Session Information
23 SES 07 A, Knowledge and Policy in the Education Sector in Europe (Part 1)
Symposium, to be continued in Session 23 SES 07.5 A
Time:
2009-09-29
15:30-17:00
Room:
HG, HS 28
Chair:
Eric Mangez
Discussant:
Maarten Simons
Contribution
In an era of post-bureaucratic regulation, transnationalisation and evidence-based policies, the appeal for change in any policy domain is always an appeal for research and expertise (both national and international). Knowledge and cognitive authority legitimize public policies. “Evidence” is often lacking, though.
While investigating the issue of special education needs, which is cross-sectoral (health and education) and cross-disciplinary (special education, psychology, sociology, medicine, etc.), the presentation shows how conflicting ‘knowledges’ lead to and are based on a specific knowledge-regime, which, in turn, leads to the paradoxical phenomena of „non-knowledge”. (Beck 1996, Weingart 2006, Wehling 2006) and of „specified ignorance” (Merton 1987). „(A)s the history of thought, both great and small, attests, specified ignorance is often a first step toward supplanting that ignorance with knowledge” (Merton 1968: 471). We will examine the substitutes for evidence and for knowledge, such as (1) “incarnated knowledge” of charismatic decision makers representing and symbolizing a target population, (2) practical knowledge of politicians and bureaucrats, and (3) local knowledge (which is sustained anyway by decentralization and the growing importance of street level bureaucracy), among others.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.