Europeanization of Educational Research: Top-Down Agenda and Bottom-Up Actions

Author(s):

Julia Planer(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

28. Sociologies of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

28 SES 03, Multiple Enactments of Europeanization of Education

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-23

17:15-18:45

Room:

NM-B101

Chair:

Sotiria Grek

Contribution

Promoted by the European Community, as well as national politics, the European Educational Research Association (EERA) was founded 1994 in order to enhance a joint European basis for educational research and to increase public awareness of educational research and development across Europe. Moreover, it was agreed to strive for a better cooperation between educational research, politics and administration (Gretler 2007). Now, 22 years later, EERA can now be seen as representative for developments and political influence in educational research in Europe. The European Union is creating a policy space in education, which is governed by “measuring units, benchmarks and standards” (Lawn 2011), which disguise the political power within research structures at first glance but promoting a governance at distance (ibid.).

The European Conferences on Educational Research (ECER), European Educational Research Association (EERA) and its networks are involved in this construction of a common European Educational Research Area, with ECER having the potential of being both observer and actor in these developments. ECER consequently offers a platform for researchers to exchange opinions, found cross-border research projects and enhance quality of educational research (Gretler 2007), while the production of standards contributes to the exchange of knowledge-practices flexibly (Lawn 2011). By analyzing the paper proposals of Network 28 submitted to ECER 2012-2015, I aim at providing a comparative and historical view on the developments of education research at ECER by adopting two perspectives:

- inside the ‘Brussels bubble’: To what extent do we as researchers and participants of ECER deal with the ‘top-down political agenda’ education research is currently embedded in? The proposal analysis focuses on transnational European politics and politically initiated educational programmes mentioned in ECER paper proposals. More precisely, all forms of top-down political agenda of the European Union which focus on international reforms in education.

- Europeanization from below: In how far are researchers contributing and enhancing the construction of a European Research Space by presenting research as results of international cooperation? Whereas the first research question deals with a theoretical discussion of Europeanization as a topic, I now go further by inquiring the actual practice of Europeanization: The analysis of the researchers’ institution and the amount of international cooperation reveals global and transnational projects at ECER. Especially since critical voices emphasize the predominance of national research perspectives in ECER proposals and the lack of transnational, European research questions (Keiner/Hofbauer 2014), this research will shed light on how far ECER actually contributes to the formation of the European research society from below.

This research is thus an attempt to reveal ECER’s dealing with the linkage between developments in education and education research and policy programmes (Keiner 2011, Keiner/Schriewer 2000) by adopting a self-observing and self-reflective perspective on various levels (see method). In the face of increasing dependence on policy (Ozga 2008), educational research might see ECER as a platform on which “research and knowledge can be managed and steered” as a bottom-down process (Ozga 2008: 261).

Method

content analysis; qualitative and quantitative methods: As a method, content analysis is chosen to examine the papers submitted between 2012 and 2015. The data was kindly provided by EERA office. The abstracts of the papers are qualitatively analyzed with regard to their reference to top-down political agendas (1) and international institutional cooperation as Europeanization of education from below (2). (1) “Top-down agenda” Concerning the theoretical Europeanization processes I asked: To what extent do papers presented at ECER deal with policy programmes, reforms and projects initiated by the EU? Does this degree change over time? The degree of reference was assessed according to the intensity with which European policy programmes were discussed explicitly in the papers. Consequently, a system of categories has been established ranging from category 0 (‘Aspects of European education policy are not mentioned at all’) to 3 (‘the European policy programmes are discussed with regard to their influence on the establishment of a common Educational Research Space’). Papers, in which ‘policy’ in the notion of a national or transnational context appeared as a word are hence graded as referring 'to national policies' (1) or giving ‘some reference’(2) to the European space, whereas if a paper’s theme is explicitly and systematically centered Europeanization of education research as a political phenomenon, it is categorized as ‘very high reference’(3). The transformation of the collected information into quantitative data allows for a historical comparison of the results. (2) “Europeanization from below” With regard to bottom-up processes of Europeanization, i.e. the international cooperation of at least two researchers from different institutions, the number of cooperation partners of the proposals is collected, as is the amount of cooperative research groups in comparison to all Network contributions. A similar system of categories was applied to evaluate transnational, non-EU steered projects (bottom-up actions) and considerations presented in paper proposals.

Expected Outcomes

In the face of the interdependence of knowledge and governance (Ozga 2008), the question is not only if education research analyzes the influence of political programmes on education research in Europe (i.e. the effect of top-down processes); it raises also the question how far researchers reconfigure European space of education, and therefore European research society, by cooperation and networking from below (bottom-up processes). In this respect, the paper tries to contribute to a mode of comparative educational research as a mode of historical and empirical investigation, scholarly reflection, and intellectual self-governance. It aims at using comparison as a methodological and epistemological tool to defamiliarize ourselves and the context we are embedded in as researchers. The EERA offers a platform for international, multicultural exchange of ideas among researchers and creates thus a European scientific community in the context of EERA, in which the quality and amount of European policy as a subject in scientific discourse, as well as the actual implementation of Europeanization by establishing international forms of cooperation among researchers at the ECER gives information about the relation between top-down and bottom-up forming processes.

References

Gretler, Armin (2007): The International Social Organisation of Educational Research in Europe: Reviewing the European Educational Research Association as an Example — Facts and Questions. In: EERJ. Vol 6 (2). Pp. 174-189. Keiner, Edwin (2010): Disciplines of education. The value of disciplinary self-observation. In: Furlong, J. & Lawn, M. (eds.): Disciplines of education. Their Role in the Future of Education Research. London & New York: Routledge. Pp. 159-172. Keiner, Edwin & Hofbauer, Susann (2014): EERA and its European Conferences on Educational Research: a patchwork of research on European educational research. In: EERJ. Vol. 13 (4). Pp. 504-518. Keiner, Edwin & Schriewer, Jürgen (2000): Erneuerung aus dem Geist der eigenen Tradition? Über Kontinuität und Wandel nationaler Denkstile in der Erziehungswissenschaft. In: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Bildungswissenschaften 22 (1), 27-50. Lawn, Martin (2011): Standardizing the European Education Policy Space. In: EERJ. Vol.10 (2). Lawn, Martin & Lingard, Bob (2002): Constructing a European policy space in educational governance: the role of transnational policy actors. In: European educational research journal, (1), 290-307. Ozga, Jenny (2008): Governing Knowledge: Research Steering and Research Quality. In: EERJ. Vol. 7 (3) 261-272.

Author Information

Julia Planer (presenting / submitting)

University Erlangen-Nuremburg, Germany

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