Session Information
23 SES 12 A, The Politicization of the Elite and its Influence in Education Reforms
Symposium
Contribution
This communication will demonstrate how the formal group of responsible officials in the Czech Republic ceased to be decision elite in the normative course of educational reforms and was replaced by a fluid group of elite normative actors who operate on different logic and through different spatial forms (Wirthová, 2021). They publish many normative papers and recommendations and held public debates influencing publicly state officials, politicians, and other decision-makers to change education system. It is argued that the prior horizontal division is accompanied in effect by hierarchisation, that through practices of “co-invitation” (to a debate or an expertise) produce consecration that provides pride and elevation above ordinary matter, and provide the possibility of evading both subordinate relations to formal institution officially responsible for the educational reform (MOE) and responsible relations to the audience (those affected by these reforms as schools, teachers and parents). This new normative elite is a mix of various jurisdictions, some state officials among them, but these loyalties are less important than the spatial practices that enable both to intervene and to construct moral and expert identity to its members by moralising quantitative data as something inherently Good. Therefore, this elite is not based predominantly on economic advantages, although partnership with wealthy actors (banks) is involved, but on the ability to spatially evade limits and secure the channels for intervention. The discourse emerging elite normative infrastructure produce mobilises both the neoliberal vocabulary of effectivity, auditing, measuring quality and moral of “doing good” (Wirthová, 2022). This reproduces the division among those to be measured and improved in quality (the matter) and those who do not come under this measurement (individual-knowledgeable-expert actors who pursue the common good for everyone and therefore are incontestable).
References
Wirthová, J. (2022). Patterns of actorship in legitimation of educational changes: The role of transnational and local knowledge. European Educational Research Journal, 21(4), 658 –679.Wirthová, J. (2021). Anti-state populism in Czech educational governance: Relations among state, expertise, and civil society. In J. Herkman, E. Palonen, V. Salojärvi, & M. Vulovic (Eds.), The Second Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism, and Polarisation. University of Helsinki.
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