Session Information
23 SES 10 B, Advocacy for Educational Policy Change: Strategies, Trajectories, and Lessons from Diverse Actors in Four Countries
Symposium
Contribution
Diverse theories of policy processes and the politics of education recognize individuals, interest groups, and networked policy advocates as important actors in these arenas. Indeed, the diversity and connections between policy actors has increased within and across jurisdictions in past decades (Ball & Exley, 2010). Recent scholarship of policy advocacy in education explores the emergence, strategies, and influence of transnational policy networks (e.g., Ball & Exley, 2010) community-based organizations (e.g., Evans, Newman & Winton, 2015), international and other non-government organizations (e.g., Tota, 2015; Yemini & Sagie, 2015), and the private sector (e.g., Bulkley & Burch, 2010) in policy processes in Europe and beyond. The proposed symposium contributes to this growing scholarship’s focus on policy actors who lie outside of the formal arena of policymaking by presenting research and perspectives on policy advocacy from four countries. While each paper in the symposium examines the strategies, constraints, and contributions of advocates engaging in a particular policy process in a single nation, the contested policies (large-scale student assessments; school fees; teacher recruitment; curriculum reform) are not unique to these countries, and their findings about policy advocacy are relevant to jurisdictions around the world.
The proposed symposium addresses the following research questions:
- How do policy actors engage in educational advocacy?
- What can research on policy advocacy teach policy advocates, researchers, and formal policymakers?
While the papers draw on diverse perspectives and methodological approaches, a critical understanding of policy grounds the symposium theoretically. Unlike rational theories of policy that view policy as objective decisions made by authoritative bodies, the symposium’s critical perspective recognizes policies as inherently political because they produce effects that benefit some groups and disadvantage others (Weaver-Hightower, 2008). In addition to government texts, policy is understood to include dynamic interactions between influences, practices, texts, and discourses at various sites. Policy actors use a range of strategies to persuade others to adopt the policy meanings and solutions they advocate (Winton, 2013). While policy actors’ efforts may be deliberate, influences on how a policy “problem” is ultimately defined are indirect and diffuse (Dumas & Anderson, 2014), occurring through the circulation of ideas and discourses in informal policy networks and media (Ball and Exley, 2010). Personal histories, interests, and beliefs as well as cultural discourses and global, national, state/provincial, and local contexts influence how policies are defined, constructed, and enacted.
The symposium responds to calls for policy research that provides knowledge about what we know about policy, in this case, policy advocacy, rather than “mere policy prescription” (Dumas & Anderson, 2014, p. 1). The papers demonstrate different ways actors inside and outside formal systems of state policymaking have successfully advocated for and engaged with educational policy in their national contexts. These engagements vary from individual acts of dissent, to collaborating with unusual bedfellows, to conducting and disseminating research and stories. Advocates in European countries and around the world can use the papers’ findings to inform and strengthen their current and future policy change efforts. The findings also contribute to theoretical understanding of policy actors and advocacy under neoliberalism (Ball, 2012).
References
Ball, S. J. (2012). Global education inc: New policy networks and the neo-liberal imaginary. Routledge. Ball, S.J., & Exley, S. (2010). Making policy with ‘good ideas’: Policy networks and the ‘intellectuals’ of New Labour. Journal of Education Policy, 25(2), 151-169. Bulkley, K. E., & Burch, P. (2011). The changing nature of private engagement in public education: For-profit and nonprofit organizations and educational reform. Peabody Journal of Education, 86(3), 236-251. Dumas, M.J. & Anderson, G.A. (2014). Qualitative research as policy knowledge: Framing policy problems and transforming education from the ground up. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22(11). Evans, M. P., Newman, A., & Winton, S. (2015). Not your mother’s PTA: Hybridity in community-based organizations working for educational reform. The Educational Forum, 79(3), 263–279. Tota, P. M. (2014). Filling the gaps: The role and impact of international non-governmental organisations in “Education for All”. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 12(1), 92–109. Weaver-Hightower, M. B. (2008). An ecology metaphor for educational policy analysis: A call to complexity. Educational researcher, 37(3), 153-167. Winton, S. (2013). Rhetorical analysis in critical policy research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(2), 158-177. Yemini, M., & Sagie, N. (2015). School–nongovernmental organization engagement as an entrepreneurial venture A case study of Sunlight’s engagement with Israeli schools. Educational Administration Quarterly, 51(4), 543–571.
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