Globalizing Education Policy

Fazal Rizvi, Bob Lingard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135270490
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

Rizvi and Lingard's account of the global politics of education is thoughtful, complex and compelling. It is the first really comprehensive discussion and analysis of global trends in education policy, their effects - structural and individual - and resistance to them. In the enormous body of writing on globalisation this book stands out and will become a basic text in education policy courses around the world.

- Stephen J Ball, Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education, Institute of Education, University of London, UK

In what ways have the processes of globalization reshaped the educational policy terrain?

How might we analyse education policies located within this new terrain, which is at once local, national, regional and global?

In Globalizing Education Policy, the authors explore the key global drivers of policy change in education, and suggest that these do not operate in the same way in all nation-states. They examine the transformative effects of globalization on the discursive terrain within which educational policies are developed and enacted, arguing that this terrain is increasingly informed by a range of neo-liberal precepts which have fundamentally changed the ways in which we think about educational governance. They also suggest that whilst in some countries these precepts are resisted, to some extent, they have nonetheless become hegemonic, and provide an overview of some critical issues in educational policy to which this hegemonic view of globalization has given rise, including:

• devolution and decentralization
• new forms of governance
• the balance between public and private funding of education
• access and equity and the education of girls
• curriculum particularly with respect to the teaching of English language and technology
• pedagogies and high stakes testing
• and the global trade in education.

These issues are explored within the context of major shifts in global processes and ideological discourses currently being experienced, and negotiated by all countries. The book also provides an approach to education policy analysis in an age of globalization and will be of interest to those studying globalization and education policy across the social sciences.

1 Conceptions of education policy

Introduction

Policy studies is a relatively recent field of academic endeavour. It emerged during the 1950s in mainly liberal democratic countries, where governments sought the resources of the social sciences to develop public policies, replacing earlier approaches that were largely intuitive and ad hoc. Fifty years later, policy studies has become an established field of study, central to the ways in which societies are now governed. Governments now employ a large number of policy experts to help them think through social problems, develop programmes and assess their effectiveness. Policy experts are also used to justify and promote political decisions, helping to steer social formations in particular directions. In this sense, policy studies as a field is inextricably linked to the processes of change. Especially in its more technical and bureaucratic forms, it has even come to replace politics, sidelining debates about values, shifting attention instead to matters of administrative dictates and directions.

In the early stages of its development, policy studies was grounded mostly in ‘policy sciences’, an approach developed by political scientists to enquire into the ways in which public policies were best developed, implemented and evaluated (de Leon and Danielle 2007). Policy studies thus largely addressed the needs of the state, helping it to develop its priorities and programmes and determine ways of ensuring their efficiency and effectiveness. Governments believed that the intractable problems they faced could only be solved through the rigorous application of research knowledge and techniques developed by social scientists. There thus emerged a so-called ‘rationalist’ approach to policy processes, which prescribed a number of determinate steps, from an analysis of the policy context and the elucidation of a range of policy options to the processes of policy selection, production, implementation and evaluation (Wagner 2007). In addition to providing information helpful to policy-makers, academic policy researchers were also interested in what governments did: how they negotiated various political interests, and more generally managed policy processes.

The rationalist approach to policy studies in liberal democratic countries was developed during a period when it was widely believed that government intervention was both desirable and necessary for solving social problems. It was widely assumed that increased expenditure on social programmes would not only enhance national economic performance, but would also ensure greater equality of opportunities, especially through various redistributive measures. This state activity, however, required reliable information and advice upon which to base decisions and create programmes. Governments thus turned to policy scientists to help them both create and promote policies and programmes. In response, political groups outside the state also began to embrace this approach, marshalling information to argue for particular policy preferences. This inevitably blurred the dividing line between policy analysts inside and outside government – between policy development and advocacy. As sources of policy advice multiplied, lobby and pressure groups came into existence, professing technical expertise that often masked their particular interests (Knoepfel et al. 2007).

During the 1980s, however, the rationalist approach to policy studies began to lose popularity for a number of reasons (Wagner 2007). First, it was believed that the approach did not produce the reliable, generalizable and predictable policy knowledge it had promised. Secondly, the positivist view of (social) science upon which the rationalist approach was based was increasingly discredited or at least challenged within the social sciences. Thirdly, a range of new theoretical developments such as critical theory, feminism, post-structuralism and post-colonialism undermined rationalist approaches and claims to knowledge, and their alleged value neutrality. Fourthly, the Keynesian economic theories upon which many policy interventions were based lost popular support, especially following the ideological assault on them by the Thatcher and Reagan governments. Market ideologies framed by neoliberalism became ascendant around the world. And finally, and perhaps most significantly, the emerging processes of globalization transformed the political and economic contexts in which public policies were developed (Kennett 2008). More than anything, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 signified a fundamental shift in policy thinking around the world, both resulting from and giving rise to the globalization of capitalism and the emergence of a ‘neoliberal’ ideology, reshaping the ways in which policies are now forged, implemented and evaluated.

Public policies were once exclusively developed within a national setting, but now are also located within a global ‘system’. While national governments continue to have the ultimate authority to develop their own policies, the nature of this authority is no longer the same, affected significantly by imperatives of the global economy, shifts in global political relations and changing patterns of global communication that are transforming people's sense of identity and belonging. In the early 1990s, these epochal shifts led some scholars such as Francis Fukuyama (1992) to even speak of the ‘end of history’, suggesting that liberal democracy and market ideologies had now become ‘globalized’ and that this was the endpoint of ideological struggle.

These shifts have inevitably affected education policy. With the rejection of the ideas associated with the Keynesian welfare state, governments have increasingly preached a minimalist role for the state in education, with a greater reliance on market mechanisms. As educational systems around the world have become larger and more complex, governments have been either unable or unwilling to pay for educational expansion, and have therefore looked to market solutions. This has led to an almost universal shift from social democratic to neoliberal orientations in thinking about educational purposes and governance, resulting in policies of corporatization, privatization and commercialization on the one hand, and on a greater demand for accountability on the other (Lipman 2004). At the same time, educational purposes have been redefined in terms of a narrower set of concerns about human capital development, and the role education must play to meet the needs of the global economy and to ensure the competitiveness of the national economy.

Over the past two decades, then, a new global policy paradigm seems to have emerged. Yet while similarities in policy shifts occurring in a wide variety of nations are clearly evident, it is also the case that these changes are mediated at the national and local levels by particular historical, political and cultural dynamics (see, for example, Mok and Tan 2004). An understanding of the nature of this mediation suggests that there is nothing inevitable about these changes. The concept of globalization does not have a single uniform meaning, and its various expressions are as dynamic as they are context-specific. If this is so, it is important to try to elucidate the reasons for the global dominance of the neoliberal policy paradigm: how it might be unravelling in the current global economic crisis, and how it might be possible to resist its negative effects and forge a different, more just and democratic globalization that implies a broader conception of education's purposes.

This book is largely concerned with an examination of the ways in which global processes are transforming education policy around the world, in a range of complicated, complex, commensurate and contradictory ways. It seeks to provide a new introduction to policy studies in education, informed by our recent experiences in policymaking and evaluation, and with our scholarly engagement with the literature designed to understand processes of globalization. It is based on our conviction that some of the older theoretical and methodological resources are no longer sufficient, and that new tools are needed to understand policy processes in a world that is increasingly networked and shaped by a range of transnational forces and connections, demanding a new global imagination. We want to argue that while some of the older accounts of policy processes might still hold to some extent at least, the processes that now frame education policy are often constituted globally and beyond the nation-state, even if they are still articulated in nationally specific terms. Using insights from a range of theoretical and methodological traditions, including critical theory, post-structuralism, post-colonialism and critical discourse analysis, we provide a somewhat eclectic view of critical education policy analysis, which attempts to show how education policies represent a particular configuration of values whose authority is allocated at the intersection of global, national and local processes. Our focus is on both new policy content and processes; the new production rules for education policy associated with globalization; and the related need for new approaches to education policy analysis.

What is policy?

Let us begin with a discussion of the question: ‘what is policy?’ Over the years, a wide variety of definitions has been suggested, indicating that policy is a highly contested notion. The simplest of all definitions has been provided by Dye (1992), who argues that policy is ‘whatever governments choose to do or not to do’. Two points might be made about this statement. First, Dye is concerned here about public policy – that is, policy developed by governments. Other institutions such as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and corporations also make policy. Our focus in this book is largely on public policy. It needs to be noted, however, that in the contemporary context, a range of public/private partnerships are becoming common, resulting in more private sector involvement in policy processes (Ball 2007). Secondly, sometimes non-decision-making is as much an expression of policy as are the actual decisions made. Significant manifestations of policy and power are often evident when things stay the same or when issues are not discussed or are deliberately suppressed. In this way, policy can be expressed in silences, either deliberate or unplanned.

More than 20 years ago, Hogwood and Gunn (1984: 13–19) suggested a number of meanings for the concept of policy. The concept of policy, they argued, is variously used to describe a ‘label for a field of activity’, for example education policy or health policy; as ‘an expression of general purpose’; as ‘specific proposals’; as ‘decisions of government’; as ‘formal authorization’; as a ‘programme’; and as both ‘output’ and ‘outcome’, with the former referring to what has actually been delivered by a specific policy, and outcomes referring to broader effects of policy goals. Wedel and colleagues (2005: 35) more recently have offered a similar account of the meaning of policy, suggesting it refers to a field of activity (e.g. education policy), a specific proposal, government legislation, a general programme or ‘desired state of affairs’, and what governments achieve. Public policy, then, refers to the actions and positions taken by the state, which consists of a range of institutions that share the essential characteristics of authority and collectivity. While policy is often synonymous with decisions, an individual decision in isolation does not constitute policy. A policy expresses patterns of decisions in the context of other decisions taken by political actors on behalf of state institutions from positions of authority. Public policies are thus normative, expressing both ends and means designed to steer the actions and behaviour of people. Finally, policy refers to things that can in principle be achieved, to matters over which authority can be exercised.

Policies are often assumed to exist in texts, a written document of some kind. However, a policy can also be viewed as a ‘process’ involved in the production of an actual text, once the policy issue has been put on the political agenda. Policy processes thus include agenda setting, as well as work on the production of policy texts. They also refer to implementation processes, which are never straightforward, and sometimes also to the evaluation of policy. In this sense, then, policy may refer to both texts and processes. In Stephen Ball's (1994: 10) terms, ‘Policy is both text and action, words and deeds, it is what is enacted as well as what is intended.’ This observation recognizes that policy purposes and goals are not always achieved in practice. This is because policies as they are implemented always encounter complex organizational arrangements and already-existing practices. For policy is not the only factor in ‘determining’ practices. In recognition of this policy/practice gap, Ball notes, ‘Policies are always incomplete in so far as they relate to or map onto the “wild profusion of local practice”’ (Ball 1994: 10). In our earlier book on education policy studies (Taylor et al. 1997: 24–25), we summarized this distinction in the following way:

... policy is much more than a specific policy document or text. Rather, policy is both process and product. In such a conceptualization, policy involves the production of the text, the text itself, ongoing modifications to the text and processes of implementation into practice.

Writing from an anthropological perspective, Wedel et al. (2005: 35) suggest that although the question ‘What is policy?’ is important, a more important question might be, ‘What do people do in the name of policy?’

Policy is about change (Weimer and Vining 2004). It is through policy that governments seek to reform educational systems, for example. Policy desires or imagines change – it offers an imagined future state of affairs, but in articulating desired change always offers an account somewhat more simplified than the actual realities of practice. In many ways policies eschew complexity. Given the level of generality, policies could be seen to be more like a recipe than a blueprint (Considine 1994). They are designed to provide a general overview, leaving a great deal of room for interpretation. To use another metaphor, a policy is designed to steer understanding and action without ever being sure of the practices it might produce.

Policy texts often take the form of a legal document, but not always. Other kinds of text, such as speeches and press releases by a Government minister and papers by senior policymakers, can express policy intentions and have real effects. Here we are in agreement with Jenny Ozga (2000: 33), who works with a very broad and ecumenical definition of policy. She observes that a policy text is any ‘vehicle or medium for carrying and transmitting a policy message’. Further, in terms of the trajectory across the production of the policy text and its implementation into practice, practitioners can also be regarded ‘as policy makers or potential makers of policy, and not just the passive receptacles of policy’ (ibid.: 7). In the context of schooling systems, policy is also mediated by the leadership practices within the school, as well as by the ways teachers interpret that policy and translate it into practice (Bell and Stevenson 2006). This process of translation is fundamental to understanding how policies play a role in producing and shaping change.

It is possible to conceptualize policy processes in terms of what has been called the ‘policy cycle’ (Ball 1994). This view rejects a one-way, linear account of relationships between the setting of policy agendas, the production of the policy text and its implementation into practice. Instead, the notion of a policy cycle points to the messy, often contested and non-linear relationships that exist between aspects and stages of policy processes. Ball (ibid.) has written instructively about the various contexts of the policy cycle, namely the context of influence, the context of policy text production and the context of policy practice or implementation, to capture the interactive, synergistic set of relationships between these contexts.

There is often contestation within and across these contexts. In the production of policy texts, for example, there are attempts to appease, manage and accommodate competing interests. Jane Kenway (1990: 59) has argued that policies (here read policy as the actual text) represent ‘the temporary settlements between diverse, competing, and unequal forces within civil society, within the state itself, and between associated discursive regimes’. Drawing from theories within literary criticism, then, we can see most policy texts as being heteroglossic in character; that is, policy texts often seek to suture together and over competing interests and values. At the same time, policies usually seek to represent their desired or imagined future as being in the public interest, representing the public good. As a result they often mask whose interests they actually represent. Thus, contestation occurs right from the moment of appearance of an issue on the policy agenda, through initiation of action, to the inevitable trade-offs involved in formulation and implementation.

Policies are also often assembled as responses to perceived problems in a field such as education. Here, however, we again have to be aware of the discursive work that policies do in constructing problems in certain ways, perhaps differently from what the best research-based empirical and theoretical analyses might suggest. The nature of the problems is never self-evident, but is always represented in a specific manner, from a particular point of view (Dery 1984). Policies thus proffer solutions to the problem as constructed by the policy itself (Yeatman 1990). McLaughlin (2006: 210), in an extensive review of the US policy implementation literature in education, speaks of the ‘problem of the problem’ – of the manner in which the problem is constructed in order to give a policy proposal its legitimacy. Nor is the idea of policy context objectively given, but it is similarly constructed (Seddon 1994), designed to present issues in a particular light. The description of the context, so constructed, may include the historical backdrop to the policy. The constructed nature of such history is intended to give legitimacy to the policy's intentions.

An example might be helpful here. In recent years, many countries have instituted new policies on literacy education. These policies have been based on an understanding of the broader context, over the representation of which there has been much argument. On the one hand, there are those who have characterized the context in terms of what they regard as the declining levels of literacy. They have demanded the re-institution of the traditional policy emphasis on phonics, grammar and canonical texts (see Snyder 2008). The critics of this view, on the other hand, deny such a crisis, and represent the context instead in terms of the changing nature of society which is increasingly multicultural, and in which new forms of media literacy have become essential, thus necessitating, for example, a focus on ‘multiliteracies’ (Cope and Kalantzis 2000). It is not hard to see how the competing policy proposals are grounded in differing representations of the context, historical narratives of what has worked or has not, and the contemporary problems that need to be solved through policy.

In another useful discussion of education policy, Luke and Hogan (2006: 171) have emphasized policymaking as opposed to policy as text: ‘We define educational policy making as the prescriptive regulation of flows of human resources, discourse and capital across educational systems towards normative social, economic and cultural ends.’

In their use of ‘prescriptive regulation’, they stress the authoritative, mandating aspects of policy – that is, policy tries to change the behaviours and practices of others so as to steer change in a particular direction. Luke and Hogan's definition also suggests that the idea of policy involves allocation of resources of various kinds, namely human, economic and ideological. Policies have discursive effects, often changing the language through which practitioners engage with policy in practice. Further, their definition also recognizes the normative nature of education policy, emphasizing the goals or purposes of education. They suggest that education policy is about having effects in the broader social, cultural and economic domains or what could be seen as policy outcomes. Considine (1994: 4) has similarly observed that ‘A public policy is an action which employs governmental authority to commit resources in support of a preferred value.’ Values are either implicit or explicit in any given policy.

The issue of values is thus central to policy. In an early definition of policy, the American political scientist David Easton (1953: 129–130) argued that:

The essence of policy lies in the fact that through it certain things are denied to some people and made accessible to others. A policy, in other words, whether for a society, for a narrow association, or for any other group, consists of a web of decisions that allocates values.

This definition was encapsulated in Easton's well-known statement that policy involves ‘the authoritative allocation of values’, to a discussion of which we shall return later in this chapter. But suffice to say at this stag...