Session Information
23 SES 10 B, Advocacy for Educational Policy Change: Strategies, Trajectories, and Lessons from Diverse Actors in Four Countries
Symposium
Contribution
At the centre of many current education policy debates around the world is the question “What should count as core knowledge and skills?” In its desire for a “world-class” curriculum (DfE, 2011, Introduction), the English government proposed to drastically reduce the number of statutory subjects in the National Curriculum. This paper focuses on an advocacy campaign (2011-2013) undertaken by the subject teaching association for Design and Technology (D&T) in an effort to examine some of the goals and strategies that were mobilized to both contest the anticipated effects of the proposed curriculum reforms and to advocate for an alternative version of D&T education. Responding to Fenwick and Edwards’ (2011, p. 709) call for “new ways to engage with policy processes,” I take a sociomaterial approach to investigate how a heterogeneous mix of actors assembled around this particular “matter of concern” (Latour, 2004) and took action through their associations with others. Two questions guide this inquiry: 1) How did the campaign practices (as material and discursive enactments) perform curriculum policy into being? and 2) What effects did these networked relations produce? The data for this study consists of a variety of texts collected from the “Believe in D&T” website as well as from in-depth interviews of campaign participants. Constructivist grounded theorizing (Charmaz, 2006) and situational mapping (Clarke, 2005) are utilized to trace and map out a connected and overlapping set of policy networks (Ball & Exley, 2010) that linked teachers, designers, business people, engineers, public affairs personnel, politicians, a manifesto, video, and press articles in the doing of curriculum politics. Preliminary findings suggest that the campaign’s influence on educational policymaking was contingent on the joining up with other more powerful actor-networks beyond the education field, and engaging in legitimizing processes (Strauss, 1982) of claiming worth, distancing, and boundary setting. This study adds to the dearth of research available on the sociomaterial nature of advocacy work—as enacted in policy reform processes and shaped by human and non-human actors and the networks through which they circulate (Nespor, 2002). By describing how relations of influence can emerge and effect change in curriculum standards (not unlike for instance, Key Competences in Europe; and U.S. Common Core Initiative), the paper contributes to the body of scholarship on new policy communities (e.g., Ball, 2008) and complements the existing but limited education research literature on the school subject advocacy role of teaching associations (e.g., Hilferty, 2007).
References
Ball, S.J. (2008). New philanthropy, new networks and new governance in education. Political Studies, 56(4), 747–765. 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. Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. London, England: SAGE Publications Ltd. Clarke, A. E. (2005). Situational analysis: Grounded theory after the post-modern turn. London, UK: SAGE Publications. Department for Education (DfE). [UK]. (2011). National curriculum review launched. Press release. January 20. Retrieved from http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/inthenews/a0073149/national-curriculum- review-launched Fenwick, T., & Edwards, R. (2011). Considering materiality in educational policy: Messy objects and multiple reals. Educational Theory, 61(6), 709-726. Hilferty, F. (2007). Contesting the curriculum: An examination of professionalism as defined and enacted by Australian history teachers. Curriculum Inquiry, 37(3), 239–261. Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry, 30(2), 225-248. Nespor, J. (2002). Networks and contexts of reform. Journal of Educational Change, 3(3-4), 365-82.
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