Beyond Implementation. Policy Doing in a School Improvement Program

Author(s):

Annika Åstrand(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

23 SES 01 D, Critical Approaches to Effectivness/ Values in Policy Making in Education

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-10

13:15-14:45

Room:

GCONF - Conference Hall

Chair:

Christina Segerholm

Contribution

In 2003 a school development and research program (Problem Based School Development), was initiated from Karlstad University. The program was partially funded by the National Agency of School Development and the overall aim was to "contribute to the formation of knowledge about how local inspection and improvement systems evolve, activates and function in a long-term improvement and quality work" (Skolverket 2002, p. 1). A prerequisite for taking part in the program was to have previously participated in the so called Development Dialogues, an extension of the former state quality reviews, aimed at being a more active support to schools and childcare (Skolverket 2008). In line with this extended support the program initiated from Karlstad University aimed at in various ways support school leaders and teachers in their efforts for greater goal achievements.

Among studies carried out within the scope of the program a doctoral thesis was conducted (Åstrand 2009). The aim of the thesis was, from a somewhat different perspective than the program, to show how staging and carrying through of a new policy (the program) was received and reconstructed in three of the nine participating municipals. The study was inspired by two theoretical perspectives, a narrative approach (Boje 1991, 2001) and a critical perspective on policy (Ball 2006). Based on these theoretical points, the research questions were: What happens to a policy when it arrives in an organization? How is this policy interpreted and reconstructed by people in different areas in the school organization? How can this be understood in terms of a critical and inclusive (Weaver-Hightower 2008) perspective on policy?

The result reflected in various ways the trends on the global education policy scene, which has moved towards higher standards of accountability and performativity (Apple 2006; Ball 2006; Ball, Maguire and Brown 2012). Since 2009 when my thesis was published the educational policy trends has moved even further. The new Swedish School Act (SFS 2010:800) and the establishment of the Swedish Schools Inspectorate (SOU 2007:101) can be understood as national mediations of these global educational political pressures (Bush 2011), pointing to an increased governmentality (Foucault 2003).

The overall feature in my study was the complexity that was revealed considering policy work: how the interviewees receive, interpret and reconstruct the model by previous, personal and organizational motives, experiences, needs and interests, and how this was done in discursive contexts that shaped what was considered normal and evident.

The present paper is designed to further illustrate what happens beyond the explicit state administrative governance. This is done by empirical illustrations from my thesis. The paper thus does not focus on how a policy is implemented, but is based on a policy enactment perspective (Ball, Maguire and Brown 2012), where policy is regarded as a dynamic and non-linear process, which includes global as well as state, regional and local policy actions. I will also draw on the concepts rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari 1987) to discuss policy’s characterization of becoming and constant transformation.

Method

Between the spring of 2006 and autumn of 2007 a qualitative investigation was carried out in three of the municipalities partaking in the school improvement program. 46 research interviews were carried out, group interviews as well as separate. Those interviewed were school politicians, executive directors, area directors, school-leaders, development managers/project leaders, pedagogue teams and individual teachers. All the interviews started with one open-ended question: Has [the program] played any significant part in your work? All the interviews were recorded and then written down. Official texts from each of the three school organizations, as work plans, quality reports and competence development plans were also analyzed. My methodological choice fell on a narrative approach. Narratives, where personal, social, historical and cultural factors are interlaced, serve as good tools to study social processes, the interplay between the personal and the social (Pérez Prieto 2006). In this perspective a story is seen as socially situated and therefore cannot be seen in an objective way (Mishler 1996). In the analytical work parts of a model called the zoom model (Pamphilon 1999) and three different concepts taken from the field of organization studies, organizational narratives (Czarniawska 2007) narrative sensemaking and anti-narratives (Boje 2001) were used.

Expected Outcomes

School improvement researchers of today say that a development process is to be considered a contextual process (Lauder et al 2000; Hargreaves and Fullan 2012). But the relationship between a policy text and its readers is still often based on an understanding of reading as something linear and monologic (Honan 2004). When I look at the stories those who have taken part in my thesis told me, the tensions between the different narratives, the organizational narratives and the ante-narratives, show there is very little linearity in policy work. In the light of a critical policy perspective these tensions appear as dilemmas, implicated by a cacophony of policy voices, whose prescriptions pull in different directions. People indeed and of course act in different ways with these dilemmas. A more productive way to understand how policy really work, instead of further investigate the never-ending difficulties with making a policy work, would be to further investigate these actions. To dig deeper in the “under-life” of policy (Ball 2006), where people finds creative, innovative and constructive ways to handle these large amounts of internal and external projects, proposals and demands the performativity of today requires.

References

H. Lauder, P. Brown, J.-A. Dillabough och A. H. Halsey (2000)(Red.), Education, globalization & social change. Hampshire: Oxford University Press. Ball, S. J. (2006). Education policy and social class: The selected works of Stephen J. Ball. London: Routledge. Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., and Brown, A. (2012). How Schools Do Policy. Policy Enactment in Secondary Schools. London: Routledge. Boje, D. M. (2001). Narrative methods for organizational and communication research. London: Sage. Clandinin, D. J. (2007)(Red.). Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology. London: Sage. Bush, T. (2011). The Micropolitics och Educational Change. Educational Management Administration & Leadership 39(6) pp. 642–645 . DOI: 10.1177/1741143211424559 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: University of Minnesota Press. Foucault, M. (2003). Övervakning och straff: Fängelsets födelse. Lund: Arkiv förlag. Hargreaves, A.,Lieberman, M., Fullan and D. Hopkins (Red.) (2002). International handbook of educational change (s. 214-230). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Hargreaves, A. and Fullan, M. (2012). Professional Capital. Transforming Teaching in Every School. London: Routledge. Honan, E. (2004). (Im)plausibilities: A rhizo-textual analysis of policy texts and teachers’ work. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(3), pp. 267-281. Ozga, J. (2000). Policy research in educational settings: Contested terrain. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Pérez Prieto, H. (2006). Pérez Prieto (Red.). Erfarenhet, berättelse och identitet. Livsberättelsestudier. Karlstads university studies, nr. 2006:70. Karlstad: Karlstads universitet. Skolverket. (2002). Överenskommelse (Dnr 84–2002:1 096). Stockholm: Skolverket. National Agency of Education. Skolverket. (2008). Utvecklingsdialog för skolutveckling: Metod och förhållningssätt. Fetched from http://www.skolverket.se/publikationer?id=1968. SFS 2010:800. Skollag. Fetched from http://62.95.69.3/SFSdoc/10/100800.PDF Weaver-Hightower, M. B. (2008). An Ecology Metaphor for Educational Policy Analysis: A Call For Complexity. Educational Researcher, 37(3), 153–167. Åstrand, A. (2009). När PBS kom till byn - berättelser om erfarenheter av skolutveckling. Doctoral thesis, Karlstad: Karlstad University.

Author Information

Annika Åstrand (presenting / submitting)

Karlstad University

Educational Sciences

Karlstad

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