1,720,964 research outputs found
Anecdotalization: From individual to collective learning through intimate accounts
No full textThis chapter claims a two-fold learning potential in the sharing of intimate accounts of personal epiphanies by education policy researchers. Communicating to others stimulates the researcher’s self-reflection and brings to consciousness what she has learned about the research/ed word and the self; practicing a method for communicating such learning to others acts as a bridge between individual and collective learning, as it prompts larger lessons for the benefit of the wider community of education policy researchers. Illustrating this double learning loop, the author draws on “anecdotalization” as a method for interrogating her research practice and to draw larger lessons from her being with and in the research/ed world. Hence, she shares two epiphanies from her fieldwork, implicating a UNESCO institute and a European educational stakeholder, which had multiple consequences for both her research methodology and her being a researcher and academic more broadly
Researching education elites twenty years on
Full text linkThis chapter focuses on the role of knowledge in the evolution of education elites: if there was a time that policy elites were formed on the basis of their social status and intuition, what has changed with new policy elites whose good grasp of evidence and international networks have become the preferred tools for decision-making? How are the epistemic and the political enmeshed in this knowledge and policy relationship and what does the rise of transnational education governance suggest about the fate of previously powerful national policy elites? As this chapter shows, it appears that the primary capital contemporary education elites hold is not state power, upheld through traditional, bureaucratic and legislative tools, but the ability to move swiftly in and out of national and transnational policymaking spaces, armed with the epistemic and symbolic capital that they skilfully master
Researching unsafe global education policy spaces in Mexico
No full textIn this chapter I reflect on the research methodology that I employed for my research of the 2009–2011 Mexican curricular reform to primary education in unsafe field sites. Taking an autoethnographic approach, I reflect on how my personal network of education actors formed the basis for my access to these field sites and how they constituted my safety. Moreover, I discuss how they altered the course of my research and, ultimately, my knowledge of the reform. In doing so, I make a case for emphasising the importance of interpersonal relationships in social science research as a criterion for accessing and assessing research sites, to counterbalance more detached criteria of what constitutes researcher safety, as employed in many university protocols that are founded upon research risk avoidance. These methodological issues are important, as the consequence of not researching in places deemed too risky according to university constructions is likely to underrepresent particular geographical and socio-economic areas, which ultimately may lead to important connections between global education policy and the transformation of education being missed
Literacy as numbers : researching the politics and practices of international literacy assessment
No full textThis book enquires into the politics and practices of international literacy assessment programmes, exploring how the internationally comparable numbers so heavily relied on in national policy are produced and how they shape our understanding of the meanings and purposes of literacy. It aims to raise questions and trigger discussion on processes of quantification by examining the concepts of literacy competence that underpin international assessment data and the challenges of achieving cross-cultural validity in diverse international settings The collection brings together internationally leading academics in this field and representatives from key policy and literacy assessment institutions to begin to identify a future research agenda for the emerging field of International Assessment Studies. It illuminates the work that goes on behind the scenes in producing the tests and the data. The unfinished nature of this work is evidenced through insider accounts of the debates that absorb researchers, policy makers, implementers and practitioners alike. The book will be of particular interest for students of literacy and global educational policy, teachers of literacy and researchers located within universities and within assessment programmes, as well as practitioners in testing agencies, educational policy makers and other end users of the data. Mary Hamilton is Professor of Adult Learning and Literacy in the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University. She is Associate Director of the Lancaster Literacy Research Centre and a founder member of the Research and Practice in Adult Literacy group. Bryan Maddox is a senior lecturer in education and international development at the University of East Anglia. He specialises in ethnographic and mixed methods research on globalised literacy assessments. Camilla Addey is a researcher in international educational assessments and global educational policy. She recently completed her PhD which focused on the rationales for participation in international literacy assessments in Mongolia and Laos
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Why do countries join international literacy assessments? an actor-network theory analysis with case studies from Lao PDR and Mongolia.
No full textInternational assessments are a growing educational phenomenon around the world, increasingly picking up in lower and middle income countries and entering the space of global educational governance (Fenwick et al. 2014). Following the success of the OECD’s first international assessments, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) set out in 2003 to develop the Literacy Assessment and Monitoring Programme (LAMP) to measure adult literacy levels across lower and middle income countries in a context-sensitive way. As international organizations rationalize international assessments as essential tools for policy (Rizvi and Lingard 2010) target lower and middle income countries, researching the rationales behind these countries’ participation becomes an urgent area of investigation.
In this thesis I enquire into what drives lower-middle income countries to join international assessment programmes through case studies of LAMP in the Lao PDR and Mongolia. Setting my research in the emerging field I define as International Assessment Studies, I argue that Lao PDR and Mongolia join international assessments for reasons that go beyond the need to inform policy (as stated by the UIS and the OECD) and to access foreign aid (Lockheed 2013). Different, and often contradictory interests are being played out through heterogeneous alliances (Latour 1996) which include human and non-human actors (including standardized testing instruments). Through the application of Actor-Network Theory, the data generated in my fieldwork suggests countries are joining the recent phenomenon of international assessments as a global ritual of belonging, comparing the gap with reference societies, and ‘scandalizing’ and ‘glorifying’ (i.e. statistically eliminating problems) with international data.
The thesis suggests that understandings of governmentality need to be revised in light of the international and comparative character of educational governance. My findings have implications for understanding the politics of reception of international assessments, but also for the upcoming Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Development which the OECD is in the process of developing – in a similar manner to LAMP – for lower and middle income countries
Literacy as numbers: The efficacy, merits and validity of transnational literacy assessment programmes.
No full textDebates about the nature of literacy and how to account for the diversity of learning are far from resolved. A new book, Literacy as Numbers, looks at how literacy itself is being reframed around globalized assessment regimes. Camilla Addey delves into how these comparable numbers, now so heavily relied on in national policy, are produced, and how they are shaping our understanding of the meanings and purposes of literacy
Unboxing and unravelling in the archive of gender equity policy
No full textIn this chapter, we circle around an accidental archive of historical policy materials, the flotsam and jetsam of documents that informed the drafting of the national policy document Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools (1997). We find ourselves increasingly entangled with the materials, implicated by them in larger debates and events, and in more intimate ways in our own personal histories. While we endeavour to ‘tame’ the archive, approaching it through what seems to be an appropriately systematic and rigorous policy analysis, we are at the same time undone, even at times overwhelmed by it. We wonder through this chapter whether feminist policy research demands a more ‘modest witnessing’ (Haraway, 1997) that does not lose sight of the situatedness or imbrication of policy researchers with the policies they research
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