In a more global-conscious world, it is held that “knowledge” is being re-worked to advance Europe’s economic and social priorities (Robertson, 2007; Young, 2009). Thus, it is argued that “knowledge has value” (Robertson, 2007) and few people, if any could be  “against knowledge” (ibid). In European policy today, it is argued that a set of complex changes in education is re-shaping the “traditional image of policy processes in sub-national, national and supra/national politics” (Ball, 2009). In effect, this is a move from “government to governance” whereby new forms of governance require “new forms of knowledge” in order to succeed (ibid). Consequently, the “meaning of knowledge” is being re-constituted through education (Young, 2009). However, in a European context, under the Principle of Subsidiarity[1], the EU has no treaty-based competence when it comes to education policy (Alexiadou, 2014). Instead, it uses a broad variety of mechanisms including institutional arrangements, processes such as the Open Method of Coordination, as well as the expertise of multiple actors to “support” the policy work of Member States. In this context, education is expected to play a significant role in advancing policy ambitions (Galvin, 2009, 2015; Lawn & Grek, 2012). As a result, the European and local teacher education landscape has become a troubled site of contestation, flux and reform (Apple, 2009; Mulgan, 2003, inter alia). This issue is further complicated by a relentless neo-liberal agenda that prevails here, especially around measures focused on “performativity” (Ball, 2003, 2013; Galvin 2015). Neo-liberalism is argued to have emerged as a primary “project” of the European Union in the form of a policy governance mechanism, used by the EU for reforming education, through the introduction of small moves and tactics in the shape of initiatives and programmes (Lange & Alexiadou, 2010). In turn, it is held that these measures seed the notion of new possibilities and opportunities for education by shifting ideas from nationally embedded policy-making arrangements to a collective regime at the EU level (cf. Wallace, 2010). When these measures are also deeply embedded in a logic most commonly associated with international economic competitiveness, education arguably becomes more measurable (Ball, 2013).

The proposed paper has its origins in doctoral research conducted at University College Dublin on education policy formation and governance at the European level. The study explores and analyses the rhetorical and epistemelogical question of what counts as “legitimate knowledge” (Apple, 2009) in the construction of teacher education policy discourses at a European and national level (Ireland), and in relation to the realities which dominate both at a broader public policy level. It is framed in particular around one aspect of the neo-liberal performativity agenda – how public education policy appears to be persuaded into being through growing moves to harmonise teacher education practices across European nation-states. Thus, the research questions explore how education policy is seeded, shaped and channelled by the European Commission across EU Member States. The work draws upon a number of theoretical paradigms. Emerging insights, data and findings are analysed using a custom-designed, Study-specific EU Policy Analysis Frame that enables theorisation of the issue and contributes new knowledge to the field of policy analysis. Particular reference is made to one European Commission initiative – the IPTS Scale Creative Classroom Project 2011-13 (SCALE CCR)[2] – because it provided an exceptionally valuable point of entry into the complex and often opaque world of policy and policy-making between contested spaces at an EU level and the particularities of local teacher education in Irish policy and practice contexts.

Footnotes:

[1] http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/institutional_affairs/treaties/lisbon_treaty/ai0017_en.htm

[2] http://is.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pages/EAP/SCALECCR.html

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