This paper focuses on a specific theoretical interlinkage of several relational approaches which enables normativity and legitimisation in education to be studied in non-essential terms, an approach which could lead to greater capacity to empirically detect and trace tensions between actors, knowledges, and claims that might easily be missed both by utilitarian analyses for policy and by critical sociologies. Questions such as how the competence of actors to justify or criticise is established and maintained, and in the mutual relation, how the relevance and reasonability of the educational claim is established are the important ways by which the legitimacy of an educational goal is achieved. In order to research such relations within an educational legitimising ecology,  this paper employs a relational approach (Abbott 2016b; Benjamin 2015) to legitimisation in education.

While many sociological approaches have tried to capture educational legitimisations (whether as the usage of ideology or as the concealment of “true interests”) much discontent has been expressed with these critical developments themselves (Boltanski 2011), the superficial use of theory or its absence in the sociology of education has been criticised (Ball 2008), and the dependence on theories dating back to the 1970s has been rejected as anachronism (Mehta and Davies 2018). Following on from these and many other objections, a renewal of sociology of education has recently been declared (Landri and Neumann 2014; Mehta and Davies 2018; Seddon 2014), centred around question, which theoretical and epistemological approach to employ in order to see relations which remains unseen so far in the contemporary changes of social conditions for education.

This paper shows that the sociological perspective on educational norms and their legitimisation resides in the views of the social conditions of the emergence of such norms and legitimisations, by which is meant the actors, practices, shapes of relations, and knowledge which constitute an educational legitimisation ecology. This notion refers to the recognition of a specific spatiality which cannot be omitted from the study of education (Landri and Neumann 2014; Lingard 2018; Seddon 2014) because it provides “the locales, facilities, and constraints that shape the possible actions of the moment”(Abbott 2016a:34).

Emphasis will be placed on the theoretical component of the study of legitimacy in education, while previous empirical research outcomes will be used as illustrations. On the basis of studies of the Czech context of educational reform claims, partly presented at the previous ECER conference (ERC ECER 2018), this paper elaborates the theoretical and epistemological advantages of the relational approach developed in the sociology of agency (Abbott 2016b; Biesta and Tedder 2006; Emirbayer and Mische 1998). More precisely, it suggests several theoretical connections between authors who work through a kind of relational perspective (Abbott, Boltanski, Lyotard) that identifies the ontological status of the social in relations within arranged and complex situations. Together these authors offer a theoretical and epistemological possibility to think about instances of the situation, whether they are actors, locales, or constraints (Abbott 2016b), as non-self-evident categories which are established socially through the process of action. Specifically, the interlinkage of relational theories of agency with the sociology of critical action (Boltanski 2011), together with Lyotard’s elaborations on the differend (Lyotard 1988), broadens the focus of empirical studies on diversity of changes, actions and actors, i.e. more aspects of difference within an educational legitimisation ecology.

Three moves need to be undertaken in this paper: to place relational ontological approaches among other approaches in order to see what the opportunity for sociology of education is; to delimit the concept of educational legitimisation ecology in a kind of working notion; and to show several cases that elucidate the advantages of such a conceptualisation. This theoretical approach will be illustrated via analyses of diverse empirical material such as policy texts, media news, records of public debates, and research interviews (Wirthová 2019, n.d., n.d.). All the studies just cited used qualitative interpretive discourse and content analysis (Prior 2003, 2008; Saldana 2009), which consists of several iterative steps, tracing the emergence of a normative educational claim, together with a relational interlinkage with the constitution of its actor, and its relevance, reasonability, and audience (Lyotard 1988). Together, tracing these categories, which are taken as non-essential, enables the main tensions and contradictions among various claims and their justification or criticism to be identified.

A different way to approach educational legitimisation on the national level in relation to wider levels is proposed in this paper, instead of comparing variables. Terri Seddon has suggested that there are three levels – national, supranational, and that of translation between them, which opens up the question of how to consider all these levels in their mutual relationships (Seddon 2014). Jal Mehta proposed focusing in sociology of education on these nodes of interconnection, because they are decisive (Mehta and Davies 2018). And Andrew Abbott has suggested that in processual sociology no micro-macro sociology division is possible (Abbott 2016b:x). Therefore, in this paper I venture to suggest the educational legitimisation ecology as a concept via which it is possible to consider all these levels together. It draws on the notion of relationally and processively linked ecologies (Abbott 2016b), but goes further and makes use of it in the legitimisation of education (goals, norms, changes), together with qualificating operations (Boltanski and Thévenot 2000), and an ontology of event (Lyotard 1988). The usefulness of such a conceptualisation lies in the possibility of broadening the analysis of instances, which previously were not often considered. It broadens the spectrum of possible “actors” in focus (not only authorised organisations) – this will be illustrated by means of a study of the production of policy documents that present their (dis)qualified actors. It broadens the spectrum of “things” which have a legitimisation potential – legitimisation can be achieved by many levers (not only in terms of capital) – this will be illustrated by means of a study of the writing strategies employed to create a proof of the need for educational reform. These instances (actors, locales, relations, knowledges, facilities, constraints, temporalities) are not pre-determined in advance; rather, they can become the questions.

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