteenth century to accompany industrialisation. In his late work, Bourdieu (2003) referred to ‘national capital’ to encapsulate the strength of national identity and resources which mediate the effects of global pressures. In Scotland ‘national capital’, as manifest in a strong Scottish identity with considerable longevity, very much mediates global pressures and those from Westminster. As has been argued, in respect of the growth of nations and nationalism, mass school systems and universal literacy (and numeracy) were central to the creation of the ‘imagined community’ which is the nation. This is very much the case in Scotland, historically and today. One has only to look at history syllabuses in Scottish schools to confirm this observation. Yet, there is still the reality of Scotland in McCrone’s terms as an understated nation where the cultural community is not homologous with the political but is mediated in the complex governance structure of Europe and the United Kingdom. The cultural and the political homology at UK level works through a somewhat artificial construct of Britishness, which is being destabilised in some ways in the contemporary world. As Nairn (2007) argues, this raises interesting questions about the scale of nationhood. Specifically, he observes, ‘Globalization does not make all nations disappear, or become equally small. But it does make some permanently and irreversibly “smaller”, in the sense of rendering older styles of imperium and domination impossible’ (p. 131). At

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the same time, of course, there is in Europe the emergence of a larger, supranational political entity as well. Further, the rearticulation of Scottish nationalism, the creation of the devolved Parliament and devolution of powers and the move for an independence referendum are all indicative of the new scalar politics which accompanies globalisation. They are effects of, and responses to, globalisation. We see here pressures from below within the UK for more independence, for example in Scotland (precipitating further discussion about the so-called West Lothian question), Wales and Northern Ireland. At the same time, we also see the strengthening of the supranational entity of the European Union, which itself is about ‘fabricating’ Europe and also creating a European Education Policy Space through a new form of governance and networks often constructed around European data and indicators. The EU is the most powerful supranational entity in this age of globalisation, but other inter-governmental organisations also have effects, such as the OECD, which – it has been argued – has become more of a policy actor in its own right in the context of globalisation and the end of the Cold War (Henry et al., 2001; Rizvi and Lingard, 2006). The European Education Policy Space has emerged, linked to the Lisbon Declaration of 2000 which has the goal of the European Union being the most powerful knowledge economy on the globe by 2010. This is a political response by Europe to the one-worldsuperpower reality of the post-Cold War era and the emergence of China to fill the vacuum left by the dismantling of the former Soviet Union. The production of the requisite human capital through schooling, further education, university and lifelong learning is deemed to be central to achieving the Lisbon Declaration goals. So, while under the rubric of subsidiarity education putatively remains a national policy prerogative in Europe, there are now considerable supranational pressures on policy. It is interesting in education terms to see how Scotland is positioned in this respect. Scotland is a small European nation with a new devolved Parliament responsible for education, a long history of independence sentiment, and a long and significant educational history, with education central to Scottish self-perception. While, in England, school policy makers at the national level seem almost indifferent to Europe and the OECD, this is not the case for Scotland, which takes these involvements very seriously. Indeed, one can see an attempt to ‘sell’ Scotland and Scottish educational practices in Europe, for example in relation to self-evaluation for schools developed by the Inspectorate, while English policy makers aim for world best practice, believing that in terms of data for governing they lead the world and ought to be the model for others. What we see here is English exceptionality as the archetypal neo-liberal model of school reform, with Scottish education more in line with the social-democratic models of Europe, particularly northern Europe, but affected by broader UK neo-liberal policy frames. Scottish education has begun to brand and sell itself and its educational services in Europe. The significant point to note here, however, is that, as with pressures from globalisation alluded to throughout this chapter, Scotland’s mediated membership of the EU will continue to have policy effects in education. Any moves for greater Scottish independence will presumably only strengthen the effects in Scottish education of the European Education Policy Space. It is interesting to note, however, that the Scottish universities have retained their four-year undergraduate degree structures rather than align with a three-year structure necessary for conformity with the demands of the Bologna process in Europe. Two further comments need to be made about the effects of globalisation, actual and potential, on Scottish education. The first relates to the impact of the flows of migrants from an enlarged Europe on national identity and schools. This contemporary situation also needs to be located in the historical context of Scotland across much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as an emigration nation, constituting what Nairn

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(2007, p. 121) calls a ‘haemorrhage society’ with consequences for the concept of Scottish identity. One negative feature perhaps of a small nation, located beside a more powerful neighbour, has been a defensive and at times inward-looking national identity, a potentially parochial insularity. Further, in respect of the English other, one is reminded, as already noted, of Freud’s observation about the narcissism of minor differences. On this, Nairn comments: It is quite true that a widespread and often unpleasant attitude surfaces among Scots: ‘anti-Englishness’. This bears little resemblance to text book ethnicity or blood-line inheritance. It is, in truth, anti-Britishness: something like latter-day antiAmericanism, a resentment of over-weening state power and assumed superiority. (Nairn, 2007, p. 128) As with most nations on the globe today, multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies challenge historical constructions of national identity and public policy. Schools have an important role to play in respect of these matters, while the broader geo-political situation post-‘9/11’ has probably provoked some enhanced fear of difference, including the rise of Islamophobia, among some sections of the population, and indeed even within public policy in terms of so-called citizenship tests and the like for new arrivals. There are challenges here in contemporary Scotland, given its quite ethnically homogeneous population, and challenges for schools in terms of educational opportunity and in relation to multi-culturalism and cosmopolitanism. However, Scotland is not alone in facing these challenges, but faces them in terms of a particular national history, a particular past and mixture of the residual, dominant and emergent cultural and political pressures. They are challenges which result from the diasporas of people associated with globalisation, post-nationalism and contemporary geopolitics. As Appadurai (2006, p. 84) observes, ‘Minorities in a globalizing world are a constant reminder of the incompleteness of national purity’. The second consequence of globalisation is a changing class structure related to postindustrialism: only 10 per cent of jobs in Scotland today are in manufacturing. Associated growing economic inequalities affect opportunities for social mobility via education. The then First Minister of Scotland, Jack McConnell, argued in a lecture published as Scotland’s Future: Thinking for the Long Term that ‘Poverty and inequality are at the root of Scotland’s greatest weaknesses’ (Scottish Executive, 2006, p. 16). He continued: It cannot be right that, while most young Scots do well at school, 1 in 20 will still leave with no formal qualification. And that, for those who receive free school meals, that number rises to 1 in 8. The proportion of 16–19-year-olds not in education, employment or training is poor by international comparison. From the current snapshot, Scotland’s performance on the indicators that matter most to me is not good enough. This is the problem of inequalities in educational access and attainment at the very moment when qualifications have become even more important in job and career opportunities. These patterns of inequality have been quite intransigent over time. The focus in Scottish policy has been on those young people not in education, employment or training (the so-called NEET group). The question facing Scottish policy makers in post-devolution Scotland is, of course, how to overcome these intransigent, class-based inequalities. It needs to be asked whether or not education reform alone can affect them. In the context of globalisation, enhanced participation in education has been the most common strategy pursued by governments and supported by international agencies such

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as the OECD. Such a strategy is central to the EU’s desire to be the leading knowledge economy on the globe by 2010. This demand for more and better education for all young people is justified by human capital theory. It is interesting in this context to quote from the 2000 Lisbon Declaration on the knowledge economy and its ten-year target to become ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustained economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’. The mention here of a need for ‘greater social cohesion’ is recognition of the divisive effects of growing inequalities. Of course, the Scottish Parliament does not control the UK economy. Economic policy for the UK is the prerogative of the UK government in Westminster and to some extent the EU. There are further questions here regarding the extent to which nations such as the UK and supranational entities such as the EU control economic policy, given a neo-liberal frame, the mobility of capital and the economic strength of trans-national corporations. Castells, in his analysis of the emergent network society, has argued that, today, power, particularly economic power, is mobile and not located in place, while traditional political power remains located, placed and bounded by national borders (M. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd edn, Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). This has affected the capacities of nations in respect of economic policies. Not all nations have taken a neo-liberal stance in respect of globalisation; the developmentalist state strategies employed by some East Asian states are a good case in point here. The politics of contemporary Scotland, drawing on a distinctive Scottish tradition, also indicates a firm rejection of a Thatcherite version of neo-liberalism, and of the rearticulated New Labour ‘third way’ version of it. Nonetheless, this is the level of government within the multi-layered polity which is the contemporary UK, where economic policy is theorised and constituted. How greater equality can be achieved, how fuller participation in education can be achieved, and how more equal educational opportunities can be achieved, remain central political and educational questions in all contemporary societies in the face of globalisation. In contemporary Scotland, these are set against Scottish traditions and contemporary UK and EU policies.

Conclusion In the context of globalisation, Scottish education faces many of the policy pressures seen in other comparable nations of the Global North (see Ozga and Lingard, 2007). This is not to suggest necessary policy convergence, but it is to recognise soft convergence pressures from globalised education policy discourses such as the knowledge economy, lifelong learning, enhanced participation and quality, and concern for social cohesion. It is also to recognise the emergent global education policy field where comparative performance and attainment data, along with educational indicators of various kinds, are beginning to constitute a commensurate global space of comparison, which contributes to some new forms of governance. Within the latter space, the Nordic countries, particularly Finland, Sweden and Iceland, have performed well with high attainment but also with limited social class effects, and limited between-school effects, upon student performance, reflecting their comprehensive-schooling models and social-democratic welfare state approaches. Post-devolution Scotland in many ways aspires to constitute a model of public policy, including education, similar to the Scandinavian models. This is evident in the continuation of the comprehensive system, the non-expansion of the independent sector, and the rejection of market approaches and parental choice in schooling. International performance data indicate quite good Scottish attainment but, as with other Anglo-Celtic countries, a strong social class effect on performance. This is a major concern in contemporary Scotland, which has been addressed through a

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number of policies, including the Ambitious Schools project, which has supported schools serving disadvantaged communities in school reform and transformation plans. However, the question still remains of how inequality generally and specifically in schooling can be overcome in contemporary Scotland. The rise of Scottish nationalism is also interesting in terms of contemporary schooling: in relation to curriculum content, say in history and literature, and in relation to the need for more international dispositions in the context of globalisation and global labour markets. The question of Scottish identity also comes up against the effects of contemporary migration and the need for multi-culturalism through schooling at a time of strengthening and reconstituted nationalism. There are interesting questions in relation to schooling here about Britishness, European identity and cosmopolitan attitudes in the context of globalisation. The changes and pressures discussed throughout this chapter have also brought some challenges to the Scottish tradition of opportunity provided through a comprehensive system and a largely academic curriculum. The Curriculum for Excellence reform, which respects teachers in the Scottish way, sees the desired outcomes from schooling as the production of ‘successful learners’, ‘confident individuals’, ‘responsible citizens’ and ‘effective contributors’. It is worth reflecting on how this curriculum agenda will play out in the context of the academic tradition, and the desire to increase retention in schooling, against the backdrop of a changed political landscape. What are the epistemological underpinnings of this reconceptualist curriculum reform? Curriculum for Excellence reminds me very much of developments in Queensland Education in Australia, where I chaired the Queensland Studies Authority, and where there has been a policy desire to develop a seamless curriculum. This is a response, as is Curriculum for Excellence, to the globalised discourse of human-capital theory and the need to modify school provision in terms of increasing participation and retention. How ought an educational system respond in curricular and pedagogical terms to a broader upper-secondary student cohort? Questions remain concerning what is lost and gained in such democratic moves, especially in relation to academic knowledge and the disciplines. What is the desirable balance between the academic and the vocational? It is interesting as well in comparing Scotland and Queensland, which have mutual recognition of teacher qualifications, and where Queensland has had no public examinations for more than thirty years, that Assessment is for Learning has had more positive effects in primary schools than in secondary schools, given the continuing and significant role of public examinations in secondary schooling in Scotland. The question is, given the Scottish ‘tradition’ in education, broad social-democratic political commitments and deep Enlightenment values: can an education system be constructed in contemporary Scotland which ensures equality of educational opportunity for all, and which works with and values differences, while constituting a cosmopolitan nationalism through schooling? This question will need to be answered in the context of deep understanding of globalisation and a desired position for Scotland within these developments, including within the UK and the EU. As Bourdieu sagely noted in an article entitled ‘The politics of globalisation’ in Le Monde in 2002, globalisation is a politics, not a fate.

References Appadurai, A. (2006) Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ball, S. (2007) Education PLC: Understanding Private-Sector Participation in Public-sector Education, London: Routledge.

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Bourdieu, P. (2003) Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market. London: Verso. Hartley, D. (2003) ‘New economy, new pedagogy’, Oxford Review of Education, 29 (1): 81–94. Henry, M., B. Lingard, F. Rizvi and S. Taylor (2001) The OECD, Globalisation and Education Policy. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Lawn, M. and B. Lingard (2001) ‘Constructing a European policy space in educational governance: the role of transnational policy actors’, European Educational Research Journal, 1 (2): 290–307. McCrone, D. (2005) ‘Cultural capital in an understated nation: the case of Scotland’, British Journal of Sociology, 56 (1): 65–82. Nairn, T. (2007) ‘Union on the rocks?’, New Left Review, 43: 117–32. Novoa, A. and T. Yariv-Mashal (2003) ‘Comparative research in education: a mode of governance or a historical journey?’, Comparative Education, 39 (4): 423–38. Ozga, J. (2005) ‘Renewing the public: policy and practice in education in Scotland’, Paper to the International Conference on Reinventing the Public? Changing Relationships between Public and Public Services, The Open University, 15–17 April 2005, p. 5. Ozga, J. and B. Lingard (2007) ‘Globalisation, education policy and politics’, in B. Lingard and J. Ozga (eds), The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Education Policy and Politics. London: Routledge. Paterson, L. (2002) ‘Social capital and political ideology’, in J. Curtice, D. McCrone, A. Park and L. Paterson (eds), New Scotland, New Society? Edinburgh: Polygon. Paterson, L. (2003) Scottish Education in the Twentieth Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Ranson, S. (2003) ‘Public accountability in the age of neo-liberal governance’, Journal of Education Policy, 18 (5): 459–80. Rizvi, E and B. Lingard (2006) ‘Globalization and the changing nature of the OECD’s educational work’, in H. Lauder, P. Brown, J. Dillabough and A. H. Halsey (eds), Education, Globalization and Social Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rutkowski, D. J. (2007) ‘Converging us softly: how intergovernmental organizations promote neoliberal educational policy’, Critical Studies in Education, 48 (2): 229–47. Schriewer, J. and C. Martinez (2004) ‘Constructions of internationality’, in G. Steiner-Khamsi (ed.), The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending. New York: Teachers College Press. Simola, H. (2005) ‘The Finnish miracle of PISA: historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education’, Comparative Education, 41 (4): 455–70.

CHAPTER 7

MEDIATIZING EDUCATIONAL POLICY The journalistic field, science policy, and cross-field effects Bob Lingard and Shaun Rawolle Originally published in: Journal of Education Policy, 2004, 19(3): 361–380

Introduction There has been what one might call a ‘mediatization’ of politics and government (Fairclough, 2000: 3). The production of public policy texts today is a heavily ‘mediatized’ process, to use the neologism Fairclough (2000) has created to refer to the way in which media considerations now affect both policy processes and texts. Within much policy literature, both educational and social, this emergent policy/media relationship is viewed in a negative fashion (Franklin, 1999; Thomas, 2003). In this chapter, we attempt to theorize these relationships, using Bourdieu (1998) and his concept of the logics of practice that define the journalistic field. While we are concerned with the mediatization of the production of the policy text, Bourdieu (1998) has noted that the media have become important today for actually constructing political and policy agendas. Similarly, Sontag (2003, p. 104) has remarked ‘public attention is steered by the attention of the media’. Beyond this, it has been suggested by some that there has been an abdication of reality, which has been replaced by spectacle, texts, media, and representations (Debord, 1970, 1990; Baudrillard, 1981, 1994). One does not have to subscribe to the strong versions of this argument of reality abdicating in the face of a dematerialized hyper-reality and simulacra to see some relevance to considerations of media and educationalpolicy. Today journalists and their logics are not only operant in the journalistic field in the media but also in the offices of politicians and policy producers, thus affecting the very processes of policy production. These journalists are important in the context of the ‘ministerialization’ and ‘politicization’ of educational policy production, with policy being more directly framed by politicians (with advice from their political and media advisers) than by bureaucrats, policy makers, and educational professionals (Ball, 1990; Knight & Lingard, 1997). As Fairclough (2000, p. 122) observes: A media strategy is prepared for all significant Government initiatives—they are ‘trailed’ in the media before being properly launched, and there is a systematic ‘follow-up’. This has been described as ‘government by media spin’. In utilising Bourdieu, this chapter goes beyond the dominant approaches to policy and media relationships. Franklin’s (1999) edited text, Social policy, the media and

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misrepresentation is perhaps the best example of the most common way of analysing these relationships. In the introductory essay, Franklin draws on the insight from The Guardian journalist, Polly Toynbee, that ‘Social policy makes neither news nor history unless there is some crisis’. The introductory essay well illustrates these insights, along with the idea that the media often create the crisis as much as report it. There has been much work in this critical tradition, including the Jeffs’ (1999) paper in the Franklin collection, which demonstrates the crisis focus of UK media coverage of education. The work of researchers associated with the Sociology Research Group in Cultural and Educational Studies at Melbourne University in the early 1980s provided interesting accounts of how media representations of educational issues worked to provide a social consensus or hegemony, to utilize Gramsci’s concept, around an educational issue. This research (Bannister et al., 1980; Bannister, 1981; Foley, 1981) also utilized the insights from the early work of Hall et al. (1978) and the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies and that of the Glasgow Media Group (1980), showing how powerful social interests— ‘primary definers’—facilitate the media to define the world in a particular way and construct a consensus around these definitions. This work underplayed the potential for reading against the grain. While the critical discourse account of the political language of the Blair government provided by Fairclough (2000) is applied to the language of politics generally rather than to policy (politics mediated by the policy and bureaucratic fields), his work does give some attention to the role of the media in contemporary policy. As noted already, Fairclough refers to this as the ‘mediatization’ of politics and notes how media representations under the Blair government have been incorporated as part of both policy production and the policy text and play an important manufacturing of consent role. There are other ways that media and educational policy relationships can be considered. We will briefly address these mediations of educational policy here, including: media constructions as de facto policy, policy as sound bite, media policy representations as deliberate political misrepresentations, and policy release as media release. In some educational domains where there is a policy vacuum, media coverage of the potential policy area can serve almost as de facto policy. This appears to be the case in Australia in relation to educational policies for boys. The last national policy statement on gender, an indication that boys were now to be included in the remit of the policy, was Gender equity: a framework for Australian schools (MCEETYA, 1997). This was a heteroglossic policy text, trying to meet multiple interests, feminist and backlash alike. The document was not user-friendly and did not have broad distribution to the schools. Ailwood and Lingard (2001) have argued that this policy signified ‘the endgame’ for national schooling policies for girls in Australia. However, this situation, along with the evacuation of central equity policies in schooling at the state level and a narrowed policy focus on literacy, has created a policy vacuum. It is in this context of a policy vacuum that extensive media coverage of boys’ educational difficulties, particularly in relation to literacy scores, school retention, performance at the end of secondary schooling, and behaviour at school, has created a de facto policy framework for schools, which are now more policy active (Lingard, 2003). Another way in which the logics of practice of the journalistic field have affected the logics of practice of the policy field is through the common production today of meta-policy and policy naming as sound bites. The state government in Queensland, for example, has now framed its policy response to the concept of the emergent knowledge economy as ‘Smart State’. Thus, education polices in contemporary Queensland are constituted as part of the meta-policy strategy of achieving the smart state. The alliterative aphorism, Smart State, appears on all educational policy documents, letterheads, etc.

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Sontag’s (2002, p. 65) observations about writing and reading provide insights into how meta-policy as sound bite in its ‘compact assertion’ is ‘irrepressibly aphoristic’. In her comment on the nature of aphoristic thinking, Sontag nicely captures the political intentions of meta-policy as sound bite: ‘It is the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding; a bid to have the final word is inherent in all powerful phrase making’ (Sontag, 2002, p. 67). Meta-policy as sound bite reflects the logic of practice of the journalistic field and manifests the significance of media representations in the naming of contemporary policy, as well as the incursion of the logics of practice of the journalistic field into the policy field. A related matter to policy as sound bite is the concept of the policy release as media release. Today, with the tighter control by politicians over the policy agenda, the release of any significant educational policy is usually accompanied by a media release and a media conference. In this way, the actual construction of the policy as a text has usually been edited by professional editors so it reads as a document for the lay reader rather than focused as much on professional readership. Furthermore, journalists in a government minister’s office are usually responsible for the media ‘spin’ on the policy and for a media strategy for the various stages of the policy process. Policy release in this way becomes synonymous with media release. If we accept Ozga’s (2000, p. 33) definition that a policy text is ‘a vehicle or medium for carrying and transmitting a policy message’, then media representations of policy—policy release as media release—can also be seen as a policy text. The last two examples of media and educational policy have been strategic interventions about policy representations in the media. A story in the Sydney Morning Herald on 15 February 2003 indicated another type of relationship between policy and the media. This is silence about progressive policy interventions, when they are seen to be at odds with more conservative political representations of policy. We might call this relationship ‘media policy representations as deliberate misrepresentations’ The examples given in the Sydney Morning Herald article talk about the conservative law and order approach represented in the media of the Carr Labor government in New South Wales. However, the article shows some of the very progressive policies being implemented in New South Wales in this policy domain, which the government did not appear to want publicized. So the article inter alia elaborates on a very successful community conferencing programme geared to keeping young people out of prison. Yet, as the article demonstrates, the Premier fails to seek publicity for these progressive programmes, but rather ‘prefers to meet the Opposition head-to-head and focus public attention on tough new sentencing or policing reforms’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 15 February 2003). As the Headline on page 1 of the paper noted: ‘Hidden Treasures: Why Carr makes No News of Good News’. This chapter, taking a different point of departure, is about demonstrating the usefulness of the social theory of Bourdieu for understanding the mediatization of policy. In particular, the chapter draws upon Bourdieu’s (1998) accessible account of the journalistic field as outlined in On television and journalism. The usefulness of this work is exemplified through a case study of the policy The chance to change (Batterham, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c), a specific articulation in Australia of a human capital and science policy, and its cross-field effects. This science policy, though seemingly disconnected from educational policy, exemplifies cross-field effects, which in turn worked to restructure parts of the educational policy field. This chapter accepts Bourdieu’s own rejection of ‘theoretical theory’ (Brubacker 1993), and seeks to use and extend his theory as a ‘set of thinking tools’ (Wacquant, 1989, p. 50). It also builds upon his argument of invariance across all fields—what he calls structural homologies—which include embodiment and its relation to structures.

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However, alongside this invariance, Bourdieu argues, is a specificity of products and kinds of embodiment localized within each field. An example here would be the genre of policy texts as a product of the policy field. In this chapter, we are interested in the productive intersections between fields and their effects, a concern that Bourdieu began to address in a nascent fashion in On television and journalism. We open with a consideration of Bourdieu’s theory and attempt to make a contribution to the conceptualization of cross-field effects. We then move to the case study of The chance to change, documenting the move from the discursive to the aphoristic in its various iterations, and then analyse its cross-field effects.

Fielding and mediatizing policy A field is a structured social space, a field of forces, a force field. It contains people who dominate and people who are dominated. Constant, permanent relationships of inequality operate inside this space, which at the same time becomes a space in which the various actors struggle for the transformation or preservation of the field. All the individuals in this universe bring to the competition all the (relative) power at their disposal. It is this power that defines their position in the field and, as a result, their strategies. (Bourdieu, 1998, pp. 40–41) When Bourdieu (1998) argued in On television and journalism about the influence of the fields of journalism in France, one concern was to outline the things that separate these fields and make them distinctive. The focus was to describe the inner working of this social world and to illustrate the effects that it has on other social fields. One of the major points of interest was the interlinking between the fields of journalism and politics. However, the latter interest was more descriptive than theoretically elaborated. In this section, we outline the major concepts associated with Bourdieu and introduce two concepts that he used which are specific to the logic of practice within the journalistic field, namely ‘circular circulation’ and ‘permanent amnesia’. Bourdieu’s main theoretical frame, including the concepts of social field, capitals, and habitus, offers a way of conceiving the activities associated with the policy cycle. To apply Bourdieu’s frame to policy studies, we suggest that, for a given policy area, policy context, text production, and policy practice can be thought of as the effects of social struggles occurring in different social fields (see also Rawolle, 2001). Each major policy area is viewed as a social field. Social fields can be thought of as having some properties common to all, while having some distinctive features that render them irreducible to one another. Social fields are social spaces that are bound by a common logic, related to the distinctive products produced by the fields. The logic of practice of each field acts to regularize the effects of interactions that occur between agents— Bourdieu’s (2000) term for individuals that constitute the field—who struggle and compete with one another within these areas over capitals (social, cultural, economic). Social fields are bound by these practices that they sustain. They are also areas of competition for various kinds of prestige or capitals, in which agents strategize to secure their own position and social power in a hierarchy (Bourdieu, 1977). We argue that policy can be theorized in terms of social fields. There are conceivably multiple kinds of policy fields. The educational policy field deals with the management of institutions and segments of the population in relation to broader political agendas. In the case study that follows, we make reference to some other fields that are linked to the educational policy field, specifically those of journalism and science policy. We refer

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to these fields because, without the flow of policy effects between different fields, the effect and meaning of policy would seem to lose purchase. Educational policy as a field contains a logic that is not reducible to economic management or to science policy, but inter-relationships do exist. At present, the discourses of human capital theory inform the strategies and positions held within the field. The science policy field concerns the management of resources, institutions, and segments of the population necessary for the efficient development of new knowledge and invention, which lead to commercialization. Part of this ensures a selective promotion of scientific disciplines or projects. Similar to the education policy field, variations of human capital theory are prevalent in strategies for dominance. There are other ways in which social fields are useful in modelling mediation in policy development. The major one is how competition and symbiosis are structured between each field. This is to suggest that social fields relate to one another in multiple and contested ways. Some fields are in a better position to impact on others for various reasons. Their location may accord their products greater symbolic utility, or their functioning may produce a dependence of one field (like the print media) on the debates and internal operations of another (like the political fields). Or, significantly, the agents from some fields can more readily convert their capitals to gain advantage in other fields. The relative social power of agents depends on their positions within fields, and the relative position of the fields in which they engage. The way an agent comes to strategize and develop a trajectory within and between fields is through habitus, a set of dispositions that guide practice in the form of a ‘feel for the game’ that is neither conscious nor unconscious (Bourdieu, 1977, 2000).

Evaluating the applicability of concepts from journalism field to educational policy field Regarding the journalistic field, Bourdieu (1998, pp. 70–71) points out: Like the literary field or the artistic field, then, the journalistic field is the site of a specific, and specifically cultural, model that is imposed on journalists through a system of overlapping constraints and controls that each of these brings to bear on the others. The specific idiosyncrasy of the journalistic field, according to Bourdieu, is that the market weighs more heavily upon it than on many other fields.

Circular circulation Bourdieu (1998, 23 ff) developed the concept of ‘circular circulation’ to refer to an important logic of practice within the journalistic field, related to its tendency to impose mental closure on the treatment of a topic as a result of competition. He suggests that competition between different arms of the media means that a story run by one outlet— say a newspaper or a television channel—is then followed by similar stories on other outlets. This similarity results from pressures on journalists and editors to consistently produce stories. In essence, this constitutes the concept of circular circulation. Competition between media owned by different companies actually encourages uniformity through such circularity. Bourdieu (1998, p. 23) notes that ‘competition homogenizes when it occurs between journalists or newspapers subject to identical pressures and opinion polls’.

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We argue that the concept of circular circulation has some purchase in relation to the educational policy field, particularly in respect of policy text production. Within the academic field of educational policy analysis, there has been some concern with policy borrowing (e.g. Finegold et al., 1993). More recently, there have been attempts to push this concept further in the context of the enhanced cross-national flows associated with globalization (e.g. Halpin, 1994) and the possible emergence of a global educational policy community (Henry et al., 2001). It has been argued that the latter requires a different conceptualization from traditional policy borrowing (Taylor et al., 1997, pp. 60–61). Globalization has broadened the potential effects of such circular circulation of educational policy production through a greater global connectedness and annihilation of distance and space through new technologies. At the same time, new forms of educational policy development are also occurring through the emergence of an inchoate global educational policy community that is moving beyond borrowing as a result of the converging cosmopolitan habitus of the policy makers.

Permanent and structural amnesia Bourdieu has developed the concept of ‘permanent amnesia’ to refer to the ways in which the media report some issues without any recourse to earlier events or even earlier stories, unlike modernist social science where there is an imperative to build on what has gone before. Thus, the media tend to neglect Shakespeare’s observation in The Tempest that ‘What’s past is prologue’. This permanent amnesia in the logic of practice within the journalistic field, according to Bourdieu (1998, p. 72), is the ‘negative obverse of the exaltation of the new’, clearly evident in everyday talk of ‘the news’. This logic of practice, Bourdieu (1998, p. 71) suggests, is most pressing the closer the actual media production is to market pressures. These pressures work differently for various media depending upon the demographics of their readership. We suggest that the concept of permanent amnesia has some purchase as a descriptor for aspects of the logic of practice in the sub-field of educational policy in respect of policy text production. However, this imperative might be better understood as ‘structural amnesia’.1 Such structural amnesia appears to be particularly the case when a policy derives directly from political interventions. The on-going restructuring of educational systems, the contractual employment of senior policy officers, the emergence of generic managers, all ensure the loss of policy memory within the processes of educational policy text production. Those educational policies that have their gestation in the political process are also caught in attempts to ever make it new.

Cross- field relations Perhaps one of the more interesting aspects about conceptualizing educational policy as a field lies in the question of inter-relations. That is, if we conceptualize educational policy as a field, then how does it come to produce effects in other fields? The example most pertinent here lies in how policy fields come to have specific effects within the fields of journalism and vice versa. Cross-field relations deal with how these connections between different fields can be thought about. We introduce some general categories of these relations here, but recognize that these generalizations are specific to the modern capitalist nation-state. It is probably clear enough that individual fields in and of themselves do not necessarily produce effects in other fields. Policy production on educational or scientific issues may not reach the public domain in major media outlets. Scientific research in many

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disciplines may have limited appeal to politicians, educators, or journalists. Effects of specific fields are then contingent on the history of the fields in question, rather than necessary to how each functions. The fact that there are effects between fields would appear to suggest something about the nature of autonomous fields in their inter-dependence. This is to suggest that the autonomy that Bourdieu and others ascribe to fields is one related to their distinctive products, be they credentials or innovations, scandals, or laws. However, these distinctive products often rely on a range of taken for granted conditions in order to be produced, broad conditions that only appear relevant in exceptional circumstances, or to different disciplines. Specific events can be used to illustrate some of the regularities of effects that occur between specific fields. There are a number of simple classifications that we use here to distinguish different kinds of cross-field effects: structural, event, systemic, temporal, hierarchical and vertical. These categories are not intended to be exclusive of either all the possible cross-field effects or to suggest that an example would only fit within a single category. How we intend to use these categories is briefly explored below. Structural effects relate to the links between structures of the fields in question. These linkages impose to varying degrees the logics of practice of one field over others. In its broadest terms, this chapter is about the structural effects of the science policy field upon the educational policy field and the concurrent way in which the science policy field has been structurally affected by the media field. In a simple example, the effectiveness of many policies is dependent on their portrayal in newspapers and on television. This is mirrored by the dependence of some journalists on news and storylines related to political events. Structures in the different fields can be materialized in the form of specific positions related to these links. Media and publicity positions can be found amongst many fields, e.g. popularizers of science and education journalists. On a broader scale, positions like that of the Chief Scientist (a central player in the case study below) seem to internalize the interests of the science field within politics, as well as serve as political spokespersons for science in the media. Event effects relate to specific occurrences whose impacts cascade between fields. These effects may be ongoing, as in the case of a political scandal involving systemic corruption. They could also be short-term, in the sense that a particular case may gather attention from multiple fields, like a scientific fraud or discovery, but there are few substantive impacts that last. Systemic effects relate to broad changes in the values underpinning social fields. They are usually more incremental than event-based effects. An example here is the shift from the principles of the government’s role towards its citizens under the Keynesian settlement, and the hybrid responses commonly pointed to using terms like neo-liberalism and new contractualism. Temporal effects are those limited in duration. These could have their origins in events, or in shifts in structures that link fields. Importantly, these effects could be further designated by their regularity, in the sense of political statements producing regular kinds of coverage in the print or television media, or their anomalous appearance. Hierarchical and vertical effects designate those between fields that hold different positions relative to one another. These are introduced to discuss the regular direction of effects that may exist as a result of asymmetrical structural links between two fields. Of importance here are service-based fields like education, whose relations to government fields and the fields of journalism are tenuous and result from a form of dependence. This dependence is based on favourable funding and policy directions and on positive media coverage.

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The chance to change : a case study of cross- field effects In order to illustrate the cross-field effects of interactions between the fields of journalism and the policy fields, the following section examines the development of The chance to change, a report by Australia’s Chief Scientist (Batterham, 2000c) that was instigated by the federal government to investigate the nation’s science capabilities. In its final orientation, it offered much more than that. The policy production process initially covered the science policy field and the fields of print media, but spread as the influence of this report produced cross-field effects. We can attribute, as one of the effects of this report, the reframing and overlaying of policies and policy production work within other policy fields, including educational policy, which are designated knowledge economy discourses. We begin with a description of the changes in wording that occurred between the initial stages of the review of science capability and the final report. There was an increasing sound-bite orientation in subsequent iterations of the report, alongside expanded explanation of the major points covered. This could be read rhetorically as a reduction in the conciseness of the report’s content. However, we will argue that these changes can in part be explained by reference to the media release of the final report. Here we see clear exemplification of the interplay of the logics of the media and policy fields. The second part of the section summarizes the cross-field effects that occurred in this extended event. In particular, this details how the changes in wording worked across fields, with interventions in the media fields and broader political arena by the Chief Scientist in the lead up to a federal election.

From terms of reference to The chance to change: a thoroughly mediatized event The terms of reference and calls for submission by the Australian Science Capability Review, to be carried out by Australia’s Chief Scientist, Dr Robin Batterham, were officially announced by Senator Nick Minchin, then Minister for Industry, Science and Resources in a press release on 24 September 1999. This press release, ‘Government undertakes groundbreaking science capability review’ (Minchin, 1999), outlined the broad scope of the review and promoted the government’s role in the development of associated reviews. It established the government’s record on issues to do with innovation in previous reports and raised expectations about the nature and scope of the review. However, the press release only received media attention in the major national newspaper in the following week, in the Higher Education section of The Australian, a broadsheet with an educated middle class readership, which used this review to pass comment on internal politics concerning how research in universities should be dealt with (Illing, 1999). This related to the timing of the review with that being conducted by the then education minister, Dr David Kemp, and the notion that the science review actually covered parts of the policy areas in contest within the higher education review. It alluded to some internal political/bureaucratic divisions in how this link should be publicly managed. Between this announcement, outlining the major areas of review, and the release of the final report, The chance to change: final report, on 17 November 2000, the list of four terms of reference produced two interim reports and an extensive number of public submissions (Batterham, 2000a, 2000b). Accompanying the submissions and media publicity accorded to the Review was a public consultation process, whereby different aspects of the review were brought before audiences and discussed by the Chief Scientist. These were both widespread and exhaustive and seemed to involve a strategic public

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awareness campaign, more high profile than in previous Chief Scientists’ activities. The widespread coverage might suggest that these served a dual purpose of public awareness and market research as to the saleability of the package of recommendations flowing from the Review, given that the findings then served as the basis for both the federal government and federal opposition party’s election campaigns. The concerns with investment in science and appropriate responses as to whether research generally should be publicly funded or privately funded became the site for vigorous debates. From the outset, the terms of reference of the review singled out certain domains as points of reference that mirrored the internal political divisions discussed in The Australian. This impacted on certain highly related areas, particularly university research and schools. The terms of reference in the original statement of the Review were designated as ‘significant issues facing the science community, government, and industry’, studiously omitting the educational community at any level. There were four terms of reference in relation to these areas: Level of expenditure and effort on basic and applied research; Business investment in Research & Development; Vision for Australian Science & Technology; and Linkages & Infrastructure. The review proceeded on a wider frame than the terms of reference and the Chief Scientist engaged in a broad public campaign to ensure that the relevance of the review was not overlooked. The mediatization that took place in this policy process is apparent in textual products of the review, media releases, and newspaper articles. The part played by the Chief Scientist in this process is particularly apparent in these textual products; for example, statements from him comparing Australia’s successful ‘investment’ in sport with the need for comparable investment for similar success in science. Here we will look at just one of the forms of mediation mentioned: the textual products of the policy process, and the trend towards aphorisms. Aphorisms are increasingly evident in the moves between policy texts resulting from the Science Review, reflected in the changes of titles of the reports generated, the headers that accompany each section, and particularly in rhetorical constructions in the introductions to each report. We deal with each of these aspects individually. To highlight the development of mediations, we will take as a case in point the development of the slogan ‘The chance to change’ and the policy claims made in its name. The Federal Government’s response to this aphorism (‘Backing Australia’s ability’) appears predicated on a particular reading of some of the policy connotations that attach to the arguments of the text. Our claim here is that, during the review and leading up to the preparation of The chance to change: final report, the style and presentation of the reports became more and more framed by factors related to marketing the policy, making it more amenable for media up-take. That is to suggest that the relatively complex argument presented throughout the policies, which took pains to distinguish between the various components of the Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) base (culture, ideas and commercialization) that needed to be efficiently interlinked, and about how these differences needed support by government, became increasingly interspersed with aphoristic or sound bite rephrasing. We can illustrate this by referring to the rhetorical moves between the first report, the discussion paper Investing in knowledge generation for the 21st century: Australian science capability: a chief scientist project, and the two reports entitled The chance to change. The discussion paper consisted of a 17-page response to the terms of reference. The document, as a discussion paper, identified a number of key angles that it was going to take in relation to the review, as signified in the headers to the five sections of which it was comprised. These were quite procedural in comparison with the terms of reference. The sections introduced the review, identifying an ideal position that Australian science (read

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here to mean Science, Engineering, and Technology) would play in the economy in 2020, outlined the current position, gave some international trends in the area, and possible ways to move forward. The headers in this review were generally perfunctory (Table 7.1). The phrase ‘The chance to change’, which became emblematic both of the review and of the Chief Scientist, is entirely absent from the initial discussion paper. In style, the report is descriptive of changes and tends not to comment on the trends in direct ways. It does this, however, in indirect ways, through the introduction of quotes at the beginning of sections, which suggest a particular reading of the descriptions. The quotes are all from local interested groups or individuals in some way commenting on science in Australia, and link to an ongoing media debate about the reduction of funding levels to science by the Federal Government following their election in 1996. Two quotes in the last two sections suggest the normative and emotive phrasing that underscores the message of the two The chance to change reports. It is in these quotes that we can find precursors to the aphorisms in the reports that follow. The first quote is from the Business Council of Australia (1999; cited in Batterham, 2000a): ‘To be going backwards at a time when the rest of the world is putting unprecedented energy into innovation raises deep concern’; the second from Sir Gustav Nossal, the Australian of the Year in 2000 (Nossal 2000; cited in Batterham, 2000a): ‘Australia, by cutting support and funding, is drastically shooting itself in the foot’. As can be demonstrated by looking at the breakdown into section headings of the final two reports, the phraseology inclined more and more to aphorisms. The substance of the beginning sections of these latter reports provides a picture of the ways in which each markets its message. The executive summary of these two reports, Innovation: the only way forward, is illustrative of the sound bite qualities mentioned earlier. While the aphoristic qualities of these executive summaries might be attributed to their exemplification of different policy text genres, we argue that there is a symbolic significance to these features related to the different fields in which they are intended to have effects. The aphoristic qualities are present because of their intended effects in the media and science fields. It is in these executive summaries that the focus seems particularly related to marketing the message. One example from the section, ‘People and Culture’ (2000, p. 10), is illustrative of this aphoristic marketing, an effect of the logics of practice of the media field. People matter. Without people, Australia has no vision, no ideas and no SET (science, engineering, and technology) base to create and anchor ideas and turn them into products and processes that enhance the quality of our lives. The SET base is reliant upon people who have progressed through a supportive educational system, from primary school through to tertiary, and beyond. As well, people in SET need to have the skills to communicate with the business world and the rest of the community. The rhetorical quality of the paragraph illustrates a theme of simplified, suggestive statements followed by a neutral and somewhat vague elaboration. The beginning sentences of other sub-sections in the executive summary repeat this theme: ‘Innovation is the driver of every modern economy—it is the key to competitiveness, employment growth and social well being’. ‘Without additional strategically driven investment, it is likely that the SET capability will lack the critical mass for the future’. ‘Ideas have the potential to drastically change the way in which we live’. ‘The ultimate measure of success in innovation is the value placed on it by consumers and the community’.

A1. Summary of submissions to the review A2. Basic research funding in the US

5. Future directions

4. International trends

4. Science links

17 November 2000 129 Executive summary + 9 chapters + 8 appendices ES: Innovation, the only way forward— outline of a model of innovation + recommendations 1. Definitions knowledge-economy innovation systems of innovation SET base 2. Introduction vision, goals, value proposition

The chance to change final report

(Continue overleaf)

7. Investing in commercialization 8. Accountability 9. Conclusion: the implementation plan

6. Investing in ideas

2. Investing in the SET base: recommendations and model development 3. Returns on investment in the SET 3. Investment: maximizing a return base: a list of expected outcomes for investment in the SET base and an outline of metrics to enable its measurement. A list of submissions to the review 4. Setting the case for Australia: current state of the science base 5. Investing in people and innovation culture

3. Current capability

3. S&T vision

The chance to change discussion paper A

2. Business R&D investment levels

Investing in knowledge A generation

8 February 2000 17 August 2000 17 52 5 Sections + 2 attachments Executive summary + 3 chapters + 1 appendix 1. Introduction ES: Innovation, the only way forward – outline of a model of innovation + recommendations 2. Profile of science in 1. The knowledge-based economy: a 2020 vision for Australia’s future

24 September 1999 1 List of 4 terms + explanation Chapter structure 1. R&D effort + expenditure

Release date No of pages Structure

Terms of reference A

Table 7.1 From Terms of reference to the Final report

Mediatizing policy text production

–

Terms of reference A

Table 7.1 (Continued)

–

Investing in knowledge A generation

Change in title

The chance to change discussion paper A

Rhetorical constructions in text.

AA. Terms of reference AB. Summary of strategies AC. National innovation summit recommend. AD. Initial submissions to the review AE. Submissions to The chance to change – a discussion paper AF. Letters of support AG. International consultations AH. Public support for The chance to change Title: short active chapter titles ‘soundbite’ quotes in borders of text.

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The formal substance of the report is descriptive, but there are more leading features in the presentation of the report that frame its message. One crucial feature of these reports is that in the margins at particular paragraphs are sentences or phrase reiterations of the key points covered. These seem pedagogic in their role, providing easy phrases for use by journalists in news reports, as headers to articles or as discussion points in interviews. Some phrases from The chance to change: discussion paper include: ‘Rewards for excellent teachers’ of science (p. 25), ‘Alliances between schools and industry’ (p. 26), and ‘A new social contract’ between science and society (p. 30). These are notable for the way in which they direct the reader’s attention to significant features of the policy. The combination of the aphoristic and the technical can be seen to be the outcome of the play between fields. As well, this textual hybridity can also be seen as linked to the intended readership within different fields. The effects of these aphorisms can be seen in their direct appropriation in newspaper articles.

Cross- field effects of The chance to change So, in trying to make sense of how The chance to change influenced and had effects in different fields, we have introduced a range of different fields. These are distinctive in the products attributable to them, and in the kind of dispositions (habitus) displayed by agents engaged in the production of these products. These things are relatively clear in the case of science, politics, and the media. There were other fields that we could have mentioned, from the economic field to the medical research policy field. The fields were chosen primarily because of the way that they exemplify different sorts of effects related to the developments and mediatization of The chance to change. In this section, we will use the fields of print journalism, education, and science policy to demonstrate how the cross-field effects defined earlier played out in practice. One of the key points about the case study is that policy aphorisms in the development of the policy text came to have some specific event effects. These can be related to the extent of pick-up in other fields, and are crucially contextual to internal policy debates about how Australian governments can both respond to pressures of globalization, and be seen by the wider public to be doing something positive about these pressures. The aphorisms were particularly influential across the policy fields and the fields of journalism, where they were symbolically used to argue for a return to almost Keynesian investment spending in education, rather than simply as support for uncoordinated markets. The consequences of the pick up of aphorisms related to The chance to change were widespread, and the event effects spawned other kinds of effects. The temporal effects of aphorisms were exemplified in changes in patterns of news coverage of science policy for the duration of the review, and in the lead up to the subsequent federal election. Where this coverage had been limited to newspapers with a largely middle-class readership, the circular circulation of these aphorisms by politicians of different persuasion ensured that a wider range of types of newspapers and journalists engaged with and wrote stories related to the report. We can describe the changes of newspaper involvement with the report by analysing the increase in direct references to The chance to change from the release of the discussion paper on 17 August to the end of 2000. These will be discussed on a monthly basis. During August, 10 major articles were written with reference to The chance to change, of which eight were published by The Australian or its weekend variant, The Weekend Australian, one by the leading Sydney weekend paper, The Sun Herald and the final by the Queensland paper, The Courier Mail. The Australian is a national paper, The Sun

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Herald is the Sunday variant of Sydney’s major daily paper, while The Courier Mail is Brisbane’s only daily newspaper. Significantly, five of The Australian’s articles were written by two journalists, one a dedicated science reporter, the other a reporter on higher education. The other three articles in The Australian were not attributed to a specific author. Of the remaining two articles, one was written by Kim Beazley, then Federal opposition leader, and the other by a designated science reporter. The involvement of Beazley in the promotion of The Chance to Change may have contributed to changes in the pattern of types of journalists who wrote stories commenting on the significance of its messages. So, the month of September saw four major papers publish articles dealing with the report, with The Australian and Weekend Australian contributing six, and other papers (The Hobart Mercury, Tasmania’s paper, The Sun-Herald, and The Daily Telegraph, a Sydney tabloid) contributing four. The kinds of journalists who commented on the report were much broader than science and higher education, with commentaries ranging from comments on the price of petrol to economic analysis, and dealing more broadly with the impact of the report on schools and education. October’s coverage involving The chance to change extended its economic analysis, its impact on students, and linked to Australia’s involvement with the Olympics. On the latter, leading commentators picked up on comments regarding the levels of investment in sports relative to research, and the expected returns on investment that would result. This greater network of coverage for what was still a government discussion paper resulted in 13 articles being written during October. Four different newspapers included articles dealing with The chance to change, with some leading journalists contributing editorial comment in addition to their coverage in science, economics, education, and general interest articles. November and December saw a continuation of the themes of October, in that The chance to change became a byline in articles that detailed comments by The Chief Scientist, Dr Robin Batterham, on public issues such as funding for science in the upcoming budget, debates about funding provision in higher education, and the need for competition in research grant decisions. Temporal effects in relation to media coverage of The chance to change revolve around the kinds of journalists who engaged with the report, and the coverage in different kinds of papers. Throughout 2000, The chance to change became increasingly contested and debated in one particular newspaper, The Australian, while other newspapers provided occasional articles related to broader political debates. The alignment of habitus of the Chief Scientist, Dr Batterham, to the pedagogic and marketing role in multiple fields is noteworthy in these temporal effects. The success of Dr Batterham in this endeavour could be taken as an indication of the symbolic capital he possessed, as his authority in the science policy field was transferred into other fields. The engagement of Dr Batterham with journalists, politicians, vice-chancellors, and scientists throughout the review and its subsequent promotion would seem to set some sort of ideal type for the role—ideal, that is, in relation to the kinds of expectations of engagement held by the federal government. Without the support of the government, media coverage, and politician up-take of the aphorisms and argument, the effects of the policy would have been significantly curtailed. The initial coverage of the review could be explained by a combination of timing and structural effects. As the initial coverage of The chance to change in The Australian suggests, higher education stories related to a concurrent policy review largely disappeared when the Prime Minister publicly dismissed the plausibility of some of the measures being considered. So, journalists who were structurally dependent on higher education for stories could focus on the science review, which held some potential for

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impact on the higher education sector. However, the development of the policy spawned some ongoing structural effects, particularly in other policy fields like higher education and school education, where states came to emulate some of the key concepts of the review, in order to accrue funding provisions. These were also influential for more specific political posturing within the states themselves. We will consider here some specific structural effects of The chance to change in relation to federal school funding and higher education policy. On the former, the Howard federal government attempted to establish a quasi-market between government and nongovernment schools by creating a competitive funding model between the sectors. Thus, any movement of students from government to non-government schools resulted in a loss of funding to state systems and schools. This ‘enrolment benchmark adjustment’ policy was heavily criticized by the state systems, the opposition party, and by many educational interest groups. As a result of The chance to change, the federal government returned funds to the states taken away from them because of declines in enrolment share, but did so as a science education policy initiative. However, the funding that was returned to the states was tied to specific requirements about science and maths in schools. This is a structural effect in so far as it puts in place mechanisms that altered patterns of engagement within the school policy field. The significance of this as a structural effect lies in the tendency here for school policy to be used as a vehicle to articulate the importance of science for an innovative and competitive economy and for the production of science citizens. Another structural effect that crosses both the school and higher education policy fields is that of the recent federal review, Australia’s teachers: Australia’s future: Advancing innovation, science, technology and mathematics (Committee for the Review of Teaching and Teacher Education, 2003). The chance to change and Backing Australia’s ability articulated the importance of science education. This was reflected as a structural effect in Australia’s teachers: Australia’s future in the interlinking of schools and higher education, and in the call for more students to study science at school and university, more students to do research in science, more students to opt for science as a career, and a recognition of the pressing need to attract high achieving science, maths, and technology graduates to the teaching profession. Australia’s teachers was also framed as a sub-policy of the meta-policy of Backing Australia’s ability. Due to the political framing of The chance to change, it made no reference to predecessor policies within Australia, for example Labor’s earlier policy aphorism of the ‘Clever Country’. Rather, it only referenced contemporary, global policy texts. This is an example of structural amnesia, another structural effect. If we conceive of an emergent global policy space (Henry et al., 2001), this example can also be seen as circular circulation at work. Perhaps the most significant, systemic effect that can in part be attributed to this policy case is the way in which ‘knowledge economy’ or ‘knowledge society’ have come to be guiding meta-policy frames, and have been used by governments to align some other policy domains in a hierarchy. Under this systemic change, hierarchical effects cascade from the way the review conceived the relevance of other fields to the pursuit of knowledge economy goals. This is to suggest that the internal priorities of some other policy fields were viewed as a target for potential change, and some funding changes suggest that there are mechanisms in place to readjust these priorities. While this coverage of effects only skeletally develops the way that cross-field effects can be used, we intend that this approach be suggestive of ways to document the necessary interlinking of the fields of journalism and policy.

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Conclusion This chapter has demonstrated the usefulness of Bourdieu’s theory of fields to understanding contemporary imbrications between the journalistic field and the field of politics, and more specifically the field of policy. Through the case study of The chance to change, which indirectly dealt with the growth of knowledge economy discourses, we have shown how the logics of practice of the journalistic field reconstituted the naming of that policy as aphorism and the subsequent effects associated with this. This is the mediatization of contemporary policy. Bourdieu has not fully developed the concept of cross-field effects, concentrating more on the internal characteristics of fields as structured social spaces. We have attempted to develop understanding of cross-field effects. So that in attending to Bourdieu’s use of effects, we have extended this to a consideration of five different types of cross-field effects, notably structural, event, systemic, temporal, and hierarchical and vertical effects and illustrated each in relation to The chance to change. While The chance to change is largely a science policy framed within conceptions of the knowledge economy, its cross-field effects have worked their way out in contemporary educational policy. As already noted, The chance to change spawned the national metapolicy of Backing Australia’s ability (Commonwealth of Australia, 2001), which in turn has resulted in education policy coming under scrutiny at the national level. More specifically, a review of teacher recruitment and a full policy review of higher education, Backing Australia’s future, have been two cross-field effects in education of The chance to change. Thus, while we have concentrated largely on the cross-field effects between this science policy and the journalistic field there have also been effects into the education policy field. The policy activism of the Chief Scientist (Yeatman, 1998), Dr Robin Batterham, and his presence in the media, ensured that the science policy aphorisms were kept in circulation in the media, in the policy field and had effects in education.2 In the titles of these policies with the use of ‘Backing’, we see further exemplification of the argument of the mediatization of policy resulting in aphorisms, and a play with popular Australian culture in relation to gambling and risk taking. This is exemplified again in the Labor opposition’s policy retort of Knowledge Nation (Australian Labor Party, 2001). Bourdieu has outlined two logics of practice of the journalistic field—circular circulation and permanent amnesia—which we believe have some homologous purchase within the educational policy field. We have applied these to the policy field, showing how The chance to change is forgetful of its policy predecessors, especially those of the Hawke/ Keating Labor government around the meta-policy aphorism of Clever Country, yet well aware of its global contemporaries, especially those of the OECD. The first demonstrates structural amnesia, the second circular circulation of policy ideas across the globalized policy space. Contemporary educational policy analysis has to take account of this globalized policy space, while also recognizing the cross-field effects of the logics of the journalistic field resulting in the mediatization of educational policy and accept that educational policy today can be spawned, as well as affected by developments in other public policy fields.

Notes 1 2

Bourdieu (1998, p. 7) basically speaks of ‘permanent amnesia’, but does briefly allude to the concept of ‘structural amnesia’. See Yeatman (1998) for an understanding and analysis of policy activism. In Yeatman’s terms, Dr Batterham is a policy activist in relation to agenda setting, policy development and policy formulation.

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References Ailwood, J. & Lingard, B. (2001) The endgame for national girls’ schooling policies in Australia?, Australian Journal of Education, 45(1) 9–22. Australian Labor Party (2001) Report of the knowledge nation taskforce (Canberra, Chifley Research Centre). Ball, S. (1990) Politics and policy making in education: explorations in policy sociology (London, Routledge). Bannister, H. (1981) The media and the state aid debate 1961–1964: the construction of a consensus, in: H. Bannister & L. Johnson (Eds) Melbourne working papers 1981 (Department of Education, The University of Melbourne), 1–31. Bannister, H., Dale, C., Foger, A. M., Higgins, I., Knop, L. & McCallum, D. (1980) Media definitions of education and work: gaining consensus in the social crisis, in: D. McCallum & U. Ozolins (Eds) Melbourne working papers 1980 (Department of Education, The University of Melbourne), 157–176. Batterham, R. (2000a) Investing in knowledge generation for the 21st century: a discussion paper. [No longer available online] Batterham, R. (2000b) The chance to change: a public discussion paper. Available online: http://www. dest.gov.au/chiefscientist/Reports/Chance_To_Change/Documents/ChanceToChange_17aug. pdf [Available online in 2013 at: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/tep/25109]. Batterham, R. (2000c) The chance to change—final report. Available online: http://www.dest.gov.au/ chiefscientist/Reports/Chance_To_Change/Documents/Chance Final.pdf [Available online in 2013 at: http://bit.ly/15VFeDR]. Baudrillard, J. (1981) For a critique of the political economy of the sign (St Louis, MO, Telos Press). Baudrillard, J. (1994) Simulacra and simulation (Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press). Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a theory of practice (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Bourdieu, P. (1998) On television and journalism (London, Pluto Press). Bourdieu, P. (2000) Pascalian meditations (Cambridge, Polity Press). Brubacker, R. (1993) Social theory as habitus, in: C. Calhoun, E. Lipuma & M. Postone (Eds) Bourdieu: critical perspectives (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press), 212–234. Committee for the Review of Teaching and Teacher Education (2003) Australia’s teachers: Australia’s future advancing innovation, science, technology and mathematics (Canberra, Commonwealth of Australia). Commonwealth of Australia (2001) Backing Australia’s ability (Canberra, Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Industry Science and Resources). Debord, G. (1970) The society of the spectacle (Detroit, IL, Black and Red). Debord, G. (1990) Comments on the society of the spectacle (London, Verso). Fairclough, N. (2000) New Labour, new language? (London, Routledge). Finegold, D., McFarland, L. & Richardson, W (Eds) (1993) Something borrowed, something learned? The transatlantic market in education and training reform (Washington, DC, The Brookings Institute). Foley, J. (1981) Media representations: a documentation of strategies employed in the treatment of education in the print media, 1981, in: H. Bannister & L. Johnson (Eds) Melbourne working papers 1981 (Department of Education, The University of Melbourne), 32–64. Franklin, B. (Ed.) (1999) Social policy, the media and misrepresentation (London, Routledge). Glasgow Media Group (1980) More bad news (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul). Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, J., Clarke, J. & Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the crisis: mugging, the state and law and order (London, Hutchinson). Halpin, D. (1994) Practice and prospects in education policy research, in: D. Halpin & B. Troyna (Eds) Researching educational policy: ethical and methodological issues (London, Falmer Press), 198–206. Henry, M., Lingard, B., Taylor, S. & Rizvi, F. (2001) The OECD, globalisation and education policy (Oxford, Pergamon). Illing, D. (1999) Science scrutiny to affect research, The Australian, 29 August, 29. Jeffs, T. (1999) Are you paying attention? Education and the media, in: B. Franklin (Ed.) Social policy, the media and misrepresentation (London, Routledge), 157–173. Knight, J. & Lingard, B. (1997) Ministerialisation and politicisation: changing structures and practices of educational policy production in Australia, in: B. Lingard & P. Porter (Eds) A national approach to schooling in Australia? (Canberra, Australian College of Education), 26–45.

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Lingard, B. (2003) Where to in gender equity policy in Australia after recuperative masculinity politics?, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 7(1) 33–56. MCEETYA (1997) Gender equity: a framework for Australian schools (Canberra, AGPS). Minchin, N. (1999) Government undertakes groundbreaking science capability review. [No longer available online]. Ozga, J. (2000) Policy research in educational settings contested terrain (Buckingham, Open University Press). Rawolle, S. (2001) What and who are held to change in the current ‘The chance to change’ document? In: R. Capeness, A. Kolatsis & A. Woods (Eds) Creating new dialogues: policy pedagogy and reform (Flaxton, Post Pressed), 54–60. Sontag, S. (2002) Where the stress falls (London, Jonathan Cape). Sontag, S. (2003) Regarding the pain of others (New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Taylor, S., Rizvi, F., Lingard, B. & Henry, M. (1997) Educational policy and the politics of change (London, Routledge). Thomas, S. (2003) ‘The trouble with our schools’: a media construction of public discourses on Queensland schools, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 24(1), 19–33. Wacquant, L. (1989) Towards a reflexive sociology: a workshop with Pierre Bourdieu, Sociological Theory, 7(1), 26–63. Yeatman, A. (1998) Activism and the policy process, in: A. Yeatman (Ed.) Activism and the policy process (Sydney, Allen and Unwin), 1–16.

CHAPTER 8

DEPAROCHIALIZING THE STUDY OF EDUCATION Globalization and the research imagination Bob Lingard Originally published in: K. N. Gulson and C. Symes (eds), Spatial theories of education: Policy and geography matters (pp. 234–250). New York: Routledge, 2007

Introduction 1 Industrial capitalism and that of services, colonial systems, modernity, and the information revolution have been managed by the West, and this has implied the generalization of Western culture—not so much as an ethnic culture but as a ‘metaculture’. However, the objectives of conversion and domination of this metaculture have also necessarily opened its information circuits to wider access, making it in turn vulnerable to exploitation by the ‘Other’ for its own, different ends, transforming the metaculture from within and without. Western metaculture has paradoxically become a medium for the affirmation and globalization of differences beyond their local referents. (Fisher and Mosquera 2004: 5) Today we live and work in globalized spaces and places and need to recognize this in our theorizing, research, and pedagogies within the academy. This means we need to challenge any taken-for-granted and easy assumption of a society/nation homology in research and theorizing. Today society is in some ways simultaneously local, national, regional, and global in terms of effects, experience, politics, and imaginaries. Further, these spaces are imbricated in unequal power relations, which reflect both contemporary geo-politics and past political struggles. Residual, dominant, and emergent geographies of power, including those of the colonial past and postcolonial present, are at play across this global space and made manifest in vernacular ways in the local and the national. Western ‘metaculture’ relates to these cartographies and geographies of power and includes academic theories, epistemologies, and research methodologies. Recognition of theoretician, researcher, and teacher positionality within Western universities and their relationships to these cartographies of power is an important beginning for challenging the silent valorization of Western epistemologies. Such a challenge is also imperative for moving towards what Arjun Appadurai (2001) calls the deparochialization of research and a strong internationalization of the Western academy, in the light of enhanced global flows of students and academics as part of the ethnoscapes, mobilities, and networks of globalization. This chapter utilizes postcolonial theory, including the work of Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and Arjun Appadurai, and Pierre Bourdieu’s work to draw attention to these usually overlooked matters in respect of policy studies in

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education and teaching educational policy studies to travelling non-Western students studying within a Western university. The perhaps contentious conjoining of Bourdieu and post-colonial theory is justified in terms of Bourdieu’s (2003) recognition that contemporary globalization read performatively as neoliberal politics and economics has been a political project with a history and that the effects of globalization within nations are in some ways contingent upon the extent of ‘national capital’ held and developed historically. This seems to appositely complement the postcolonial recognition of the colonial past forever haunting the postcolonial present and the politics involved in challenges from postcolonial aspirations to these resistant residues in an attempt to strengthen ‘national capital’ for a more autonomous postcolonial politics. There are also evident complementarities between Bourdieu’s rejection of an epistemological ‘state of perfect innocence’ (Bourdieu 1999b: 608) and Appadurai’s (2001) postcolonial call for ‘epistemological diffidence’, both of which recognize the constructedness of knowledge and thus potential disfiguring through failure to acknowledge this. The chapter specifically works in dialogue with Appadurai’s paper, ‘Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination’ (2001) in an attempt to outline some necessary changes in researching education. The widening of the object of study of educational research, with the breakout of pedagogies from specialist educational institutions and the globalization of the spatial location of educational policy effects, challenges the institutional and national focus of educational research. Further, the new multimodal and multi-directional circuits of power associated with globalization, and related flows of students and researchers, challenge many of our theoretical, epistemological, and methodological assumptions about doing educational research. The educational research imagination needs to be exercised to meet these challenges of globalization. In his paper, Appadurai suggests the need to deconstruct in both an anthropological and pragmatic sense, the ‘taken for granted’ of the contemporary system of research in the context of globalization and its flows of capital, people, ideas, images and technologies, and disjunctions and related asymmetries of power. Specifically, he calls for a ‘deparochialization of the research ethic’ (Appadurai 2001: 15) and a strong internationalization of research. This is necessary, he avers, to the globalization of the knowledge of globalization and for challenging globalization as simply neoliberal economics. The argument of this chapter is that deparochialization and strong internationalization are also required of educational research. It provides two narratives regarding the deparochialization of research in education. In narrative one, following my own educational policy research trajectory from a national policy focus to researching the effects of the global in national and state educational policy developments in Australia, an argument will be sustained that a new imaginary is imperative because factors affecting national systems of education, educational policy, and local pedagogies, now extend well beyond the nation. This is part of the larger project which suggests that the mobilities associated with globalization demand a rethinking of implicit taken-for-granteds in social theory of the relationship between theory and society as a nationally bounded space (Beck 2000; Urry 2000, 2002). The work of Bourdieu (1996, 2003) on fields will be utilized to suggest an emergent global educational policy field with the extent of national autonomy mediated by the strength of specific national capitals. Narrative two of deparochialization draws on my experiences teaching and directing a doctoral programme in the Caribbean for the University of Sheffield, and teaching about globalization and educational policy on a Sheffield-based master’s programme in educational policy and research, where most of the students are from China. These experiences made me aware of those elements that need to be considered and traversed as part of Appadurai’s (2001) desired move towards a stronger definition of what the internationalization of research in education might entail.

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Appadurai (2001) suggests a number of ways in which the research ethic might be challenged; he argues for a reconnection with earlier pre-research paradigm thinking premised on a strong moral position, reconnection with the style of argumentation of public intellectuals, and consideration of research linked to policy making and state functions in a range of nations, particularly the developing world. Most Sheffield doctoral candidates in the Caribbean argue the individual benefits of their research. However, they also argue a contribution to knowledge raison d’etre, but importantly for the thesis here, they argue most strongly about the building of research capacity in the Caribbean. They desire to contribute to research informed politics and policy making as a speaking back to the requirements and conditionalities of international donor agencies such as the World Bank and informing policy making within the local state. In their view, stronger national research capacity would offer the possibility for stronger national mediation of the effects of such donor agencies on educational policy agendas. Indeed, they recognize that the capacity to do research rather than simply be researched is central to postcolonial aspirations. However, such capacity and practices also evoke potential and significant challenges to theory and methodologies, which are largely western and metropolitan in origins.

Deparochializing research Appadurai postulates that ‘epistemological diffidence’ is necessary to the project of deparochialization of research, and suggests that this can be contrasted with the epistemological certainty of dominant forms of modernization theory of the 1950s and 1960s and its effects, particularly in what was then called the ‘Third World’. That theory accepted without question that theory and research were metropolitan, modern, and western, while the rest of the world—in this case the developing world, now the global south—was simply a research site to test and confirm such theory. Here relations of researcher and researched paralleled relations of colonizer and colonized, even within decolonizing and postcolonial politics and aspirations. As an aside, as a university student in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s, I had similar experiences that theory was something Australian academics and researchers utilized and applied, but did not develop. The same dependency is evident in the contemporary Australian academe, when international recognition is utilized to evaluate research output; here international sometimes is read as non-Australian but English speaking, a very different reading from that in the United Kingdom or United States of America, where it is read as high quality with large impact, while potentially remaining deeply parochial.2 On this politics of research and representation, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) opens her Decolonizing Methodologies, a study of the relationship between research and Indigenous peoples and knowledges in New Zealand, with the statement: ‘From the vantage point of the colonized, a position from which I write, and choose to privilege, the term “research” is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism’ (Smith 1999: 1). This is Said’s (2003) point that even the most arcane theories, including I would note research methodologies, are distorted to some extent by relations of power and politics in both macro and micro relations. Postcolonial insights are important to the decolonizing and deparochializing strategies required. Appadurai’s call for the deparochialization of research is set against the effects of globalization after the Cold War and the presence of one global superpower operating unilaterally. An important element of this context is the enhanced flows of students in the global market of higher education and the attraction of the US as the place for graduate study for potential students around the globe, including students from China

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and the global south. Here there is the dangerous possibility for globalization to be synonymous with Americanization and a weak form of internationalization of research to occur, which simply means the inclusion of more people in the conversation of researchers without challenging its western, metropolitan form. The disjunctions between the various human and cultural flows of globalization, however, also allow for some optimism for a stronger form of internationalization than this. There are other regional student flows, for example, within South East Asia to Singapore and within the Caribbean to Cuba, which offer some challenge to the allure of the west in the global student market. In rejecting a stance of epistemological innocence (Bourdieu 1999b), Appadurai suggests that some ‘epistemological diffidence’, and what Tuhiwai Smith (1999) would see as ‘epistemological openness’, can help in a strong internationalization of research, and I would add theory, and thus move us beyond what we might see, à la Said, as an Orientalist approach to both research and theory. Such a project, according to Appadurai, needs to be aligned with ‘grassroots globalization’ or ‘globalization from below’. This is the question of whose globalization and offers a challenge to globalization from above (in an economic policy sense in particular) as driven by some international organizations and US foreign policy and cultural industries. In Modernity at Large, Appadurai (1996) spoke of ‘vernacular globalization’, the ways in which local sites and their histories, cultures, politics, and pedagogies mediated to greater or lesser extent the effects of topdown globalization.3 This is the outcome of relations and tensions between the context productive and context generative effects of globalization; some local sites are more able to be context generative and mediate global effects. The idea of globalization from below is about strengthening this mediation and enhancing global connections across NGOs and other groups of resisters to globalization from above, read simply as neoliberal economics, what Bourdieu (2003) calls the performative construction of globalization. Globalization from below could also be seen to be aligned with a postcolonial aspirational politics.4 Gayatri Spivak (2003) has made some telling comments about the disjuncture at times between the local, educated elites in the global south, who in human rights discourses are the ‘righters of wrongs’, and the rural poor within their nations. The former probably have more in common with the educated elites of the global north. These are the epistemological disjunctures and exclusions of globalization about which Appadurai (2001) speaks. As Spivak argues, the sort of education required in the south is not that which would ‘make the rural poor capable of drafting NGO grant proposals’ (Spivak 2003: 173–174)! Importantly, echoing Said’s observation about the elite universities in the US being the last utopias for free and questioning thought, she argues, rightly in my view, that globalization from below also requires an unmooring of such education from its elite location in both the North and the South. This would go well beyond Freire’s banking conception of education towards conscientization, and ‘beyond literacy and numeracy and find[ing] a home in an expanded definition of a humanities to come’ (Spivak 2003: 173). As noted already, Appadurai writes about the need for research to examine its own ‘taken for granteds’ in the present globalizing context. These include ‘systematicity, prior citational contexts, and specialized modes of inquiry’, replicability, along with ‘an imagined world of specialized professional readers and researchers’ (Appadurai 2001: 12), which taken together work to inhibit the deparochialization of research, its theories and methodologies. The argument here is that a particular postcolonial politics is a useful starting point for a re-reading, re-examining, re-imagining, indeed deparochializing of re-search in the globalized context of American and western neo-colonialism, a reality often glossed over in talk about globalization.

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Deparochialization of the focus of educational policy studies: narrative one In my own educational policy research in Australia, I have shifted scalar focus from the national to the global. During the late 1980s and early 1990s under Labor governments, there was a move towards national policies in schooling, despite the federal political structure and the states being responsible for schooling. I researched that move through in-depth interviews with the policy and political elites and became aware of the emergence of global pressures on national policy and of what Bourdieu (1995) might have called an emergent ‘world or global educational policy field’ (Henry et al. 2001; Lingard 2000; Lingard et al. 2005; Ozga and Lingard 2006; Taylor et al. 1997). This made me aware of what I now would describe as the need to deparochialize educational policy studies—the focus of this narrative. The reality of trans- and supra-national processes labelled as globalization has challenged contemporary social theory. In sociology, Urry (2000, 2002) has argued the need to refocus from the social as society to the social as mobilities, indicating the weakened connectivity between society and nation-state and the stretching of networks across the globe. The spatial turn in social theory has been another response. Massey (1994: 2) has noted that the ‘spatial is social relations stretched out’. Castells (2000) argues that today power is located in flows, while most people still live in the space of places; this disjunction, he suggests, results in political schizophrenia. Other theorists have demonstrated the implicit national space of much social theory and a complementary ‘methodological nationalism’ (Beck 2000). Bourdieu, for example, has observed how ‘[i]ntellectual life, like all other social spaces, is a home to nationalism and imperialism’ (1999b: 220) and that ‘a truly scientific internationalism’ requires a concerted political project; this is another way of expressing the project in which Appadurai invites us to participate. Bourdieu’s theoretical stance and methodological disposition allow a way beyond such spatial and national constraints, a necessary position for analyzing and understanding global effects in contemporary educational policy and the emergence of a global policy field in education. Globalization has resulted in the compression of time and space, which has had the phenomenological effect of enhanced awareness among (privileged) peoples across the globe of the world as one place, evidenced in, for example, talk of the ‘world economy’, ‘world recession’, ‘global warming’, ‘world heritage sites’, ‘world policy’, ‘global educational indicators’, and so on. Appadurai (1996) speaks of the flows and networks across the globe that render national boundaries more porous. Focusing on the various cultural flows associated with globalization, he also speaks of ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes (p. 33ff), which are related to the emergence of the postnational era. Castells (2000) also argues that society is now organized around flows, namely, ‘flows of capital, flows of information, flows of technology, flows of organisational interaction, flows of images, sounds and symbols’ (p. 442), with technology facilitating these flows via nubs and nodes located across the globe that are dominated by elites of various kinds. However, the postnational accounts proffered by Appadurai and Castells probably overstate the ‘porousness’ of national boundaries, and the extent of the postnationality of the present, particularly since September 11, and the bombings in Madrid and London, where such boundaries have become somewhat less porous in the so-called ‘war on terror’ (Gregory 2004; Rizvi 2004). The relational approach and that of fields as a social space, rather than being a specific material, grounded space, also allows for the stretching of the concept of field in an elastic way across the social space of the globe, taking us beyond empirical investigation of only the local and the national to the nested regional, international, transnational,

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and global spaces of educational policy production. To paraphrase Massey (1994), the global educational policy field sees the social relations of educational policy production stretched out. Much writing about globalization, as Rizvi (2007) argues, has reified the concept, failing to historicize it and to recognize its hegemonic role, while neglecting the asymmetries of power between nations and colonial and neo-colonial histories, which see differential national effects of neoliberal globalization. It is the argument here that Bourdieu’s work potentially offers a way beyond such reification of globalization and allows for an empirically grounded account of the constitution of a global policy field in education, an example of globalization from above. In his later, more political work, Bourdieu (1998, 1999a, 2003) is concerned with the politics of globalization, read mainly as the dominance of a neoliberal approach to the economy. Interestingly, this appears to argue against his earlier work on the various fields of social and cultural production, which suggested a relative autonomy of the logics of practice of each field. Instead, he seems to be suggesting ways in which global neoliberal politics have dented somewhat the relative autonomy of the logics of practice of many social fields, including that of the educational policy field, which has become more heteronomous as a sub-set of economic policy. The media field and its logics have also affected the degree of autonomy of educational policy production (Lingard and Rawolle 2004). While much talk about globalization has reified the concept, failing to locate agency in respect of its workings, Bourdieu’s approach allows for an empirical investigation of the constitution of the global economic market. There is, however, another potential pitfall here, that of over-emphasizing collective agency in the process. This is why empirical investigation of these processes is needed. And of course there are the counterhegemonic effects of anti-globalization movements and globalization from below. In a homologous fashion, I would argue that the global field of educational policy is also a political project and yet another manifestation of the emergent politics in the age of flows and diasporas of people and ideas across the (more or less) porous boundaries of nation states in both embodied and cyber forms. Political imagination has been a central component in the creation of the global market and the global field of educational policy, just as political imagination is necessary to challenge their effects. Different nations, now located in a post Cold War world with one superpower seemingly committed to unilateralism are, of course, positioned differently in terms of power and the strength of national capital within these global fields of economy, governance, and educational policy. The differing ‘reference societies’ (Schriewer and Martinez 2004) for different national educational systems within the global educational policy space also tell us something about political history and contemporary global politics. Policy making in education within the nation and at sub-national and local levels, nonetheless, still remains important. Drawing on Bourdieu (2003: 91), it can be argued that the amount of ‘national capital’ possessed by a given nation within these global fields is a determining factor in the spaces of resistance and degree of autonomy for policy development within the nation. Here the global south is positioned very differently in relation to the educational policy effects of the World Bank and other international agencies from the global north. National capital can be seen to mediate the extent to which nations are able to be context generative in respect of the global field. Under globalization and the emergence of global fields, the sovereignty of the different nation states is affected in different ways; as Jayasuriya (2001: 444) suggests, ‘the focus should not be on the content or degree of sovereignty that the state possesses but the form that it assumes in a global economy’. Further, as an example of Appadurai’s (1996) point about the disjunctions between the cultural flows of globalization, national capital in respect of the global educational policy

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space is not exactly homologous with economic capital. The iconic status of Singapore and Finland in this global educational policy space in terms of Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results, respectively, is a good illustrative case in point and also a good example of the elision of contextual differences within this global educational space. Numbers are central to the decontextualized character of the global educational policy field. In research on the OECD, for example, it was shown how OECD policy work had more salience in the policy culture of the more peripheral Scandinavian countries and Australia than in Britain, while it was demonstrated how the USA played a hegemonic role in the creation of the educational indicators project which was created against the policy inclinations of some OECD insiders (Henry et al. 2001). In work on the emergence of a European educational policy space, it was shown how a form of structural adjustment saw convergence effects in the educational policies of net benefactor countries within the EU, that is, in the least powerful and least developed countries of the Mediterranean rim such as Portugal and Greece, with talk of a supranational ‘magistrature of influence’ (Lawn and Lingard 2001). That research also demonstrated the awareness of policy makers of this postnational policy and the lack of recognition of it by school-based practitioners. In the developing countries of the world, the effects of the World Bank upon educational policy are palpable, though not necessarily taken up unconditionally, while not recognized or felt in Europe, North America or Australia. Politics can also resist the global dominance of neoliberalism as suggested by Bourdieu (2002) in his article on ‘The politics of globalization’ which Le Monde published on the day after his death, and in which he observed that ‘the construction of a Social Europe’ would be a good bulwark for resistance against ‘the dominant forces of our time’. The state is not powerless in the face of globalization, but different states have varying capacities and varying amounts of ‘national capital’ to manage their ‘national interests’. It is this ‘national capital’ that ought to be the focus of research on educational policy. When combined with the argument about competing logics of practice, this offers another way of thinking about policy/implementation relationships across the contexts of policy text production and that of practice, both across and within national borders. The educational policy field today is multilayered, stretching from the local to the global. In terms of this multi-layering, Mann (2000) speaks of five socio-spatial networks, namely local, national, international (relations between nations), transnational (pass through national boundaries), and global, which cover the globe as a whole. Theorization about and empirical investigation of educational policy fields today must recognize the growing global character of relations between national policy fields and international fields, re-emphasizing Bourdieu’s conceptualization of fields as social rather than purely geographical spaces. Such an account needs to see the various networks, referred to by Mann as sitting within a global educational policy field. The educational policy field thus now demands an empirical and theoretical stretching beyond the nation. The argument here is that Bourdieu’s approach enables us to do this in both theoretical and methodological senses. The model that I advance, of adapting Bourdieu’s notion of field to examine the relations between global, international and national educational policy fields, offers a different way to locate the practices and products of policy. This global educational policy field encompasses the contexts of the policy cycle of which Ball (1994) writes, and offers some analytic gains in locating the effects of particular policies. That is, it caters for these matters and also offers a particular way of utilizing Bourdieu’s concept of field to discuss issues around the impact of different fields on one

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another within national fields of power, and of different scalar levels of fields also affecting one another. All three contexts of the policy cycle – the context of policy text production, the context of influence and the context of practice – are affected in different ways by globalization (Ball 1998), through both its policy mediation and more direct effects. Bourdieu’s conceptual apparatus allows for a deparochialization of educational policy studies by setting a frame for the theoretical and empirical study of the world educational policy field. What has been provided in this narrative is a skeletal outline of how and why the scalar focus of educational policy studies must be stretched and the contribution that Bourdieu’s approach can make to that deparochializing project. What is needed now is much empirical investigation.

Deparochialization of theor y and methodology in educational research: narrative two I’ve been teaching now for almost forty years. And I’ve always learnt during the actual class. There’s something that eludes me when I read and think without the presence of students. So I’ve always thought of my classes as not a routine to go through but rather an experience of investigation and discovery. (Edward Said in Viswanathan 2001: 280) My pedagogical experiences articulated below align with Said’s experience of learning through teaching. These two somewhat cryptic narratives are provided to raise issues in relation to the project of strong internationalization of research and the globalization of knowledge. My positionality here is as an Australian teaching in an English university (now Scottish), myself part of the flows of globalization, and teaching international students located in Sheffield and students of the University of Sheffield located in the Caribbean.

Chinese international students at the University of Sheffield I have worked with three cohorts of full-time MA students in educational policy and research at the University of Sheffield. The majority of these students in each year of the programme have been young women from China, self-sponsored, full-fee paying, who have been teachers of English, mostly in universities, but some in schools, in various parts of China. One Chinese male I have taught and supervized was in the international office of a large and important Chinese university. His research was about the meanings of internationalization for Chinese universities, but all framed by how, given language difficulties, China generally and his university in particular, could attract some of the full fee-paying students who now moved in flows towards the US (Marginson 2004). He would joke that when China became a world superpower then the flows of international students might be greater in China’s direction, indicating the link between economic power, knowledge, and language. What struck me about these students in teaching globalization and educational policy, as well as supervizing dissertations was their positive reading of globalization. Unlike much of the literature on globalization, which sees the dominant reading as that of neoliberal economics, with all its attendant negative effects within and across nations, these international students regard globalization as a positive phenomenon. We become aware here of the multifaceted nature of globalization and the significance of positionality to reading it. In this respect, it is interesting to contemplate Tikly’s observation about globalization and education theory:

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It has been a shortcoming of much of the existing literature on globalization and education that the specific contexts to which the theory is assumed to be applicable have not been specified. It is problematic to assume that there is one superior vantage point from which global forces can best be understood. (Tikly 2001: 152) Deng Xiaoping is seen as the centrally important figure for the Chinese students in relation to globalization, opening up China to the world in various ways after its inwardness during the period of the Cultural Revolution. These students are, of course, the beneficiaries of globalization; they are part of the ethnoscapes of globalization. They also make us aware of the centrality of English, along with ICTs, as the bearers of globalization and invite us to think of how a common language produces common ways of seeing. The question of language needs to be a central one in the attempt to deparochialize research (see also Mufti 2005, in respect of English and the study of comparative literatures). For some of these students, globalization is linked to aspirations for a more open political system, and their own desire for participation in global labour markets. They see the possibilities for pressures from globalization and demands and contradictions, which stem from Chinese ‘market socialism’, for making things better. This is the case in particular with their still somewhat muted criticisms of the dual administrative structures within their own state controlled work organizations of professionals and party officials. They see this as meaning their organizations are still sclerotic when it comes to change, but global pressures and the embrace of the market, will mean they will have to change, and this will be beneficial. At the same time as desiring a new style, more open and pluralistic polity, they fear a disastrous Soviet type transition from command economy to market capitalism. They desire a new political way and see globalization as providing an aegis for this, while profoundly recognizing that neoliberal globalization manifests very differently within market socialism. The question of criticality in content and pedagogy about globalization becomes very interesting. The students appear able to be critical to a point, within certain parameters: always critical of the Bush regime, for example. In terms of the research topics the students have pursued, these are in many ways accounts of their own experiences, as beneficiaries of one of the central flows associated with globalization, but utilizing western research methodologies and theories. In terms of the citational contexts in which their research is located, it tends to be very limited, or about similar issues in other contexts, not their own. This is certainly the case in respect of methodological issues as well. There is also the interesting issue of translation in respect of much of their interview data and all the complexities that entails. Further, they are resistant to the use of the personal in their writing, and perhaps research and write within an academic tradition of smaller citational frames and where researchers take research problems in terms of the infidelities of the implementation of government determined policy.

Teaching and super vizing Caribbean students I was Chair of the University of Sheffield’s Caribbean programme, which has been functioning since 1989. The political frame for this programme has been postcolonial, taking the local and national civic missions of the University onto a global and postcolonial stage. However, I also recognize the old colonial relation as backdrop to the involvement of an English university in the Caribbean, even though the programme is seen more as part of the globalization of the University’s civic mission, rather than as part of a revenue raising market.

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While recognizing the multi-meanings of ‘post’ when attached to colonialism (Shohat 2000) – after, beyond, neo, building upon, aspirational, etc., and indeed its ambivalence (Radhakrishnan 2000), the programme has been framed by a reading of post as aspirational, in terms of the pedagogies, methodologies, the topics, and intellectual resources utilized in the teaching and research and in terms of the desired outcomes. In this respect it is significant that the programme works with Caribbean-based tutors and works through a local Caribbean consultancy firm. The programme’s underpinning aspirational definition recognizes the differences between postcolonialism and postmodernism, particularly in relation to provisional commitments to the Enlightenment project in respect of equality and democracy. As Said, in the 1995 Afterword of Orientalism, puts it: Yet whereas post-modernism in one of its famous programmatic statements (by Jean-Francois Lyotard) stresses the disappearance of grand narratives of emancipation and enlightenment, the emphasis behind much of the work done by the first generation of post-colonial artists and scholars is exactly the opposite: the grand narratives remain, even though their implementation and realization are at present in abeyance, deferred, or circumvented. (Said 2003: 351) Specifically in the Caribbean, I have worked with master’s students in their course work and in dissertation supervision. The thing I notice is the impact of Freire’s (1972) ‘banking education’ on these students. Criticality and the capacity and right to express one’s own voice have not been allowed. In early writings, the student’s voice is usually missing. Quotations from others sometimes substitute for an argument. On querying this, many of the students say they were not allowed to express their argument and voice in their undergraduate courses in the Caribbean. Often the literature reviews, which the students prepare as part of their dissertation work, deal only with US literature without a mention of its specificity or more accurately, its specificity segued as universal. The presence of one citational context has effects, as does the absence of another, that is, an extensive literature about their research topics in the Caribbean. These research students are out of place, as it were. Further, in the early stages of the programme many students have a narrow conception of what research in the social sciences ought to look like. Their dependency disallows experimentation and creativity. It is reflection upon these matters, through what we might tentatively call ‘postcolonial pedagogies’ and ‘conscientization’, that all of us working in the Caribbean programme seek to encourage a disposition of criticality and a postcolonial attitude. Incidentally, Dimitriadis and McCarthy (2001) provide an especially valuable account of postcolonial pedagogies that are useful in the West. Postcolonial histories of education in the Caribbean are provided as a contribution towards strengthening public memory of colonialism and its residual legacies as a way of challenging the amnesia resulting from the colonial experience.5 This postcolonial pedagogy works against the silencing of the local and of the past; such silencing and forgetfulness are effects of colonialism. Said (2001: 502) describes this desired disposition as: ‘a sense of critical awareness, a sense of scepticism that you don’t take what’s given to you uncritically’. My work with Caribbean doctoral students has been of a different order and I am speaking here of the professional doctoral programme taught in the Caribbean, as well as supervision of Caribbean PhD students in Sheffield. Teaching about educational policy to the doctoral students in the Caribbean, I am always struck by their deep awareness of their political location in the contemporary globalized world. Of all the educational policy students I have taught, they are the ones who immediately raise issues to do with

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globalization, global geo-politics, the World Bank, and other donor agencies and their effects on educational policy production, the globalized policy discourses in education, which they ventriloquize, and their very real effects on policy implementation and pedagogies. They are aware of a global educational policy field, the focus of the first narrative in this chapter. They articulate the negative effects of running to policy tunes set elsewhere in terms of timing of policy agendas and implementation. They talk about the effects of WTO decisions on the banana industry in the Caribbean; they know about the creation of new regional blocs and markets in the Caribbean, as both an expression of and response to globalization. They are also patently aware of their colonial and neocolonial legacies, and at the same time they have deep postcolonial aspirations for themselves, for their families, for the young people of the Caribbean, for Caribbean education, for their research work and for their nations. They want to speak back contrapuntally to the metropolitan centre (Said 1993) to which they are connected historically and through flows of people, of culture, and of theory and research methodologies. Some of their research involves the prodding of ‘public memory’ about colonial histories and their neocolonial present and what this means for postcolonial aspirations. They are also aware of the gap Spivak (2003) points to between their intellectual and material locations within the Caribbean and those of the less privileged, but they also see themselves in some ways distanced from the agental capacity of doctoral researchers working in the academic centres of the global north. These doctoral students are very politically aware of the impact of US cultural industries on culture, politics, young people, and schooling in the Caribbean. They are aware of the ways in which globalization has spawned a neoliberal individualism and aspirations among the young in the Caribbean to be like rich young black Americans. These aspirations have partially replaced the independence and nationalist movements and their collectivity in the national habitus. But the students want to work with and against these matters, politically and in research terms. And for some, Cuba and Venezuela provide political alternatives. Their major aspiration for their own doctoral research is to build research capacity in the Caribbean, developing the capacity to research, rather than simply being researched, both individually and collectively. They desire the Caribbean to be more than a site for research and the application of theories and methodologies developed elsewhere. Here they talk of the ways in which donor agencies have to this point defined who were regarded as researchers in the Caribbean. They also see the heavy research for policy character of most of the research that has been conducted. They see this capacity to do research as potentially strengthening national capital in the face of globalization and international agencies. Some of the students are involved in policy making inside the state and others in the political process through teacher unions and other activist organizations. They are close to government and want educational policy research to be for policy as well as of policy and sensibly eschew this unhelpful binary. Thinking about the issues involved shows them and me how doing research can be used pedagogically to understand research and to move it towards deparochialization. Despite all of this and the awareness that some Caribbean concepts such as ‘creole’ are vernacular versions of the concept of ‘hybridity’ central to postcolonial theory, the western, metropolitan character of citational contexts, theories, and methodologies restricts possibilities and is itself reflective of past and present geo-politics.

Conclusion The argument has been advanced in this chapter that Bourdieu’s theoretical work and research disposition allows for the deparochializing of educational policy research in terms of the global stretching of the research gaze and the elision of society with the

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national in social theory. Narrative one has shown how his work can enable such a global gaze within the field of educational policy research. Bourdieu’s approach also prescribes epistemological diffidence, as called for by Appadurai, in its overt rejection of an epistemological state of perfect innocence in research and its demand for reflexivity as central to the (deparochialized) research habitus. Bourdieu’s work also allows globalization to be dealt with in a non-reified way by suggesting that it is a political project reflecting past and present (colonial, neo-colonial and postcolonial) politics and resultant asymmetries of power between nations. The pedagogical anecdotes of narrative two demonstrate the desperate need for, as well as difficulties of, deparochializing educational research. Furthermore, as I have also argued in this chapter, there have been some serious challenges to the research canon from within the western academy itself. The research edifice is perhaps not as impermeable as Appadurai’s account might imply, yet there is no denying the multiple ways in which contemporary public policy about research and universities in the West at least have somewhat constrained research possibilities in terms of disciplines and topics and the intellectual resources brought to bear upon them (Ozga, Seddon and Popkewitz 2006). The challenges to the research ethic have come from several directions, including feminist, neo-Marxist, critical theory, poststructural, postmodern, narrative, life-history, and more lately postcolonial theories and methodologies (Robinson-Pant, 2005; Mutua and Swadener, 2004). The work of Tuhiwai Smith (1999) on decolonizing methodologies has been a boon to the Caribbean doctoral students, allowing a view of how things might be done and thought otherwise. In an epistemological and methodological sense, these approaches could be grouped as postpositivist and they have contributed to deparochializing educational research and challenging western metaculture. Appadurai argues that a progressive globalization requires a destabilization of the research ethic and its paradigmatic approaches. This requires a new mix which would include ideas and perspectives from the global south, from pre-research paradigm thinkers, from student and academic flows, from NGOs, from activists, from public intellectuals, from state workers and policy makers, from humanities and social science scholars, from the post literatures and so on. In spite of these hopeful developments, the asymmetrical power realities on the world political stage will also make the globalization of knowledge and the deparochialization of research a difficult but continuing and necessary task.

Notes 1

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This chapter owes much to formal and informal discussions with my colleagues and students involved in Sheffield’s Caribbean Masters and doctoral programs and in the Sheffield based full-time Masters programme in educational policy and research. I note here, especially, Jennifer Lavia, my former colleague and Kentry Jn Pierre, my doctoral student. I have learned much from them and have had my postcolonial awareness heightened by working with them and students in the Caribbean. I also mention my debt to Wilf Carr and Paul Standish who bring a philosophical sensibility to epistemological issues of theory and research in education in the context of globalization and postcolonial aspirations. I also thank Ian Hextall, Trevor Gale, Martin Mills, Colin Symes, Kalervo Gulson, Carolynn Lingard and Nicholas Lingard for their very useful comments on various drafts of this chapter and Sandra Taylor and Shaun Rawolle for helping with the thinking around Bourdieu and the emergent global educational policy space. An earlier version of this chapter was presented to the Globalisation of the Research Imagination Conference, Prato, Italy, 24–26 October 2005. Another version of this chapter appears in Globalisation, Societies and Education, Vol 4, No 2, 2006, and I would like to thank the editor for permission to publish it. As an aside, we need to recognize how deeply parochial are the neoliberal political and economic agendas. Further, there is also often a deeply parochial character to US academic literature

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reviews where the world and the US are taken to be synonymous, not unlike the World Series in baseball. For an account of vernacular globalization in educational policy production and implementation, see Lingard (2000). Young (2003: 1–8) sees four elements of what I would call an aspirational postcolonial politics, namely: (a) the right of all people to the same levels of material and cultural well-being; (b) contesting the reality that the nations of Africa, South America, and parts of Asia are in multiple positions of subordination to the US and Europe; (c) creating theoretical approaches which challenge dominant western ways of seeing; and (d) a reorientation towards ‘the perspectives of knowledge, as well as needs, developed outside of the west’ (p. 6). Said (2001) in his essay, ‘On Defiance and Taking Positions’, sees functioning as a public memory as central to the role of the public intellectual. This is even more the case in respect of public intellectuals in postcolonial nations and is also a central element of postcolonial pedagogies.

References Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at large, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —— (2001) ‘Grassroots globalization and the research imagination’, in A. Appadurai (ed.), Globalization, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ball, S.J. (1994) Education reform: a critical and poststructural approach, Buckingham: Open University Press. —— (1998) ‘Big policies/small world: an introduction to international perspectives in education policy’, Comparative Education, 34.2: 119–130. Beck, U. (2000) The cosmopolitan perspective’, British Journal of Sociology, 51.1: 79–105. Bourdieu, P. (1995) ‘Foreword’, in Y. Dezalay and D. Sugarman (eds.), Professional competition and professional power: lawyers, accountants and the social construction of markets, London: Routledge. —— (1996) The rules of art: genesis and structure of the literary field, Cambridge: Polity Press. —— (1998) Acts of resistance: against the new myths of our time, Cambridge: Polity Press. —— (1999a) ‘The abdication of the state’, in P. Bourdieu et al. (eds.), The weight of the world: social suffering in contemporary society, Cambridge: Polity Press. —— (1999b) ‘The social conditions of the international circulation of ideas’, in R. Shusterman (ed.), Bourdieu: a critical reader, Oxford: Blackwell. —— (2002) ‘The politics of globalization’, Le Monde, January. —— (2003) Firing back against the tyranny of the market (Trans. Loic Wacquant), London: Verso. Castells, M. (2000) The rise of the network society (2nd ed.), Oxford: Blackwell. Dimitriadis, G. and McCarthy, C. (2001) Reading and teaching the postcolonial from Baldwin to Basquiat, New York: Teachers College Press. Fisher, J. and Mosquera, G. (2004) ‘Introduction’, in G. Mosquera and J. Fisher (eds.), Over here, international perspectives on art and culture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the oppressed, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Gregory, D. (2004) The colonial present, Oxford: Blackwell. Henry, M., Lingard, B., Rizvi, F. and Taylor, S. (2001) The OECD, globalization and education policy, Oxford: Pergamon Press. Jayasuriya, K. (2001) ‘From political to economic constitutionalism’, Constellations, 8.4: 442–460. Lawn. M. and Lingard, B. (2001) ‘Constructing a European policy space in educational governance: the role of transnational policy actors’, European Educational Research Journal, 1.2: 290–307. Lingard, B. (2000) ‘It is and it isn’t: vernacular globalization, educational policy and restructuring’, in N. Burbules and C. Torres (eds.), Globalization and education, New York: Routledge. Lingard, B. and Rawolle, S. (2004) ‘Mediatizing educational policy: the journalistic field, science policy and cross field effects’, Journal of Education Policy, 19.3: 361–380. Lingard, B., Rawolle, S. and Taylor, S. (2005) ‘Globalizing policy sociology in education: working with Bourdieu’, Journal of Education Policy, 20.6: 759–777. Mann, M. (2000) ‘Has globalization ended the rise and rise of the nation state?’ in D. Held and A. McGrew (eds.), The global transformation reader, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Marginson, S. (2004) ‘National and global competition in higher education’, Australian Educational Researcher, 31.1: 1–28.

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Massey, D. (1994) Space, place and gender, Cambridge: Polity Press. Mufti, A.R. (2005) ‘Global comparativism’, in H. Bhabha and W. J. T. Mitchell (eds.), Edward Said continuing the conversation, Chicago; University of Chicago Press. Mutua, K. and Swadener, B. B. (eds.) (2004) Decolonising research in cross-cultural contexts, New York: State University of New York Press. Ozga, J. and Lingard, B. (2006) ‘Globalization, education policy and politics’, in B. Lingard and J. Ozga (eds.), The RoutledgeFalmer reader in educational policy and politics, London: RoutledgeFalmer. Ozga, J., Seddon, T. and Popkewitz, T. (eds.) (2006) Education research and policy: steering the knowledge-based economy, London: Routledge. Radhakrishnan, R. (2000) ‘Postmodernism and the rest of the world’, in F. Afzal-Khan and K. Seshadri-Crooks (eds.), The pre-occupation of postcolonial studies, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rizvi, F. (2004) ‘Debating globalization and education after September 11’, Comparative Education, 40.2: 151–171. —— (2007) ‘Postcolonialism and globalization in education’, Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies, 7.3: 256–263. Robinson-Pant, A. (2005) Cross cultural perspectives in educational research, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Said, E. (1993) Culture and imperialism, London: Chatto & Windus. —— (2001) Reflections on exile and other literary and cultural essays, London: Granta Books. —— (2003) Orientalism, London: Penguin. Schriewer, J. and Martinez, C. (2004) ‘Constructions of internationality in education’, in G. Steiner-Khamsi (ed.), The global politics of educational borrowing and lending, New York: Teachers’ College Press. Shohat, E. (2000) ‘Notes on the ‘postcolonial’, in F. Afzal Khan and K. Seshadri-Crooks (eds.), The pre-occupation of postcolonial studies, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Smith, L. Tuhiwai (1999) Decolonizing methodologies research and indigenous peoples, London: Zed Books. Spivak, G. C. (2003) ‘Righting wrongs’, in N. Owen (ed.), Human rights, human wrongs, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, S., Rizvi, F., Lingard, B. and Henry. M. (1997) Educational policy and the politics of change, London: Routledge. Tikly, L. (2001) ‘Globalization and education in the postcolonial world: towards a conceptual framework’, Comparative Education, 37.2: 151–171. Urry, J. (2000) Sociology beyond societies: mobilities for the twenty-first century, London: Routledge. —— (2002) Global complexity, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Viswanathan, G. (ed.) (2001) Power, politics, and culture interviews with Edward W. Said, New York: Pantheon Books. Young, R. (2003) Postcolonialism: a very short introduction, Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press.

CHAPTER 9

RESEARCHING EDUCATION POLICY IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD Theoretical and methodological considerations Bob Lingard Originally published in: T. S. Popkewitz and F. Rizvi (eds), Globalization and the study of education (pp. 226–246). Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell Malden, 2009

Introduction Globalization means that we have to reconsider the ways we do education policy analysis. This is because changes as a result of globalization have had an impact on policy and policy production in education. These changes include: the rescaling of contemporary politics (Brenner, 2004); the move from government to governance (Rhodes, 1997; Roseneau, 1997); and the effects of those processes on the object of education policy analysis, namely, policy and policy processes. These changes and their effects have implications for theory and methodology for doing education policy analysis. The rescaling of contemporary politics relates to what some have called the move away from Westphalian politics, which were constructed around national sovereignty and political authority (Krasner, 2000). What we see today in the wake of the Cold War, collapse of the Soviet bloc and rise of a global economy is a post-Westphalian politics. This is a rescaling of politics, with new relations and agencies above the nation having political effects within nations, as well as some internal restructuring of the nation-state. Accompanying such rescaling is the emergence of a number of global fields, for example, a global education policy field (Lingard & Rawolle, 2009; Lingard, Rawolle, & Taylor, 2005). Appadurai (2006) represents these two forms and different scales of politics through the descriptors “vertebrate” and “cellular.” Westphalian politics were vertebrate, that is, bureaucratic and hierarchical in character, with political authority located within the nation, while post-Westphalian politics are more cellular, networked and horizontal in character, functioning across porous national borders. This does not mean the nationstate is no longer significant or powerless, but rather that it now has to function in different and globally strategic ways. As Dale (2006, p. 27) observes, “It seems to be widely accepted that states have at the very least ceded some of their discretion or even sovereignty to supranational organizations, albeit the better to pursue their national interests.” The result of the transition is an overlay of Westphalian and post-Westphalian politics. So this rescaling of politics and reworking of nation-states provides the first reason why we need to rethink how we do education policy analysis today. The second reason for rethinking education policy analysis is the move from government to governance (Rhodes, 1997; Roseneau, 1997). This refers to and is inclusive of the rescaling of politics outlined above, but is also used to depict various privatization pressures within the public sector (e.g., the emergence of public-private partnerships) and the effects of new public management, which is basically the importation of private sector management practices into the public sector. Taken together, these changes have

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resulted in a more polycentric, networked state with some privatization of policy and policy processes. The third factor demanding a rethink of our theory and methodology for carrying out education policy analysis flows from the first two. A commonly accepted definition of public policy, including education policy, is that provided by Easton (1953), who defined policy as “the authoritative allocation of values.” The rescaling of politics and the move to governance mean that each aspect of this definition has been challenged. These changes have affected the location of political authority, practices of allocation via a reconstituted state at the national level framed by a rescaled politics, and policy discourses, which, while they often have their gestation in various global networks, are negotiated and rearticulated at regional, national, provincial, and local levels.

Purposes and positionalities There is no recipe for doing policy analysis in education. Rather, the appropriate approach to adopt will depend on the nature of the policy being analyzed (e.g., World Bank policy, national or provincial policy, school policy). The type of approach taken to policy analysis is also dependent on the site of production of the policy (e.g., international organization, department of education or a school), while the purposes of policy analysis are equally significant for the theoretical and methodological approaches to be adopted. In the traditional policy literature a distinction is made between analysis of and analysis for policy (Gordon, Lewis, & Young, 1977). The former is the more academic exercise, conducted by academic researchers, seeking to understand why a particular policy was developed at a particular time, what its analytical assumptions are and what effects it might have. The latter, analysis for policy, refers to research conducted for actual policy development, often commissioned by policy makers inside the bureaucracy within which the policy will be developed, and is thus ipso facto more constrained as to theoretical framework and methodology and usually has a short temporal frame. Analysis of policy sets its own research agenda and does not take for granted the policy construction of the problem, which policy seeks to address. The first step in analysis of policy might be a critical deconstruction of the problem as constructed by the policy and of the context and history assumed and/or constituted by the policy. In contrast, analysis for policy takes as given the research problem as constructed by those framing policy and thus lacks a critical orientation. This binary should not be overstated, however, and perhaps the two types of analysis might best be seen as sitting at various points on an academic/applied education policy studies continuum (Cibulka, 1994). The analysis of/for binary implies different relationships between these two forms of policy research and actual policy, which we might see as an activist relationship geared to enhancing understanding or “enlightenment,” as opposed to a more instrumental, “engineering” relationship geared to problem solving and sometimes legitimation (Trowler, 2003). The focus of policy research can vary and may be on: analysis of the context of policy; the construction of the problem which the policy addresses; values articulated by the policy content; policy production processes; the information needed for policy making; the policy actors and processes of advocacy; policy allocation, dissemination and implementation; or policy evaluation and review. Given these multiple foci, issues relating to the positionality of the policy researcher and the significance of that positionality to policy analysis become important. The questions of who is doing the policy analysis and for what purposes, and within what context, are clearly relevant in determining the approach to be taken to policy analysis. Positionality has four meanings. The first relates to the actual location of the policy researcher in respect of the focus of analysis. For example, contrast the positionings of the

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academic researcher, the doctoral student, the policy bureaucrat, and the commissioned researcher, and consider how such positioning frames the type of policy analysis conducted. The second meaning of positionality links to the theoretical and political stance adopted by the policy researcher, which has implications for the intellectual resources brought to bear on the research topic, including theory and methodology. Commissioned policy research, that is, research for policy, usually demands methodologies that often assume a kind of rationalist “engineering” model, involving a series of steps: the specification of policy goals, an examination of the possible implementation strategies, a determination of the resources available for implementation, the selection of the most efficient strategies to realize the specified policy goals, and actual implementation. In this approach ends and means are separated, while the operational values of efficiency and effectiveness are considered paramount. There is a third meaning of positionality in respect of policy research that is intimately linked to the features of globalization. Here positionality is taken to refer to the spatial location of the researcher, specifically national location, and the positioning of that nation in respect of global geopolitics, including location within the Global North/ Global South divide. Spatiality has become a new focus of contemporary social theory and research in the context of the apparent time/space compression associated with globalization (Massey, 1994). Tickly (2001) has observed that the problem with much theorizing about globalization and education policy is that it fails to recognize the different positionings of different nations vis-à-vis international governmental organizations (IGOs) such as the World Bank, UNESCO, and the OECD. In developing their educational policy, donee countries in the Global South are, for example, much more constrained than those of the Global North. It is important to recognize that positionality then may refer to the national location of the policy researcher, which has implications for the nature of the analysis done and the theoretical and methodological options available. Working with doctoral students from various nations of the Global South has made me very aware of this meaning of positionality in education policy analysis. Indeed, in many nations of the Global South the only extant education policy analysis is research commissioned by donor agencies such as the World Bank or the UK Department for International Development (DfID), with all the implications that result in relation to problem setting, theoretical frameworks, and methodologies. The above discussion underlines the importance of taking a historical approach to understanding how globalization might affect policy processes. This point is well exemplified in respect of the postcolonial aspirations of many nations of the Global South and the role that education policy is expected to play in achieving those aspirations, Neglecting the history of their education systems—what Gregory (2004) calls the “colonial present”—will necessarily reduce the veracity and quality of the education policy analysis carried out. Colonial histories are necessary to an understanding of the education policy effects of globalization. In this way, the temporal location of the education policy analyst is the fourth aspect of positionality, which is important in the chronological consideration of what policies have preceded any given policy, and the extent to which the policy represents an incremental or a radical change. Contemporary accounts of research methodologies in the social sciences stress the significance of reflexivity to quality research. Reflexivity demands transparent articulation of researcher positionality and the significance of this to data collection and analysis. Bourdieu (Bourdieu et al., 1999), for instance, has spoken of the need to reject “epistemological innocence.” Such a rejection demands that researchers articulate their positioning within the research in terms of their value stances, their problem choice, and their theoretical and methodological frames. Bourdieu (2004, p. 94) thus sees the necessity of

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researchers “objectivating” themselves in order to deconstruct their “taken for granted” assumptions. Bourdieu’s argument is that this is necessary to arrive at more trustworthy and justifiable accounts of the data. Critical policy analysis not only explores the workings of political power and authority but is also embedded within relations of power. As Foucault (1980) has suggested, every relation of power has an associated knowledge and every form of knowledge exists within relations of power.

Questions for policy analysis The approach to policy analysis adopted here is located within what Jenny Ozga (1987) has called “policy sociology.” Policy sociology is “rooted in the social science tradition, historically informed and drawing on qualitative and illuminative techniques” (p. 144). While historical understanding is important to policy analysis, policy sociology has been affected in a number of ways by globalization. For example, globalization effects an elision of a simple homology between society and nation in relation to what we call the social. As Massey (1994) has noted, globalization is social relations stretched out. By way of an example: Burawoy and colleagues (2000) have investigated methodological issues arising from global shifts in relation to ethnography. They have suggested that there are three axes of globalization, namely “global forces,” which refer to the large structural developments in respect of global capitalism, “global connections,” which refer to the connections between local and global flows of people, and a “global imagination,” which encapsulates how these structural changes and connections provoke the mobilization of meaning about globalization and the changes it has effected. In a sense, these axes of globalization provide a specific contemporary account of how the central problem of social theory, namely, the recursive relationships between structure and agency, might be reconceptualized and interrogated in the context of globalization. Methodologically, much of the recent research conducted in the name of policy sociology has been “qualitative and illuminative.” This is not to suggest, though, that policy sociology should simply reject quantitative methods; rather, for many empirical policy problems, quantitative methods can be appropriate. As Gale (2001, p. 382) has noted, “quantitative data can also prove illuminating, particularly when it is subjected to the methodological assumptions of critical social science.” Fitz, Davies, and Evans (2006, p. 3) have argued that the difficulties and complexities associated with quantitative methods ought not to mean the abandonment of such methods, a position adopted in this chapter, nor do such approaches have to be non-critical. In terms of methodology, what is needed is an appropriate fit between the research problem and the methods adopted, together with a historically informed reflexivity. The type and site of the policy, and the focus and purpose of analysis, are all important considerations to find the methodological fit. Ball (2008) has used the metaphor of a pragmatic tool box to suggest that methodologies should not determine the approach to education policy analysis, but that methodology should be framed in terms of research purpose and researcher positionality. Policy sociology has multiple purposes, not only descriptive and analytical, but also normative and imaginative. Thus policy sociology should not only describe relations of power and processes through which policies are developed and allocated, but also point to strategies for progressive change which might challenge oppressive structures and practices. The construction of progressive politics is now affected by and must take account of globalization. Progressive social change relates to issues of what Nancy Fraser (1997) has called a politics of redistribution seeking to achieve a more equal society and to a politics of recognition, which works with a politics of respect for difference, as well

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as a politics of representation which enables marginalized voices to be heard. The first politics is concerned with equality and issues of poverty and social class, the second with matters of identity, while the third relates to global structures of power and democratic participation. The imaginative aspect of policy sociology is based on a set of normative principles, which encourages equality, respect for difference, and democratic participation in both the content of policy and in the manner in which policies are constructed and implemented. Policy analysis cannot be value-neutral, involving a set of rational-instrumental techniques, as with much of the traditional policy sciences. These rational-instrumental techniques take the status quo for granted, as a given, as well as a policy’s definition of the problem to which the policy is the intended solution. This type of policy analysis is circumscribed and does not confront larger questions relating to the changing structure and functioning of the state whose interests are represented in both decision-making and non-decision making in policy processes. In contrast, the position taken here is that policies not only embody a particular set of values, but that analysis of policy is also an inherently political activity. This approach to education policy analysis then is at one level ecumenical, but at another it explicitly specifies the normative position adopted in analyzing texts which have policy effects. This position affects “how” we research and how we interpret “what we find,” and how we suggest alternatives. Drawing on Kenway (1990) and Taylor, Rizvi, Lingard, and Henry (1997), policy sociology, as analysis of policy, involves a range of questions in respect of any given policy, situated against reflexive consideration of the positionality of the policy researcher. Critical social science theories and methodologies offer ways to research these questions, which can be categorized around contextual issues, textual issues, and implementation and outcomes issues, drawing on Taylor et al.’s framework for policy analysis of context, text, and consequences. Policy analysis need not, of course, address all of these issues at once, but may focus on a selected set: much depends on both the purpose of analysis and the position of the analyst. For example, research might focus on the “origins” of policy, textual analysis of a policy, or policy outcomes through implementation. Trajectory and ecological approaches to education policy (Weaver-Hightower, 2008) are also concerned with policy across this cycle and its location in the broader context. Within the broad spectrum of questions that can be asked in analysis of policy, various approaches have emerged, each defined by its focus. It is possible to focus exclusively, for example, on implementation and policy outcomes. Implementation studies in education have been highly influential, particularly in the United States (Honig, 2006). These studies are either top-down or bottom-up, with a “backward mapping” approach being a component of the latter type of studies (Elmore, 1979, p. 80). Backward mapping as a normative policy production approach looks at the site of practice which the policy wants to change, and then strategizes backwards to create the policy, structures, culture, and implementation strategy necessary to achieve such change. Top-down implementation studies are usually concerned with refractions, failures, or deficits in policy implementation, while the bottom-up studies recognize the inevitability of mediations by professionals. When professionals implement policies they inevitably take the specificities of the context into account. Another common approach to policy analysis is concerned with the critical analysis of actual policy texts, including analyzing and documenting the discourses within which the texts are located (Taylor, 2004). This approach recognizes that policies are often as much about language as anything else (Fairclough, 2001) and that policies are often positioned within what Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) called “magisterial discourse,” that is, language which is unidirectional and which commands and instructs. Such discourse

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attempts to constrain the possibilities for interpretation. Rizvi and Kemmis (1987) view policy implementation as “interpretation of interpretations,” a situation which the magisterial nature of discourse seeks to limit. An attempt to understand the problem to which a given policy is a putative solution represents yet another approach to policy analysis. This requires an appreciation of the problem, rather than simply taking the policy construction of the problem as given. As Gil (1989, p. 69) suggests, the first task of policy analysis is “to gain understanding of the issues that constitute the focus of the specific social policy which is being analyzed or developed, This involves exploration of the nature, scope and distribution of these issues, and of causal theories concerning underlying dynamics.” Similarly, McLaughlin (2006, p. 210) points out that “assumptions about the nature of the policy problem determine the policy solutions pursued and the logic of action advanced by a policy. And notions about preferred solutions also determine how polices are formulated—the policy target, nature of policy implements, level of support and regulatory structures.” Traditionally, most policy problems and solutions were constructed within the nationstate. In recent decades however, policy gestation, especially for national, state-centric, top-down policies, can now increasingly be traced to international organizations and globalized education policy discourses. While there has always been policy borrowing and policy lending across nations (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004), these processes today have been speeded up with the emergence of a global field of education policy production, even if local factors remain important for nations. We also need to recognize that nations of the Global North and Global South are positioned differently in relation to these global pressures. But even for Global North nations measures of comparative educational performance on an international scale have become important. They take the measures of quality and equity outcomes in education on the OECD’s PISA, for example, as a point of comparison, thus locating the national system within a global system. As Nóvoa and Yariv-Mashal (2003) suggest, the global eye works together with the national eye today in both education policy and governance. Policy analysis today needs to take account of this changed post-Westphalian optic.

Research and policy analysis In 1990, commenting in a UK context, Stephen Ball (1990) observed that critical education policy analysis had the character of commentary and critique, which was not often supported by empirical evidence. The situation has changed over the past two decades. There have been two sets of pressures here: the first relates to the theoretical developments within the social sciences generally, while the second concerns the framing of policy research by government policies, which are located within the broader move to new public management and a desire for evidence-based policy. Research paradigms in education have become the focus of government policy, directly and indirectly (through funding priorities, output and impact emphases, encouragement of policy relevant research) and have sought to valorize certain theoretical and methodological frames over others (Ozga & Lingard, 2007, pp. 77–79), with effects on policy analysis. Maguire and Ball (1994) classified qualitative approaches to education policy analysis into three kinds: elite studies (“situated studies of policy formation”), trajectory studies, and implementation studies. To this categorization, I would add policy text analysis. Elite studies usually involve interviews with the major policy players as a way of understanding policy texts and policy processes across the policy cycle, with a particular focus on the politics of policy text production. Such studies recognize the politics of relationships between politicians and policy makers and the politics involved inside the actual site of

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policy production itself. Elite studies can also be linked to policy histories, focusing on changing policies over time. From the argument to this point, it can also be seen that elite studies might stretch to interviews with policy makers in international organizations and to considerations of globalized policy discourses. There is a range of methodological issues which are raised by the elite studies approach, because such research utilizes interviews with elite policy players and thus requires access to them. Such access is usually easier for seasoned academic researchers than emerging researchers, with the power relations between the researcher and the interviewees becoming highly problematic. Sometimes methodological issues of access can also provide important research evidence. Trajectory studies deal with policy across the stages of the policy cycle, beginning with elite interviews, concerned with the gestation of a policy and the often internecine politics involved in the production of the actual policy text through to implementation and the reception and effects of the policy in practice. Similar to trajectory studies, policy ecology studies offer another way of locating policy in its broader ecological contexts. Weaver-Hightower (2008, p. 155) suggests that “a policy ecology consists of the policy itself along with all the other texts, histories, people, places, groups, traditions, economic and political conditions, institutions, and relationships that affect it or are affected by it.” While trajectory studies trace policy across the policy cycle, policy ecology also locates the text and policy processes in a much broader context, as signified by the metaphor of “ecology” (Weaver-Hightower, p. 155). An anthropology of public policy takes a similar approach to that of policy ecology from within a different disciplinary framework (Wedel, Shore, Feldman, & Lathrop, 2005). Implementation studies deal with the context of policy practice and use a variety of research methods including interviews, observations, document analysis, and sometimes ethnographic case study work. In trajectory studies there has been opposition to separating out policy production from policy implementation, with Cibulka (1994, p. 111) noting that “implementors have an explicit policy role, not merely a technical one.” Those who use backward-mapping for policy production acknowledge that reality. Implementation studies have been a particularly strong focus of educational policy analysis in the United States, stretching from McLaughlin’s (1987) earlier influential essay on changes in foci of implementation studies in the US through Elmore and McLaughlin’s (1988) Rand Corporation study and talk of “backward mapping” to the more recent collection edited by Honig (2006). In the United States a more policy relevant version of implementation studies is policy evaluation, usually commissioned by governments or state bureaucracies, and more limited in scope and responsive to the demands of those who commission such research. Analysis of policy texts is another common approach to policy analysis. These studies often take a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach to text analysis. These studies are located in the contention that the contemporary world of consumer capitalism and new global media has become text saturated and that text and language have become central to contemporary politics and policy making. In this context, Luke (2002, p, 98) has spoken of “semiotic economies” in which “language, text and discourse become the principal modes of social relations, civics and political life, economic behavior and activity.” Regarding these economies, Fairclough (2000) has written at some length about the politics of the language used by the Blair Labour government in the UK. Focused analyses of specific policy texts usually emphasize either the linguistic features of the policy text or work with Foucauldian-inspired (and poststructuralist-inspired) accounts of texts in context, including discursive context. Fairclough’s (2003) approach to CDA works across these two categories and is becoming more influential in this approach to policy analysis (e.g., Adie, 2008; Mulderrig, 2008; Taylor, 2004).

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This is not the place to document the fine detailed types of analyses taken by CDA approaches, but suffice to say that Fairclough (2001, pp. 241–242) has suggested the following as features of texts which should be the focus of analysis: “whole text organization (structure, e.g., narrative, argumentative, etc.), clause combination, grammatical and semantic features (transitivity, action, voice, mood, modality), and words (e.g., vocabulary, collocations, use of metaphors, etc.).” So, for example, there have been analyses of the use of “we” in policy texts in education. Adie (2008), in a CDA analysis of Queensland “smart state” policies, for example, shows how “we” is used in the texts to mean both the government and the people, with slippages between the two. Fairclough’s (2000) analysis of Blair’s political language in the UK has also argued similarly with respect to usage of “we” and these dual and blended meanings. Such textual analysis might also make us aware of what Fairclough (1992) called “overwording,” the repetitive usage of certain words and types of words, for example “new,” in attempts to justify the need for a policy. We also need to recognize the significance of the silences of a policy text; just as a politics of non-decision making can be important in relation to policy, so too can silences in policy texts tell us a lot about power. The postcolonial critic Edward Said (1983) speaks of reading (literary) texts contrapuntally, that is, reading their silences into them. This is equally necessary in policy analysis. Said has also talked about how spoken language carries its context with it, while this is not the case for a written text. To fully understand the written text the policy analyst has to “world” the text, situate it in its context. Texts are positioned within discourses (Ball, 1994), which today are often globalized. Bourdieu’s work is helpful to an analysis of policy texts and particularly those which circulate globally. Talking about the global circulation of texts, Bourdieu (2003) argues that policy and other texts are taken from their context of production and read in a different context of reception. This leads to multiple slippages across national borders and between sites of policy production and policy implementation, and can also be seen to work in relation to sub-national policy texts implemented in schools. Using Bourdieu’s notion of fields, it can be argued that the context of the field of text production has particular logics, which are often different from those of the field of policy reception and of school and classroom practices, which have different logics and which thus ensure policy as “palimpsest,” literally a new text written over a partly erased older text. In Bourdieu’s concept of social fields (one of the last additions to his theorizing), he suggested that the social arrangement consists of multiple quasi-autonomous fields with their own logics of practice, over-arched by a field of power linked to the economic field and a field of gender relations. Bourdieu’s use of social field appears to refer to studies of social institutions, but rather than speak of politics, he talks of “the field of politics”; instead of the media, “the journalistic field”; in place of literature and the arts, “the field of cultural production”; and so on. Thus, instead of policy, Bourdieu would talk of the policy field. In the context of globalization, in addition to the national education policy field, we also need to recognize an emergent global education policy field (Lingard et al., 2005). The nature of relationships between fields or cross-field effects (Lingard & Rawolle, 2004), here for example the global and national education policy fields, then becomes an important task for contemporary education policy analysis. Also important to explore in our media age are the ways in which policy texts are distributed—how their authority is allocated. Here the work of Fairclough (2000) is useful. In his analysis, Fairclough speaks of the “mediatization” of policy and politics. In some ways, this refers simply to the enhanced role of the media in contemporary politics and to the role of global media in the circulation of globalized education policy problems and discourses. However, it can have an even more specific meaning in relation to education policy production with implications for policy analysis. As Rawolle (2005) has

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demonstrated, today many policy texts are mediatized; that is, the logics of practice of journalism affect policy production processes. This sometimes involves journalists in the production of the actual policy text and the implied readership of the policy (the imagined policy community) becomes the public, rather than the professional community which will actually implement the policy in question, with implications for implementation. The media logic, including the proclivity to aphorism, alliteration, metaphor, and catchy phrases seeps into the wording of the policy and renders it less professionally relevant.

Globalizing education policy analysis Globalization has challenged theory and methodology within the social sciences. Thus globalization implies the need to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions of a society/ nation homology in policy research. Today society is simultaneously local, national, regional, and global in terms of experience, politics, effects, and imaginaries. Further, these spaces are imbricated with unequal power relations which reflect both contemporary geopolitics and past political struggles. Residual, dominant, emergent, and contested geographies of power, including those of the colonial past and postcolonial present, are at play across these global spaces and manifest in vernacular ways in the local, national and regional. Fisher and Mosquera (2004, p. 5) have noted that Western “metaculture” relates to geographies of power, which include academic theories, epistemologies and research methodologies. For those researchers in the Global North, recognition of the researcher’s positionality within Western universities and their relationships to these geographies of power is a central beginning for challenging the silent valorization of Western epistemologies in research of all kinds, including education policy research (Connell, 2007). Such a challenge is central to what Arjun Appadurai (2001) calls the “deparochialization” of research and a strong internationalization of the Western academy, in the light of enhanced global flows of students and academics as part of the mobilities and networks of globalization. He argues for the need to deconstruct, in both an anthropological and pragmatic sense, the “taken-for-granted” assumptions of contemporary systems of research. In the context of increased flows of capital, people, ideas, images, and technologies, and disjunctions and related asymmetries of power, he specifically calls for a “deparochialization of the research ethic” (p. 15). He suggests a number of ways in which the research ethic might be challenged, including a reconnection with earlier pre-research paradigm thinking premised on a strong moral position; the promotion of the style of argumentation of public intellectuals; and paying greater attention to research linked to policy making and state functions in a range of nations, particularly those in the developing world. Appadurai postulates that “epistemological diffidence” is necessary to the project of deparochialization of research—the need to move beyond the epistemological certainty of dominant forms of modernization theory of the 1950s and 1960s and their effects, particularly in the developing world. Modernization theory accepted without question that theory and research were metropolitan, modern, and Western, while the rest of the world was simply a research site to test and confirm such theory. Here relations of researcher and researched paralleled relations of colonizer and colonized, even within decolonizing and postcolonial politics and aspirations. Similarly, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999), in her Decolonizing Methodologies, a study of the relationships between research and indigenous peoples and knowledges in New Zealand, suggests that the term “research” is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism. Raewyn Connell (2007) calls for acknowledgement of, and respect for, “Southern theory.” We

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need to recognize then that relations of power and politics, in both macro and individual relations senses, distort even the most arcane theories to some extent. These theories are imbricated within global politics. In rejecting an epistemological innocence characteristic of the dominant forms of social research, Appadurai, Smith, and Connell call for an “epistemological openness.” Such a project, according to Appadurai, needs to be aligned with “grassroots globalization” or “globalization from below.” We need to ask: whose globalization? And in doing so, issue a challenge to globalization from above as driven by leading international organizations and global cultural industries. In his book Modernity at Large, Appadurai (1996) speaks of “vernacular globalization” to refer to the ways in which local sites and their histories, cultures, politics, and pedagogies mediate to greater or lesser extents the effects of top-down globalization. This is an outcome of relations and tensions between the context-productive and context-generative effects of globalization; some local sites are more able to be context-generative and mediate global effects. The idea of globalization from below seeks to extend and strengthen this mediation and enhance global connections that resist globalization from above, read simply as neoliberal economics, what Bourdieu (2003) calls the performative construction of globalization. Policy is now increasingly located within this struggle, with implications for analysis. Appadurai (2001) emphasizes the need for research to examine its own rhetoric and practices of “systematicity, prior citational contexts, and specialized modes of inquiry,” and replicability, along with “an imagined world of specialized professional readers and researchers” (p. 12), which taken together work to inhibit the deparochialization of research, its theories and methodologies. Prior citational contexts and an imagined world of specialized readers ensure the reproduction of more “parochial” Western- or Northerndominated theories. As already noted, the reality of trans- and supra-national processes labelled as globalization has challenged contemporary social theory. In sociology, Urry (2000) has argued the need to refocus from the social as society to the social as mobilities, indicating the weakened connectivity between society and nation-state and the stretching of networks across the globe. The spatial turn in social theory has been another response to the rescaling of experience. The spatial turn in social theory, exploring these relations between space and place as social constructions, reflects the new scalar politics. Brennan (2006, p. 136) has suggested that the centrality of space and place in contemporary globalization theory manifests the apparent “overcoming of temporality,” with this new theoretical optic ushering in a transition from “tempo to scale,” from “the chronometric to the cartographic.” Brennan (2006, p. 136) makes a distinction between space and place, suggesting “‘space’ is more abstract and ubiquitous: it connotes capital, history, and activity, and gestures towards the meaninglessness of distance in a world of instantaneous communication and virtuality.” In contrast, place, he notes, connotes “the kernel or centre of one’s memory and experience—a dwelling, a familiar park or city street, one’s family or community.” The necessary research disposition being argued for acknowledges this space/place distinction in relation to the conduct of education policy analysis. It is interesting to contemplate the significance of a conceptualization of the space of policy production and the place of policy implementation, and their differing logics, in relation to Brennan’s argument. Other theorists have demonstrated the implicit national space of much social theory and a complementary “methodological nationalism” (Beck, 2000). Bourdieu (1999), for example, has observed how “[i]ntellectual life, like all other social spaces, is a home to nationalism and imperialism” (p. 220) and that “a truly scientific internationalism” requires a concerted political project; this is another way of expressing the project in

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which Appadurai invites us to participate, namely the deparochialization of research and theory. Bourdieu’s theoretical stance and methodological disposition allow a way beyond such spatial and national constraints, a necessary position for analyzing and understanding global effects in contemporary educational policy and the emergence of a global policy field in education. Globalization has resulted in the compression of time and space, which has had the phenomenological effect of enhanced awareness amongst (privileged) peoples across the globe of the world as one place, evidenced in, for example, talk of the “world economy,” “world recession,” “global financial crisis,” “global warming,” “world heritage sites,” “world policy,” “global educational indicators,” and so on. Castells (2000) speaks of flows and networks across the globe which render national boundaries more porous. He argues, somewhat like Appadurai (1996), that society is now organized around flows, namely, “flows of capital, flows of information, flows of technology, flows of organisational interaction, flows of images, sounds and symbols” (Castells, p. 442), with technology facilitating these flows via hubs and nodes located across the globe that are dominated by elites of various kinds. While the postnational accounts proffered by Castells and others perhaps overstate the “porousness” of national boundaries, particularly post-9/11, the suggestion that the world has become increasingly interconnected is now beyond doubt. This implies that the local and the national are now nested within regional, international, transnational, and global spaces. This implies the need to see the social relations of educational policy production as stretched out. It becomes the task of policy analysis to determine how, and with what effects. The policy cycle needs to be globalized with the consequent implications for policy analysis. This task involves refusing to reify the concept of globalization, and requires us to historicize it and to recognize its potentially hegemonic role. The task needs to determine the asymmetries of power between nations, and attend to their colonial and neocolonial histories and post-colonial aspirations. Also important is the need to calibrate the differential national effects of neoliberal globalization. Bourdieu offers a way beyond such reification of globalization and allows for an empirically grounded account of the constitution of a global policy field in education, an example of globalization from above, and an account of global effects in national policy fields, globalization from below. In his later, more political work Bourdieu (2003) was concerned with the politics of globalization, read mainly as the dominance of a neoliberal approach to the economy. He was interested in exploring the ways in which global neoliberal politics have dented the relative autonomy of the logics of practice of many social fields, including that of the educational policy field, which has become more heteronomous, as a subset of economic policy. Bourdieu’s approach allows for an empirical investigation of the constitution of the global economic market, as well as of the ways in which the media field and its logics have affected the degree of autonomy of educational policy production. In a homologous fashion, the global educational policy field is a political project and yet another manifestation of politics in the age of flows and diasporas of people and ideas across the boundaries of nation-states in both embodied and cyber forms. And just as a social imaginary of neoliberal globalization has been a central component in the creation of the global market, so it has been with the global field of educational policy. A global field of education policy is now established, certainly as a global commensurate space of measurement of educational performance. Such a field does not, of course, affect all nation-states in the same way, for they are positioned differently in terms of power and the strength of national capital within the global fields of the economy and governance and have to relate to these global fields in terms of their own economic, social and political conditions. While nation-states retain their significance for policy making in education, their capacity to set their policy priorities has become relativized, as they now

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have to refer to the global processes in a range of different ways, including their effects in specific nations. Drawing on Bourdieu (2003, p. 91), it can be argued that the amount of “national capital” possessed by a given nation is a determining factor in the degree of autonomy for policy development within the nation. National capital in one articulation can be seen to consist of the economic, political, and cultural capital (evidenced in quantity and quality of education of a country’s workforce) possessed by any given nation. Here the Global South is positioned very differently from the Global North in relation to the educational policy effects of the World Bank and other international agencies. National capital can be seen to mediate the extent to which nations are able to be context-generative in respect of the global field. Under globalization and the emergence of global fields, the sovereignty of different nation-states is affected in different ways. As Jayasuriya (2001, p. 444) suggests, “the focus should not be on the content or degree of sovereignty that the state possesses but the form that it assumes in a global economy.” The education policy field today is multilayered, stretched from the local to the global. Mann (2000) speaks of five socio-spatial layers, namely local, national, international (relations between nations), transnational (relations that pass through national boundaries), and global, which cover the globe as a whole. It is important to note, however, that these layers are inter-related, in ways that are affected by the processes of globalization. If this is so, then education policy analysis demands an empirical and theoretical stretching beyond the nation, but in ways that do not overlook the importance of these layers. Bourdieu’s notion of field is useful for examining the relations between these layers, suggesting that global, international, national, and local educational policy fields represent a different way to locate the practices and products of policy. This global educational policy field encompasses the contexts of the policy cycle, and offers some analytic gains in locating the effects of particular policies and reframes the contexts, texts, and consequences of policy. That is, it caters to these matters and also offers a particular way of utilizing Bourdieu’s concept of field to discuss issues around the impact of different fields on one another within national fields of power, and of different scalar levels of fields also affecting one another. All three contexts of the policy cycle (Ball, 1994)—the context of policy text production, the context of influence, and the context of practice—are affected in different ways by globalization through both its policy mediation and its more direct effects.

Conclusion This chapter has shown how globalization has given rise to a number of new theoretical and methodological issues for doing education policy analysis linked to globalization’s impact within critical social science. Critical policy analysis has always required critical reflexivity and awareness of the positionality of the policy analyst. However, as demonstrated, both now need to be nuanced in different ways in the context of globalization. This is to ensure a deparochialized approach to education policy analysis, one which recognizes the layering of policy processes across local, national, regional, and global spaces and the globalization of many policy discourses in education. The disposition for critical education policy analysis in an era of globalization also demands that we recognize the relationality and interconnectivity of policy developments, given the contemporary rescaling of politics. This recognition is in response to the new spatial politics and interconnectivity within and across nations, evident in globalization. Critical policy analysis indicates how any given policy either supports or undermines the values of democracy, social justice, and difference, while also explicating its own imbrications in

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power/knowledge relationships. Beyond critique, another purpose of critical education policy analysis is to suggest how policy could be otherwise—to offer an alternative social imaginary of globalization to the neoliberal construction.

Author’s note This chapter has been developed from Chapter 3, “Globalizing Education Policy Analysis,” in Fazal Rizvi and Bob Lingard’s (2009) book, Globalizing Education Policy.

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CHAPTER 10

GETTING BOYS’ EDUCATION ‘RIGHT’ The Australian Government’s Parliamentary Inquiry Report as an exemplary instance of recuperative masculinity politics Martin Mills, Wayne Martino and Bob Lingard Originally published in: British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2007, 28 (1): 5–21

Introduction This chapter focuses on the Australian federal Parliamentary Inquiry into Boys’ Education, Boys: Getting it Right, presented as signifying a pivotal moment in the enactment of a recuperative masculinity politics in the Australian educational context (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002). This report was the product of a bipartisan parliamentary inquiry set up in March 2000 when the then conservative Liberal–National Party Coalition Commonwealth Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs charged the Employment, Education and Workplace Relations Committee with the task of investigating issues surrounding boys’ education. Its publication, and subsequent inspiration for a number of federal government initiatives on boys’ education, is an indicator of the success that various lobbies for boys have had in foregrounding ‘boys’ as a disadvantaged group in Australian education. As in most other western countries, the current moral panic about boys’ education in Australia has led to a variety of media-generated school-based responses to the ‘boy problem’ (Lingard, 2003). These media-driven discourses have been able to take hold in many schools due to the policy vacuum created as a consequence of the government’s failure to implement the national Gender Equity Framework developed in 1997 (Gender Equity Taskforce for Ministerial Council for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, 1997). Boys: Getting it Right is a highly significant and influential document in terms of defining the limits for ‘recasting’ and determining the terms of reference for a new gender equity framework for Australian schools. In the absence of specific policies related to addressing complex issues of masculinities and schooling, Boys: Getting it Right represents an official stance on boys’ education—we can regard it as a de facto policy, accepting Ozga’s (2000, p. 33) observation that policy can be seen as any ‘vehicle or medium for carrying and transmitting a policy message’. As such, it legitimises a number of conservative school-based responses to the educational needs of boys. The document has taken for granted the notion that (all) boys are unquestionably the ‘new disadvantaged’ in school and this is related to essentialised notions about boys’ learning styles that have not been accommodated by schools. The report thus works with the trope of males as the new disadvantaged, or what Robinson

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(2000, p. 3) calls ‘an identity politics of the dominant’. Many of the report’s recommendations feed off this ‘truth’ in ways that potentially work to disadvantage female students and teachers, and may well exacerbate the existing problems of those boys who are struggling with contemporary schooling. This policy message is mediated through a politics of discourse (Yeatman, 1990), which deploys various rhetorical and reiterative strategies that mask its anti-feminist politics. The report asserts that a focus on boys’ education does not necessarily translate into neglecting the educational needs of girls. Indeed, it suggests what is needed now is an approach to gender equity committed to identifying ‘their common and separate educational needs’ (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. xviii). Through such rhetorical ploys, a common-sense understanding about essentialised differences between boys and girls is central to the conceptualisation of gender equity within the discursive regime of the report. We argue that what this report has accomplished is the re-legitimisation of educational structures and practices in schools that favour the interests of the current ‘patriarchal gender order’ (Connell, 1995). This is foregrounded through the failure of the inquiry to engage with the extensive research literature, which offers more nuanced accounts of the complex social variables, including masculinity, affecting boys in schools (Epstein et al., 1998; Skelton, 2001; Lingard et al., 2002; Martino & Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003, 2005; Connolly, 2004). In excluding such literature, some academics and educational bureaucrats get constructed as lacking in ‘common sense’. Such exclusions enable a number of recommendations that support the need to ‘remasculinise’ schooling as a strategy to better address the educational needs of boys. Our argument is demonstrated through focusing on a number of the report’s recommendations, including the need to ‘revise and recast Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools’ and those recommendations relating to creating ‘boy-friendly’ curricula, assessment and pedagogical practices in schools, and the need for employment of more male teachers. The sections of the report highlighted for criticism are those that have acquired currency in the media, in schools and with many policy-makers. We also recognise that some of the report’s recommendations (e.g. those related to reducing class sizes and improving teacher salaries) are positive and, if taken up by the State systems, would contribute to improved schooling for all students. We need to acknowledge, however, that such matters of class sizes and teacher salaries lie outside the political jurisdiction of the federal government and are the responsibility of the States in the complex federalism surrounding Australian schools.

The inquir y Boys: Getting It Right was released in October 2002. While it was set up by a conservative coalition government, it received bipartisan political support. This standing committee, which consisted of parliamentary members from all major political parties, were given the following Terms of Reference: •

•

inquire into and report on the social, cultural and educational factors affecting the education of boys in Australian schools, particularly in relation to their literacy needs and socialisation skills in the early and middle years of schooling; and the strategies which schools have adopted to help address these factors, those strategies which have been successful and scope for their broader implementation or increased effectiveness. (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. xi)

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The original chair of this committee was the Liberal Party member Dr Brendan Nelson, who after the 2001 election became the Commonwealth Minister of the renamed Department of Education, Science and Training. After the election, Mr Kerry Bartlett, also a Liberal member, headed the standing committee conducting the inquiry. During the course of the inquiry the Committee received 231 written submissions from 202 different parties. It also received 178 exhibits that were attached to the written submissions, given at public hearings or sent to the committee by other parties. Public hearings were held across the country, at which 235 witnesses appeared. Members of the committee also visited 16 schools, and at six of these schools forums were held with students. A total of 124 students took part in these forums.

Context Any analysis of Boys: Getting it Right needs to be situated within the highly charged context of backlash politics that are shaping the gender agenda today. Much has been written about this ‘backlash’ in education (Gilbert & Gilbert, 1998; Lingard & Douglas, 1999; Yates, 2000; Martino & Meyenn, 2001; Mills, 2003). However, it is worth briefly re-covering some of this territory. Several texts (Bly, 1991; Farrell, 1993; Biddulph, 1995, 1997) and media reports (Arndt, 2001; Ruse, 2002) have claimed that males are now the second sex. They argue that feminism has had a major impact on society such that women and girls are no longer discriminated against and that it is now men and boys who experience disadvantage and discrimination because of their sex. In order to prove this point, data are drawn on to amplify male victim status with discrepancies between rates of male and female imprisonment, deaths in the workplace and in road accidents, male access to children after separation, unemployment and school achievement usually being cited. In this miscellany, there is, however, silence on data indicating gender differences in those occupying the top income brackets, headships of large business corporations, seats in government, experiences of domestic violence and welfare dependency. Furthermore, there is a tendency to homogenise women and men, along with girls and boys, such that issues of class and race/ethnicity are bleached from the analyses. In so doing, it is the disadvantages being experienced by men and boys from marginalised backgrounds that are being used to indicate that all men are disadvantaged. This rather devious construction of men’s lack of privilege ignores the reality that while many men are disadvantaged, it is not because they are men, but because they are working-class men or Indigenous men (McLean, 1995). Thus, we argue here that it is necessary to read the report within a broader politicised context that is fuelled by this backlash. In addition, the possibilities for deploying the data to draw attention to the limits imposed on boys, through their subscribing to practices of hegemonic masculinity, are elided in favour of supporting a neoconservative boys’ education agenda, which is grounded in essentialist and commonsense understandings about ‘being a boy’. An aspect of this backlash, rightist agenda is the way that boys are constructed as the victims of an education system which is deemed to be explicitly girl rather than boy friendly. Deficit models of students are often used to explain student failure, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds (Delpit, 1995). However, in relation to all boys, educational failure is often attributed to their oppression by unfriendly schools. This, however, is not carried through to particular categories of boys. For instance, for non-Anglo boys, failure is often attributed to factors other than gender (Sewell, 1997; Simpson et al., 2001) and the same is the case for boys who come from low socio-economic backgrounds (Jackson, 1998). Connolly’s (2004) analysis of achievement data in England, however, led him to conclude that ‘raising boys’ achievement cannot simply be about gender, it needs to be as much (if not more) about strategies focusing on social class and ethnicity as well’ (p. 219).

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However, the report at no stage makes any mention of racism or negative assumptions about working-class students, despite raising issues to do with Indigenous students. Silences such as these keep the report firmly within a right agenda that works in the interests of the most privileged (Apple, 2001). For instance, the silences in the report on the ways in which some boys are heavily privileged by the education system effectively work to shore up those privileges for middle-class boys (Yates, 1997). This is a point well captured by McLean (1995, p. 32): The whole popular discussion of men and boys’ issues is oblivious to the complexities of class and race. This allows the exploitation and oppression suffered by working-class men, and men from marginalised ethnic and racial backgrounds, to be used to justify the claim that all men are oppressed. This tendency to exploit marginalised boys as equivalent to an essentialised category of all boys is found throughout the report. As such, it speaks to an array of conservative audiences who construct schools as institutions captured by leftist education systems more concerned about the welfare of gay and lesbian students, students with disabilities, Indigenous students, non-English speaking background students, non-Anglo students and girls than they are with the mainstream (a rather small minority once all of the supposedly favoured groups are taken out). Many of these audiences are sceptical about academics, whom they regard as having been instrumental in the creation of ‘progressive’ education systems, while they are influenced by ‘common sense’ discourses.

Common sense versus research There is a tendency within Boys: Getting it Right to appeal to conservatism by rejecting academic research findings and theory in favour of ‘common-sense’ assumptions and understandings about gender and boys’ schooling. For instance, there is an assumption that there are different learning styles for boys and girls (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, pp. 77–79). Interestingly, even where boys and girls are claimed to have similar learning styles, generalised gender differences are noted. The report uses the following quote from a submission by Greg Griffith from Victoria to demonstrate this: An example may be male and female students exhibiting similar verbal linguistic preference. The girls would probably exhibit better ideational fluency, have better verbal memory, have quick verbal responses under pressure, use longer sentences, have a better vocabulary, verbalise thoughts and feelings, use intonation to express ideas and take poetic licence, talk more about relationships and people and read fiction. While the boys with a similar learning style will tend to write and speak in shorter sentences, ask more questions of their teachers, talk more about sport and politics, read to follow instructions rather than listening to follow, use vocabulary competitively and will read more non-fiction (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 78) Such understandings of gender can also be found within numerous populist texts on men (Biddulph, 1995, 1997; Gurian, 1999; Pollack, 1999), whose arguments stand in contrast with research conducted in Australia and elsewhere that has highlighted the significant impact of the social construction of masculinities on both boys’ social relationships with other boys and girls, and on their attitudes to learning, teachers and school

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in general (Collins et al., 1996; Francis, 2000; Martino & Meyenn, 2001; Skelton, 2001; Martino & Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2001, 2003, 2005). The inquiry ignores this research, which highlights the effects of bullying on the social and educational well-being of students at school and which draws attention to the racialised, sex-based and genderbased dimensions of harassment. However, the inquiry team was not unaware of this particular theory of gender. In its response to The Australian Education Union’s submission in relation to calls for more male teachers, the report states: The Australian Education Union argued that excellent teaching style ‘is not dictated by gender’ but a range of attitudes and abilities including an ‘understanding of gender construction and its impact on students and teachers’. The Union also argued that effective male teachers ‘need to understand the construction of gender and motivations for violence, and be trained in ways to intervene to deal with inappropriate behaviour’. Even if this is true it places too much emphasis on gender theory and too little on the importance of the relationship between teacher and the student which is the foundation of good teaching. (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 160) This attitude towards ‘theory’ highlights the inquiry’s denigration and refusal to acknowledge the impact and effects of the social construction of gender, despite the increasing evidence to support the very significant ways in which the social construction of gender impacts significantly on curriculum, pedagogical practices and relations with and between students in schools (Collins et al., 1996; Martino & Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2001; Skelton, 2001). This research indicates, for instance, that the ways in which boys patrol the boundaries of acceptable masculinities through the use of homophobic abuse has a significant impact upon the ways in which some boys engage with the academic curriculum, leading Epstein et al. (1998, p. 97) to suggest that, at times, ‘The rejection of the perceived “feminine” of academic work is simultaneously a defence against the “charge” of being gay’. Hence, a more nuanced analysis of gender relations and the factors influencing boys’ and girls’ educational outcomes and social relations needs to be undertaken in order to understand the complex issues facing boys and girls in schools. Boys: Getting it Right rejects such analysis by suggesting that a ‘which boys/which girls’ approach is utilised by academics and bureaucrats as a surreptitious form of ‘resistance to addressing boys’ education issues’. It suggests that such an approach has washed gender out of the picture and replaced it with class—interestingly, we would argue that class has been neglected in contemporary educational policy in Australia. In order to reinstate a focus on gender, it argues that a concentrated effort to improve the education of boys is justified because ‘for almost every socio-economic group, boys are underachieving compared to girls’ and that this ‘disparity is greatest in the most disadvantaged socio-economic groups’ (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. xvii). These arguments are valid, and the report, to its credit, recognises this; indeed in chapter two there is a special section on Indigenous boys, within which it also notes the disadvantages facing Indigenous girls in Australia. However, it does not emphasise the evidence that there is less of a gap in the educational performance of boys and girls from higher socio-economic backgrounds (Teese et al., 1995). It is this complex picture that indicates taking a ‘Which boys?’ and ‘Which girls?’ approach is necessary for disaggregating and understanding the educational performance data of males and females in schools. Marcus Weaver-Hightower (2003) suggests that there have been four main strands to the debate on boys’ education. He classifies this literature into the popular-rhetorical, the

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theoretically oriented, the practice oriented, and the feminist and pro-feminist. The report appears only to deal with the popular-rhetorical and practice-oriented literatures and submissions, while rejecting the theoretical and feminist and pro-feminist accounts through both omission and off-hand dismissal. This means that the issue of the dominant construction of masculinity is elided in the report. It seems to us that schools need to deal with the construction of various masculinities and their relationships with femininities to really move schools towards gender equity for all. As Connolly (2004) notes in a review of the gender and performance data in the United Kingdom: ‘the key factor to address in terms of boys’ poor educational performance is masculinity itself’ (p. 61).

Gender equity framework That the report has, as its first recommendation, called for a rewriting of the Gender Equity Framework in order to take account of both boys’ and girls’ interests is indicative of its support for the boys’ lobby. Like many of those in the boys’ lobby who protest that they are not against girls or women, the report states that it has to be acknowledged that boys are disadvantaged, but such recognition should not mean neglect of girls’ educational needs. This constitutes one of the rhetorical ploys used within the report to assert that a focus on boys’ education does not necessarily translate into a failure to address the educational needs of girls. However, its anti-feminism surfaces when it critiques former approaches to gender equity; for example, ‘The assumption in recent decades appears to have been that girls have urgent educational needs to be addressed and that boys will be all right’ (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. xv). Implicit within this statement is a suggestion that there has been a decided attempt to deny the reality of boys’ educational and social disadvantage in schools. Hence, the report attempts ‘to set the record straight’ by announcing that ‘there is justification for many of the concerns about boys’ education’ (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. xv). Thus, in response to many of the feminist and pro-feminist critiques of the populist boys’ debate, it wants to convince its audience that (all) boys are underachieving and disengaged from learning. As part of its attack on feminism, the report criticises the Gender Equity Framework. This is rather ironic given that the Framework has also been criticised for its failure to adequately address the educational needs of girls (Ailwood & Lingard, 2001), while also attempting some focus on boys and masculinity. According to the inquiry, what is overlooked in the current gender equity policy is ‘the longer term impact of low achievement and the resulting restriction of some males to lower skilled employment’. It thus argues that the Gender Equity Framework, as a strategy for addressing the education and social needs of boys in schools, is inadequate. The suspicion with which the report treats this framework may well stem from the Framework’s development from both the National Policy for the Education of Girls in Australian Schools (Australian Education Council, 1987) and the National Action Plan for the Education of Girls 1993–97 (Australian Education Council, 1993). The report provides a history of gender equity policy dating back to 1975 and the Commonwealth Schools Commission’s report Girls, School and Society. While critical of some of these policies, for their apparent negative construction of boys or for ignoring boys, it is interesting to note that these earlier girls’ policy documents have also been critiqued by feminists. For instance, Kenway (1990, p. 68) argued that the National Policy ‘paid insufficient attention to the connections between masculinity, sexuality and domestic and other violence’. This is a point echoed by Yates (1993, p. 25) who, in her examination of the influence of feminist theory on educational policy in Australia, observed:

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Getting boys’ education ‘right’ If we look back on the recent decades of Australian government policy on girls and schooling, the ‘noise’ of the entry of new issues and demands for schools is apparent. But what has changed relatively little is the education of boys: the skills they get, the subject-matter they learn and the ways they are permitted to act in school.

Putting boys onto the agenda is of course not necessarily anti-feminist, for as Kenway (1996, p. 447) has stated: Most feminists want boys and men to change so that they cause less trouble for girls and women and themselves, so the sexes can live alongside each other in a safe, secure, stable, respectful, harmonious way and in relationships of mutual lifeenhancing respect. However, the report’s recommended revision of the Gender Equity Framework is unlikely to do much to address these feminist concerns. Boys: Getting it Right acknowledges that there ‘appears to be widespread support among State and Territory education departments, Catholic Education authorities, teachers’ unions, principals’ associations and academics for the existing gender equity policy framework’ (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p 61). However, it claims that a separate boys’ education strategy has been advocated within this existing gender equity framework document by the New South Wales Secondary Principals’ Council. The logic governing the report’s direction from the outset is once again identified here—the need for a gender equity policy to outline a separate boys’ education strategy. It also seeks to distance teachers from their unions and departments by constructing the latter as divorced from the ‘real world’. For instance, it claims that while many teachers who contributed to the inquiry appear eager to address boys’ education as a part of their overall commitment to improving the quality of schooling for all students, this does not appear to be the case at the official institutional level of education departments and unions: . . . it is difficult to avoid the impression that some gender equity units in education departments and education unions, generally, have been reluctant to openly confront boys’ under-achievement and disengagement as an issue, perhaps for fear of undermining ongoing support for strategies for girls. (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 61) The report also notes that opinions among academics are divided, with some supporting the current Gender Equity Framework and others seeing it as ‘too narrowly based on the issues that drove reform for girls’ and as such ‘does not adequately address boys’ needs’ (p. 61). The report is fairly clear as to which academics it is in accord with. It claims that the Gender Equity Framework is grounded in concerns about girls’ education and thus fails to address factors affecting boys’ schooling, participation in the labour market and wage earning capacity: The Gender Equity Framework, built as it is on the prior work for girls, does not separately research and identify boys’ needs and it sets boys’ needs solely in the context of what still needs to be achieved for girls. (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 64)

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Earlier attempts to address boys’ education from within a gender equity framework are constructed as being limited, problematic and, moreover, as ‘dangerous’, in that they involve applying uncritically gender equity principles underpinning girls’ education to boys’ education and are based on the desire to ‘fix boys up’ (p. 65). Thus, while the report noted that ‘Clearly, the work to achieve full equality of opportunity and access in education and employment for girls is not completed’, it qualifies this with the statement: ‘However, while it continues to address the on-going needs of most girls, the Gender Equity Framework does not adequately articulate and address boys’ educational needs’ (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 67). In arguing for a ‘recasting’ of the Framework, the new gender equity strategy would cast: the educational objectives positively for boys and girls as opposed to the negative approach for boys implied in most of the current policy material—for example, about boys not being violent, not monopolising space and equipment and not harassing girls and other boys. (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 68) The implication here of course is that former approaches have undermined the achievements of boys, and, hence, feminism can be blamed for boys’ current failures. Thus, while not opposed to the rewriting of the Gender Equity Framework, we are concerned this is grounded in the attitude that there is nothing damaging about dominant constructions of masculinity for either girls or boys, that take for granted essentialist accounts of gender, that adopt an anti-feminist stance and that ignore the privileges that accrue to boys as a result of their sex.

Curriculum, pedagogy and assessment The report promotes ‘boy-friendly’ practices in schools, ignoring the needs of girls, drawing on Trent and Slade’s (2001) claim that boys are very reactive to poor teaching and irrelevant curriculum. This research, in conjunction with the submission from Ian Lilico, a Western Australian principal and consultant, leads the report to state that boys need to be provided with a relevant curriculum that is connected to the world beyond the classroom. This, it is acknowledged, is also important for girls, but according to the inquiry there are groups of boys who are more likely to disrupt classes and the learning of others when not provided with such a curriculum. The report also recognises that many Australian curriculum innovations have been accompanied by a concern with improving pedagogical practices. However, its focus in its consideration of pedagogy is learning styles, arguing that some are favoured by boys and others by girls, again adopting an essentialised account. Drawing on Gardiner’s work on multiple intelligences, it is suggested that learning styles associated with verbal linguistic activities and interpersonal and intrapersonal skills are favoured by girls, whereas boys supposedly prefer activities associated with mathematic logical learning styles, spatial intelligence, kinaesthetic learning and naturalistic intelligence. The evidence used to support these gender preferences for particular styles of learning are drawn from submissions from educators in schools and one conference paper. From this ‘evidence’, the following claims about what boys need in terms of quality teaching and learning designed to address their educational needs are made:

186 • • • • •

Getting boys’ education ‘right’ boys tend to need more explicit teaching than girls and tend to prefer active, handson methods of instruction; structured programs are better for boys because they need to know what is expected and they like to be shown the steps along the way to achieve success; while girls more readily respond to content, boys respond more to their relationships with teachers; activities help boys establish rapport with their teachers; and boys respond better to teachers who are attuned to boys’ sense of justice and fairness and who are consistent in the application of rules. (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 78)

‘Getting it right’ for boys, according to the report, means that more attention be directed to implementing a relevant curriculum that accommodates boys’ interests and orientations to learning and that focuses on positive relationships between boys and their teachers. While the report does argue that this is equally important for girls, it asserts that boys more specifically need to be accommodated due to their resistance to engage in learning, which, it is implied, is somehow related to their natural predisposition based on their sex: Of course having a relevant and interesting curriculum that is taught well is just as important for girls as it is for boys. However boys are more likely than girls to respond to dull subject matter or uninspiring teaching in an overt and challenging way that will disrupt their own and others’ learning. (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 72) Moreover, the report claims that curriculum content and delivery also need to be varied to suit student needs, but more specifically to ‘suit particular groups of boys and girls’ (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 75). There are constant slippages in the discourse that resort to reaffirming what by implication are simply natural predispositions or learning behaviours and orientations for boys and girls. The rhetorical ploy is one that operates at the level of asserting that both boys’ and girls’ educational experiences need to be taken into consideration, while simultaneously establishing that they essentially have different needs on the basis of simply being boys and girls. This discourse of sameness and yet difference is governed by problematic liberal humanist notions of subjectivity and equity (Weedon, 1997) that fail to pay heed to the complex ways in which intra-group differences for both boys and girls impact on their social and educational outcomes. This is evident in the report when it states that some boys will prefer learning styles favoured by most girls and vice versa, while at the same time arguing that there are definite orientations to learning that are the specific domain of boys as opposed to girls. For example, it claims that verbal, linguistic and interpersonal and intrapersonal skills are deemed to be those usually developed and preferred by girls, while mathematical logic, spatial intelligence, kinaesthetic or physical learning and naturalistic learning (activities related to the natural environment and tasks using sorting and classifying) are identified as being preferred by boys (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, pp. 77–78). Thus Boys: Getting it Right legitimates essentialist understandings of gender in that it is based on the presupposition that there are natural and normal behaviours, dispositions and attitudes that are either male or female (for a critique of essentialist views, see Harding, 1998). Such understandings can be seen in the above claims about the learning styles of boys and girls. There is some evidence to support these claims with regard to boys being

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more disruptive in class (although the document is critical of earlier policies that were ‘negative’ about boys’ behaviours) and that boys do gravitate towards mathematics and science more often than girls and so on. However, the only explanations found throughout Boys: Getting it Right are based upon biological essentialist notions of being a boy. Indeed when issues of the social construction of gender, which is referred to throughout as ‘gender theory’, are raised by various submissions to the inquiry, they are dismissed. The report stresses the need for teachers to ensure that curriculum and pedagogy work towards making school relevant to boys, because ‘boys are more likely than girls to respond to dull subject matter or uninspiring teaching in an overt and challenging way that will disrupt their own and others’ learning’ (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 72). However, there is little recognition that this ‘rebellion’ on the part of boys is actually a playing out of dominant constructions of masculinity that often have a detrimental impact on the learning of both boys and girls (Mills, 2001; Skelton, 2001). There is a need in schools to ensure that curricula and pedagogy are connected to students’ worlds, and to recognise that good relationships between teachers and students, along with explicit forms of teaching, are important for student outcomes, and that this is especially the case for underachieving students. However, there is also a need to reject deficit models of students by providing all students with intellectually challenging classrooms, which connect subject matter to students’ interests and biographies and to the world beyond the classroom (Lingard et al., 2003; Newmann & Associates, 1996; Hayes et al., 2006). The report recognises that assessment is interrelated with pedagogical and curricular issues. It claims that different methods of assessment favour and disadvantage groups of boys and girls. It suggests that it is generally understood, referencing the Northern Territory Department of Employment, Education and Training submission, that tests and examinations suit boys, while continuous assessment is better for girls. It also recognises that this is not true for all boys or all girls. They also stressed the need to have assessment tasks linked to real-world problems, but wanted these tasks to be such that they were attractive enough to help boys overcome their unwillingness to engage with the language and social demands of such tasks. This led the committee to recommend that the Commonwealth fund further research into the impact of different assessment methods on boys’ and girls’ achievement levels. It is interesting to note that throughout this chapter of the report very few academics whose work is primarily in the areas of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment have been cited. There is a heavy reliance on the opinions of teachers, principals and academic members of the boys’ lobby, and on the research of Rowe and Rowe, which in our view overstates teacher effects. This is not to deny that teachers and principals have sound knowledge of their students and the effects of assessment practices. However, there is a distinct lack of research evidence provided to support the claims made. There are a number of unacknowledged dangers with the suggested approaches. First, the focus on giving explicit instruction to boys may mean that some underachieving girls are ignored. The productive pedagogies research (Lingard et al., 2003) has demonstrated the significance of direct pedagogy to successful teaching for all students. Such directness and explicitness are necessary to ensure that implicit cultural capital does not become the misrecognised factor in determining student performance (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). In terms of assessment practices, providing students with explicit criteria as to what is expected from them in the classroom is necessary for all students who struggle with understanding the expectations of teachers (Hayes et al., 2006). Secondly, dismissing the importance of relationships in the teaching of girls may mean that quieter girls are not provided with those kinds of relationships that foster a love of learning as opposed to acquiescence to irrelevant curriculum. Thirdly, a focus on relationships for boys may come at the cost of providing an intellectually challenging classroom—challenging

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content and positive relationships with teachers are important for all students. Good student/teacher relationships are a necessary, but not sufficient basis for productive pedagogies for all students (Hayes et al., 2006). Fourthly, in a context where boys are affected by the pervasive backlash against feminism, their ‘sense of justice and fairness’ may slip into a ‘competing victim syndrome’ (Cox, 1996). While perhaps overstating the case, the report quite rightly recognises the importance of the teacher in providing students with high-quality education. For instance, the chapter on pedagogy and curriculum addresses the structural issue of single-sex classes as a strategy for improving students’ learning. However, it neither advocates nor rejects this as an approach for improving outcomes. It stresses that any structural change has to be accompanied by pedagogical and curriculum practices that recognise boys’ learning needs. A similar view of the male teachers issue is taken. The report stresses that the sex of the teacher is not as important as the quality of the teacher and of the pedagogies. We would agree with this emphasis upon pedagogies as opposed to an emphasis upon structural changes or the sex of the teacher (Martino et al., 2005).

Male role models Boys Getting it Right expresses concern with the lack of male teachers in primary schools and suggests the reasons for this include the status of teaching, salaries, career opportunities and child protection issues. Elsewhere, we have been critical of the focus on these kinds of reasons alone for explaining a lack of male teachers (Mills et al., 2004), as they often do not take into account the ‘glass escalator’ effect for male teachers in promotion away from the classroom (Williams, 1993), the ways in which men are often privileged in early childhood education (King, 1998, 2000), the masculinised nature of school structures and practices (Skelton, 2002) and the feminist struggles to get child protection issues onto the educational agenda. We have also been critical of the silences regarding the ways in which homophobia and misogyny work to keep men out of primary school teaching and early childhood teaching in particular, silences evident in the report. The report acknowledges that single-parent families headed by mothers cannot be held responsible for under-achievement and that the impact of ‘father absence’ on boys’ welfare has not being ‘thoroughly researched’. Yet it nonetheless states: The level of public and media interest in the gender balance of the teaching force and submissions to the inquiry indicate a high level of concern about the decline in the proportion of men in teaching, and in primary teaching in particular. The Committee shares this concern but rejects any suggestion that there is widespread discrimination by female teachers against boys or that female teachers cannot be excellent teachers for boys. (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 155) The report agrees with the position that ‘the quality of the teacher is more important then the gender of the teacher—the position consistently taken by education departments, school principals and teachers’ unions’ (p. 162). However, drawing on anecdotal evidence from submissions to the inquiry, it states that the negative impact of a lack of male role models for boys is ‘generally accepted’. In fact, the report contends that the situation of the absent male role model is made worse by media representations of men. It thus suggests that intervention through the school system is important, given the increasing numbers of boys who lack adult male role models or have limited experience of men in their lives. The report suggests that such

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boys are less likely to identify with positive male images, and are more likely to identify with stereotyped media images. The report states in relation to male teachers that ‘An understanding of gender issues is important but the role modelling and teaching by males whose relationship and commitment to boys is genuine is the most important factor’ (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 161). However, what a ‘genuine commitment’ to boys might look like is not clear. The report contends, that in the absence of male role models, boys are more likely to identify with ‘unbalanced models of masculinity’ that portray and valorise ‘restrictive emotionality, concern with power and status, excessive self reliance, homophobia, antiauthoritarian bravado, anti-intellectualism and non-relational attitudes towards sexuality’ (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, 2002, p. 67). Thus failure to be exposed to male role models, the report suggests, leads to boys’ inability to develop the necessary emotional and communicative literacies and skills required, not only for their active participation in a changing labour market but also in terms of the development of their psychological and emotional well-being as active citizens. However, many of the common reasons suggested as to why more male role models are needed indicate that it is very traditional men who are being sought. The problem with the logic underpinning role model theory used in this report is that it fails to acknowledge the all pervasive culture of masculinity in boys’ lives. The report mentions the limited range of masculinities propagated by the media, but fails to recognise the investment that men and many schools have in maintaining such a system of gender, with homophobia often functioning as a gate keeping mechanism of an oppressive normalisation in boys’ and men’s lives (Martino & Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003). The role of culture and power are not investigated in terms of the interplay between the consumption of media texts and the marketing of particular forms of gender representations consistent with valorised notions of masculinity within the dominant culture. The point is that such media representations would have no purchase, unless there were considerable numbers of men and boys already investing in such practices.

Conclusion: the re-masculinisation of schooling In our view, the report’s recommendations will do little to challenge the current structures within schools that work against the interests of underachieving boys and girls. Furthermore, the report adds fuel to the argument that the feminisation of schooling has caused problems for boys. It is implied that this feminisation is a result of a policy legacy that has favoured girls over boys, of curriculum content and assessment and pedagogical practices that are unfriendly to boys, and because of the large numbers of women teachers to whom boys are exposed. All of this sits well with the conservative boys’ lobby, who work politically with the trope of boys and men as the new disadvantaged.

Acknowledgements M. Mills would like to thank the Institute for Policy Studies in Education, London Metropolitan University, for their support during the course of writing this paper. The three authors would also like to thank Carolynn Lingard for assistance with the editing of this paper.

References Ailwood, J. & Lingard, B. (2001) The endgame for national girls’ schooling policies in Australia?, Australian Journal of Education, 45(1), 9–22.

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Martino, W. & Pallotta-Chiarolli, M. (2005) Being normal is the only way to be: adolescent boys and girls perspectives on gender and school (Sydney, UNSW Press). Martino, W., Mills, M. & Lingard, B. (2005) Interrogating single-sex classes for addressing boys’ educational and social needs, Oxford Review of Education, 31(2), 237–254. McLean, C. (1995) Boys and education in Australia, Dulwich Centre Newsletter, 2&3, 29–42. Mills, M. (2001) Challenging violence in schools: an issue of masculinities (Buckingham, Open University Press). Mills, M. (2003) Shaping the boys’ agenda: the backlash blockbusters, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 7, 57–73. Mills, M., Martino, W. & Lingard, B. (2004) Issues in the male teacher debate: masculinities, misogyny and homophobia, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(3), 354–369. Newmann, F. & Associates (1996) Authentic achievement: restructuring schools for intellectual quality (San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass). Ozga, J. (2000) Policy research in educational settings contested terrain (Buckingham, Open University Press). Pollack, W. (1999) Real boys: rescuing our sons from the myths of boyhood (New York, Henry Holt). Robinson, S. (2000) Marked men white masculinity in crisis (New York, Columbia University Press). Ruse, B. (2002). ‘Schools fail boys: report’, The West Australian, 22 October, p. 2. Sewell, T. (1997) Black masculinities and schooling: how black boys survive modern schooling (Stoke on Trent, Trentham Books). Simpson, L., McFadden, M. & Munns, G. (2001) ‘Someone has to go through’: Indigenous boys, staying on at school and negotiating masculinities, in: W. Martino & B. Meyenn (Eds) What about the boys? Issues of masculinity and schooling (Buckingham, Open University Press), 154–168. Skelton, C. (2001) Schooling the boys: masculinities and primary education (Buckingham, Open University Press). Skelton, C. (2002) The ‘feminisation of schooling’ or ‘remasculinising’ primary education?, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 12, 77–96. Teese, R., Davies, M., Charlton, M. & Polesel, J. (1995) Who wins at school? Boys and girls in Australian secondary education (Canberra, DETYA). Trent, F. & Slade, M. (2001) Declining rates of achievement and retention: the perceptions of adolescent males (Canberra, Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs). Weaver-Hightower, M. (2003) The ‘boy-turn’ in research on gender and education, Review of Educational Research, 73(4), 471–498. Weedon, C. (1997) Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory (Oxford, Basil Blackwell). Williams, C. (1993) Doing ‘women’s work’: men in nontraditional occupations (London, Sage). Yates, L. (1993) What happens when feminism is an agenda of the state? Feminist theory and the case of education policy in Australia, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 14(1), 17–29. Yates, L. (1997) Gender equity and the boys’ debate: what sort of challenge is it?, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 18(3), 337–347. Yates, L. (2000) The ‘facts of the case’: gender equity for boys as a public policy issue, in: N. Lesko (Ed.) Masculinities at school (Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage), 305–322. Yeatman, A. (1990) Bureaucrats, technocrats, femocrats: essays on the contemporary Australian state (Sydney, Allen & Unwin).

CHAPTER 11

PEDAGOGIES OF INDIFFERENCE Bob Lingard Originally published in: International Journal of Inclusive Education, 2007, 11(3): 245–266

Introduction A pedagogy of différance complicates the ancient thinking of the West that does not grant standing to the idea of the Other, its infusing in the idea of perpetuity, stasis, and fixed order the semblance of an outside, exteriority, to a pedagogy of the Same. (Trifonas, 2003a, p. 8) Following Cummins (2003), we can see classroom pedagogies as involving simultaneously ‘identity negotiation’ and ‘knowledge generation’. Both processes are intimately linked to the inequalities of broader social structures, in which what Bernstein (1971) called the three message systems of schooling, namely curriculum, pedagogies and assessment, are located. As Bernstein (1971) put it in his influential essay in Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education, edited by Michael Young: How a society selects, classifies, distributes, transmits and evaluates the educational knowledge it considers to be public, reflects both the distribution of power and principles of social control. (p. 47) To speak of knowledge generation in the pedagogical relationship, as Cummins does, is to work with a constructivist view of classroom practice, with which I have real sympathy, but we need to recognize that schools, as argued by the reproduction theorists (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977), also reproduce knowledge in the selective traditions of curriculum construction and pedagogical practices. Trifonas’ (2003b) edited collection Pedagogies of Difference deals with these issues in relation to rethinking more equitable schooling through more equitable pedagogies. In so doing, the Trifonas collection emphasizes the identity negotiation side of pedagogies and attempts to constitute a community of difference across feminist, critical, antiracist, postcolonial, gay and lesbian pedagogies. However, we need to acknowledge the weave between identity negotiation and the production and reproduction of knowledge in the pedagogical encounter and its effects. We can consider effects in terms of academic outcomes, but sociological work on schooling has also been concerned with opportunity or social justice effects. Here we need to distinguish carefully between schooling as a positional good, providing or denying opportunities for more education and access to the better rewarded and regarded occupations, and schooling as good in and of itself, irrespective of its positional effects and outcomes.

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This chapter documents what are called here pedagogies of indifference to encapsulate the dominant nature of actually existing pedagogies found in a large Australian pedagogical study (Lingard et al., 2001, 2003; Hayes et al., 2006). These actually existing pedagogies of indifference failed to work with and across the differences that the Trifonas collection is concerned with, but also failed to make a difference in their lack of both intellectual demand and connectedness to the world. These pedagogies could be seen to be deeply therapeutic in their strength of care for students, but indifferent in terms of working with differences and making a difference in academic and opportunity senses. Thus, the title of the chapter is not meant to imply indifferent teachers, indeed the extent of teacher care should be commended, rather it is to acknowledge the indifferent effects of the mapped pedagogies in relation to opportunities and difference. This chapter thus draws on a large Australian research project—the Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS)—mapping, analysing and theorizing teacher pedagogies in the context of school reform agendas (Lingard et al., 2001, 2003; Hayes et al., 2006). Here the theoretical concept of productive pedagogies derived from the research is introduced, while the concept of pedagogies of indifference is used to describe the actual pedagogies mapped in the research. The model of pedagogies developed tried to weave together the ideas of identity construction and knowledge generation—what Fraser (1997) calls a politics of recognition and a politics of redistribution. The model sought to develop a conception of productive pedagogies which would work with and value difference, but also strengthen schooling as a good in its own right, as well as in positional terms—all of which are substantial conceptual aspirations. On the basis of the evidence derived from the QSRLS, the chapter argues the need to challenge pedagogies of indifference and instead to construct and work towards pedagogies which make a difference in ways described above, but also in the production of global citizens who can work with and value difference, i.e. following Appadurai (2001), there is a need to deparochialize pedagogies and in so doing to consider the place of pedagogies.1 This requires a working together of Gilroy’s (2004) ‘planetary humanism’ and Said’s (2004) ‘democratic humanism’ with difference, a working together of sameness and difference. Expressed another way, this is Luke’s (2006) call for ‘the re-envisioning of a transcultural and cosmopolitan teacher’; at the same time, he argues that contemporary policy actually restricts teacher habitus to a ‘narrowly local, regional, and national epistemic standpoint’ (p. 135). Such a cosmopolitan teacher would have, Luke suggests, ‘the capacity to shunt between the local and the global, to explicate and engage with the broad flows of knowledge and information, technologies and populations, artefacts and practices that characterize the present historical moment’ (p. 135). Deparochialization requires pedagogies to reach beyond the local and the national to the global, but also demands deep connectedness with the local. In the contemporary context, educational policy production at the national level is affected by globalized educational policy discourses, Ball’s (1998) ‘big policies in a small world’, while teacher practice tends to remain local and fenced in by local and national regulations, but the effects of globalization come through the classroom door each day in multiple ways. As Luke (2006) argues, we need, in the contemporary context, to challenge this restrictive and parochial ‘structural isomorphism’ (p. 133) between teachers/ pedagogies and the nation. However, we also need to strengthen local connections as well; this is another manifestation of Bernstein’s (1999) distinction between vertical and horizontal discourses and part of what we might call, after Sassen (2001), the new spatiotemporality of contemporary schooling, recognizing the simultaneous fixity and mobility, local and global, presentism and futures orientation of schooling and pedagogies. The QSRLS demonstrated that teachers and their practices (pedagogies and assessment) are the most significant element of schooling in respect of student outcomes and

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schooling as a positional good (cf. Coleman et al., 1966); indeed, it is through pedagogies that education gets done. Pedagogies are central to the professional knowledges and identities of teachers, as well as the central component of their practices. Further, Bernstein (1971) spoke of the educative and opportunity effects of the three message systems of schooling, namely curriculum, pedagogy and assessment and the complex, almost symbiotic relationship between the three. McNeil’s (2000) US study of the way schooling controlled through standardized testing produced ‘defensive pedagogies’ is a good illustrative case of this relationship. Historically, educational policy has had more to say to and about curriculum and assessment than to pedagogies. However, in education policy developments in England at least, pedagogies, while being inflected by developments in curriculum and assessment and by other features of the post-Keyensian educational policy settlement of markets, competition, choice, testing and outcomes accountability and so on, what Ball (2004) has called, drawing upon Lyotard, a culture of performativity, have also been the explicit focus of policy. Jeffrey and Woods (1998), Mahony and Hextall (2000), Hartley (2003), Ranson (2003) and Ball (2006) have written persuasively and instructively about the pedagogization of policy and policy on pedagogies in England, demonstrating its technization, reductive character in respect of hoped for goals in relation to the knowledge economy, and negative impact of performativity on ‘the soul of the teacher’ (Ball, 2006). This policy regime has resulted in what we might call pedagogies of the same, rather than pedagogies of difference. Specifically, in terms of England, Ranson (2003) has shown how a regime of professional accountability has been replaced by a regime of neo-liberal accountability, which has witnessed an increasing specification of curricula and classroom practices, which has reached into the pedagogic core of teachers’ work, as well as ensuring the secret garden of the curriculum is secret no more. Relatedly, Hartley (2003) demonstrates the clear mismatch between the effects of the technization of pedagogies in the English policy regime and what is actually required in terms of knowledge and dispositional outcomes from schools in today’s globalized world. Writing about the USA, Dimitriadis and McCarthy (2001) have suggested that in the present time of multiplicity and difference most often pedagogies there seek to tame and regulate as a response—more pedagogies of the same. As noted already, Luke (2006) argues there is a tension between restrictive national and provincial educational policy frames and the necessity for a global reach for teacher pedagogies and epistemologies, what we might see as globalization from below. The reality of the global/national/local for teachers, he suggests, is actually where globalization reaches teachers through globalized educational commodities and products in a globalization from above way, and I would argue, through national and sometimes vernacularized mediations of globalized educational policy discourses (Lingard, 2000; Ozga & Lingard, 2007). Pedagogies are thus linked to broader societal and policy changes, as Alexander’s (2000) monumental comparative study of primary school pedagogies across five countries makes us aware; there are complex interrelationships between pedagogies and broader culturally and historically bound ‘ideas and values, habits and customs, institutions and world views’ (p. 5). In contrast, Bernstein (1996) characterizes his work on pedagogies as considering ‘relations within’ education, what he calls recontextualizing, contrasting this with his conception of Bourdieu’s work as being concerned with ‘relations to’ broader social structures and their role within reproduction, the position Alexander takes in his study. While Bernstein might be concerned with relations within schooling as his prime theoretical focus, he also considers pedagogies’ links to culture and class structures external to them, as clearly indicated in his quote used earlier, in which he articulates the relationships between the selection, classification, distribution, transmission and evaluation of

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school knowledges and social structures. Thus, he says ‘pedagogic practice can be understood as relay, a cultural relay: a uniquely human device for both the reproduction and production of culture’ (Bernstein, 2004, p. 196). Pedagogic practice is in Bernstein’s terms connected with the how rather than what of knowledge transmission. In his later work, Bernstein (2001, p. 368) was concerned to construct a ‘sociology for the transmission of knowledges’, building upon his earlier account of the relationship between knowledge production and its reproduction at the site of the school through the ‘recontextualizing field of pedagogic discourse’ (Bernstein, 1990, 1996), a contested discourse. One aspiration of this chapter then is to contribute towards a ‘sociology for the transmission of knowledges’ and to a progressive, socially just, account of the recontextualizing field of pedagogic discourse (cf. Lingard, 2005), a concern with both external and internal relations. Pedagogies are thus the central feature of teachers’ practices which make the most significant impact upon student outcomes. While predicated upon the assumption that the quality of pedagogies is a social justice issue, I do not want to overstate the social justice possibilities for pedagogy and teachers, particularly when located against the evacuation of specific social justice policies by many state systems in the post-Keynesian era, and given the growth in inequalities and exclusion within nations as an outcome of neo-liberal globalization and policy frames. To traditional measures of disadvantage and exclusion, I would also add mobility/immobility in the globalized economy (Bauman, 1998). Teachers and schools can make a difference, but not all the difference (Hayes et al., 2006) and this difference relates to identity construction, global citizenship, schooling as a good in and of itself and schooling as a positional good. These limited possibilities of making a difference are particularly the case at the current educational policy moment of what Apple (2000a, b) has called ‘conservative modernisation’; Apple concedes that the literatures on critical pedagogies have been important, but that given the new ‘material and ideological conditions surrounding schooling’ (Apple, 2000b, p. 226), there is a need to ensure concerns with such pedagogies are not simply romantic gestures unattached to tactical and strategic reform agendas, which are located in an analysis of these changing conditions. While not working with a romantic, progressive aspirational politics, the early school effectiveness research seemed to work with an overblown account of what schools alone could achieve—without taking necessary account of contextual and societal effects. More recently, Apple (2006, p. 210) has noted that critical pedagogies should not simply be about ‘academic theorizing’. Rather, he states: ‘Critical approaches are best developed in close contact with the object of one’s analysis’ (p. 210), the position adopted by the QSRLS. The possibilities for productive pedagogies in Bourdieu’s account of relations between schooling and society as one of social reproduction and legitimation of inequalities are a good case in point of a realistic assessment of what pedagogies might achieve. For example, in respect of the knowledge generation aspect of pedagogies, he has observed that: If all pupils were given the technology of intellectual enquiry, and if in general they were given rational ways of working (such as the art of choosing between compulsory tasks and of spreading them over time), then an important way of reducing inequalities based on cultural inheritance would have been achieved. (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 309) He adds that the nature of the pedagogies utilized is important for equalizing opportunities or at least for providing an education which produces useful knowledges

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and dispositions, putting aside questions of education as a positional good. He states that it is: Absolutely necessary to give priority to those areas where the objective is to ensure that fundamental processes are thoughtfully and critically assimilated. These processes—the deductive, the experimental, the historical as well as the critical and reflective—should always be included. (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 309) Thus, the assumption of the research on which this chapter is based, to reiterate, was that ‘the quality of pedagogies is a social justice issue’ and that, drawing on insights inter alia from Bourdieu and Passeron (1977), pedagogies which are not intellectually demanding and which make implicit cultural assumptions, benefit those with the requisite cultural capital obtained through socialization within the home and disadvantage the already disadvantaged in terms of such capital and often misrecognize such reproduction in terms of individual ability—a ‘social gift treated as a natural one’ (Bourdieu, 1976, p. 110). In working with pedagogies of the same, they also deny identity constructions of difference. Bernstein (2004, p. 205) has argued that academic success requires two sites of pedagogic acquisition, namely the school and the home. The pacing of curricula linked to material to be covered in a finite period of time means that successful acquisition demands that school pedagogies be complemented by ‘official pedagogic time at home’. Within poor families, Bernstein suggests, there is usually not this complementary, yet necessary, site of pedagogy and thus we have a sociological explanation for class based differences in attachment to schooling and likelihood of academic success. Bernstein (2004) also is interested in understanding the complementarities between different fractions of the middle class (those linked directly to the economy and those in the service sector) and their homes as sites of pedagogy with what he has called visible and invisible pedagogies. The concern with pedagogies was not reductive of the possibilities for educational research. As already noted, the QSRLS accepted a view of pedagogies as having a dual concern with knowledge production and the negotiation of identities (Cummins, 2003, p. 43), concerns which push pedagogies into considerations of culture, identities, nation and citizenship, and the relationships actual and desired of schooling in respect of these. The chapter accepts that pedagogies are a social justice issue in respect of both socially just provision and access to powerful knowledges and also to the production of identities and cosmopolitan citizens who can work with and respect difference, issues which also take us well beyond reductive constructions of pedagogies. Traditionally, schools were central to the creation of the ‘imagined community’ of the nation (Anderson, 1983); today they must do that at a time of challenges to a straightforward isomorphism between ethnic identities and the space of the nation, and produce imagined citizens of the global community—this is central to being deparochialized in recognition of the new spatiotemporalities of schooling. One important rider needs to be added here—the research was concerned with mapping and understanding pedagogies; there was no explicit focus upon curricula and knowledge. The QSRLS recognized the need for future research to make the linkages between pedagogies and knowledges and was also predicated upon the assumption that particular teacher threshold knowledges are central to effective teacher pedagogies (Darling-Hammond, 1997). It also recognized some developments in the knowledge/ pedagogy relationships in Scandinavian educational policy. Contemporary research in Singapore has built on the QSRLS and productive pedagogies to consider more closely the pedagogies/knowledges relationship (Luke & Hogan, 2006), as has similar research

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in New South Wales being conducted by James Ladwig and Jenny Gore (Ladwig et al., 2003; Gore & Ladwig, 2005), two members of the original QSRLS research team. This is what Shulman (1987) has referred to as ‘pedagogical content knowledge’.

Pedagogies Without wishing to oversimplify or to establish an artificial binary, educational research and educational theory on pedagogies can be seen to sit within either an abstract political and theoretical frame or within an empiricist reductive frame. The critical pedagogies literature, including that referred to earlier and framed by feminism, critical theory, neo-Marxism, critical race theory and more recently postcolonialism is most often exhortatory in nature and not based within deep empirical accounts of classroom practices. Weiner (2007) has recently in a review of feminist pedagogies suggested that they remain an aspiration rather than a set of actual practices. Earlier, Gore in The Struggle for Pedagogies (1993) established another binary in her Foucauldian account of critical and feminist pedagogies: between the social vision of these approaches and the more explicit instructional focus of accounts against which they are often juxtaposed. However, she does note that there is an at least implicit vision in approaches which emphasize instruction. She also distinguishes between, how, what and why questions in respect of pedagogies. In this way, she argues that ‘instruction and vision are analytical components of pedagogy, insofar as the concept implies both, each requires attention’ (Gore, 1993, p. 5). Ellsworth’s (1989) influential essay, ‘Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy’, provided a feminist critique of the critical pedagogy approaches and why they did not seem empowering, while some other feminist literature (e.g. Luke & Gore, 1992) also has provided swingeing critics of the masculinist disposition and non-groundedness of some such literature. The empiricist literature most often does not engage with this particular theoretical literature. The instructional literature as Gore puts it, using the American nomenclature, does not speak to the critical pedagogies literature. The two traditions are incommensurate. In a sense, what we end up with is a divide like that described so evocatively by Wright Mills in The Sociological Imagination (1959):2 the divide between grand theory—it sounds significant but we do not know whether or not it is true—and abstracted empiricism, where we know what is observed is true, but is it significant? We see here in these two incommensurable traditions the failure of theoretical aspiration to meet empirical reality, and the failure to link macro- and micro-accounts. In respect of educational research, the latter empiricist approach has often come out of a developed school effectiveness research which now sees teachers rather than the whole school as the most significant lever for effective educational change. However, this perception of teachers and their practices as simply a variable for policy and leadership manipulation would come under strong critique from the critical pedagogies literature. The approach taken in the research reported here—the QSRLS—is in some ways an attempt to provide a pedagogical theory of the middle ground, one that eschews the grand theory/abstracted empiricism and politics/instruction binaries and instead seeks to dialogically interrogate both theory and data, politics and instruction, accepting the imbrication of the one in the other in each of these binaries. As with Bourdieu (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 35), this research accepted that research is always simultaneously empirical—‘it confronts the world of observable phenomena’ and theoretical—‘it necessarily engages hypotheses about the underlying structure of relations that observations are designed to capture’. The QSRLS approach attempts to work across the two bodies of literature, including the critical pedagogies literature framed by the sociology of education, which has so clearly evoked the way schooling links to social and

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cultural reproduction. While such reproductionist accounts would tend to deny or see limited potential of critical pedagogies (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977), not all such theory does, as already noted in the introduction—schools and teachers can make a difference. On the other hand, school effectiveness research tends to underplay or often deny the significance of contextual factors (class structure, gender order, patterns of inequality etc. and changes to them) and to overplay the potential of whole school or teacher pedagogical change effects and for this reason has been much more attractive to policy makers and politicians in education. So the approach here, the Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS) (Lingard et al., 2001), developed out of Newmann and Associates’ (1996) research in the US on authentic pedagogy and authentic achievement, which unlike earlier versions of school effectiveness research began from the assumption that teachers and their classroom practices were the most significant factors for making a difference, especially in relation to the school performance of those usually characterized as disadvantaged. I would locate the Newmann research within a North American school reform tradition. Yet, the Newmann work neglected the grand theories and political disposition of the critical pedagogies literature, while being empirically focused as with school effectiveness work, but much more teacher-friendly than that literature; its empirical focus was on nested concerns with pedagogies and assessment in classrooms, school organizational capacity and the nature of external systemic supports. The research backward-mapped from classrooms, a research strategy in stark contrast to the top-down mapping usually associated with educational policy production. The Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (Lingard et al., 2001) developed from the Newmann research, but was also strongly informed by the critical pedagogies literature and radical sociology of education. However, it also had a deep empirical focus, thus the argument about the model developed, that of productive pedagogies as a pedagogical theory of the middle ground. Unlike early critical pedagogies, as Gore (1993) noted, the QSRLS was also interested in subsequently having some effects upon practice. In a sense, the QSRLS was a hybrid approach, working with theoretical/empirical imbrications as articulated by Bourdieu above, but also across reproduction theory and school effectiveness, school improvement and US school reform literatures. (For a more detailed account of this theoretical melange, see Hayes et al., 2006, Ch. 5.)

The research: the theoretical and empirical bases of productive pedagogies The Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (Lingard et al., 2001), from which the concept of productive pedagogies was derived, was commissioned by the Queensland State government in 1997, and conducted in 1998–2000, with the final report in 2001. The QSRLS team was able to rearticulate the research purpose of the study around issues of classroom practices (pedagogies and assessment) and complementary school and systemic supports, rather than focus on the effects of school-based management on student learning, as originally desired by the government. The QSRLS backward mapped from classroom practices to structures with priority given in the research design to classroom practices. As Rose (1995) has noted in respect of researching schooling: The vantage point from which you consider schools—your location physically and experientially—will affect what you see and what you can imagine. (p. 230)

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This complements Apple’s (2006) point made earlier about the need for critical approaches to be close to their objects of study. The model of productive pedagogies was derived from long periods of observation in actual classrooms across Queensland government primary and secondary schools. The model derived from maps of teacher pedagogies developed from a classroom observation tool developed out of the relevant research literature and from an interrogation of the classroom data. The point to stress here is that the model has come from observing actual teachers at work in actual classrooms. While the QSRLS was developed out of Newmann and Associates’ (1996) US research on ‘authentic pedagogy’, it was reconstituted, recontextualized if you like, to take account of the Australian, specifically Queensland, context. The Newmann research identified the concept of ‘authentic pedagogy’ to refer to teacher classroom practices that promoted high quality learning and boosted achievements for all students. Newmann found that authentic pedagogy boosted the achievement of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, closing to some extent the equity gap in school performance. In the Newmann research, authentic pedagogy incorporated the concepts of authentic instruction3 and authentic assessment. The QSRLS research differentiated between pedagogies and assessment, whilst at the same time recognizing the importance of aligning the two (Lingard et al., 2006). Authentic instruction requires higher order thinking, deep knowledge, substantive conversations and connections to the world beyond the classroom. Authentic assessment involves students being expected to organize information, consider alternatives, demonstrate knowledge of disciplinary content and processes, perform elaborate communication, solve problems that are connected to the world beyond the classroom and present to an audience beyond the school (Newmann and Associates, 1996, p. 46). The QSRLS augmented the concepts of authentic pedagogy and assessment so as to take account of social as well as academic outcomes. Consequently, the elements of authentic instruction were expanded into a broader grid consisting of 20 items for productive pedagogies (and authentic assessment into seventeen items for productive assessment), each mapped on a five point scale (Table 11.1). There were 24 carefully selected research schools, selected because of their reputations for reform—half were primary and half secondary. Eight schools were studied in each year of the research (1998–2000), with each being visited twice for one week at a time. Classes observed in these schools were Year 6 (penultimate primary year), Year 8 and Year 11 (penultimate secondary year), in the subject areas of English, Maths, Science and Social Science with year levels and subject areas determined by the government. The researchers also observed in each research school outstanding teachers outside of the required Year levels and subjects, as identified by their colleagues. (For fuller descriptions of the research design, see Lingard et al., 2001.) The expanded elements of productive pedagogies were derived from a literature review and included work from the sociology of education, critical readings of school effectiveness and school improvement, socio-linguistic studies of classrooms, social psychology including socio-cultural approaches, social cognition, learning communities and constructivism, critical literacy, and critical pedagogies, along with Freirean, Indigenous, anti-racist, postcolonial and feminist pedagogies, etc., direct instruction and so on. The construction of the classroom observation manual drew on these broader critical literatures. It was in the construction of the 20-element model of productive pedagogies that the attempt was made to construct progressive pedagogies, which would make a difference in relation to schooling as a positional good, a good in and of itself, and in terms of the difference dimension of contemporary multicultural Australia. This was evident in

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Table 11.1 Relationships between productive pedagogies and productive assessment Dimensions

Productive pedagogies

Productive assessment

Intellectual quality

Problematic knowledge

Problematic knowledge: construction of knowledge Problematic knowledge: consideration of alternatives Higher-order thinking Depth of knowledge: disciplinary content Depth of knowledge: disciplinary processes Elaborated written communication Meta-language Connectedness: problem connected to the world beyond the classroom Knowledge integration Link to background knowledge Problem-based curriculum Connectedness: audience beyond the school Students’ direction Explicit quality performance criteria

Higher-order thinking Depth of knowledge

Connectedness

Supportiveness

Working with and valuing of difference

Depth of students’ understanding Substantive conversation Meta-language Connectedness to the world beyond the classroom Knowledge integration Background knowledge Problem-based curriculum

Students’ direction Explicit quality performance criteria Social support Academic engagement Student self-regulation Cultural knowledge Active citizenship Narrative

Cultural knowledge Active citizenship Group identities in learning communities

Group identities in learning communities Representation

the 20 elements in the emphasis upon the constructed nature of knowledge and multiple perspectives on things and also in the constructivist and collectivist approach to learning. It was also evident in the connectedness of the pedagogies—to biographies, to previous knowledge, to the world in which students currently learn and play, to their everyday/ everynight practices. It was evident in the required explicitness of criteria and in the substantive conversations which were conceived as being central to the distribution of multiple capitals to all students. It was evident in the supportiveness of such pedagogies and in the difference elements. The emphasis upon working with and valuing difference attempted to take a critical ‘post’ perspective on differences of all sorts (ethnic, Indigenous, gender, disability, sexuality), both in terms of representation in texts and examples, but also in inclusion in classroom activities, and in the creation of activist citizens who saw the global space as that for contemporary politics, but who also worked on the local space. This was the cosmopolitan aspect of the pedagogies, creating global citizens, informed as noted earlier by ‘planetary humanism’ and ‘democratic humanism’, a non-Eurocentric, nonsexist, reflexive critical humanism, stressing similarity as well as difference. Thus, productive pedagogies sought to work with, not against multiplicity (Dimitriadis & McCarthy,

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2001) and ‘with a culture of respect for the history, the language and culture of the peoples represented in the classroom’ (Rose, 1995, p. 414). Hall (2000) has beautifully encapsulated the stance taken on difference in the research: This is not the binary form of difference between what is absolutely the same, and what is absolutely ‘Other’. It is a ‘weave’ of similarities and differences that refuse to separate into fixed binary oppositions. (p. 216) The construction of these difference elements in the classroom observation manual was, of course, fraught with conceptual and measurement difficulties. In her Amnesty International 2003 lecture at Oxford University, Spivak (2003), the postcolonial theorist, argued the significance in terms of human rights of the education of the elites in the global North and of the elites in the global South, as well as of the rural poor in the global South. She also noted how the elites of the global South often have more in common with their counterparts of the North than with the rural poor in their own nations for whom they often work as educators, NGO activists and so on. The nature of the education, including curriculum and pedagogies which these various groups receive, is centrally important to a contemporary social justice project in education. The QSRLS in constructing the elements of what became the difference dimension of productive pedagogies, assumed that recognition of and working with the difference dimension was centrally important to both what we might call pedagogies of the elites and pedagogies of the oppressed (Freire, 1972), in respect of both the knowledge production and identity formation purposes of schooling. On the basis of about 1000 classroom observations in 24 case study schools over three years (1998–2000) (about 250 teachers each observed four times), statistical analysis (congeneric factor analysis) has supported a more elaborate, multidimensional model of pedagogy—what we called ‘productive pedagogies’. The 20 elements of productive pedagogies fitted into four dimensions as shown in Table 11.1, which also shows alignment with the way the research conceptualized productive assessment. The focus here is on productive pedagogies, but with the need to be cognisant of aligning assessment practices with such pedagogies and indeed with the higher order articulations of the goals of schooling. Particular testing regimes can thin out pedagogies, denying both the achievement of higher order goals and access by the disadvantaged to those capitals necessary for high level performance and active citizenship (Lingard et al., 2006). In terms of the productive pedagogies model derived from the statistical analyses of the classroom mapping, the research team named the four dimensions of productive pedagogies, namely, intellectual quality, connectedness, social support and working with and valuing of difference. The latter dimension was initially called recognition of difference, but modified to working with and valuing difference to capture a more activist disposition and potentially less relativist stance. This modification was in part a response to views expressed by some teachers in the research schools to the naming of this dimension, as well as productive discussions amongst the research team.

Findings Each of the elements that made up the dimensions of productive pedagogies was measured on a five-point scale, where a score of five represents a high presence and quality of an element. The ‘findings’ in relation to productive pedagogies demonstrated that across the entire sample there was a high degree of support for students (although very few opportunities for them to affect the direction of activities in the classroom), but

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not enough intellectual demandingness, connectedness to the world or engagement with and valuing of difference (Table 11.2). In relation to intellectual quality and connectedness, there was a high standard deviation, indicating that these dimensions were present in some classrooms. In contrast, there was a high mean and a low standard deviation for supportiveness and low mean and low standard deviation for the difference dimension (see Table 11.2). What we saw were very supportive and caring teachers, teachers practising an almost social worker version of teachers’ work; teacher work as therapy. We believe that teachers should be praised for this, their commitments to social support for students, but that the absence of intellectual demand, connectedness, and working with and valuing difference carries significant social justice implications. The actual pedagogies mapped were thus pedagogies of indifference, in their lack of intellectual demand, their non-connectedness, and their absence of the working with and valuing difference dimension of productive pedagogies. There are obviously structural reasons for these findings in most of the classrooms observed, including class sizes, contemporary policy pressures (earlier social justice policies which perhaps emphasized care over intellectual demand) and contemporary testing policies, a crowded curriculum, time demands of curriculum coverage, pacing, pressures on teachers, a focus on structural change, etc. Luke (2006), a member of the QSRLS research team, notes that interviews with teachers supported an explanation that ‘the testing, basic skills, and accountability push had encouraged narrowing of the curriculum’ and was affiliated with the finding of ‘a shaving off of higher order and critical thinking and a lowering of cognitive demand and intellectual depth’ (p. 123). In the context of growing inequality, we believe that teachers should be congratulated for the levels of social support and care they offer to students. We found this to be particularly so in schools located in disadvantaged communities. Schools do contribute to what contemporary public policy likes to call ‘social capital’, i.e. the creation of social trust, networks and community—the collective (but also dangerous) ‘we’ of local communities (Sennett, 1998) and the imagined community of the nation. However, some forms of capital have more salience as investment than do other types. Further, the lack of working with and valuing difference dimension suggested the social capital generated was most often of a bonding, within group type, rather than bridging across group type (Schuller et al., 2000, p. 10). The research would suggest that such support is a necessary, but not a sufficient, requirement for enhancing student outcomes, both social and academic, and for achieving more equality of educational opportunity. Socially just pedagogies also need to work with a more equitable distribution of cultural capital through explicitness and intellectual demand. Table 11.2 Mean ratings of dimensions of productive pedagogies, 1998–2000 1998 (n = 302)

1999 (n = 343)

2000 (n = 330)

Total (n = 975)

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Intellectual quality

2.16

0.77

2.17

0.73

2.47

0.91

2.27

0.82

Connectedness

1.84

0.77

1.97

0.79

2.39

0.97

2.07

0.88

Supportive classroom environment

2.75

0.63

3.05

0.67

3.26

0.67

3.03

0.69

Working with and valuing difference

1.79

0.51

1.89

0.50

2.13

0.54

1.94

0.54

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The lack of intellectual demandingness (particularly in schools serving disadvantaged communities and in secondary schools in such communities) has social justice implications. Indeed, this absence of intellectual demand works in the way in which Bourdieu suggests schools reproduce inequality, i.e. by demanding of all that which they do not give, those with the requisite cultural capital are advantaged in schooling. Such a lack probably reflects the substantial amount of curriculum content teachers feel they must cover in a finite period of time; thus coverage becomes more important than the pursuit of higher order thinking, citizenship goals and so on (cf. Bernstein, 2004, on the impact of curriculum pacing). There is not time with such pacing for substantive conversations. It is interesting that the nexus between the socio-economic status/social class of the student body and the quality of the pedagogies (particularly on the ‘intellectual demandingness’ dimension) appeared to be broken in some of the ‘best’ most productive primary schools in the QSRLS research. By contrast, this was not so in most of the very large, low socio-economic, suburban high schools, where effective reform around good pedagogies seemed to be based more in departments than across the whole school. School size was also an important factor here, with the smaller country high schools having better across school pedagogies than the big city schools. It should be noted as well that differences in quality of pedagogies between primary and secondary schools evaporated when size was taken into account. We were also surprised how unconnected with students’ lives and communities that the pedagogies were most of the time. Practice was decontextualized. Following Bourdieu’s account of the reproduction of inequality, the literature would suggest that middle-class students possessing the requisite cultural capital are better positioned to handle this decontextualized school knowledge. Bernstein’s (1999) work on the distinction between vertical (in this case academic knowledges) and horizontal (connectedness to the local and the specific) discourses provides insights into the difficulties faced by teachers in working with and across the two. The lack—indeed absence—of engagement with difference perhaps reflected teacher doubt about what the appropriate responses were and a serious lack of effective professional development on such matters. In our view, this did not reflect so much a failure to recognize that something had to be done, but rather not knowing what to do in an increasingly xenophobic political environment (Crowley & Matthews, 2006). Since 1996, the Howard government in Australia has shifted: the public gaze and preoccupation to global events such as the War on Terror, the potential avian flu epidemic and, at the micro level, encourages its population to be wary of strangers, to be conscious of the vulnerability of Australia and Australian shores to illegal immigrants (Crowley & Matthews, 2006, p. 6) provoking a fear of difference, rather then robust multiculturalism and robust Reconciliation with Indigenous Australians. Peters (2005) has juxtaposed a conception of education as counterterrorism to encapsulate this xenophobic pedagogy, as opposed to a pedagogy which seeks to prepare world/cosmopolitan citizens working for global social justice. Counterintuitively, we also found (apart from the Aboriginal community school) an inverse relationship between the extent of engagement and valuing of difference in pedagogical practices and the ethnic diversity of a school’s population. In interviews with teachers—every teacher was interviewed after every lesson observed—they indicated that they had no professional development in respect of difference and really did not know

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what to do, particularly in a context where multiculturalism had become highly politicized, in a subsequent context post-Tampa, September 11, Bali and Madrid bombings, post-7/7 of what Gilroy (2004) has called an enhanced ‘fear of difference’. This context makes the difference dimension of productive pedagogies even more important and necessary for all classrooms. The Aboriginal community school in the study did emphasize engagement with difference, manifested in the school motto of ‘strong and smart’, which sought to work together good academic performance with a powerful Indigenous identity politics. However, this appeared to be more evident in the broader culture of the school than in the pedagogies—images of Cathy Freeman, the gold medallist from the Sydney Olympics were everywhere, as were those of Nelson Mandela. In terms of pedagogies it was the curriculum area of Aboriginal studies where the pedagogies actually included the valuing of difference dimension of productive pedagogies. The research has hypothesized that such engagement with difference will be necessary for good outcomes for Indigenous students, but in a normative sense also argued that such engagement is necessary for all students so as to achieve desired social outcomes such as active citizenship, Reconciliation and robust multiculturalism. Difference is even more important in the context of globalization and mobility/ immobility as an additional element of contemporary disadvantage. The development of a planetary humanism for all students, particularly those from disadvantaged, immobile communities, is important in relation to emergent global labour markets. As Bauman (1998) observes: Mobility and its absence designate the new late-modern or postmodern polarization of social conditions. The top of the new hierarchy is exterritorial; its lower ranges are marked by varying degrees of space constraints, while the bottom ones are, for all practical purposes, glebae adscripti. (p. 105) This is linked to the new individualism imbricated in the neo-liberal response to globalization, and its other, what Sennett (1998) calls the ‘corrosion of character’— the move away from public good concerns. Let me make one further critical reflection upon pedagogies which work with and value difference. In her book Identity Anecdotes (2006), the Australian cultural theorist Morris has a chapter on the work of Japanese theorist Naoki Sakai and two of his books: Voices of the Past: The Status of Language Eighteenth Century Japanese Discourse (1991) and, more particularly, Translation and Subjectivity: On ‘Japan’ and Cultural Nationalism (1997). She uses his work on translation to talk about academic work done across national contexts, specifically asking the question: ‘how is it possible to create a transnational space of debate that crosses linguistic as well as racial, ethnic, gender, sexual and religious boundaries?’ This is a ‘space in which people who really share no sense of communality could articulate their differences’ (Morris, 2006, p. 175). In Morris’s evocative words, Sakai works with a construction of translation ‘as a practice producing difference out of incommensurability (rather than equivalence out of difference)’ (p. 177). She continues that Sakai conceptualizes translation as a mode of address and that such a mode of address actually precedes communication (p. 178). Here Sakai distinguishes between a ‘heterolingual’ and ‘homolingual’ mode of address, with the former seeking to engage with an audience consisting of multiples and difference, with the latter viewing translation as simply working across two separate language communities. In a post facto way, it is a similar conception to the working with and valuing of difference dimension of productive pedagogies in classrooms consisting of cultural

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differences that we were grappling with in our operationalization of this dimension in the QSRLS. It is a particular mode of address, namely a heterolingual and heterocultural one that is implicit in this aspect of productive pedagogies, what I am calling here pedagogies of difference. Given the low incidence of the working with and valuing difference dimension, there was considerable debate amongst the QSRLS research team as to how to interpret this finding and how to deal with it in subsequent research. I was part of the group that found the absence of this dimension a significant research finding, carrying quite profound social justice implications to do with the experiences of schooling of many students and also with the purposes of schooling in a globalized age of diasporic flows and multiculturalism. In my view, this absence was a significant presence. I would also acknowledge that this absence also might have reflected some technical issues to do with constructing the scales for each of the elements and to do with actual observations in the research classrooms. There was less interrater reliability in respect of this dimension than of the other three. (About one-third of classroom observations in the total sample of about 1000 involved two observers.) Nonetheless, this absence was significant in its suggesting the dominance of pedagogies of the same, rather than pedagogies of difference. At the same time, this absence raised many methodological questions. The research also found correlations between the dimensions of productive pedagogies and those of productive performance. There was so little of the difference dimension, this meant that correlations were not significant with academic performance as measured by the research. There was debate amongst the research team about what this meant for future research developed from the QSRLS and the actual model of productive pedagogies. In my view, this ought not mean the deletion of the difference elements from the model, but an attempt to improve the technical operationalization of these elements in the classroom observation manual. Working with and valuing difference are too important in today’s globalized world of a fear of difference to allow one absence to produce another in the theoretical development of a pedagogical theory of the middle ground. Further, there is an important way in which working with and valuing difference should be valued in and of themselves, outside of any considerations of their causal effects on opportunity. However, I would hypothesize that they are linked to opportunity through schooling for those from non-dominant backgrounds and to the development of critical global citizens who can work with difference, as well as encouraging sophisticated epistemological standpoints for all students. However, these claims need better empirical investigation.

Conclusion The quality of the pedagogies received by all students, stretching from the pedagogy of the oppressed to the pedagogy of the elites, is very important for a political/social justice project of equality and difference, for a more equal distribution of capitals through schooling, through productive pedagogies of difference which make a difference. As already noted, Fraser (1997), the US social theorist, has argued that a progressive politics today requires a working together of what she calls a politics of redistribution with a politics of difference. Productive pedagogies in their conceptualization attempted to work together these two politics. However, it has been argued here that pedagogies in and of themselves cannot make all the difference in social justice terms—surrounding redistributive policies and funding are necessary complements, as are certain systemic supports—however, pedagogies can make some difference, as the QSRLS demonstrated.

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To apply Fraser’s argument to the pedagogies thesis being proffered here: socially just pedagogies in being intellectually demanding and connected attempt to provide a more just redistribution of intellectual capital and, while working with and valuing difference, are encouraging a planetary and democratic humanism and at the same time effecting a pedagogy which makes a difference, particularly in respect of education as a good in and of itself, apart from considerations of education as a positional good. This entails a deparochialization of pedagogies, which takes account of the new spatio-temporalities associated with globalization. The supportiveness and therapeutic character of teacher pedagogies found in the study are necessary as complements to the other dimensions, but not sufficient to maximize teacher/school effects. Productive pedagogies thus work with a redistributive as well as recognition politics and as such seek to maximize teacher effects in respect of both knowledge production and identity and disposition formation. In contrast, the actual pedagogies mapped in the research were more akin to pedagogies of indifference in their absence of the difference dimension and in low intellectual demand and connectedness. As such, they do not prepare students for the globalized world of the present, nor do they work in socially just ways. While emphasizing the significance of pedagogies as linking curriculum and assessment, I would, however, caution against the mandating of particular pedagogies at system level as has happened in New South Wales and in England, as this is restrictive of teachers’ professional practices and professional conversations, and forgets that trust is central to effective pedagogical reform. Pedagogies in practice cannot be simply read off from research on pedagogies, nor can policy for that matter. Further and more importantly, there are different logics of practice in policy production at systemic level, which can be starkly juxtaposed with the logics of practice within classrooms. Research also has different logics of practice.4 The research reported here provided one model of productive pedagogies and a map of actually existing pedagogies at one particular policy moment in Australian educational history. This needs to be the basis for critique, further research and development. In this sense, as with all good research, the QSRLS raised as many theoretical and methodological issues as it answered. The research provided some frisson between research, policy and practice, given its government commissioned character, but also I hope provoked much needed debates across these domains, towards conceptualizing, researching and practising pedagogies, which make a difference, rather than pedagogies of indifference.

Acknowledgements The QSRLS was conducted by a large research team: Bob Lingard and James Ladwig (co-directors); Martin Mills (manager); Pam Christie, Debra Hayes and Allan Luke (researchers); David Chant and Mark Bahr (statistical advisers); Merle Warry (senior research assistant); Joanne Ailwood and Ros Capeness (field researchers); and Jenny Gore (consultant). The research was funded by Education Queensland. The views expressed in this paper are the author’s rather than those of Education Queensland or of the author’s colleagues. However, the contribution of both to the ideas developed here is acknowledged. Some of the argument presented here formed part of the Keynote Address ‘Pedagogies of Indifference: Research, Policy and Practice’ presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, 7–10 September 2006.

Notes 1

For a consideration of what the deparochialization of educational research might entail, see Lingard (2006). This involves an application of Appadurai’s (2001) thesis about the need to

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2

3

4

207

deparochialize research in the context of globalization and the global flows of students. (See also Appadurai (1996).) It needs to be recognized that it might be the case that a new sociological imagination is required for new times. This is the focus of Fuller’s The New Sociological Imagination (2006) that seeks to update Wright Mills’s (1959) sociological classic. The use of the word ‘instruction’ was rejected because of its very reductionist overtones and the concept of ‘pedagogy’ was used instead, while recognizing the different reading of instruction in the US context. The concept of ‘authentic’ was also rejected because of its modernist overtones and in the QSRLS pedagogy it was pluralized to indicate that many pedagogical styles could be aligned with the concept of productive pedagogies. Productive also resonated with the idea of teachers actually producing something in a positive sense at a time when human capital discourse dominated educational policy. Implicit here is Bourdieu’s social theory which sees society as consisting of quasi-autonomous but interacting social fields that have their own logics of practice, hierarchies of capitals and required habitus.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Authored books: (2013) Lingard, B. Politics, policies and pedagogies in education: The selected works of Bob Lingard. London: Routledge. (2013) Lingard, B. and Rawolle, S. Bourdieu and the field of education policy. London: Routledge. (2013) Wyse, D., Baumfield, V.M., Egan, D., Gallagher, C., Hayward, L., Hulme, M., Leitch, R., Livingston, K., Menter, I. and Lingard, B. Creating the curriculum. London: Routledge. (2010) Rizvi, F. and Lingard, B. Globalizing education policy. London: Routledge. (2009) Lingard, B., Martino, W. and Mills, M. Educating boys: Beyond structural reform. London: Palgrave. (2006) Hayes, D., Mills, M., Christie, P. and Lingard, B. Teachers and schools making a difference. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. (2003) Lingard, B., Hayes, D., Mills, M. and Christie, P. Leading learning: Making hope practical in schools. Buckingham: Open University Press. (2001) Henry, M., Lingard, B., Taylor, S. and Rizvi, F. The OECD, globalisation and education policy. Oxford: Pergamon. (1999) Lingard, B. and Douglas, P. Men engaging feminisms: Profeminism, backlashes and schooling. Buckingham: Open University Press. (1997) Taylor, S., Rizvi, F., Lingard, B. and Henry, M. Educational policy and the politics of change. London: Routledge. (1988) Henry, M., Knight, J., Lingard, B. and Taylor, S. Understanding schooling: An introductory sociology of Australian education. London: Routledge.

Edited books: (2012) Wrigley, T., Thomson, P., and Lingard, B. (eds). Changing schools: Alternative models making a world of difference. London: Routledge. (2010) Lingard, B. and Gale, T. (eds). Research by association. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. (2008) Lingard, B., Nixon, J. and Ranson, S. (eds). Transforming learning in schools and communities: The remaking of education for a cosmopolitan society. London: Continuum. (2007) Lingard, B. and Ozga, J. (eds). The RoutledgeFalmer reader in educational policy and politics. London: RoutledgeFalmer. (1997) Lingard, B. and Porter, P. (eds). A national approach to schooling in Australia? Essays on the development of national policies in schools’ education. Canberra: Australian College of Education. (1995) Limerick, B. and Lingard, B. (eds). Gender and changing educational management. Sydney: Hodder. (1993) Lingard, B., Knight, J. and Porter, P. (eds). Schooling reform in hard times. London: Falmer Press. (1989) Lingard, B. and Cramer, S. (eds). The Institute of Modern Art 1975–1989: A Documentary History. Brisbane: Institute of Modern Art. (Funded by the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council).

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Book chapters: (2013) Lingard, B. Positions/dispositions: Reflections on engaging with feminism and masculinity politics. In M. Weaver-Hightower and C. Skelton (eds), Leaders in gender and education. Rotterdam: Sense. (2013) Lingard, B. and McGregor, G. High stakes assessment and new curricula: A Queensland case of competing tensions in curriculum development. In M. Priestley and G. Biesta (eds), Reinventing the curriculum. London: Bloomsbury. (2013) Lingard, B. and Sellar, S. Globalization and sociology of education policy: The case of PISA. In R. Brooks, M. McCormack and K. Bhopal (eds), Contemporary debates in the sociology of education. London: Palgrave. (2013) Rawolle, S. and Lingard, B. Bourdieu and educational research: Thinking tools, relational thinking, beyond epistemological innocence. In M. Murphy (ed.), Social theory and educational research: Understanding Foucault, Habermas, Derrida and Bourdieu. London: Routledge. (2013) Sellar, S. and Lingard, B. Expanding PISA and the role of the OECD in global educational governance. In H.-D. Meyer and A. Benavot (eds), Who succeeds at PISA and why? The role of international benchmarking in emerging global governance. Oxford: Symposium Books. (2012) Lingard, B., Forbes, J., Weiner, G. and Horne, J. Multiple capitals and Scottish independent schools: The (re)production of advantage. In J. Allan and R. Catts (eds), Social capital, children and young people: Implications for practices, policy and research. Bristol, UK: The Policy Press, pp. 181–198. (2012) Lingard, B., Hardy, I. and Heimans, S. Deparochializing educational research. In T. Fenwick and L. Farrell (eds), Knowledge mobilization and educational research. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 211–236. (2012) Lingard, B., MacKinlay, L. and Vass, G. Reimagining lines of flight in schooling for Indigenous students in Australia. In J. Lavia and S. Mahlomaholo (eds), Culture, education, and community: Expressions of the postcolonial imagination. London: Palgrave, pp. 125–146. (2012) Thomson, P., Lingard, B. and Wrigley, T. Reimagining school change: The necessity and reasons for hope. In T. Wrigley, P. Thomson and B. Lingard (eds), Changing schools: Alternative ways to make a world of difference. London: Routledge, pp. 1–14. (2012) Wrigley, T., Thomson, P. and Lingard, B. Resources for changing schools: Ideas in and for practice. In T. Wrigley, P. Thomson and B. Lingard (eds), Changing schools: Alternative ways to make a world of difference. London: Routledge, pp. 194–214. (2011) Grek, S., Lawn, M., Lingard, B., Ozga, J., Rinne, R., Segerholm, C. and Simola, H. National policy brokering and the construction of the European education space in England, Sweden, Finland and Scotland. In J. Ozga, P. Dahler-Larsen, C. Segerholm and H. Simola (eds), Fabricating quality in Europe: Data and education governance. London: Routledge. (2011) Lingard, B. Changing teachers’ work in Australia. In N. Mockler and J. Sachs (eds), Rethinking educational practice through reflexive inquiry. London: Springer, pp. 229–245. (2010) Lingard, B. The impact of research on education policy: The relevance for doctoral students. In P. Thomson and M. Walker (eds), The Routledge doctoral students’ companion: Getting to grips with research in education and the social sciences. London: Routledge, pp. 377–389. (2010) Lingard, B. Towards a sociology of pedagogies. In M. Apple, S. J. Ball and L. Gandin (eds), The Routledge international handbook of sociology of education. London: Routledge, pp. 167–178. (2010) Lingard, B. and Gale, T. Presidential Address as pedagogy. In T. Gale and B. Lingard (eds), Educational Research by Association. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp. 1–22. (2010) Lingard, B. and Rawolle, S. Comparative education and the rescaling of education politics and policy. In M. Larsen (ed.), New thinking in comparative education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp. 33–52. (2009) Lingard, B. Pedagogizing teacher professional identities. In S. Gewirtz, P. Mahony, I. Hextall and A. Cribb (eds), Changing teacher professionalism: International trends, challenges, and ways forward. London: Routledge, pp. 81–93. (2009) Lingard, B. Researching education policy in a globalized world: Theoretical and methodological considerations. In T. S. Popkewitz and F. Rizvi (eds), Globalization and the study of education. Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell Malden, pp. 226–246. (2009) Lingard, B. and Rawolle, S. Rescaling and reconstituting education policy: The knowledge economy and the scalar politics of global fields. In M. Simons, M. Olsen and M. Peters (eds),

212

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Re-reading education policies: Studying the policy agenda of the twenty-first century. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp. 205–219. (2009) Lingard, B. and Renshaw, P. Teaching as a research-informed and research-informing profession. In A. Campbell and S. Groundwater-Smith (eds), Connecting inquiry and professional learning. London: Routledge, pp. 26–39. (2009) Rizvi, F. and Lingard, B. The OECD and global shifts in education policy. In R. Cowen and A. Kazamias (eds), International handbook of comparative education. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 431–447. (2008) Lingard, B. Pedagogies of indifference: Research, policy and practice. In B. Lingard, J. Nixon and S. Ranson (eds), Transforming learning in schools and communities: The remaking of education for a cosmopolitan society. London: Continuum, pp. 209–235. (2008) Lingard, B. Scottish education: Reflections from an international perspective. In T. G. K. Bryce and W. M. Humes (eds), Scottish education: Beyond devolution, 3 edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press., pp. 968–981. (2008) Lingard, B., Nixon, J. and Ranson, S. Remaking education for a globalized world: Policy and pedagogic possibilities. In B. Lingard, J. Nixon and S. Ranson (eds), Transforming learning in schools and communities: The remaking of education for a cosmopolitan society. London: Continuum, pp. 3–33. (2007) Lingard, B. Deparochializing the study of education: Globalization and the research imagination. In K. N. Gulson and C. Symes (eds), Spatial theories of education: Policy and geography matters. New York: Routledge, pp. 234–250. (2007) Lingard, B. and Ozga, J. Reading education policy and politics. In B. Lingard and J. Ozga (eds), The RoutledgeFalmer reader in education policy and politics. London: Routledge, pp. 1–8. (2007) Ozga, J. and Lingard, B. Globalisation, education policy and politics. In B. Lingard and J. Ozga (eds), The RoutledgeFalmer reader in education policy and politics. London: Routledge, pp. 65–82. (2006) Rizvi, F. and Lingard, B. Globalization and the changing nature of the OECD’s educational work. In H. Lauder, P. Brown, J.-A. Dillabough and A. H. Halsey (eds), Education, globalization and social change. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 247–260. (2002) Lingard, B. Troubling educational practice and the emergent structure of feeling: An excursus on context. In V. Carrington, J. Mitchell, S. Rawolle and A. Zavros (eds), Troubling practice. Flaxton: PostPressed. (2002) Lingard, B. and Mills, M. Teachers and school reform: Aligning the message systems. In B. Webber (ed.), Teachers make a difference: What is the research evidence? Wellington: New Zealand Council for Educational Research. (2000) Lingard, B. It is and it isn’t: Vernacular globalization, educational policy, and restructuring. In N. C. Burbules and C. A. Torres (eds), Globalization and education. New York: Routledge, pp. 79–108. (2000) Lingard, B. and Rizvi, F. Globalisation and the fear of homogenisation in education. In S. J. Ball (ed.), Sociology of education: Major themes. New York: Routledge/Falmer. (1999) Lingard, B. and Garrick, B. Producing and practising social justice policy in education: A policy trajectory study from Queensland, Australia. In J. Marshall and M. Peters (eds), Education Policy. Oxford: Edward Elgar. (1999) Luke, A., Lingard, B., Green, B. and Comber, B. The abuses of literacy: Educational policy and the construction of crisis. In J. Marshall and M. Peters (eds), Education Policy. Oxford: Edward Elgar. (1998) Comber, B., Green, B., Lingard, B. and Luke, A. Literacy debates and public education: A question of crisis? In A. Reid (ed.), Going public: Education Policy and public education in Australia. Deakin West, ACT: Australian Curriculum Studies Association. (1998) Lingard, B. and Rizvi, F. Globalisation, the OECD and Australian higher education. In J. Currie and J. Newson (eds), Universities and globalisation critical perspectives. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage. (1998) Lingard, B., Ladwig, J. and Luke, A. School effects in postmodern conditions. In R. Slee, G. Weiner and S. Tomlinson (eds), School effectiveness for whom? Challenges to the school effectiveness and school improvement movements. London: Falmer Press. (1997) Knight, J. and Lingard, B. Ministerialisation and politicisation: Changing structures and practices of educational policy production in Australia. In B. Lingard and P. Porter (eds), A national approach to schooling in Australia? Canberra: Australian College of Education.

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(1997) Lingard, B. The State and education policy: The contribution of the work of Barry Troyna. In P. Sikes and F. Rizvi (eds), Researching race and social justice in education: Essays in honour of Barry Troyna. London: Trentham Books, pp. 97–108. (1997) Lingard, B. and Porter, P. Australian schooling: The state of national developments. In B. Lingard and P. Porter (eds), A national approach to schooling in Australia? Canberra: Australian College of Education. (1996) Rizvi, F. and Lingard, B. Disability, education and the discourses of justice. In C. Christensen and F. Rizvi (eds), Disability and the dilemmas of education and justice. Buckingham: Open University Press. (1995) Lingard, B. Gendered policy making inside the State. In B. Limerick and B. Lingard (eds), Gender and changing educational management. Rydalmere, NSW: Hodder Education, pp. 136–149. (1995) Lingard, B. Social justice and education. In Board of Teacher Registration (ed.), Implications of social justice for teacher education. Brisbane: Board of Teacher Registration. (1995) Lingard, B. and Limerick, B. Thinking gender and changing educational management. In B. Limerick and B. Lingard (eds), Gender and changing educational management. Sydney: Edward Arnold. (1995) Lingard, B. and Rizvi, F. Educational work and its contexts. In B. Lingard and F. Rizvi (eds), External environmental scan. Brisbane: Queensland Department of Education. (1995) Lingard, B. and Rizvi, F. Shaping the future through back to basics? The Wiltshire Review of Queensland School Curriculum. In C. Collins (ed.), Revisioning the curriculum. Canberra: Australian College of Education. (1995) Lingard, B. and Rizvi, F. Some concluding remarks. In B. Lingard and F. Rizvi (eds), External environmental scan. Brisbane: Queensland Department of Education. (1994) Lingard, B., Knight, J. and Porter, P. Restructuring Australian schooling: Changing conceptions of top-down and bottom-up reforms. In B. Limerick and H. Nielsen (eds), School and community relations. Sydney: Harcourt Brace. (1994) Porter, P., Lingard, B. and Knight, J. Changing administration and administering change: An analysis of the state of Australian education. In F. Crowther, B. Caldwell, J. Chapman, G. Lakomski and D. Ogilvie (eds), ACEA yearbook, The workplace in education: Australian perspectives. Sydney: Edward Arnold. (1993) Knight, J. and Lingard, B. Dis/counting teacher education: The Beazley papers. In M. Bella, J. McCollow and J. Knight (eds), Higher education in transition. Brisbane: Graduate School of Education, University of Queensland. (1993) Knight, J., Lingard, B. and Bartlett, L. Reforming teacher education: The unfinished task. In J. Knight, L. Bartlett and E. McWilliam (eds), Unfinished business: Reshaping the teacher education industry for the 1990s. Rockhampton: University of Central Queensland Press. (1993) Knight, J., Lingard, B. and Porter, P. Restructuring schooling towards the 1990s. In B. Lingard, J. Knight and P. Porter (eds), Schooling reform in hard times. London: Falmer Press. (1993) Lingard, B. Corporate federalism: The emerging approach to policy-making for Australian schools. In B. Lingard, J. Knight and P. Porter (eds), Schooling reform in hard times. London: Falmer Press. (1993) Porter, P., Knight, J. and Lingard, B. The efficient corporate state: Labor restructuring for better schools in Western Australia. In B. Lingard, J. Knight and P. Porter (eds), Schooling reform in hard times. London: Falmer Press. (1993) Porter, P., Lingard, B. and Knight, J. Higher education, national development and the academic profession. In M. Bella, J. McCollow and J. Knight (eds), Higher education in transition. Brisbane: Graduate School of Education, University of Queensland. (1993) Rizvi, F. and Lingard, B. Discourses of social justice and the dilemmas of policy in special education. In Department of Education Queensland (ed.), Social justice, equity and dilemmas of disability in education. Brisbane: Government Printer. (1992) Knight, J., Lingard, B. and Bartlett, L. Reforming teacher education: The shape of current developments. In N. Dempster and L. Logan (eds), Australian teachers: Issues for the nineties. Canberra: Australian College of Education. (1992) Knight, J., Lingard, B. and Porter, P. Reforming the Education Industry: Award Restructuring and the New Federalism. In D. Riley (ed.), Industrial relations in Australian education. Wentworth Falls: Social Science Press. (1991) Lingard, B. and Collins, C. Education: Incrementalism or radical reform?. In C. Hughes and R. Whip (eds), Political crossroads. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.

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(1986) Lingard, B. Marxism and Radical Education. In E. Dowdy (ed.), Marxist policies today in socialist and capitalist countries. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press. (1983) Lingard, B. Education and radical change: The philosophy and practice of Paulo Freire. In W. Haynes (ed.), Philosophy reader in education. Brisbane: Kelvin Grove Press. (1983) Lingard, B. Sociological theory and the sociology of education: An introductory comment. In T. Garvey (ed.), Readings in the Sociology of Education. Brisbane: Kelvin Grove Press. (1983) Lingard, B. and MacLennan, G. Class, culture and the English teacher: Beyond reproduction. In E. Robinson (ed.), Two years to Newspeak. Brisbane: Kelvin Grove Press. (1982) Lingard, B. Multicultural education in Queensland: The assimilation of an ideal. In R. E. Young, M. Pusey and R. Bates (eds), Critical perspectives on educational policy in Australia. Geelong: Deakin University Press. (1981) Lingard, B. and Henry, M. Multiculturalism: Rhetoric and reality. In J. Zajda (ed.), Education and society in the 1980s. Melbourne: James Nicholas.

Published articles in refereed journals: (forthcoming) Lingard, B. Thinking about theory in educational research. Educational Philosophy and Theory. Lingard, B. The impact of research on education policy in an era of evidence-based policy. Critical Studies in Education. doi: 10.1080/17508487.2013.781515. (2013) Lingard, B. and Sellar, S. ‘Catalyst data’: Perverse systemic effects of audit and accountability in Australian schooling. Journal of Education Policy. doi: 10.1080/02680939.2012.758815. (2013) Lingard, B., Martino, W. and Mills, M. Managing oppositional masculinity politics: The gendering of a government commissioned research project. International Journal of Qualitative Research in Education, 25(4), 434–454. (2013) Martino, W., Rezai-Rashti, G. and Lingard, B. Gendering in gender research in education: Methodological considerations. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 25(4), 391–399. (2013) Sellar, S. and Lingard, B. Looking East: Shanghai, PISA and the reconstitution of reference societies in the global education policy field. Comparative Education. doi: 10.1080/03050068.2013.770943. (2013) Sellar, S. and Lingard, B. The OECD and global education governance. Journal of Education Policy doi: 10.1080/02680939.2013.779791. (2012) Honan, E., Hamid, M. O., Alhamdan, B., Phommalangsy, P. and Lingard, B. Ethical issues in cross-cultural research. International Journal of Research and Method in Education. doi: 10.1080/1743727X.2012.705275. (2012) Lingard, B. and Sellar, S. A policy sociology reflection on school reform in England: From the ‘third way’ to the ‘big society’. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 44(1), 43–63. (2012) Lingard, B., Creagh, S. and Vass, G. Education policy as numbers: Two Australian cases of misrecognition. Journal of Education Policy, 27(3), 315–333. (2012) Lingard, B., Mills, M. and Weaver-Hightower, M. B. Interrogating recuperative masculinity politics in schooling. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 16(4), 407–421. (2012) Smala, S., Bergas Paz, J. and Lingard, B. Languages, cultural capital and school choice: Distinction and second-language immersion programmes. British Journal of Sociology of Education. doi: 10.1080/01425692.2012.722278 (2012) Thomson, P., Lingard, B. and Wrigley, T. Ideas for changing educational systems, educational policy and schools. Critical Studies in Education, 53(1), 1–7. (2012) Wrigley, T., Lingard, B. and Thomson, P. Pedagogies of transformation: Keeping hope alive in troubled times. Critical Studies in Education, 53(1), 1–14. (2011) Hardy, I., Heimans, S. and Lingard, B. Journal rankings: Positioning the field of educational research and educational academics. Power and Education, 3(1), 4–17. (2011) Horne, J., Lingard, B., Weiner, G. and Forbes, J. Capitalizing on sport: Sport, physical education and multiple capitals in three Scottish independent schools. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 32(6), 861–879. (2011) Lingard, B. Policy as numbers: Ac/counting for educational research. Australian Educational Researcher, 38(4), 355–382.

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(2011) Lingard, B. Redistribution et reconnaissance: le refus des pedagogies de l’indifference (Redistribution and recognition: working against pedagogies of indifference). Education de Societies, 27(1), 39–52. (2011) Lingard, B. and Rawolle, S. New scalar politics: Implications for education policy. Comparative Education, 47(4), 489–502. (2011) Rizvi, F. and Lingard, B. Social equity and the assemblage of values in Australian higher education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 41(1), 5–22. (2010) Lingard, B. Policy borrowing, policy learning: Testing times in Australian schooling. Critical Studies in Education, 51(2), 129–147. (2010) Lingard, B. and Gale, T. Defining educational research: A perspective of/on presidential addresses and the Australian Association for Research in Education. The Australian Educational Researcher, 37(1), 21–49. (2010) Rawolle, S. and Lingard, B. The mediatization of the knowledge based economy: A field based account. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 35(3), 269–286. (2009) Grek, S., Lawn, M., Lingard, B. and Varjo, J. Dwelling in the flow: Europeanization through quality assurance processes in education. Journal of Education Policy, 24(2), 121–133. (2009) Grek, S., Lawn, M., Lingard, B., Ozga, J., Rinne, R., Segerholm, C. and Simola, H. National policy brokering and the construction of the European education space in England, Sweden, Finland and Scotland. Comparative Education, 45(1), 5–21. (2009) Johannesson, I., Lingard, B. and Mills, M. Possibilities in the ‘Boy Turn’? Comparative lessons from Australia and Iceland. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 53(2), 309–325. (2009) Lingard, B. and Ali, S. Contextualising education in Pakistan, a White Paper: Global/ national articulations in education policy. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 7(3), 237–256. (2009) Lingard, B. and Rawolle, S. Understanding quality and equity of schooling in Scotland: Locating educational traditions globally. Education in the North, 17(1), 1–25. (2008) Hardy, I. and Lingard, B. Teacher professional development as an effect of policy and practice: A Bourdieuan analysis. Journal of Education Policy, 23(1), 63–80. (2008) Lingard, B. Globalizing research accountabilities, access: Critical perspectives on communication. Access: Cultural & Policy Studies, 27(1 & 2), 175–188. (2008) Lingard, B., Mundy, K., Wexler, P. and Sunker, H. Review Symposium: Education, equality and social cohesion: A comparative analysis. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29(2), 225–236. (2008) Rawolle, S. and Lingard, B. The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and researching education policy. Journal of Education Policy, 23(6), 729–740. (2007) Lingard, B. Pedagogies of indifference. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 11(3), 245–266. (2007) Lingard, B. and Gale, T. The emergent structure of feeling: What does it mean for critical educational studies and research? Critical Studies in Education, 48(1), 1–23. (2007) Lingard, B. and Mills, M. Pedagogies making a difference: Issues of social justice and inclusion International Journal of Inclusive Education, 11(3), 233–244. (2007) Martino, W., Mills, M. and Lingard, B. Getting boys’ education ‘right’: The Australian government’s parliamentary inquiry report as an exemplary instance of recuperative masculinity politics. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28(1), 5–21. (2006) Lingard, B. Globalisation, the research imagination and deparochialising the study of education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 3(2), 287–302. (2006) Lingard, B. and Jn Pierre, K. D. Strengthening national capital: A postcolonial analysis of lifelong learning policy in St Lucia, Caribbean. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 14(3), 295–314. (2006) Lingard, B., Mills, M. and Hayes, D. Enabling and aligning assessment for learning: Some research and policy lessons from Queensland. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 16(2), 83–102. (2006) Minh Ngo, T., Lingard, B. and Mitchell, J. The policy cycle and vernacular globalization: A case study of the creation of Vietnam National University – Hochiminh City. Comparative Education, 42(2), 225–242. (2006) Rizvi, F. and Lingard, B. Edward Said and the cultural politics of education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 27(3), 293–308. (2006) Rizvi, F., Lingard, B. and Lavia, J. Postcolonialism and education: Negotiating a contested terrain. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 14(3), 249–262.

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(2005) Lingard, B. Socially just pedagogies in changing times. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 15(2), 165–186. (2005) Lingard, B., Rawolle, S. and Taylor, S. Globalizing policy sociology in education: Working with Bourdieu. Journal of Education Policy, 20(6), 759–777. (2005) Lingard, B., Taylor, S. and Rawolle, S. Bourdieu and the study of educational policy: Introduction. Journal of Education Policy, 20(6), 663–669. (2005) Martino, W., Mills, M. and Lingard, B. Interrogating single-sex classes as a strategy for addressing boys’ educational needs. Oxford Review of Education, 25(2), 237–254. (2004) Hayes, D., Christie, P., Mills, M. and Lingard, B. Productive leaders and productive leadership: Schools as learning organisations. Journal of Educational Administration, 42(5), 520–538. (2004) Lingard, B. and Rawolle, S. Mediatizing educational policy: The journalistic field, science policy, and cross-field effects. Journal of Education Policy, 19(3), 361–380. (2004) Martino, W., Lingard, B. and Mills, M. Issues in boys’ education: A question of teacher threshold knowledges. Gender and Education, 16(4), 435–454. (2004) Mills, M., Martino, W. and Lingard, B. Issues in the male teacher debate: Masculinities, misogyny and homophobia. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(3), 355–369. (2003) Hayes, D. and Lingard, B. Rearticulating gender agendas in school: An Australian perspective. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 7(1), 1–6. (2003) Lingard, B. Where to in gender policy in education after recuperative masculinity politics? International Journal of Inclusive Education, 7(1), 33–56. (2003) Lingard, B. and Christie, P. Leading theory: Bourdieu and the field of educational leadership. International Journal of Educational Leadership, 6(4), 317–333. (2003) Lingard, B. and Mills, M. Teachers and school reform: Working with productive pedagogies and productive assessment. Melbourne Studies in Education, 44(2), 1–18. (2003) Lingard, B., Hayes, D. and Mills, M. Teachers and productive pedagogies: Contextualising, conceptualising, utilising. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 11(3), 397–422. (2002) Lawn, M. and Lingard, B. Forming the policy space in European education. European Educational Research Journal, 1(2), 290–307. (2002) Lingard, B., Hayes, D. and Mills, M. Developments in school-based management: The specific case of Queensland, Australia. Journal of Educational Administration, 42(1), 6–30. (2001) Ailwood, J. and Lingard, B. The endgame for national girls’ schooling policies in Australia? Australian Journal of Education, 45(1), 9–22. (2001) Lingard, B. Some lessons for educational researchers: Repositioning research in education and education in research. The Australian Educational Researcher, 28(3), 1–46. (2000) Lingard, B. Aligning the message systems. Independent Education, October, 24–26. (2000) Lingard, B. Federalism in schooling since the Karmel Report (1973), Schools in Australia: From modernist hope to postmodernist performativity. Australian Educational Researcher, 27(2), 25–61. (2000) Lingard, B., Mills, M. and Hayes, D. Teachers, school reform and social justice: Challenging research and practice. The Australian Educational Researcher, 27(3), 93–109. (2000) Rizvi, F. and Lingard, B. Globalization and education: Complexities and contingencies. Educational Theory, 50(4), 419–426. (1999) Henry, M., Lingard, B., Rizvi, F. and Taylor, S. Working within/against globalisation in education. Journal of Education Policy, 14(1), 85–97. (1998) Lingard, B. Contextualising and utilising the ‘What about the boys?’ Backlash for gender equity goals. Change: Transformations in Education, 1(2). (1998) Lingard, B. The Disadvantaged Schools Programme: Caught between literacy and local management of schools. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 2(2), 1–14. (1998) Lingard, B. and Rizvi, F. Globalisation and the fear of homogenisation in education. Change: Transformations in Education, 1(1), 62–71. (1997) Lingard, B. Policy making in a postmodern state. Australian Education Researcher 23(1). (1997) Lingard, B. and Blackmore, J. The ‘performative’ state and the state of educational research. Australian Educational Researcher, 24(3), 1–22. (1997) Lingard, B. and Garrick, B. Producing and practising social justice policy in education: A policy trajectory study from Queensland, Australia. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 7(2), 157–179. (1997) Lingard, B. and Mills, M. Masculinity politics: An introduction. Social Alternatives, 16(3), 4–6. (1997) Mills, M. and Lingard, B. Masculinity politics, myths, and boys’ schooling: A review essay. British Journal of Educational Studies, 45(3), 276–292.

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(1997) Mills, M. and Lingard, B. Reclaiming the ‘What about the boys?’ Discourse for gender justice in schools and society. Social Alternatives, 16(3), 51–54. (1996) Lingard, B. Rearticulating relevant voices in reconstructing teacher education. South Australian Educational Leader, 6(7), 1–12. (1996) McCollow, J. and Lingard, B. Changing discourses and practices of academic work. Australian Universities’ Review, 39(2), 11–19. (1995) Rizvi, F. and Lingard, B. A new discourse: Cultural politics of education. Discourse, 16(1), 3–4. (1994) Bartlett, V. L., Knight, J., Lingard, B. and Porter, P. Redefining a national agenda in education: The States fight back. The Australian Education Researcher, 21(2), 29–44. (1994) Knight, J., Lingard, B. and Bartlett, V. L. Reforming teacher education policy under Labor governments in Australia 1983–1993. British Journal of the Sociology of Education, 15(4), 451–466. (1994) Lingard, B., Bartlett, L., Knight, J., Porter, P. and Rizvi, F. Equity and diversity in mass higher education: Some policy issues. Australian Universities’ Review, 37(2), 2–7. (1994) Lingard, B., Porter, P., Bartlett, V. L. and Knight, J. Federal/State mediations in the national education agenda: From the AEC to MCEETYA 1987–1993. Australian Journal of Education, 39(1), 41–66. (1993) Apelt, L. and Lingard, B. Public schooling reform in Australia: In whose interests? Journal of Educational Administration, 31(3), 59–71. (1993) Lingard, B. Managing democracy in the public sector. Social Alternatives, 12(2), 10–14. (1993) Lingard, B. The changing state of policy production in education: Some Australian reflections on the state of policy sociology. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 3(1), 25–47. (1993) Lingard, B., O’Brien, P. and Knight, J. Strengthening Australia’s schools through corporate federation. Australian Journal of Education, 37(3), 231–247. (1992) Bartlett, L., Knight, J. and Lingard, B. Restructuring teacher education in Australia. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 12(3), 19–36. (1992) Lingard, B. and Rizvi, F. Theorising the Ambiguities of Devolution. Discourse, 13(1), 111–123. (1992) Porter, P., Lingard, B. and Knight, J. Higher education, national development, and the academic profession: Do we still want good people thinking about the universe? Australian Universities’ Review, 35(2), 26–29. (1992) Porter, P., Rizvi, F., Knight, J. and Lingard, B. Competencies for a clever country: Building a house of cards? Unicorn, 18(3), 50–58. (1991) Bartlett, L., Knight, J. and Lingard, B. Corporate federalism: The reform of teacher education in Australia. Journal of Education Policy, 6(1), 91–95. (1991) Knight, J., Lingard, B. and Porter, P. Reforming the education industry: Award restructuring and the new federalism. Unicorn, 17(3), 133–138. (1991) Lingard, B. Policy-making for Australian schooling: The new corporate federalism. Journal of Education Policy, 6(1), 85–90. (1991) Lingard, B. and Collins, C. Radical reform or rationalisation? Education under Goss Labor in Queensland. Discourse: The Australian Journal of Educational Studies, 11(2), 98–114. (1990) Lingard, B. Accountability and control: A Sociological account of secondary school assessment in Queensland. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 11(2), 171–188. (1990) Lingard, B. Teachers and equity: Definitional and policy considerations. Unicorn, 16(3), 156–162. (1990) Lingard, B., Bartlett, L. and Knight, J. Teacher education: Developments and context. The Australian Teacher, 26, 20–23. (1989) Henry, M. and Lingard, B. The rise and fall of a promotions committee: Some reflections on the interrelationship between micro and macro machinations of power. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 10(3), 335–350. (1987) Lingard, B., Taylor, S. and Henry, M. A girl in a militant pose: A chronology of struggles in girls’ education in Queensland. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 8(2), 135–152. (1986) Lingard, B. and Symes, C. On the issue of radical culture: A reading of Hoey’s reading. Social Alternatives, 6(1). (1985) Lingard, B. and Symes, C. The contribution of radical cultural practice to a socialist alternative. Social Alternatives, 4(4). (1984) Lingard, B., Hunt, J. and Hutton, D. Radicalizing schooling: The possibilities. Social Alternatives, 4(2), 4–8.

218

Bibliography

(1983) Lingard, B. Multicultural education in Queensland: The assimilation of an ideal. Discourse: The Australian Journal of Educational Studies, 4(1), 13–31. (1983) Lingard, B. Schooling and capitalism: Developments in the Bowles and Gintis thesis. The Forum of Education, 42(1), 11–24. (1983) Lingard, B. and MacLennan, G. Class, culture and the English teacher: Beyond reproduction. English in Australia, 63, 38–47. (1982) Lingard, B. and Henry, M. Multiculturalism: Rhetoric or reality. New Education, 4(2), 75–90. (1981) Lingard, B. Education and radical change: The philosophy and practice of Paulo Freire. The Forum of Education, 39(1), 1–10. (1980) Lingard, B. Educational reforms of Napoleon 1. The Forum of Education, 39(1), 27–36. (1980) Lingard, B. Schools do make a difference, but . . .! The Aboriginal Child at School, 8(4). (1978) Lingard, B. Is the German gymnasium an anachronism? The Forum of Education, 37(1), 41–47. (1977) Lingard, B. Why the trend to open education? Unicorn, 3(2), 17–24.

Other publications: Select Reports (2002) Lingard, B., Martino, W., Mills, M. and Bahr, M. Addressing the educational needs of boys: Report to the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training. (2001) Lingard, B., Ladwig, J., Luke, A., Mills, M., Hayes, D. and Gore, J. The Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study: Final Report (Vol. 1 and 2). Brisbane: Education Queensland. (2001) Martino, W., Lingard, B. and Mills, M. Literature review: Addressing the educational needs of boys: Report to Commonwealth Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs. (2001) Milojevic, I., Luke, A., Luke, C., Mills, M., Land, R., Alexander, D., . . . Lingard, B. Moving forward: Students and teachers against racism. Armadale: Eleanor Curtin. (1997) Lingard, B. Poverty and education: A discussion paper: Prepared for the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Equity Matters (MACEM). Brisbane: Education Queensland. (1997) Luke, A., Burnett, P. and Lingard, B. Like schools profile: Prepared for Education Queensland. Brisbane: Education Queensland. (1995) Lingard, B. and Rizvi, F. External environmental scan. Brisbane Commissioned by Queensland State Department of Education. Brisbane: Education Queensland. (1992) Lingard, B. and Chant, D. An index for the classification of disadvantaged schools in Queensland: Commissioned by the Queensland State Department of Education. Brisbane: Education Queensland. (1991) Lingard, B. and Collins, C. Education under Goss Labor: Incrementalist reform? Brisbane: The Centre for Australian Public Sector Management, Griffth University, pp. 1–18.

Conferences: Professor Lingard has delivered more than 120 Keynote Addresses in Australia and other parts of the world. Below is a small selection of these. (2013) Lingard, B. Keynote address: National Educational Research Organisations: The promotion of educational research in a globalizing world. Keynote Address to the Inaugural South African Educational Research Association Conference, Klein Kariba Bela Bela, South Africa, 28 January. (2010) Lingard, B. Keynote address: Productive Pedagogies and enhancing student learning outcomes: A pedagogy of the middle ground. Paper presented at the International Pedagogies Conference, Pedagogical University of Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia. (2010) Lingard, B. Keynote address: Productive Pedagogies: Redistributing and recognising multiple capitals. Paper presented at the Annual Learning Conference, Hong Kong Institute of Education. (2010) Lingard, B. Keynote address: Teaching first year university: The need to redistribute and recognise multiple capitals. Paper presented at the Pacific Rim First Year Higher Education Conference, Intercontinental Hotel, Adelaide. (2010) Lingard, B. Radford Lecture: Policy as numbers: Ac/counting for Educational Research. Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education, The University of Melbourne.

Bibliography

219

(2006) Lingard, B. Keynote address: Pedagogies of indifference: Research, policy, practice. Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association, University of Warwick. (1999) Lingard, B. Keynote address: Globalisation, the OECD and educational policy. Paper presented at the European Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Lahti, Finland.

Art publications: (2010) Lingard, B. From here on in. In R. Coates (ed.), Peter Cripps: Towards and elegant solution. Melbourne: Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. (2010) Lingard, B. and Cripps, P. Flattening Australian Art History. In R. Coates (ed.), Peter Cripps: Towards and elegant solution. Melbourne: Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. (1996) Lingard, B. Catalogue essay: Markets of meanings, meanings of markets Colonial Postcolonial. Heide: Museum of Modern Art, pp. 32–33. (1996) Lingard, B. The flag of convenience. In P. Hallinan (ed.), Surf or die: Selected essays, reviews, interviews and articles on the work of Scott Redford 1986–1996. Gold Coast: Art and Oceania Publications, pp. 21–22. (1994) Lingard, B. and Rizvi, F. (Re)membering (Dis)membering: ‘Aboriginality’ and the art of Gordon Bennett. Third Text, 26(May), 75–89. (1993) Lingard, B. Catalogue essay: Gordon Bennett: Painting history. Adelaide: Contemporary Art Centre South Australia, p. 7. (1993) Lingard, B. The totalizing and orientalist gaze. Broadsheet, 22(3), 27–28. (1990) Lingard, B. Catalogue essay: Psych(o)drama: Deconstructing settlement. Gordon Bennett exhibition 6–22 December. Brisbane: The Institute of Modern Art. (1990) Lingard, B. and Symes, C. Review: Balance exhibition, Queensland Art Gallery, 22 February-29 April. Tension, 23, 54–56. (1989) Lingard, B. Postmodernism and the appropriation of Aboriginal imagery. Agenda, March. (1989) Lingard, B. Catalogue essay: Namelessness Namelessness Exhibition, The University of Tasmania, September – October, 1988; The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, December 1988 – January 1989. Melbourne: The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. (1989) Lingard, B. Catalogue essay: From here on. Peter Cripps exhibition. Melbourne: City Gallery. (1989) Lingard, B. Catalogue essay: Eugene Carchesio; Andrew Arnoutoupoulus. Perspecta, New South Wales Art Gallery. (1989) Lingard, B. Interview with Gordon Bennett. Tension 16, 16. (1988) Lingard, B. Catalogue essay: Tim Johnson. The Bicentenary Contemporary Art to China Exhibition. (1988) Lingard, B. Interview with Peter Cripps. Tension, 15, 12–15. (1988) Lingard, B. The appropriation of Aboriginal imagery: Tim Johnson and Imants Tillers. In S. Cramer (ed.), Post-modernism and the appropriation of Aboriginal imagery. Brisbane: Institute of Modern Art. (1988) Lingard, B. and Cripps, P. Catalogue essay: Flattening Australian art history. Bicentenary European Installation Art Exhibitions, The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, September – October, 1988; Artspace, Sydney, September – October, 1988. (1987) Lingard, B. Aboriginality and the art of Tim Johnson. Eyeline, 1987. (1987) Lingard, B. Catalogue essay: Afterword. The shadow of reason. Brisbane: The Institute of Modern Art. (1987) Lingard, B. Catalogue essay: The flat of convenience: Paintings and drawings by Scott Redford. Paintings and drawings by Scott Redford. Brisbane: Bellas Gallery. (1986) Lingard, B. (ed.). Interviews with nine Queensland artists. Brisbane: The Institute of Modern Art. (1986) Lingard, B. Catalogue essay: Past and Present Visual Arts Board funded exhibition. Brisbane: The Institute of Modern Art. (1986) Lingard, B. Interview with Ross Thompson. In B. Lingard (ed.), Interviews with nine Queensland artists. Brisbane: The Institute of Modern Art. (1986) Lingard, B. and Cripps, P. Foreword. In G. Coulter-Smith (ed.), Art criticism in Queensland. Brisbane: The Institute of Modern Art. (1985) Lingard, B. The dominance of figurative expressionism in Queensland painting: Towards a sociological account. Brisbane Writings. Brisbane: The Institute of Modern Art.

INDEX

NOTE: Page numbers in italic figures refer to tables. A page number followed by n refers to a note.

Aboriginal community school, emphasising engagement with difference 204 Aborigines, support for reform in education of 58 ABS see Australian Bureau of Statistics academic research see research ACARA see Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority accountabilities: new public management (NPM) 73–4, 75 see also educational accountability achievement disparities, Indigenous/nonIndigenous students 59 achievement gap, negative effects associated with closing 61 ACT see Australian Capital Territory ACTA see Australian Council of TESOL Associations activists, utilizing research to affect policy process 12–13 affirmative action, backlash against 91 agency/structure relationship, core conundrum of sociology 9 ALAA see Applied Linguistics Association of Australia Allan, Julie 6 ALS see Australian Linguistics Society amnesia: permanent 134, 136, 146; structural 136, 145, 146 analysis for policy, research for actual policy development 164 analysis of policy, the more academic exercise 164 anti-feminism, surfacing in inquiry report 183 Anyon, J. 5–6

aphorisms: meta-policy as sound bite logic 132–3, 139, 140, 143; pick-up in cross-field effects 143–4 Appadurai, A.: deparochialisation of research 149, 171–2; epistemological disjunctures and exclusions of globalisations 152; ‘Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination’ 150, 171; LBOTE category in relation to NAPLAN performance 45; policy as numbers 30, 31, 34, 52; postnational polity associated with globalisation 105, 106, 127; refers to a number of disjunctions, or ‘scapes’ 93; vernacular globalisation 37, 86, 172 Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA) 57 aspirations, of Caribbean doctoral students 159 assessment: Australia’s NAPLAN 40–1; high-stakes national census testing 70; recommendations for further research into 187; school-based and teacher-moderated 72 see also Standard Assessment Tests Assessment is for Learning, Scottish policy document 122, 129 assumptions, need to challenge ‘taken for granteds’ 149, 152, 171 audit culture: new forms of educational accountability 15, 107; new managerialism 39 ‘audit culture’, see also educational accountability Australia: adoption of knowledge economy policies 109–11; assessment programme, NAPLAN 40–1; ‘Building the Education Revolution’ project 53; ‘closing the gap’ strategies 44–5, 54; contrasting Labour and

Index coalition policies 90, 91, 92; educational research agenda 46–7; education policy 36, 70; emergence of national curriculum 18; indigenous education policy 44–5; national policy ensemble 41; national schooling agenda 39–41; Parliamentary Inquiry into Boys’ Education 178–89; PISA performance 40; policy settlements illustrating global consensus 89–90; schooling policy context 53–4; Schools Commission report 18 see also Ministerial Councils The Australian 138 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 55, 58 Australian Capital Territory (ACT), senior secondary approach 72 Australian Council of TESOL Associations (ACTA) 57 Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA): Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) 45, 54, 62; responsible for NAPLAN and My School website 40–1, 54, 58, 68; to oversee ‘education revolution’ 40–1, 54 Australian Institute for Teachers and School Leaders 54 Australian Linguistics Society (ALS) 57 Australian Science Capability Review 138 Australia’s teachers: Australia’s future, interlinking schools and higher education 145 authentic pedagogy, concept identified in Newmann research 198, 199 Backing Australia’s ability 139, 145, 146 Backing Australia’s future, full policy review of higher education 146 backlash politics, shaping the gender agenda 180 backward mapping, research strategy 167, 169, 198–9 Ball, Stephen 5, 12, 20, 32, 35, 37, 39, 51, 53, 75–6, 93, 100, 155–6, 166, 168, 193–4 Batterham, Dr Robin 138–9, 140, 144, 146 Beazley, Kim 144 Berlin Wall, fall of the 28, 34 Biesta, Gert 6 Blair government, policies of 92, 132 Bourdieu, Pierre: account of journalistic field 133, 133–7; on national capital 174; on policy text analysis 170; theory of social fields 109, 150, 173, 179; ‘thinking tools’ 7–10, 106; world as one place 153, 173 ‘boy-friendly’ curricula, recommendations relating to 179 ‘boy-problem’, media-generated school-based responses to the 178

221

Boys: Getting it Right 178; claims and counterclaims 180–1; common sense versus research 181–3; curriculum, pedagogy and assessment 185–8; Gender Equity Framework 183–5; inquiry’s terms of reference 179–80; male role models 188–9 boys: constructed as victims of education system 180; as a disadvantaged group in Australia 178 boys’ behaviour, based on biological essentialist notions 187 boys’ education strategy, report’s aim 184 boys’ needs, in terms of quality teaching 185–6 Boys and schooling: Beyond structural reform 19 Brennan, T., on space/place distinction in educational policy analysis 172 Business Council of Australia 140 ‘Cambridge Primary Review’ 77 capitalism: agenda of socially regulated 95; social harmony a prerequisite for transnational 99; transition from multinational to transnational 87 capitals, necessary to academic success 7–8 Caribbean: argument for building research capacity in the 151, 159; creation of new regional blocs and markets 159 Caribbean doctoral students, deep awareness of political location 158–9 Caribbean master’s students, influence of their undergraduate course 158 Caribbean programme, seeking to encourage a disposition of criticality 158 Carribean students, teaching and supervising 157–9 categories in data, creating 64 categories of student performance, ungluing of stable categories 31, 45, 52 categorisation of people, complexities of 31 CDA see critical discourse analysis Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) 96 CERI see Centre for Educational Research and Innovation The chance to change: executive summary, Innovation: the only way forward 140 The chance to change: final report 138, 139, 140 The chance to change: a public discussion paper 139, 140, 143 The chance to change: a case study of cross field effects 133, 138, 143–6; terms of reference 41, 42, 138–43; textual products of the policy process 139 chauvinisms, emergence of backlash national 91–2 Children, their world, their education 77 Chinese international students, at the University of Sheffield 156–7

222

Index

choice, Australia’s school choice policies 39 circular circulation, Bourdieu’s concept of 134, 135–6 citizenship, supranational concepts of 95 civic mission, globalisation of the University of Sheffield’s 157 civil society, separateness of Scottish systems 119 class-based aspirations, and statistical probabilities of success 7 ‘Clever Country’, Labour’s policy aphorism 145, 146 Clinton, Bill, policies in education 91 ‘closing the gap’: national policy approach to Indigenous ‘disadvantage’ 59–63; strategies 44–5, 54 COAG see Council of Australian Governments Cold War: end of the 28, 34 see also post Cold War world Coleman Report 79 colonial histories: research prodding ‘public memories’ about 159; understanding education policy effects of globalisation 165 colonialism, postcolonial pedagogy working against effects of 158 commissioned policy research 165 common sense, versus research 180, 181–3 comparative education: global field of comparison 38–9; globalisation of 105 comparative indicators, in relation to national education and training 108 comparative league tables, manipulation of variables 42–3 comparative performance, global field of 107 comparative performance measures 15–17, 37–9; comparison as a form of governance 52; international 112–13; negative impact of testing culture 42–3 comparison: central to governance 107; governance through 54 competition between schools, to push up standards 71 competition state, and rise of ‘policy as numbers’ 36–7 competitiveness, international, weakening capacity of nation states 88 connectedness: dimension of productive pedagogies 202, 202, 203; and unconnectedness 203 Conservative Party, little Tory representation in Scotland 120 consultancy firm research 12 ‘context-productive’/‘context-generative’ practices, tension in restructured educational systems 86–7 Core Skills Test, effects on pedagogy 72 cosmopolitan aspect, of productive pedagogies 200

Council of Australian Governments (COAG): central education policy role 74; commitment to social inclusion 55; new model for federal financial relationships 58; no performance indicators relating to ESL services 58; schooling agenda 39, 53, 68 Creagh, Sue 2 critical analysis, of policy texts 167, 174–5 critical discourse analysis (CDA), approach to text analysis 169–70 criticality: Caribbean programme seeking to encourage 158; in educational research 6 cross-field effects, of The chance to change 133, 138, 143–6 cross-field relations, conceptualising educational policy as a field 136–7 cross-national comparisons, Australian and English educational policies 91 cross-national policy borrowing 93–5 cultural capital, effective schools engaging with communities 78–9 cultural globalisation, tension between homogenisation and heterogenisation 87 curriculum: Australia developing a national 54; boys reactive to irrelevant 185, 187; emergence of national, in Australia 18; New Basics, in Queensland 18; sociology of the 69 curriculum effects, of ‘closing the gap’ 61 Curriculum for Excellence, Scottish 122, 129 data: creating categories in 64; essential to the new governance 30, 46; governing through numbers 74 see also international data Data Standards Manual, provided by MCEECDYA 55 Decolonizing Methodologies, politics of research and representation 151, 171 DEELSA see Directorate of Education, Employment, Labour, and Social Affairs deparochialisation: of the focus of educational policy studies 153–6; of pedagogies 193, 206; of research 149, 150, 159–60; of research theory and methodology 156–9 Desrosieres, A. 33 developing countries, effects of World Bank on educational policy 155 developing world, a research site for modernisation theory 151, 171 Development as freedom 81 devolution, Scottish vote for 119 difference dimension: of productive pedagogies 200–1, 202, 202; QSRLS findings 205; valuing 203–5 Dimitriadis, G. 6 Directorate of Education, Employment, Labour, and Social Affairs (DEELSA) 96, 97

Index disadvantaged backgrounds, authentic pedagogy boosting student achievements 199 disadvantaged students, ensuring equal educational opportunities for 79 disaggregation of date, in NAPLAN test 55–6 doctoral students, significance of 2 Durkheim, Émile 8–9 EAL see English as additional language economic globalisation, effects of 91 economic nationalism, education in the postwar boom period 88, 91, 96, 99 economic policy, education as one element 99 economic power, location of 128 economic restructuring, reframing educational policies in the process 88 economic and social rationalisation 91 economisation, of education policy in Australia 39 economistic reframing, of educational policy 108 economy, PISA a surrogate measure of potential competitiveness 38 Edinburgh, independent schools 120 educated workforce, required as part of infrastructure 89 education: as one element of economic policy 99 see also schooling; Scottish education educational accountability: global/Australian policy context 73–6; linked to a socially just schooling agenda 82–3; negative impact of 42–3; new forms of 15; new managerialism 39, 40, 41; school accountabilities framework 70–1 educational governance, novel form emerging 124 educational institutions, de-differentiation of 3 educational performance: nations comparing globally 108; strong social class effect on Scottish 127, 128–9 educational policy: an element of economic policy 89; globalising 98–100; and politics, rescaling of 106–8, 114; site of culture wars 92 educational policy field, applicability of concepts from journalism to 135–40 educational policy fields, relations between 155–6 educational policy priorities 99–100 educational policy research, shifting scalar focus from national to global 153 educational policy studies, need to deparochialise 153 educational research: attempts to tame 13; defining 3–4; deparochialisation of theory and methodology 156–9; pedagogical disposition of researchers 4; some implications for 45–7

223

educational restructuring, ‘it is and it isn’t’ a result of globalisation 86–8 Educational Revolution, ‘unprecedented investment in schooling’ 60 Education at a Glance 38, 123 education failure, naturalisation of 62 education field, crossfield effects 145 education policy: Australian context 53–4, 81; emergence of a new global consensus 89; emergent global policy field 9, 128; first field of research 15–16; Scottish heritage under pressure 119; soft convergence 124 see also global education policy; policy as numbers education policy analysis: approaches defined by focus 167; rethinking theory and methodology 163–4 education policy production 88; affected by globalisation 193; supranational 93–5, 124 see also policy text production education practices, impacts of research on 4 education research, qualitative and quantitative 8, 45–6 education revolution, Australia’s version of neo-liberal policy discourses 40–1, 68, 71 education systems: inequalities in 62; policy relationships within restructured 100 educators, centrally important in emerging policy settlement 99 Edwards, Richard 6 elites, pedagogies of the 201 elite studies, education policy analysis 168–9 empirical, necessity of the, in educational research 5–7 employability, social inclusion 92 England: archetypal neo-liberal model of school reform 126; contemporary governance compared with Scotland’s structure 122; culture of performativity 194; policy regime framing schools 76; regime of neo-liberal accountability 194; as Scotland’s significant reference society 121–3; Thatcherite revolution compared with Australian policies 91 English, Chinese students’ view of centrality of English 157 English as additional language (EAL), impact of NAPLAN on classroom pedagogy 58–9 English as Second Language (ESL) service: category of LBOTE 54, 57; LBOTE data showing negative impact of policy as numbers 58–9 ENGPOOR, ABS category for people unable to speak English well 45, 58 Enlightenment, the Scottish 118, 120 ‘enrolment benchmark adjustment policy’, Australian 145 epistemic communities, central to global education policy field 112

224

Index

epistemological diffidence, contrasted with epistemological certainty 151, 171 epistemological disjunctures and exclusions, of globalisation 152 equality of opportunity, sociology of education 7–8 equity-focused national policies, introduced by Australian government 90 equity and quality, dual mode of analysis of PISA results 112 ESL see English as Second Language EU see European Union European Education Policy Space 126; convergence effects in educational policies 155 European Union (EU): most powerful supranational entity 126; rescaling of political authority 37–99 evaluation message system, major steering mechanism of Australian schools 69 event cross-field effects 137, 143 evidence-based policy 10, 11; become a global phenomenon 39; legitimacy offered by policy as numbers 33–4; rise of, in contemporary education policy 45–6 expenditure, on schooling infrastructure 80 externalization: comparing national performance with reference societies 15–16, 37–9; or policy borrowing 70 federalism, rescaling of political authority in Australia 39 feeling, ‘the structure of feeling’ 34–6 feminisation of schooling 189 feminism, impact so great that males the second sex 180 feminist concerns, not addressed in inquiry report 184 fields, Bourdieu’s 9, 134 Finland: highest performing schools systems 71; outstanding achiever on OECD’s PISA 7, 17, 77–8, 124; a reference society 124 funding: Australian schooling policy context 53; Australia’s redistribution of federal 40; and the ‘education revolution’ 82; of schools serving poor communities 7–8; Scotland’s university 121 ‘gap talk’: Malaysia 44; negative effects of policy as numbers 43–5; policies on schooling racial minority groups 52, 53, 61 gender: essentialist understandings of 186–7; Queensland’s gender policy 18; shaping the gender agenda 180; social construction of 182, 187; third field of author’s research 18–19 Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools 132, 179

gender equity, report suggesting an approach to 179 Gender Equity Framework, call for a re-writing of 183–5 gender equity policies, in schooling 19 gender relations, inquiry’s rejection of analysis of 182 gender of teachers 188 General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) 122 GERM see globalised education reform movement Gillard, Julia: Building the Education Revolution 53; focus on literacy and numeracy 69; My School website 68; National Partnership on Low SES Schools 79, 82; national schooling agenda 39–41 Gini coefficient, of social inequality, Finland’s low 78 girls’ policy documents, critiqued by feminists 183–4 Girls, School and Society, Commission Report in Australia 18 global academic networking, and research communities 2 global circulation of texts, policy text analysis 170 global comparative performance measures 15–17, 37–9, 108 global economic market, need for empirical investigation of processes 154 global economy, teachers as servants of the global 75 global educational policy: emergence of a 37–9; rescaling of authority beyond the nations 106–7 global educational policy community, emergence of a 99 global educational policy consensus: illustrated by Australian policy settlements 89–90; playing out in English and Australian policies 91 global educational policy field: emergence of a 153, 154, 163; PISA and the 111–13; recognising the emergent 128 global educational policy settlement, emergent 95 global educational space, elision of contextual differences within 155 Global Education Indicators 38, 111, 124 globalisation: after the Cold War, effects of 37–9, 151–2; distinction between ideological and empirical effects of 86; grassroots 152, 171; impact on the nation state 30–1; implications for supranational and transnational policy 88–93; the new ‘planet speak’ 125; politics of 154, 155, 173; regarded positively by Chinese

Index students 156; and the research imagination 149–51; three axes of 166 see also vernacular globalisation globalisation context, Australia’s reframing of education 54 globalisation of the economy, implications for state structures and policies 87 globalisation of education policy 98–100; education policy analysis 171–4; of policyas-numbers approach 74; rescaling impacts on national policy 15 globalised education policy discourses 11, 16; broad congruence of 37; policy problems and solutions 168; vernacularized 9 globalised education reform movement (GERM) 15, 16 globalised world, Caribbean doctoral students’ awareness of 158–9 Global North, measures of comparative educational performance 168 Global North/Global South divide, positioning of nations 165, 168 global organisations, network of 96 global policy convergence, in schools 75 global social policy 94–5 Global South: conditionality in donor funding 112; deparochialising the study of education 151–2, 154; Global Education Indicators 38, 111, 124; purposes of economic development in 81; work of the World Bank in relation to 37 glocalisation, reconstituting local, national and global interrelationships 87 governance: comparison as a form of 52, 54; data essential to 30, 46; government move to 36–9, 51, 163; linked with policy as numbers 30, 31, 52, 54–9; policy as numbers the reductive norm 28; Scotland’s distinct form of 119–20 government: move to governance in education policy 36–9, 51, 163; transition process 106 grassroots globalisation, or ‘globalisation from below’ 152, 171 GTCS see General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) habitus, Bourdieu’s ‘thinking tools’ 9 Hawke, Bob, steps towards national curriculum framework 53, 70, 89 hierarchical cross-field effects 137, 145 homology, of a society/nation, need to challenge in research 149 homophobia, working to keep men out of primary schools 188 Howard, John 79, 90, 145, 203; critical of Core Skills Test 72; school choice policies 39–40 human behaviour, sociology about probabilities of 8

225

human capital, education’s role to produce quality and quantity 74, 75 human capital theory: educational policy an element of 89, 93; justifying demand for more and better education 128 humanism, development of planetary 204 human rights, significance of education in terms of 201 ICSEA see Index of Community SocioEducational Advantage identity formation, purpose of schooling 201 identity politics, and new social movements 91 ideology see values IEA see International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement IMF see International Monetary Fund implementation studies, education policy analysis 167, 169 independence, moves towards Scottish 120 independent schools, in Edinburgh 120 Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) 40, 58, 62; research needed to improve 45, 46 indifference, pedagogies of 202 Indigenous ‘disadvantage’: boys and girls facing 182; closing the gap 44–5, 54, 59–63 Indigenous education: and its links with ‘gap talk’ 44–5, 60–3; ‘student-as-problem’ framing of 62 Indigenous/non-Indigenous peoples, statistical comparisons 60 Indigenous students, who are also LBOTE disadvantaged 62 individual, Scottish conception of the 118–19 individualism: of neo-liberalism 35, 36; neoliberal response to globalisation 204 individuals, numbers in politics 30 inequalities: growing 91, 92; Scotland’s intransigent class-based 127–8 inequalities in education systems, politics of recognition set up to accept 62 inequality, schools reproducing 7–8, 203 ‘informed prescription’, at systemic level 71 ‘informed professionalism’, at systemic level 71 Innovation: the only way forward, executive summary of The chance to change reports 140 ‘inscription devices’, numbers as 32 Inspectorate in Scotland, supportive rather than punitive role 123 intellectual demandingness, lack of 203 intellectual quality, dimension of productive pedagogies 202, 202 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) 38, 124 international comparative measures, of educational performance 112–13

226

Index

international competitiveness see competitiveness international data on education, global field of comparison 38–9 international educational indicators, OECD role 108 internationalisation of research, Appadurai’s strong call for 149, 150, 152 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 94, 95, 96, 97, 98 international organisations: affected by globalisation 94; policy problems and solutions 168 International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 124 Investing in knowledge for the 21st century, discussion paper 139–40 investment in science, vigorous debates on 139 ISCED see International Standard Classification of Education

league tables see comparative league tables learning, orientations to, specific to boys/girls 186 learning outcomes, productive pedagogies for all students 16–17 learning styles: assumptions regarding boys’ and girls’ 181; gender preferences for particular 185, 186 Lisbon Declaration of 2000 126 literacy and numeracy, focus on 69 literacy rate, Scotland 118 literacy testing 68–9, 92 literacy see also National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) local authority influence in schooling, contrasting English and Scottish systems 122 looping effects, mechanism of cross-field effects 109 Luke, Allan 72 Lyotard, F. 35, 53

journalism, and Bourdieu’s concept of mediatization 9–10 journalism field, applicability of concepts to educational policy field 133, 135–40

McConnell, Jack 127 McCrone Agreement 122 McCrone, D. 119–20 MAI see Multilateral Agreement on Investment Making good progress 77 Malaysia: global gap talk 44; Malaysian Ten Year Plan 44 maldistribution: continuance of a politics of 60; economic injustices of 62; politics of recognition sustaining 61 male role models 188–9; absence of 189 male teachers: lack of, in primary schools 188; recommendations to employ more 179 management structures, new private sector incorporated in public sector 89 managerialism: application of private sector management practices 39; politics as 36 market capitalism, Chinese student concerns 157 market choice, parental 71 marketing the message, aphoristic marketing 140 market liberal ideology, inevitability of 86 market mechanisms, policy technologies 75 ‘market socialism’, Chinese student aspirations 157 Marshall Plan 95 masculinity, issue of dominant construction of, elided in report 183 masses, numbers in politics 30 Masters, Geoff, Masters Review 73 Matters, Dr Gabrielle 73 MCEECDYA see Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs media competition, encouraging uniformity through circularity 135

Keating, Paul, steps towards a national curriculum framework 53, 70, 89–90 Kemp, Dr David 138 Keynesian approach, Rudd government’s education revolution 40, 53, 71, 90–1 Keynesian policy regime 87, 89, 91 Keynesian welfare state 29, 36, 92 knowledge economy: global education policy discourse 111, 113; rescaling the 109–11 knowledge economy policies, Australia’s adoption of 109–11 knowledge producer, positionality of the 92 knowledge production, purpose of schooling 201 Labour Party, in Scotland 120 Laidi, Z., A world without meaning 28, 35–6, 38 laissez-faire economics and politics, emergence of another period of 86 language background, capture of data 55–6 ‘Language Background Other than English’ (LBOTE): disaggregation of data 55–9; dysfunctions of LBOTE category 57–9; Indigenous students who are also LBOTE disadvantaged 62; LBOTE category in relation to NAPLAN performance 45, 54–6, 56; and policy as numbers 55; students included in the category 55–6, 57, 58 LBOTE see ‘Language Background Other than English’ leadership in schools, QSRLS research 17

Index media coverage: of the boys’ issue, Queensland 18–19; creating policy 132; as de facto policy 132; of My School website 69 media representations, of educational issues 132 media silence, when at odds with policy 133 media strategy, for stages of policy process 133 mediatisation: of policy and politics 109–11, 113, 170–1; in policy process 139; of politics and government 131–4 mediatised event, ‘The chance to change’ 138–43, 141, 142 Melbourne University, Sociology Research Group in Cultural and Educational Studies 132 Men Engaging Feminisms: Pro-feminism, backlashes and schooling 19 message systems schooling, curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation 69–70 meta-governance, an emergent form of 113 meta-policy, as sound bites 132–3, 139, 140, 143 methodological insights, Bourdieu’s ‘thinking tools’ 9–10 methodological nationalism 46, 105, 153, 172 methodologies decolonising research 159, 160, 171 methodologism 5, 6, 8 migration, challenges in contemporary Scotland 126–7 Minchin, Nick 138 Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs (MCEECDYA) 53–4; Data Standards Manual 55 misogyny, working to keep men out of primary schools 188 misrecognition: disaggregation to category LBOTE resulting in 52, 54–9, 58; enduring cultural injustices of 62; to deny politics of redistribution 63 misrepresentations, deliberate media 133 monoculturalism, imposition of 92 Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), sponsored by OECD 94, 95 multi-layering, of educational policy field 155 multiplicity, productive pedagogies working with 200–1 Murdoch press 40–1, 68, 69 My School website 40–1, 54, 58, 62, 68; government use of information age politics 81; school comparisons 69 NAPLAN see National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy ‘National Aboriginal Education Committee’ 60 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy 60

227

National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) 40–1, 42, 54; challenging Queensland’s progressive reforms 73; and ‘closing the gap’ strategy 44–5, 54, 60–3; deployment of NAPLAN data 62; disparities between Indigenous/ non-Indigenous students 59; drawing resources from other socio-economic concerns 61; impact of policy as numbers 43; ‘Language Background Other Than English (LBOTE) category 45, 55–9, 56; national presence in schooling 68–9; national results for each component of test 56; numeracy testing 68–9; report on Queensland comparative performance 42; research needed to improve 46 national capital 174; education enhancing 107–8; mediating extent to which nations are context generative 154; ought to be focus of research 155; research potential to strengthen, in Caribbean 159; Scotland’s 125 national education and training reform agenda, Australia’s 90 national governments, policy tools reduced by globalisation of the economy 88 National Indigenous Reform Agreement (NIRA) 59 nationalism, Scottish 126, 129 National Partnership on Low Socio-economic Status Schools 68, 71, 79, 82 National Partnership on quality teachers/ teaching 82 national schooling agenda, Australia 39–41 ‘national system of schooling’, NAPLAN catalysing a 70 nation-states: impact of globalisation 30–1, 51; parallel emergence of statistics and the 27, 28, 29, 33, 51; post-devolution Scotland 119; rescaling and reworking of politics 163 ‘naturalisation’, of education failure 62 natural predispositions of boys, rhetorical ploy in report 186 neoconservative boys’ education agenda 180 neo-liberal globalisation 74 neo-liberalism: global dominance of 27, 28, 51, 155; impact on education policy processes 27, 28, 36, 41, 46; individualism of 35, 36; linked with policy as numbers and governance 52; scathing critique of 80; vernacular 37 New Basics: curriculum in Queensland schools 18; trial 73 Newmann, F. and Associates, research in U.S. on authentic pedagogy and authentic achievement 198, 199 new public management (NPM), emphasis on outcomes 73–4, 75

228

Index

news coverage, of The chance to change 143–4 newspaper reports, on Australia’s declining OECD comparative performance 109–10 NIRA see National Indigenous Reform Agreement No Child Left Behind agenda: and decline in quality of teaching and learning 76; politics occurring in relation to 13 Nossal, Sir Gustav 140 NPM see new public management numbers: essential to the critical scrutiny of authority 31–2; manifest in key performance indicators 52; in politics 30–3; as a technology of governance 30, 31, 54–9 see also policy as numbers numeracy: focus on literacy and 69 see also National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy OECD see Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development one, significance of the number 30 On television and journalism 133, 134 oppressed, pedagogies of the 201 ‘organisational ecumenism’, global 89 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): economic and social policy 97; Education at a Glance 38, 123; education indicators 38, 70, 123, 124; international agency par excellence 37, 108; member countries 95–6; and new global educational policy consensus 97–8; origins of 95; policy lessons to nations 16; and policy as numbers 74; role of 96; sponsoring Multilateral Agreement on Investment 94; transnational policy actor in global education field 106, 108, 110–11 see also Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Organization for European Economic Cooperation 95 outcomes: clearly stipulated and at lowest cost 89; indicators 74; measuring 73–4; significance of teachers and their practices 193–4; social and academic 16–17 outcomes accountability: accompanying move to governance 106–7; demand for new forms of 75 Ozga, Jenny 13, 15, 30, 123, 133, 153, 166, 178 party ideology, mediating educational policy development 90 patriarchal gender order, report favouring current 179 pedagogical effects, of ‘closing the gap’ 61 pedagogies: central feature of teachers’ practices 195; educational research and educational theory on 197–8; making

the difference in outcomes 79; quality of, as a social justice issue 195, 196 see also productive pedagogies Pedagogies of Difference 192 pedagogies of indifference, arguing the need to challenge 193 pedagogized society, de-differentiating educational institutions 3 pedagogy, boys reactive to poor teaching 185, 187 performance: ‘naming’ and ‘shaming’ schools 68; outcomes accountability 107 performance assessment see National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy performance comparisons: NAPLAN results comparing LBOTE/non-LBOTE 56–9, 56; new global comparisons of students 75 performance data, international 124 performance targets, educational accountability 42–3 performativity: concept of 35–6, 47, 53; effects of culture of 76, 100; policy technology 75; postmodern culture of 92–3 permanent amnesia, Bourdieu’s concept of 134 PFI see private-finance initiatives philosophy, Bourdieu’s ‘fieldwork in philosophy’ 8 PIRLS see Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study PISA see Programme for International Student Assessment policy: framing of 10–11; mix for any given policy 11; and policy process 163 see also evidence-based policy policy activists, utilizing research to affect policy process 12–13 policy agendas, media strategy for government initiatives 131–4 policy analysis: distinction between analysis of and analysis for 164; questions for 166–8 policy aphorisms see aphorisms policy areas, viewed as social fields 134 policy borrowing: accompanying policy learning 70–1; accountability agenda borrowed from England and the USA 81–2; across nations 93–5; global policy convergence 74–5 policy cycle, three contexts of 100, 155–6, 168–9, 174 policy cycle approach, for restructured educational systems 100 policy fields, inter-relationships with other fields 134–5 policy implications of globalisation see globalisation policy learning: accompanied by policy borrowing 70–1; as the basis for policy

Index borrowing 76–8; calling for better 71–2; required to rethink school reform agenda 82–3 policy making: move to governance 106–7; as a network of numbers 32 policy misrecognition 52, 54–9, 59–63 policy as numbers: in contemporary education policy 27–41; contextualising the analysis 52–4; current debates over what counts as evidence 45–6; effects of 41–5; emergence of 74; globalised 107, 108; governance linked with 30, 31, 52, 54–9; research 30, 31, 34, 52; in respect of LBOTE 55–9 policy problems: increasingly traced to international organisations 168; understanding the issues 168 policy processes, research utilization in 13–14 policy production in education see education policy production policy regime, need for evidence-informed 71 policy release, as media release 133 policy research in education: considering research/policy relationships 10–14; intent of 12 ‘policyscapes’, supranational and post national policy flows 93 policy sociology: approach to policy analysis 166; methodology 166; multiple purposes 166–7 policy text analysis 169–71 policy text production: circular circulation of 136; logics of practice of journalism 10, 12 ‘political arithmetic’, approach to progressive public administration 27–8 political authority, rescaling of 37–9 political imagination, central component in creation of global market 154 political legitimacy, rise of evidence-based policy 33–4 ‘political numbers’ 31–3 political power, location of 128 political systems, globalization linked to aspirations for open 157 political understandings, the seeking for new 34–5 politics: of/as numbers 29–34; rescaling affecting location of authority 163–4 politics of contemporary Scotland, within the multi-layered U.K. 128 politics of globalisation 154, 155, 173 politics of recognition 52, 53, 61–2; fitting the ‘identity model’ 60; set up to accept inequalities 62 politics of redistribution 60–1 porousness, of national boundaries 153, 173 positionalities, of policy analysis 164 positionality: four meanings of 164–5;

229

positionings of countries vis-à-vis international organisations 165; position of the researcher 164–5, 174; temporal location of analyst 165; theoretical and political stance of the researcher 165 post Cold War world: globalisation 37–9; neoliberalism 52; seeking for new political understandings 34–5 postcolonial aspirations: capacity to ‘do’ research 151, 159; of Caribbean doctoral students 159 postcolonial insights, decolonising and deparochialising strategies 151, 171 postcolonialism: Caribbean programme’s aspirational definition 158; and postmodernism, recognising the differences 158 postcolonial pedagogies, working with Caribbean Master’s students 158 postcolonial theory, policy studies in education 149–50 postmodernism: cultural effect of globalisation 92; ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives’ 35, 53 postnational era, cultural flows related to emergence of the 153 post neo-liberal social imaginary, potential to frame social policy 80 post-Westphalian politics: 74, 83n 168; ‘cellular’ 163 poverty and inequality, intransigent problem in Scotland 127–8 Primary Colours, manual workers facing changes in U.S. economy 89 primary schooling, impact of testing culture in England on 42 print journalism, cross-field effects 143–5 print journalism and politics, series of blockages within fields of 110 private-finance initiatives (PFI), use of in Scotland 123 private sector involvement, associated with shift to governance 106, 107 privatisation, associated with shift to governance 39 privilege, devious construction of men’s lack of 180 productive assessment, relationship between productive pedagogies and 200 productive pedagogies: elements derived from literature review 199–200; four-dimensional model of 16–17, 201; mean ratings of dimensions 202; and productive assessment, relationship between 200; theoretical and empirical bases of research 198–201 see also Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study professional autonomy, of Finnish teachers 78

230

Index

professional development, built into Scottish teachers’ working lives 122 professional opposition, to Australia’s ‘education revolution’ 68 professional training, requiring standards of practice 83 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 4, 7, 69, 124; Australia’s PISA performance 40, 54; creating a space of equivalence across nations 124; England’s results 78; Finland’s high quality performance on PISA 7, 77–8; global comparative performance measures 15–17, 37–9, 70, 108, 111–12; and policy as numbers 74; Scotland’s desire for separate nation status 124–5; Shanghai-China’s outstanding performance 16; US’s poor comparative performance on PISA 7–8, 17 progress, new focus of schooling policy in England 77 Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study (PIRLS) 38; and policy as numbers 74 public awareness campaign, serving dual purpose 138–9 public management, steering-at-a-distance 75 public sector, application of private sector management practices 39 purposes, of policy and analysis 164 QSRLS see Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study qualitative/quantitative research 8, 45–6 quality and equity, dual mode of analysis of PISA results 112 quantification, ‘a technology of distance’ 33 Queensland: ‘closing the gap’ 62; comparing Scotland and 129; gender policy 18; indigenous education policy 44–5; Masters Report 42; restructuring with emphasis on outcomes 71; schooling system and responses to change 72–83 Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS) 16–18, 72, 193; findings 201–5; model 198–9; the research 198–201 see also productive pedagogies Queensland Studies Authority, research on effects of high-stakes testing 72 ‘race’, effects of, within education 63 Radford Lecture, Professor Richard Selleck’s 27, 28, 33 Radford Report 72 reading public, Scotland as first modern literate society 118 recognition, politics of 52, 53, 60, 61–2 recuperative masculinity 19 redemptive disposition, in sociology of education 4

redistribution, politics of 60–1 redistributive funding, Australia 40 Red Plenty 29 reference societies: England as Scotland’s ‘other’ 121–3; Scottish education through the lenses of 119; to borrow from 82; within global educational policy space 154 reflexive theory/empirical relationship, in social science research 5–7 reflexivity: in educational research 6, 174; significance to quality research 165 relations, in the research field 1–3 remasculinisation of schooling 189; recommendations supporting need for 179 reproduction of inequality, through schooling 7–8 rescaling: of educational policy and politics 106–8, 114; of political authority 37–9, 106–7, 113, 163–4 research: as ammunition, not knowledge discovery 11–12; attempts to affect agendas 13; involving ‘re-search’ 1–2; and policy analysis 168–71 research agenda, focus for future research 46 research capacity, building, in the Caribbean 151, 159 research communities, global academic networks 2 research findings, rejected in favour of ‘common-sense’ assumptions 181–3 research for policy 12 research/policy relationships 10–14 research schools, in QSRLS study 199 research in social sciences, implications of globalisation 106–7 research utilization, in policy processes 13–14 restructured educational systems, policy relationship contexts within 100 rich tasks, assessment practices 73 Rizvi, Fazal 38, 154, 167–8 Rose, N. 31–2 Rudd Kevin 59–60; apology to Indigenous Australians 59; ‘Building the Education Revolution’ 52–4, 60, 68; co-operative federalism 39, 58; NAPLAN and My School website 70–1, 75, 81; National Partnership on Low SES Schools 79; national schooling agenda 39, 40–1; on neo-liberalism 36–7, 80; on social justice 80 Salmond, Alex 120 SATS see Standard Assessment Tests scalar politics: implications for education policy 105–14; Scotland, Britain, Europe and globalisation 125–8 school accountabilities framework 70–1 school effectiveness research 198

Index schooling: Australia’s move towards national policies 68, 153; re-masculinisation of 189; reproducing inequalities linked to social class 7–8; Scottish system 118, 120–1 see also education school league tables, as part of new public management 75 school performance assessment see National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy school principals, importance in leading learning 17 school reform and pedagogies 16–18 science, debates on investment in 139 science and education investment, central to global competitiveness 111 science policy, exemplifying cross-field effects 133 science policy field 135 Scotland: as an understated nation 125; attempts to reconstitute hegemonic masculinity 19; specificities of national response to globalisation 125 Scottish education: distinctiveness of 123; in line with social-democratic models of Europe 126; reflections from an international perspective 118–29 Scottish Enlightenment 118, 120 Scottish National Party, in government 120 Scottish Parliament, Education Act 1696 118 Scottish Storytelling Centre 118 secondary assessment see assessment secondary schooling, Labour’s policy regime in Australia 90 secondary schools, comparing Scottish and English situations 123 selection principles, author’s rationale 20–1 self-representations, to produce a self-affirming culture 60 Selleck, Richard, 1988 Radford Lecture 27, 28, 33 Sen, Amartya 81 SES see socioeconomic status Shanghai-China, performance on the 2009 PISA 16 Singapore: human capital as only resource 17; a reference society 124 single figure, power of the 32–3 social capital, schools contributing to 202 social construction of gender, issues dismissed by enquiry report 182, 187 social democratic consensus, in Scotland 120 ‘social facts’, numbers in politics 33 social fields: Bourdieu’s theory of 109; policy theorised in terms of 134; relating to and impacting on one another 135 social inclusion 92 socialisation, of global politics 95

231

social justice, and the social democratic project 80 social justice consequences, of targeted accountability in schools 43 social justice in education 14, 16, 201 social justice policies, in Australia 54 socially just pedagogies 206 socially regulated capitalism, agenda of 95 social policy: crisis the focus of coverage 132 see also global social policy Social policy, the media and misrepresentation 131–2 ‘social rationalisation’ 91 social research, three different purposes of 6 social science methodology, theory central to 5–6 social science research: and development of statistics 27–8; partial nature of knowledge produced 29 social sciences, education research moving to centre stage 3–4 ‘social status model’ 62–3 social support, teachers’ commitment to 202 social theory: national space of 172; spatial turn in 153, 172 society and nation-state, weakened connectivity between 153 socioeconomic communities, New Basics achieving more socially just outcomes 73 socioeconomic status(SES): low SES schools and ‘closing the gap’ strategies 44–5, 54, 59–63; National Partnership on Low SES Schools 71, 79; targeted accountability in low SES schools 43 sociology of education: disciplinary disposition 14; possibilities for opening up opportunities 7–8; redemptive disposition in 4 socio-spatial networks, multi-layering of educational policy field 155 sound bites, meta-policy as aphorisms and 132–3, 139, 140, 143 sovereignty: of nation states, differing under globalisation 154; states ceding, to supranational organisations 163 space/place distinction, in educational policy analysis 172 spatiality, in context of time/space 165 Spivak, G.C. 201 Spufford, Francis, Red Plenty 29 stable categories, ‘unglued’ 31, 45, 52 Standard Assessment Tests (SATS) 76 standardisation, work of OECD 111 state, fundamental role of the 80 state restructuring, implicated in facilitation of a global economy 87–8 ‘statistical reasoning’, within the social sciences 52 statistical systems, alignment 38

232

Index

statistics: development of 27–8; historical unification of systems 70; politics and policy 33–4; as technology of governance 30, 31 status: of Finnish teachers 78; social status model 62–3 steering-at-a-distance, public management 75 Stobart, G. 42 structural amnesia 136, 145, 146 structural cross-field effects 137 structuralism, and constructivism 8 ‘structure of feeling’, attempts to articulate the 34–6 student fees, Australia’s higher education 90 student flows, in global market of higher education 151–2 student performance, categories of 31, 45 supportive classroom environment, dimension of productive pedagogies 202, 202 supranational policy production in education 93–5, 124 supranational political organisations, at the subglobal level 94 systemic cross-field effects 137, 145 ‘taken for granteds’, need for research to examine its own 149, 152, 171 teacher practices, greatest impact on student learning 71, 77, 79 teachers: de-professionalisation of 77; difference in status of English/Scottish 122 teachers’ education, in Scotland 122 Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) 57 teachers’ pay and conditions, in Scotland 122 teacher unions opposition, to Australia’s ‘education revolution’ 68 teaching and supervising Caribbean students 157–9 teach-to-the-test, reality of England’s schooling 77–8 ‘technicization of politics’, numbers as technical mechanisms 32 temporal cross-field effects 137, 143, 144 TESOL see Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages testing, long-term effects 75, 76 testing culture, impact on primary schooling in England 42 testing regimes, Scottish and English policies contrasted 122–3 text analysis 169–71 Thatcher, Margaret, revolution in English education 91 theory: in educational research, approaches 6–7; necessity of, in educational research 5–7; as a thinking tool 5–6 ‘thinking tools’: theory as a 5–6; usefulness of Bourdieu’s 7–10

think-tank research 12 ‘third way’ politics, calls for 92 ‘Third World’, modernisation theory and attitudes towards the 151, 171 TIMSS see Trends in International Math and Science Study Torres Strait Islanders, support for reform in education of 59 trade union movement, relations with Howard coalition 90 trajectory studies, education policy analysis 169 transnational capitalism: social harmony a prerequisite 99; transition from multinational to 87 transnationalism 37, 70 transnational policy, OECD an example 106 Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) 38, 124; Malaysian performance affected by government policy 44; and policy as numbers 74 trust in teachers, erosion of 75 understanding the problem, first task of policy analysis 168 ‘uninformed systemic prescription’, ushering in ‘uninformed professionalism’ 69 unions, teacher union opposition to ACARA website 40–1 United States: attraction of, as place for graduate study 151–2; and origins of OECD 95; poor comparative performance on PISA 7–8, 17 United States cultural industries, impact on Caribbean 159 University of Edinburgh 121 university fees, Scottish Labour’s rejection of top-up fees 121 university funding, Scotland 121 University of Sheffield: Caribbean programme 157–9; Chinese international students at 156–7; globalisation of civic mission 157 values, policy as authoritative allocation of 71 vernacular globalisation 37, 94, 100; applied to Scotland 119, 125; carrying resonances with ‘glocalisation’ 87; illustrated by Australian policy settlements 89–90; mediating the effects of ‘top down globalisation’ 152, 172 vernacularization, of global discourses 15, 16 vertical cross-field effects 137 Western epistemologies, challenging silent valorisation of 149, 171 Western ‘metaculture’, challenging 149, 160, 171

Index Westphalian politics, ‘vertebrate’ 163 ‘white’ cultural capital, NAPLAN testing favouring those demonstrating 63 ‘whiteness’, strategy to protect privilege and status of 63 Whitlam, Gough, Whitlam Labour government 53 workforce, educated, as part of infrastructure 89 World Bank: and educational policy 108, 109,

233

111, 154–5, 165, 174; transnational policy actor 94–5, 97 World Education Indicators 111 world as one place, enhanced awareness of the 153, 173 World Trade Organisation (WTO) 159 WTO see World Trade Organisation zero, significance of the number 30