General introduction to critical education policy analysis

Slides

A. Focus of the course

Educational policy = a field of practice

= a field of study

analysis for policy: to base policy on analysis of policy: analysis of policy process,

policy content, arguments, discourses, steering mechanisms

Main topic: how are we and how is education being governed? In whose name and what are the consequences = critical educational policy studies

→ what is the meaning and scope of critical today?

→ what is policy?

B. Roots of ‘the critical education policy orientation’

50’s – 60’s: strong alliance between (social) sciences and the welfare state

👀 Lasswell: strong policy orientation of research, scholars have a responsibility towards society to not only study what they deem interesting but also what is needed for society

🎯 social planning

70’s – 80’s: crisis of the welfare state → rise of neoliberal and neoconservative policies

The welfare state is payed for by the private sector so in order to have a good functioning welfare state, a good functioning economy is needed. From social regulation and state apparatus to ‘policy’

Privatisation trend: Is it necessary that the government provides all these services? Can’t the market and private companies take care of it?

C. Common features of ‘critical educational policy studies’

Study of policy based on educational, social, moral concerns: role of education in society and political commitment

Broad conception of ‘policy’: politics in policy, but also policy in broader political context

Critical ‘advocacy’:

o Policy science: problem-solving with focus on efficiency and effectiveness

o Critical poly studies: how are problems framed? Why? Focus on change

Limits:o There is an increasing intertwinement of research (as evidence) and

policy making. Where is the democracy (the people)? Tension between ‘power of truth’ and ‘power of the people’

o Shift: critical studies in support of the welfare state critical studies in view of enabling democracy

D. Critical educational policy research as “re-reading”

Re-reading = no longer taking anything for granted, not criticizing per se but looking at things critically and from different perspectives

→ identifying underlying rationalities and unintended consequences

E. Challenges to “re-reading” today

Between old fashioned parochialism and trendy cosmopolitanism:o Education, education policy, research, … are very broad todayo By becoming to cosmopolite, you become estranged from the

public Research scripts for the global scene: globalization is not a neutral process,

a natural force that we have to deal with. It is made possible by agreements etc. so there is a policy behind it that can be studied

The new state of the old state Right way solutions by third way policies: we cannot go back to the

welfare state but there has to be an alternative to neoliberalism → we develop a third way

Between theoretical inspiration (new theories of education and policy) and inspired theories (current challenges): theory driven research (policy is the field of application) // case-based research (little theoretical elaboration)

Research that works and unemployed research: policy makers have to base their decision on something, but we have to study this relationship

Critical policy makers and concerned scholars: policy makers are being critical on the results of scholars

F. Towards a new realism: rationale of the course

💣 We used to make a strict distinction between facts (constructed by science) and values (defined by policy makers). Today that distinction is not that clear anymore (ex. Global warming, fact or value?).

💡 Latour: leave the facts and values and see things in matters of concern. They should not be decided on by a scholar or policy maker, people should exchange

opinions and arguments. The role of the critical scholar is to make things public (again): it is bringing matters of concern into the public but also gathering the public around a matter of concern.

Critical ontology of the present = taking something that we think is evident, something that is part of our ontology (our being) and see if it really is that evident.

Re-reading education policies: studying the policy agenda of the 21st century

Simons, M., Olssen, M., & Peters, M. A. (2009). Introduction & overview. In M. Simons, M. Olssen, & M. A. Peters (Red.), Re-reading education policies: Studying the policy agenda of the 21ste century (p. vii-35). Rotterdam: Sense.

A. Introduction & overview

1) Critique as ethosThis book discusses education policy challenges from different perspectives. The book focusses on the field of study of the critical education policy studies. All research is supposed to be critical so the term critical doesn’t refer to how the researcher relates to his or her research or to the analytical framework being used. It indicates a relation to the domain that is being studied. The researcher takes on a critical attitude or ethos in his way of relating to the present. This may have consequences for the framework or methodology. Their research is a form of re-reading.

2) Re-readingsThe policy agenda represents a politics of reading (problems in a certain way), this text focusses on re-reading the politics of reading. This concept refers to the following issues:

Current challenges are the point of departure Broad perspective on policy texts Critical activity that aims to defamiliarize the current ways in which

policies pose problems Variety of approaches Concern for ideas pertaining to the role of education in society

3) From a handbook on matters of facts…Description of characteristics of handbooks. Handbooks are political for they constitute what knowledge in a particular field is who the main representatives are, and how one should look at the discipline’s past and future. Handbooks are instruments of what could be called disciplinary mechanisms, professionalisation, scientific socialisation or the politics of academic knowledge.

4) … to a handbook on matters of concernMatters of concern are things that create a public, not in view of finding agreement, but by gathering people for whom something is at stake. People are transformed into a public when confronted with issues that are not being taken care of by the private or official institutions and experts in a given society. Whereas matters of fact and problems are always already being taken care of – by the available expertise and agencies in society – matters of concern, because no-one can claim them, can become everyone’s concern, and therefore a public concern.

Comparison with Habermasian notions of interest, and particularly the idea of emancipatory interest; Foucauldian curiosity, Derrida’s profession of faith and Rancière’s demonstration of equality and democratic acts.

Re-reading is not just about wanting to know facts about policy and education, but foremost about being concerned with what is going on, and about developing knowledge and building theories in view of that concern.

5) Education and our limitsThe book can be regarded as a medium or equipment to transform λόγος (logos) into εθος (ethos) starting from present public concerns.

This is a book so there is a politics of selection.

6) Introduction chapters part 1 & 2Part 1 of the introduction aims at positioning contemporary critical education policy studies in a broader intellectual and social context.

7) Public concerns: an overviewTopics in the book:

Globalisation The knowledge society Lifelong learning Equality, social inclusion and democracy Quality, accountability, control Teacher professionalism

B. Part 1: The critical education policy orientation

1) The policy orientation: a brief overviewDescription of the history of the policy orientation in the social sciences after World War II.

The policy sciences

After World War II: close connection between policy and sciences. Science to inform and support policy.

👀 Lasswell

Multi-disciplinary Policy sciences include a value orientation Clear focus on the context A science of policy forming and execution and the improving of the

concrete content of the information and the interpretations available in policy making ~ analysis of policy versus analysis for policy

Integration of knowledge, the organisation of teaching and the organisation of new institutions to bring policy scientists and policy makers into contact

👀 Lasswell, Simon, Lindblom, Easton

Policy sciences inscribe themselves in the enlightenment project, they aim at the reorganisation of society through policy measures taken on the basis of scientific problem-solving rationality. They are clearly positivistic and instrumental and focus on the analysis in the policy process.

Policy studies and the welfare state

There is an alliance between a particular kind of power and a particular kind of knowledge. With the upcoming welfare state, the discipline was mainly concerned with collecting data to support public policy and hence inscribing itself in a social-democratic agenda of reform.

Overview of the development of the discipline, through and after the welfare state. Distinction between USA and Europe. USA knows a stronger social science before Europe.

The limits of rationalist conceptions

Different critiques on the science of democracy by Lasswell:

Critical rationalists: rational model of the policy process and that of an incrementalistic viewpoint

Political rationalists: policy analysis should not replace the political process but complement political argumentation and discussion

Forensics: policy analysis is more similar to legal investigation Managerialists: new analytical techniques from the business sector Critical theorists: policy analysis should be driven by a strong commitment

to social change and equality

The problematic of education policy, politics and power

Four dimensions of problematic:

Focus on the policy context and critical advocacy: analysis of policy // analysis for policy

Reliance on sociology of education and political theory: education is not the biggest concern of public policy studies

Concern for education and public policy: public is a broad term Critical stance towards knowledge-policy alliances: being critical towards

assumptions

2) General frameworks for policy studies Welfare economics: generate knowledge that promotes the organisation of

welfare policies in an economic way Public choice theory: judge public policy in terms of rational, that is

economic, choices Information processing: analysis of the role of information in decision

making Social structure: look at the social dimension of policies and policy

making and to explain and understand policies, their making and their effects in relation to social structures

Political process: approaches that look at the political context of policies and politics in policy and policy making

Comparative politics: approaches to the study of public policy by comparing what, why, how and with what effects different governments do something or do not.

Management: the application of managerial thought and techniques to public administration

Political philosophy and social theory: lots of different names and influences are mentioned

3) Frameworks for education policy studies Economic approach: rational analysis of the costs and benefits of

education policy as well as more general concerns with the economics of education

Organisational theory: the analysis and evaluation of organisational, administrative and political structures and procedures

Critical theory: not only concerned with public policy but the broader politics of education inside and outside school

Important influences from other critical theories are mentioned and the difference between education policy study and critical educational policy study is highlighted.

4) The critical education policy orientationFirst this discipline only focussed on the study of the school and classroom, the confrontation with neoliberal and neoconservative governments in the 80’s and 90’s worked as a catalyst for a broader development of policy studies.

Features of this discipline:

The educational, moral and social concerns underlying the policy studies: this is typical for educational policy studies and not usually the case. These studies broke with the classical rational and instrumental tradition in policy analysis.

The broad conception of policy, including politics, the mechanisms of power and the relation with the wider social context

A difference is made between politics and policy, but in education policy this difference is not that sharp since policy is the legitimation of values.

We should also adopt a wide view on politics and policy in education. Critical policy studies focus bot on the politics of education policy and on education policy as politics.

7 overall features and remarks about critical education policy orientation

The diverse forms of critical advocacy: o Analysis for policy: information for policy // policy advocacy

(influencing the agenda)o Analysis of policy: policy determination and effects // policy

content

Is this distinction useful? Four characteristics of the traditional approach to education policy studies are presented. In this approach it is taken for granted that education policy studies are neutral with regard to the policy option or content and are merely supportive. This is also called the technical-empiricist model of policy analysis, this is too technical and the advocacy part is lacking.

Another attempt to describe the specificity of critical advocacy at another level is the distinction between policy science and policy scholarship. Critical education policy orientation is a policy scholarship. The policy scholar is someone who can inform policy makers and the public and at that level there is a possible advocacy role.

There is a lot of debate about this issue but in the book, it is stated that underlying critical policy research is still a deep commitment to influence the social and political world. However, this is not about practical issues. There is no focus to make the existing system, procedures or practices

more efficient and effective by offering solutions for problems identified elsewhere. Critical policy orientation is concerned with obtaining the larger picture within which policy problems take shape.

5) Conclusion: the critical education policy orientation and its limitsModern approaches to policy assumed a distinction between the field of democracy and the field of informed decision-making. But this is similar as the distinction between politics and policy, not so sharp.

The recognition of democratic process within policy and politics however questions the role of policy advocacy based on research. So, the authority granted to the critical policy researcher in the welfare state is being challenged. Is it than possible to speak of a science of democracy and the implied tension between science and democracy?

Issue 1: Key elements of neoliberalism & New Public Management (part 1)

Slides

A. Ontology of the present: fragments

🖼 Central government should not govern by rules and regulations but by controlling outcomes and targets

🖼 Coordination by markets and competition is preferred over coordination by government

🖼 State administration and civil servants or teachers have consumers

B. History: classic liberalism, welfare liberalism & neoliberalism

1) Classic liberalism (18th century) The nature of human beings is free, they are after their self and the state should not intervene. There is a nature state that will lead to the wealth of the nation and the general good. This is the mechanism of the invisible hand.

→ laissez-faire = negative conception of the role of the state

On the other hand, the importance of securing freedom and defending security. This leads to the importance of education, making good ‘citizens’, and regulation (🖼 check if people where hygienist).

Over time, people became more dependent of their work in the factories to provide for their families. They were no longer farmers so if they got sick they had nothing. The state increasingly became an institution to take care of those social questions. It protects the citizens from social risks.

2) Welfare liberalismBureaucratism: to prevent politics from intervening in public services, we set up roles for servants to follow

Liberal professions: autonomy within the welfare state, professions that do a service to the state but are allowed to govern their selves

School education = professional bureaucracy: partly rule-based and partly autonomous

💣 Financial tensions between the ‘productive’ private sector and the ‘unproductive’ public sector. We rely too much on taxation

💣 Social paternalism made citizens dependent from the state. There is no incentive to start working again

💣 Professionals and bureaucracy were not accountable to the consumer or customer. People follow the rules but they don’t look at the greater picture. Should we move from government by rules to government by objectives?

💣 the professions have too much power, there is no market anymore (ex. health care)

💡 We have to reorganize bureaucratic organizations by installing a new kind of accountability

3) NeoliberalismTransformation from central planning (bureaucratic organization) and central intervention (professional associations) to facilitation (framework and market conditions), control (output and targets) and competition (international rankings and comparisons).

Neoliberalism = a state that in the name of the social can steer society and organize public welfare

C. Neoliberalism: theoretical backgrounds

1) Austrian school👀 von Mises / von Hayek: methodological and political individualism → economic freedom and market-coordination.

If you want to understand the market, look at the individual. It is not a system but a set of individuals pursuing their self-interests. There is no such thing as society or the market, there are only individuals and social phenomena result from the motivations and actions of individuals.

💡 Central planning is impossible and making unfree, there is trust in spontaneous order based on market conditions

2) MonetarismReaction to the Keynesian model (pro state intervention by public investment, etc.)

The state should not intervene in the economy, it should instead remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production by lowering tax rates and use fiscal policy to boost growth. Supply and demand need each other, the state need to create.

🖼 Funding education by giving money as vouchers to parents: creating a market environment

💡 Approaching policy issues in economic terms (🖼 supply and demand), human-capital perspective required in policy visions. Emphasis on the role of governments in controlling the amount of money in circulation.

3) Human capital theoryEducation is an investment in people, the outcomes of education are human capital and an investment in education is a production of added value.

Human choice is based on a cost-benefit analysis. Education increases individual cognitive capacities which results in higher productivity and thus higher income. Income is the measure for human capital.

We need to make a distinction between private and social rates of return.

💡 Framing policies and individual behaviour in terms of human capital, cost-benefit analysis

D. Neoliberalism: restructuring theories

1) Public Choice TheoryEveryone has self-interests it doesn’t matter if you are a politician or a teacher, etc. We have to find mechanisms to organize social life to align everyone’s self-interest. There is no such thing as public interest or public goods.

💡 People will always act economically. We need a calculated reorganization of the public sector, neoliberalism as a positive form of state power. The calculation of individuals as point of departure for policy measures. Policy should aim at creating a market.

2) Agency theoryThe operationalization of public choice theory. Influencing people by intervening in their cost-benefit analysis → give financial incentives

💡 Restructuring the public sector or government departments along economic lines and in view of decoupling → employees are self-interested and focus on financial incentives

3) Transactional cost economicsBy focusing on efficiency, you will find the best method of organization given a market context.

💡 Establishing efficient organizational forms considering transactional costs and search for efficient organizational forms and adequate forms of control.

4) New Public ManagementThis is an umbrella term that comprises the three theories mentioned above. It refers to the transformation of the organisation of providing public administration, public health to an efficient and effective organisation of work.

This is realised by contractualism instead of central regulation and administration.

🖼 clear roles and tasks, autonomy and accountability, objectives as basis for judging performance, transparency and explicit consequences

→ bureaucratic organisation is no longer effective: reaching targets instead of following rules

Main principles:

Shift from policy to management (= how to take care of resources) Shift from input control and bureaucratic procedures (management based

on rules) to output measures and performance targets (management based on outcomes)

Devolution combined with reporting, monitoring and accountability = deconcentration of the power: democracy is a hierarchical system but not efficient, we give someone autonomy if they reach targets💣 who sets the targets?

Shift from large bureaucratic structures to quasi-autonomous agencies Preference for private ownership, contracting and competition Imitation of private sector management practices (🖼 teacher bonus)💣 deprofessionalisation

Preference for monetary incentives because people make cost-benefit analyses

→ changing position of the teacher: teachers have a double mission, the act on behalf of the public good and they are providers for their consumers

E. Towards a new role of the state

In neoliberal times we see a shift, with new conceptions of:

The role of the government: it starts to facilitate, control and set targets → becomes a manger of resources

Homo economicus = humans as rational beings that make cost-benefit calculations

Nature of the market: the market as a construction with competition in order to guarantee quality and efficiency

Relation between private and public sector: responsabilisation and privatisation in the public sector

Role and organisation of education: education as a private good and investment in human capital

Role of experts and professionals: responsabilisation and accountability Importance of globalisation for free trade, competitive states and foreign

investments

Consequences:

States become actively involved in constructing markets Economisation of all forms of life and all human behaviour: measuring

costs and value on all forms of human activity New dominant discourse of state management and control decoupling

control from operations (external control)

📄 Neoliberalism as a mode of control and as an alternative to central bureaucracy and professional responsibility is about installing new systems of monitoring and feedback. But the promotion of a strong state while subscribing the doctrine of a minimal state?

The ascendancy of neoliberalism

Olssen, M., Codd, J., & O’Neill, A.-M. (2004). The ascendancy of neoliberalism. In Education Policy: Globalisation, Citizenship and Democracy (pp. 134–152). London: Sage Publications.

Neoliberalism constitutes a revival and continuation of earlier liberal perspectives that developed from the 17th century and continued right up into and through the 19th century.

This chapter elaborates the central elements of neoliberalism through an articulation of the principal intellectual and philosophical foundations. After having completed this, the chapter provides an overview of the central effects of neoliberalism on social and educational developments in western nation-states.

A. The ‘new right’

The concept of the new right is closely related to neoliberalism but it is not exactly the same. The new right tends to adhere more to the groups or interests, while neoliberalism refers more to the discursive philosophical, economic and political doctrines so supported.

The precise alliance of interests in neoliberalism is different in every country. Also, different writers have different conceptions of the new right. It is therefore not necessary to treat the new right as a monolithic entity. The term may be applied to a wide range of ideologies and groups which support free market, anti-welfarist, or socially authoritative policies.

👀 Thompson: the new right is an expansive concept. Most of the basic ideas underlying it are not new, it is their contemporary interpretation which is. This

basic idea is a belief in competitive individualism, an ideological representation of a reduced role for the state and a maximization of the market.

For most purposes, the terms new right, economic rationalism and neoliberalism are interchangeable.

B. Defining neoliberalism

Classical liberalism Neoliberalism

Conception of state

power

Negative: the individual is taken as an object to be freed from the interventions of the state

Positive: the state’s role is creating an appropriate market by providing the conditions, laws and institutions necessary for its operation

IndividualAutonomous human nature that can practise freedom

The state seeks to create an individual that is an enterprising and competitive entrepreneur

Theoretical aim of the

state

To limit and minimize its role based upon postulates like universal egoism, invisible hand theory and the political maxim of laissez-faire

Change in subject position from homo economicus to manipulatable man who is created by the state and who is continually encouraged to be perpetually responsive

There are important differences among the various advocates of neoliberalism but they all share a basic commitment to individual liberty and lobby for a reduced state. A more economic shared tenet is the assumed superiority of market mechanisms to ensure economic prosperity, the maximization of individual freedom ad its provision of a base for all social interactions. It is explained how these ideas shape the practical world. The centrality of the market is one of the central and distinctive features of the neoliberalism’s theoretical and programmatic propositions. The theories explained further are all variants of neoclassical liberal thought and share 8 major presuppositions (see p. 138).

When advocates of neoliberalism support a reduced state, this means a reduced bureaucracy and not a reduced control. The role of the state is seen as the mediator and instigator of the successful operation of the market. Ethics become a matter for the private individual and are not a concern of the state. State support for egalitarian policy initiatives are an attack on enterprise and endeavour.

C. The doctrine of monetarism

Monetarism theory is a response to inflation following the Keynesian demand management. It is based on the quantity theory of money through the self-

stabilizing properties integral to the market system. This theory suggests the that the level of prices be directly related to the quantity of money in circulation. If governments delivered sound money then the economy would be stabilized in relation to all other areas.

Due to several factors this theory became influential.

In terms of its philosophical commitments, monetarism represents a resurgence of the classical economic model involving a renewed commitment to laissez-fare ~ the invisible hand (Adam Smith).

Monetarist concede that actual distribution may be a lottery, dependent on skill and effort to only a limited degree, but mainly on chance. Inequalities will naturally result but these are the mark of a progressive society.

The fundamental economic tenet is that economy is self-stabilizing at full-employment. Markets stabilize because supply and demand are balanced by the price mechanisms. The role of the government in this process should be neutral.

Where Keynesian methods involve the government in forecasting demand and growth in order to bring them into line, monetarists state that the difficulty of gaining accurate knowledge make any government action bound to fail. Unemployment is a result of market intervention.

D. Austrian and Chicago economics

Main ideas: consequentialist theories of individual behaviour, methodological individualism (classes, societies, … are fiction) thus economics must be based on the analysis of people’s subjective choices, antipathy to socialism and the welfare state, economic liberty as preferable to political direction, subjectivist and non-cognitivist in attitude towards the foundation of ethics.

The differences lie in that the Chicago school is more positivistic, starting from observation. The Austrian school started from introspection and instead of seeing people in behaviourist terms as automata that can be predicted to respond to external stimuli, they see the human mind as originating source of social phenomena.

👀 Hayek: recognizes public goods and a state-maintained legal framework but does not think state activity should be substantial, inflation is seen as spurred on by excessive government interference. The proper functioning of the markets is incompatible with state planning of any sort. State planning is inefficient and a threat to freedom of the individual.

One of the major differences between Hayek’s vision and classical economic theory is the theory that value is conferred on resources by the subjective preferences of agents. Social objects like money or tools are constituted by human beliefs.

📄 the market is a spontaneous order, it displays a tendency to equilibrium although an actual perfect equilibrium is never achieved but must be viewed as constantly changing process on tending towards orderliness. Social institutions arise as a result of human action but not human design.

E. Human capital theory

Human capital theory emerged from neoclassical economics. It says that investment in education accounts for the fact of economic growth and pays therefore for itself.

👀 Becker: all human action is undertaken with ends or outcomes in view and is the result of a means-end calculational rationality.

The economic approach is purely an economizing and maximizing strategy where humans are programmed to compete in order to maximize their opportunities. Education and training are investments that have direct impact on productivity and earnings.

4 assumptions

Concepts: private rates of return // private good

social rates of return // public good

💣 screening theory: there is no automatic relationship between education and economic growth → revived model of human capital theory

Human beings are passive playthings of external forces who will deteriorate if not kept in good shape through rigorous training programmes. The sum purpose of human existence is reduced to the skill level or performance capacity of its population.

Perpetual training and a learning culture is expected to bring improvements to industry in the form of a highly skilled and adaptable work force.

Neoliberal theories of institutional restructuringOlssen, M., Codd, J., & O’Neill, A.-M. (2004). Neoliberal theories of institutional restructuring. In Education Policy: Globalisation, Citizenship and Democracy (pp. 153–173). London: Sage Publications.

A. Public choice theory

The public sector, in the neoliberal view, lacked a comparable mechanism of economic efficiency to guide the utilization or allocation of resources. The public choice theory advocated the application of economic theories to public sector institutions in the interest of making public organizations subject to the similar costs and benefits as operate in the private sector.

The process of how the public choice theory is developed is discussed.

👀 Buchanan

Public choice theory is ruled by the imperative of a strict methodological individualism in which all theorizing, all analysis is resolved finally into considerations faced by the individual person as decision-maker. It suggests redesigning public institutions to make them reflect more accurately the preferences of individuals. To do this we must use quasi-market strategies and we need a strong commitment to the freedom and responsibility of individuals and are against the role and expansion of government in relation to social and welfare services. An individual’s preferences are subjective so they cannot be transformed into judgements of a collective sort. Collective provision is acceptable only if it accords with the unanimity principle: no change is acceptable unless everyone agrees.

The role of the state is to defend property, personal rights and contract.

There are a lot of parallels between the work of Buchanan and the work of Hayek and Friedman with the difference that Buchanan is explicit about his political ideals and the role they play in his work. The free market is a normative ideal. Another difference is that Buchanan sees the state’s role as the constructor of the market order and guardian of individual wants and interests. (protective vs productive state).

After Buchanan the state is represented as positively constructing the market. Neoliberalism as a positive form of state power.

B. Agency theory

The agency theory represents work relations hierarchically as a series of contracts between one party referred to as the principal and another referred to as the agent. The theory is concerned with problems of compliance and control.

Agents have an incentive to exploit their situation to their own advantage and there are many instances where the behaviour of agents is difficult for principals to observe. In order to minimize risks in the employment situation, agency theory specifies a range of monitoring, information eliciting and performance appraisal techniques.

This theory underpins funder/provider and policy/delivery splits and results in policies of deregulation, corporatization and privatization.

🖼 United Kingdom railway companies

C. Transaction cost economics

This theory analyses and accounts for the efficiency costs of transacting business and the effect these have on organizational form.

Concepts: uncertainty // bounded rationality /// limited and asymmetrical information // opportunism // self-interested subject

👀 Williamson: focuses attention on public sector governance issues and on the problem of selecting governance structures which are most efficient, that is, which minimize the costs of the different organizational transactions involved. ~ property rights theory

All the above theories are represented and led to the New Institutional Economics or New Public Management. Central to such an approach is an emphasis on contract which ostensibly replaces central regulation by a new system of public administration which introduces such concepts as clarification of purpose, role clarification, task specification, quality assurance, reliable reporting procedures and the freedom to manage. → contractualism

D. Libertarian political philosophy

The concept libertarian is used to refer to a particular political discourse which places a stress on the liberty and rights of individuals irrespective of or without relevance to the interests of society as a whole → strong commitment to individual rights.

The difference with neoliberalism is that libertarians is about a political discourse of rights and neoliberalism is more an economic discourse of the allocative efficiency and progress of markets.

👀 Nozick: the state as existing purely to safeguard the personal and property rights of individuals. Property rights are absolutely basic. All taxation is unjust for it appropriates the legitimate property of the individual.

E. Foucault’s analysis of neoliberalism

Description of two variants of post-WW II neoliberals: the Ordoliberalen in Germany and the Human Capital theorists in the USA.

F. Neoliberalism as a mode of control

Both classical liberalism and neoliberalism share common view concerning the nature of the individual as rational self-interested subjects and they endorse a strong commitment to free trade.

However, with regard to the nature of the relations between individual and society or the role of the state, there are some major differences.

Classical liberalism: the invisible hand works because it is uncoordinated and unplanned. The state represents what is artificial, standing over and against the nature-reserve of uncoordinated initiatives of free spontaneous individuals.

Neoliberalism: the state actively constructs the market, neoliberalism is the new authoritarian discourse of state management and control. New and more advanced technology of control is constituted. It incorporates more flexible and more devolved steering mechanisms.

📄 While subscribing to the doctrine of the minimal state, neoliberals have promoted the development of the strong state. Other contradictions are presented.

Classical liberal, welfare liberal and neoliberal perspectives on state, human nature and education

Olssen, M., Codd, J., & O’Neill, A.-M. (2004). Classical liberal, welfare liberal and neoliberal perspectives on state, human nature and education. In Education Policy: Globalisation, Citizenship and Democracy (pp. 180–181). London: Sage Publications.

See figure 9.1.

Issue 1: (Progressive) neoliberalism as a mode of governing education and being

governed (part 2)

Slides

A. Neoliberalism today

Neoliberalism is no longer only an economic theory or a (political) ideology (of the right), it is a mode of governing. A way of thinking about society and citizens as self-interested and about the role of the government in organising and steering society and citizens by facilitating, controlling and competition. It has an impact on how we look at ourselves and how we govern ourselves (🖼 as lifelong learners). Aspects of this mode of governing are clearly visible in other political doctrines and ideologies.

→ kind of rebirth of the social state

🖼 Teach for all: there are problems with equal opportunities in education so we should invest in great teachers to give these kids the best kind of education possible. We do this by selecting students and give them an intensive training for 5 weeks and a follow up program in which they teach for at least two years.

B. Neoliberalism and teacher education reform

The state is no longer the only one providing teacher education. We see more privatization and fragmentation of control.

C. Towards a new configuration: progressive neoliberalism

Assumption // Source Progressivism Neoliberalism

Public education reinforces social inequities by failing to provide an excellent education to all students.

Public education benefits from deregulating market reforms that reward the most efficient service providers, encourage innovation and bridge the private and public spheres.

Education should be privatised and deregulated

Public education benefits from the logic, technology and strategy of

Market mechanisms may

business not be sufficient

The market cannot be trusted to rectify educational inequity by itself

Public education is an arena for social activism in which actors can work both within and against the system.

Entering the school system to change it from within

Teach for America and the politics of progressive neoliberalism

Lahann, R., & Reagan, E. M. (2011). Teach for America and the politics of progressive neoliberalism. Teacher Education Quarterly, 38(1), 7–27.

Is ‘Teach for America’ progressive liberalism? See slides.

The purpose of this article is to problematize TFA’s intentions by situating its political philosophy in the larger context of neoliberal educational reform.

A. Neoliberalism in education

Neoliberalism is so well-insulated in public discourse that its existence is rarely noted, let alone challenged outside of academic circles. Neoliberalism calls for state policies that create competitive entrepreneurs as opposed to policies that set them free to act for their own gain and, as a result, society’s benefit.

Teacher education, in particular, has been a site for neoliberal reform. Four categories:

Privatization Fragmentation of control and oversight of schooling Use of standardized tests to gauge teacher quality Weakening of teacher unions as a voice in what constitutes teacher quality

Although very popular in the public discourse, neoliberalism receives significant academic criticism especially in its application to public education. Three categories:

Reproduction of power critique: class and race disparities will reproduce themselves

Democratic critique: democratic ideal as being fundamentally communal, not an individualistic arena

Social justice critique: primary role of education is to empower marginalized populations and redress social inequities

B. Progressive neoliberalism

Key terms:

Neoliberalism: political ideology which calls for state policies that better enable entrepreneurs to compete in the free market. Policies which promote privatization, deregulation, individual choice, and the reduction of government expenditures are valued over those which increase or promote the welfare state and government control of social and economic activity.

Neoconservatism: in American education, a secular cultural ideology that advocates a return to traditional knowledge and rejects multicultural and post-positivist challenges to curriculum.

Authoritarian populism: religious fundamentalism which found a home in conservative ideology during the 20th century. In education, closely tied to neoconservatism, but infused with religious, rather than just cultural beliefs.

Managerialism: political discourse which imports into bureaucracy the models and thinking of business, in particular the valuing of accountability and efficiency based on quantitative data.

Progressivism: the idea that schooling and teacher education are crucial elements in the making of a more just society

Progressive neoliberalism = the spirit and assumptions of the progressive and social justice tradition combined with business-infused managerial strategies.

Progressivism is defined by its commitment to educational equity and not by particular characteristics of education reform. However, neoliberal education reform falls well short of mission that could be understood as progressive. Progressive neoliberalism is thus defined as a shared belief in five assumptions about the nature of public education and education reform (see slides).

🖼 No Child Left Behind-act

C. Research method

At the heart of the analysis is the supposition that TFA’s theory of education reform both conflicts with and subscribes to elements of both progressivism and neoliberalism.

D. TFA as a progressive neoliberal organization

All assumptions of progressive neoliberalism are confronted with TFA’s vision.

📄 TFA is characterized as an example of progressive neoliberalism: embracing neoliberalism’s focus on deregulation, business strategies, and the managerial culture of accountability, but working to fight inequity and to reform the systems which produced it. Furthermore, it can be distinct from neoliberalism based on the three critiques on neoliberalism.

E. Questions and critique

Rely too strongly on the first three assumptions Potential effects of TFA’s use of business norms to serve the goals of

public education Can TFA truly operate as a corrective agent tot the market, given that

corps members only receive five weeks of pre-service teacher preparation before entering the classroom as full-time teachers.

Et cetera

F. Discussion and implication

Despite their differences, progressives and progressive neoliberals can learn from each other. Progressive neoliberal organizations, such as TF, could further emphasize educational outcomes that are not well-suited for having metrics assigned to them. The could profit from adopting a culture of critique and inquiry. Next, a culture of evidence-based decision-making can positively effect change in and out of progressive teacher education.

The end of progressive neoliberalism

Fraser, N. (2017). The end of progressive neoliberalism. Dissent, January 2 2017

The election of Donald Trump and other political uprisings are said to be a signal of the collapse of neoliberal hegemony. What people reject is not neoliberalism tout court but progressive neoliberalism. Progressive neoliberalism is an alliance of mainstream currents of new social movements and high-end symbolic and service-based business sectors.

History of progressive neoliberalism in American politics. With the rise of progressive neoliberalism came the degradation of the living conditions of all working people. Liberal-individualist understandings of progress replaced the more expansive, anti-hierarchical, egalitarian, class-sensitive, anti-capitalist understandings of emancipation.

Progressive liberalism mixed ideals of emancipation and financialization. Progressive moralism that casted the workers as culturally backward and absence of a real left wing until Bernie Sanders.

Issue 2: Governing education through lifelong learning and qualification

SlidesThere are social issues, for instance what should happen to people that are unable to work? We need a social state to take care of these issues. The government can thus influence the economic and the social. This idea is the rationale behind neoliberalism: we need to organise a market so that people act on that market but we have to look at people as individuals who make a rational cost-benefit analysis. Policy should give incentives to increase the benefits. However, do people always make cost-benefit analyses or only when you give them reasons to, like when providing financial incentives?

A. Ontology of the present: fragments

New instruments are created to support people as learners and personalize / individualize learning

Lifelong learning: learning never stops Learning is crucial, to survive on the job market you can never stop

learning. Also, collective responsibility, we should invest in human capital in order to be economically relevant. → learning is essential for personal freedom and collective wellbeing

Learning policy: there are problems in society, how can we learn people to be better citizens? (~ educationalization)

B. Reflection on approach

The fact that learning is crucial is socially constructed. It wasn’t always like this. Maybe what we see now is a shift from the social state to the learning state. This changes the role of the state from a social role (intervene in the social, like social security system) to a learning role (intervene in the learning).

C. The social state

Social state: what is socially acceptable? = the social question

🖼 can children work? How much days a week do we work?

Social freedom: you are free within society. This means that you accept the rules and norms of society. It is not a natural freedom. The creation of social citizens happens in school, this is the place where people are socialised

👀 Alphonse Quételet:

Use statistics to look at the laws of the social (like physics studies the laws of nature). We study l’homme moyen, the average man. The average is not only the average but also the norm. Moralisation becomes normalisation, you set a norm and teach people to live up to that norm. Civilisation is then decreasing the limits of the normal distribution.

Nowadays we are moving away from normality. We see people as unique individuals and no longer pose the question is something is normal = is something is reaching the average, le moyen.

The social apparatus as a way of taking that makes social mobility and social normality possible. Social workers and education act on behalf of the state to guarantee social equity and social freedom.

We used to think about this as social equality and progress but now we are shifting more to an idea of inclusion.

D. Towards the learning state

Learning is essential for greater civil participation. The state wants a learning relationship with its citizens.

“Lifelong learning is about much more than economics for it associated with ‘greater civic participation, higher reported well-being, lower criminality, reducing inequalities, and preventing marginalization.”

Lifelong learning promotes individual freedom and secures social security. You need competences to reach certain things.

E. Leaning apparatus

1) Learning as problem and solutionThere is no single architect of the learning apparatus. It comes from different directions. There are four different forms of problematization that influence our vision on learning.

Capitalization of learning

Knowledge functions as a central capital, the crucial means of production. For a knowledge worker this means that working is to a large extent learning. As a consequence, education has become too important to be left solely to the responsibility of educators without questioning.

Responsabilisation of learning

We have to accept that we are no longer living in a stable society. Therefor we cannot limit our learning to the age of 0 to 25, we need to keep improving ourselves. Learning is not the responsibility of the institutions but of ourselves. We formulate our own goals.

Managementalisation of learning

The learning process is something that should be managed and optimised. It is seen as a production process that has an output that can be measured.

Employability of learning

Learning is translated in competences in order to make it explicit and use your learning as a value. Now jobs can be described in terms of the competences needed. Learning becomes output driven and defined in advance where the output of learning is the input of your own employability. This employability exists in the labour market but also in other aspects of social life.

📄 New form of self-government wherein citizens have freedom but also need to be socialised. You should see yourself as a small business or enterprise and you are the manager. You should invest in yourself (learning), sell yourself and innovate

2) Learning & freedomLearners are the owners of their own knowledge and competences. This is a new kind of property.

CV → portfolio

A cv is an instrument that plays a social role. It shows your social biography, what institutions you were a part of. It doesn’t show what you learned or what competences you master, this is shown in a portfolio. This is an example of the shift from the social to the learning.

3) Learning & securityInstead of giving people social security we learn them to provide for themselves. We invest in their human capital.

🖼 European Qualifications Framework

4) Freedom & securityShift from social apparatus (social mobility and normality) to learning apparatus (flexibility and employability).

Flexibility instead of mobility: be flexible in order to be employable

Employability instead of normality: make yourself employable, have competences in several areas instead of ‘be normal’

Inclusion instead of equality: how can someone include himself in society? What competences do you need for that? If you are excluded this means that you are responsible for that, you need to work on your competences

Innovation instead of progress: progress looks at the future and takes measures to attain that desired future. Innovation tries to improve what is here and now, create added value.

Learning instead of socialisation: learning and creating human capital instead of developing social capital

Learning work instead of social work: policies become learning policies to learn people how to manage themselves and their lives.

5) Learning apparatus: (will to) qualificationThe entrepreneurial self is obsessed with qualifications = the output of learning. What counts is what you have learned, not the process. This means that we no longer need institutions, you can get your competences anywhere because the focus is on the outcome. This means that we need systems to assess competences and qualifications.

The school becomes an institute for the increase of human capital and no longer an institute for the creation of social and democratic citizens.

→ qualification frameworks become the curriculum

→ by aiming at transparency, these frameworks end up over-specifying

→ install an expert terminology that is incomprehensible for students and teachers

💣 discourse on social inclusion (qualification frameworks are beneficial for dropouts, etc.) but also discourse on global competitiveness (select high potentials).

F. What the learning apparatus does

We are not born with the will to learn or to be normal, we are socialised into it.

The consequence of the learning apparatus is that problems are individualised

🖼 Migration challenges as a mismatch between ‘their’ competences (also social) and the competences needed to live in our society. Integration as the learning solution.

The governmentalization of learning and the assemblage of a learning apparatus

Simons, M., & Masschelein, J. (2008). The governmentalization of learning and the assemblage of a learning apparatus. Educational Theory, 58(4), 391–415.

A. Our present experience of learning

Learning has come to be indispensable for speaking about ourselves, others, and society. It is important for us as employees to generate the competences needed to do our job and as an important source of a company’s productivity. It is also present in other domains like citizenship, everything is defined in terms of competences.

🖼 Competences for parents, eating, communication, etc.

The aim of the article is to analyse the omnipresence of learning. The authors want to study how, at a particular moment in history, we have come to understand who and what we are and do in terms of learning.

Point of departure is that governing people is not a matter of brute force or subtle ideology but a rather overt and reflected form of acting upon self-government. We govern ourselves but it is this self-government that is being governed.

Two main issues:

Elaborate the concepts of educationalization and the grammar of schooling Emphasize a critical attitude toward the present

B. The social regime of government and self-government

Primary characteristics of the welfare state:

Combination of individual freedom and the order and welfare of society → social governmental rationality: identify problems as social problems

Society with its norms and regularities is a condition for individual freedom

Because of this social rationality of governing, education becomes a governmental concern → education has a social dimension

Nowadays, there seems to be a shift from the governmentalization of education and the strategic use of the grammar of education toward the governmentalization of learning and strategic use of the grammar of learning.

C. Learning as a fundamental problem and solution

Four related fields of problems that involve the rationalization of problems as learning problems and regard the enhancement of learning as a solution.

1) The capitalization of learningNecessity of learning for a knowledge economy. Our economy changed to a knowledge economy. Knowledge has become extremely important and education as a supplier is part of the economy.

Learning becomes disconnected from its traditional institutional context and conditions. It is no longer schooling but learning itself that is regarded as a force to produce added value. The employee becomes not only someone who possesses

a knowledge base but also someone who can renew this knowledge base permanently. The learning process and the results are both a kind of capital.

2) Being responsible toward learningThe importance of learning in order to guarantee freedom in a changing society. Learning should not be limited to the school or other traditional institutions for education. Education is a means of meeting one’s needs throughout our whole life and education at school solely is no longer enough for an autonomous, adult life. The mission of schools is to learn pupils to learn on their own.

Problems concerning individual well-being can be framed as educational or learning problems.

Learning becomes regarded as a condition for individual freedom, and people are addressed as being responsible for their own learning and for regulating their learning. → responsibilisation towards learning

3) Learning as object of (self) management and (self) expertiseThe educational expertise concerning learning and instruction: learning becomes a domain of expertise. The learner is addressed as someone in an environment and social context in which knowledge is constructed on the basis of input and where the existing knowledge base is reconstructed in order to bring about a new equilibrium.

Learning is an active, constructive and social process where the learner should manage resources to create new knowledge by interacting with information in the environment and integrating it with information already stored in memory. Learning is a process of coping with our environment and instruction is problematized in terms of stimulation and facilitation and the construction of a learning environment.

4) The employability of learning resultsThere is a concern not only for improving the actual performance of employees but also regarding their potential. This potential defines whether they are employable and remain employable. → competencies and competence management

Competencies are both the outcome of learning and the input for the labour market and society. The employability of his learning is foremost a concern of the learner.

D. Learning and the present regime of government and self-government

These problematisations are being combined today and have become part of our present governmental regime that seeks to promote entrepreneurship (instead of social normalcy).

🖼 Profiles for experienced and beginning teachers: you need professionalization

🖼 Citizenship education: active citizenship can apparently be learned

🖼 The learning organization: in order to deal in a proactive way with the changing environment, they have to manage their learning forces

→ The government is presented as responsible for offering education infrastructures and learning opportunities and for stimulating learning, learning itself is framed as the task and responsibility of individuals

→ The point of departure for governmental reflections is no longer social (in-)equality and post-factum redistribution but inclusion and exclusion

Being part of society is no longer about being socialized and developing a normalized relation to the self. Instead it’s an ongoing task of managing the learning process in order to produce human capital and be able to use social capital in order to be included. Problems are framed as a lack of adequate human and social capital.

The social citizen becomes the entrepreneurial citizen. People are regarded as being responsible for managing the production of their own well-being.

Within entrepreneurship, three dimensions come together:

Epistemological dimension Strategic dimension Ethical dimension

E. The business ethics of self-mobilization and the strategy of the learning apparatus

What kind of subject experiences learning as a fundamental process and based on which forms on which forms of problematization? The entrepreneurial ‘self’ experiences learning as the force to guarantee a momentary emancipation in environments through delivering useful competencies.

Learning is a process of adaptation, this is not a state that is acquired but a momentary equilibrium between a human being and his environment. The entrepreneurial life is not about having a fixed position (in a normal, socialized structure) but about moving around in different environments.

→ you have everything you own (= your learning and knowledge) with you

Self-mobilization refers not only to the responsibility of the entrepreneurial self to mobilize its human capital but also to the responsibility to capitalize one’s life in such a way that it has economic value. A continuous renewal of one’s human capital may be required. However, investing in human capital remains a calculated risk.

🖼 Portfolio

The learning apparatus does not refer to an apparatus that is created, implemented or imposed by the state or another actor in order to organize learning. Instead the state is able to define its role in terms of promoting learning and investing in human capital. All types of policy challenges are translated into learning problems and seek to use components of the learning apparatus to offer solutions (training, citizenship education, programs about risk prevention).

Stating the obvious: the European Qualifications Framework is not a neutral evidence-based policy tool

Cort, P. (2010). Stating the obvious: the European Qualifications Framework is not a neutral evidence-based policy tool. European Educational Research Journal, 9(3), 304–316.

A. Introduction

The European Qualifications Framework (EQF) aims at initiating a process of modernisation of (vocational) education and training systems across the member states. It is described as a neutral tool of translation that and is one of the key tools in the Copenhagen process which is to be based on reliable evidence supported by rigorous research and data.

Neutral? Central role of values in policy and education and different policy aims may be contradictory

Evidence? There is no substantial evidence of qualifications frameworks being examples of good or better practice than other national curriculum systems

B. The European Qualifications Framework: a discursive perspective

What is the EQF presented to be → discursive approach

The EQF’s primary goal is to improve the transparency, comparability and portability of citizens qualifications issued in accordance with the practice in the different Member States. It is not an instrument for harmonising qualifications but to function as a type of translation device.

The EQF is situated according different perspectives: politically, from a societal perspective, at the individual level.

The rationality behind the three main objectives: transparency // comparability // portability is outlined.

C. National Qualifications Framework: the ‘evidence’ base

Existing research on qualifications frameworks: there does not exist a transnational comparison analysing qualification frameworks against other types of organising an education system.

1) TransparencyTransparency should be achieved though the description of qualifications in terms of level and learning outcomes.

Several flaws in the transparency are argued.

2) ComparabilityComparability is not necessarily ensured and the coordination is seen as politically sensitive and not neutral.

3) PortabilityOn the one hand, this approach may improve the access routes in education and training, but, in the other, a growing number of students may be in danger of dropping out as the framework in its pedagogical set-up tends to be more excluding.

D. The ideological underpinning of qualifications frameworks

Even though there is no real evidence supporting them, qualification frameworks are being implemented all over Europe. Why?

National qualifications frameworks are tied closely to neo-liberal ideals of deregulation, marketisation and undermining special interests

Embedded in a double-sided discourse of social inclusion and global competitiveness: a qualifications framework is about empowerment of groups who fall outside the formal system

EQF pleases both parties of the debate: efficiency // equity

E. Conclusions

Policies and therefore qualifications frameworks are never neutral. Qualifications frameworks lead to new problems, or other kinds of problems.

Policy making is not a rational and scientific process. Education and training systems are historically, culturally and nationally embedded and it is problematic to transfer policies uncritically across countries.

Issue 3: Accountability, quality assurance and professionalism

Slides

A. Ontology of the present: fragments

Instead of defining everything in terms of learning problems, we should maybe define things in terms of cultural or structural problems?

Accountability = giving someone else an account of what you are doing

Quality management is an improvement process for a whole organisation, professionalism is an individual concept. It is about the individual. These are confused all the time and we try to fix professionalism issues with quality management and vice versa.

B. Accountability

(progressive) neoliberalism: low trust in public sector. The alliance between government and professionals or bureaucratic organisations is questioned. This creates a new sort of relations between the government (funders) and education (actor). Education needs to give an account for receiving funding, who does what and how and why do they do it?

Accountability is a social practice that includes practices, cultural codes and structures. From professional accountability in the welfare state, the shift is made to four types of accountability in the age of neo-liberalism.

Professional accountability ~ professional bureaucracy: you make a report for your boss (higher in hierarchy) → reporting for the sake of reporting

NEW: different systems of accountability:

Consumer accountability: you need to satisfy your consumers; the consumer is central because the money follows him

Contract accountability: a contract is set to identify your objectives Performance accountability: being held accountable by measuring

performance, if you do not reach a certain performance you don’t get funding.

Corporate accountability: by working with private partners (private-public partnerships, PPP) they hold you accountable because they want something in return

What accountability is optimal? Maybe there is something like democratic accountability or public accountability where different stakeholders are represented?

C. Professionalisation

1) Professionalisation as a process towards developing a professionCharacteristics of a profession:

scientifically based specialist knowledge with a specific subject terminology

theory-based academic qualification pathways specific norms and codes of ethics professional autonomy client-based and social interactions but also supporting public welfare self-control by professional associations

Teaching is a semi-profession

2) Professionalisation as a process towards professionalismProfessionalism = combining the expertise that you developed learning and at the same time being sensitive to the situation that you are working in, the expertise developed through experience. The ability to judge a situation becomes crucial.

Professionalisation then is to educate or train people and to support their professionalism. Many issues get framed as issues of professionalisation while instead they are issues of quality assurance (~ individualisation of problems).

D. Quality management

Quality management is an organisational approach meant to standardise services in order to satisfy the client. You know what qualities to expect from this product.

🖼 ISO9000 company

Quality management looks at everything in a company as a chain of people trying to fulfil each other’s needs. This means that your colleagues also become your customers.

In today’s economy it is no longer just about buying goods and services, what is really adding value today is the experience and the customization of your experience. This means that we shift towards a system of personal standards. We no longer have standardised criteria but everyone gets his own system.

🖼 Personalized education: every student determines his own goals

💣 new hierarchies: lot of companies have quality assurance managers but which place do they take in the company structure?

💣 new form of bureaucracy: very contradictory, the system wants to give autonomy, they can choose how they do something but they have to report how they did that + formalisation

💣 self-referential: improving the system becomes improving the quality indicators

🖼 lowering dropout becomes a goal itself without looking at the problem

E. Relation between professionalisation & quality management

1) Differences between professionalization and quality managementProfessional judgment is about finding an adequate answer given a specific situation. Quality management is different, it is about how to define a situation in an organisation in order to standardize it.

Professionalization as a process towards professionalism

Quality management as a process towards standards

Roots Humanities Economy

Focus People Organisations

Basis of action

Patterns of personal interpretation, based on unique cases

Defined organisational processes, based on defined standards

Field of acting

Social fields Technical fields

Perspective Holistically oriented Oriented towards individual parts

Action orientation

A good way of acting in unique situations

One way/right way

💣 a lot of times these issues are mixed and the one is used to address issues in the other

🖼 impose customer feedback to increase professionalism

🖼 impose professionalisation to compensate for a lack of organisational standards

🖼 student evaluations: is this about quality and thus standardisation or about the professional judgments of professors as teachers?

2) Acknowledging differencesIt is necessary to decide what logic to use in different situations.

Which actions follow a right/wrong logic and can be standardised by quality management? Which actions follow an adequate/inadequate logic and therefore need professionalisation without standardisation?

For which actions is it sufficient to follow routines, and can they be standardised by quality management? Which actions need a holistic interpretation of a complex situation beyond routines and have to be professionalised?

For which actions is it necessary to have academic expertise and therefore qualified staff (professionalisation)? For which actions is this unnecessary?

F. Concluding thoughts: is there something beyond framing in terms of accountability, professionalisation, quality?

Issues in organisations are more complex than a problem of accountability, professionalisation or quality. There are many dimensions, aspects, actors and interests. They are not matters of facts but matters of common concern. They surpass the limits of professionalism, quality assurance and accountability.

We need a democratic accountability in education. Make explicit what is hidden or evident.

🖼 program committee (POC)

Public accountability in the age of neoliberal governanceRanson, S. (2003). Public accountability in the age of neoliberal governance. Journal of Education Policy, 18(5), 459–480.

A. Introduction

Accountability is no longer merely an important instrument or component within the system but constitutes the system itself. Regimes of regulation designed to enhance public accountability paradoxically strengthen corporate power at the expense of the public sphere.

B. Understanding accountability

1) Relations of regulation or reasonTo be accountable is defining a relationship of formal control between parties, one of whom is mandatorily held to account to the other for the exercise of roles and stewardship of public resources.

Different approaches to the concept of accountability.

2) External or internal goodsThe relations and purposes of accountability are inescapably evaluative, but the criteria and judgements vary according to the mode adopted: hierarchical answerability or communicative reason.

Holding to account: orientation towards instrumentally rational goods of effectiveness, creating the culture that strives to optimise performance by maximising outputs and minimising inputs.

Practices of communicative rationality: the mutual fiving and taking of accounts, reflexive questioning of achievement informs the practice of mutual accountability

C. An intensifying regime of neo-liberal governance

Overview of the practices, structures and codes of accountability within two regimes of governance: the age of professionalism and the neo-liberal age.

What is meant by practices, structures and codes is explained.

1) Professional accountability (late 1970s)Public trust was afforded to the specialist knowledge of professionals. Quality of public services could not be a private matter.

2) Neoliberalism – marketisation (from early 1980s)A new political order of neo-liberal public accountability was constituted, based upon principles of rights designed to enhance individual choice.

3) Neo-liberalism – contract management: strengthening legal regulation (from early 1990s)

New public management was promoted, there was one model of management and it was private. The public services should adopt private sector models:

The separation of the purchaser role from the provider role The growth of contractual or semi-contractual arrangements Flexibility of pay and conditions

Public management should adopt the contract culture to ensure the efficient delivery of services. Trust is secured in the increased specification of purpose, task and condition of service delivery.

4) Neo-liberalism – product performativity: strengthening the audit state (from 1990s)

Improving the performance of schools required increasingly meticulous specification of the inputs, processes and outputs that are expected.

5) Neo-liberalism – partnership privatisation: strengthening corporate power (from late 1990s)

The strengthening of corporate differentiation and ownership of educational services and infrastructure → public-private partnership

These partnerships make the managerial skills and efficiencies of the private sector available to public services but it is about outputs rather than inputs?

D. The limits and contradictions of the regulatory regime of answerability

The age of professionalism was an age of public trust for professionals to deliver reliable public services of high quality. This has been replaced by trust in mechanisms of explicit, transparent systematic public accountability that seeks to secure regulatory compliance of professional practice.

Two trends:

From accountability being a general expectation to being a process of increasing specification and regulation

From being conceived as an event to being embodied as a disposition

These trends have a big impact on the practices, attitudes and identities of state professionals.

Several contradictions and unintended consequences are presented.

E. In search of an alternative model of public accountability

Professional accountability omits the public, empowering the providers while the regime of corporate accountability atomizes the public and empowers sectional interests.

Several remarks on the search for an alternative model

Democracy and transparency are not the basis of, but rather depend upon, trust, which itself grows out the social capital of active, duties-oriented citizenship

It is the democratic institutions of the public sphere that constitute the conditions of trust and mutual accountability

Remarks on the success of public-private partnerships: key principles = transparency // responsibility // responsiveness Public-private partnership does not mean outsourcing the accountability for that service

F. Towards democratic accountability in the public sphere

Proposal for a democratic model for accountability.

The goods of effectiveness need to be subordinated to the internal goods of a service and that can only be clarified through deliberation in the public sphere. The deep purpose of the public sphere is to constitute the social and political preconditions that make society possible. Public services and institutions must reach shared understanding about what are their internal goods.

Accountability will ensue in a narrative of the communicative action, the giving and taking of reasons, at the centre of the public sphere. This would constitute in the following practices:

Membership and the politics of presence: the voice of the marginalized is brought into the centre

Each has a right to speak and have their say Opposition and challenge can only be resolved through a multi-sided

conversation. There is no transcendental standard from which to judge the conversation

Judgement and the collective rule

Professionalization and quality management: struggles, boundaries and bridges between two approaches

Egetenmeyer, R., & Käpplinger, B. (2011). Professionalisation and quality management: struggles, boundaries and bridges between two approaches. European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults, 2(1), 21–35.

A. Introduction

Two different logics in adult education:

Logic of professionalisation: development of people and specific groups of people working in a field of action

Quality management: development of an organisation and its processes

💣 The quality management approach is dominating the professionalisation approach

B. Professionalisation in adult education

1) Professionalisation as a process towards developing a professionA profession describes a professionally organised group and is featured by 7 characteristics. Professionalisation then means to develop a joint framework of education as a classical profession. However adult education cannot be understood as a typical profession, the logic of client orientation does not apply adult education.

2) Professionalisation as a process towards professionalismProfessionalism as situative competence or the ability to use broad, scientifically deepened and diverse abstract knowledge adequate in concrete situations.

Professionals in adult education are characterised by their interpretation patterns, which enable them to interpret situations from the perspective of adult education. Professionalism in this sense means understanding the situation in which professional acting is taking place.

C. Quality management in adult education

Quality is seen as something like a guiding concept with a universal meaning, however the term quality does not originate within the educational field but stems from the field of economics.

Quality management means that the product has the quality that was intended. For organisations, quality management is often a process of internal standardisation and external image-building. Both are crucial in favour of increased competition between organisation and a labour force with flexible working conditions.

Educational organisations started being treated as enterprises and learners started to be seen mainly as customers. Critics say learners are not consumers but prosumers who contribute actively in the emergence of education and formation.

💣 quality management is too rigorous, self-referentiality, homogeneity, hierarchism, bureaucratism

💣 quality is originally a neutral term which has to be defined but nowadays quality is often a simple synonym for the good without discussing what is good or bad

D. Differences between professionalisation and quality management

1) Professionalisation versus quality managementThe distinction between the logic of professionalisation and the logic of quality management → see table in slides

The approaches of professionalisation and quality management are far from identical and cannot easily be integrated. Professionalisation is understood as an ongoing process of a person in social interaction. Quality based on quality management concepts is developed through documentation, assessment, objective standards, evaluation and quality assessors.

2) A critical approach towards conflating the organisational and the professional perspectives

The term professional is used for improving organisational aspects in adult education, while the term quality management is used for improving professionalism in adult education.

The assumption is that quality assurance and quality management would improve the professionalisation of adult educators. The organisation is the reference point for professionalisation of adult education.

Several critiques about this assumption are presented.

E. Acknowledging boundaries and building bridges

It is important to keep the differences between professionalisation and quality management in mind but also to see the two different tasks of in their contribution

to an improvement of adult education. We have to look for bridges and benefits by combining both approaches.

It is necessary to think in which situations professional autonomy is needed and in which situations standardised processes lead to an improvement.

Issue 4: Governing education through numbers and examples

Slides

A. Ontology of the present: fragments

Benchmarks and PISA results: comparative information Best practices Big data

Policy making was always based on evidence but what counted as evidence?

B. Governing configurations: what counts as evidence?

1) Early modern stateStatistics as the state science: representation of the strength of the state. Not a central agency that collects knowledge and applies this to a policy domain but a collection of knowledge that creates a policy domain and access to that knowledge creates power.

🖼 Birth rates could be framed as a policy issue

2) Liberal stateRational and economic form of governing: evidence as characteristics of ‘what’ is being governed (the people) and as the evidence of the effectiveness and efficiency of the state.

Secure natural freedom and ensure collective security

Knowledge (experts) make individual freedom possible (normalisation, disciplining, correction) and protects security (knowledge about the population in view of regulation).

3) Welfare/social stateGoverning in the name of ‘the social’: social(ised) freedom and social(ised) security

We need information about how the state is doing to change something. Everything that helps us realise our plan and leads to social security is counted as social security.

Research gives us soacial and professional evidence. Social evidence can be used to set the norms in government (normativity). Professional evidence is used for teacher training. By the normativity in the government and teacher training, education is reformed.

4) Neo-liberal/advanced liberal stateGovernment becomes facilitating, controlling and competitive. As a consequence, there is a shift from social to learning and from social norms to employable competences. Could this mean that normality became performance and examples of performance? We no longer want evidence about how something is but about what works.

Governing through (providing) evidence

Social reform in the social state tries to bring reality in alignment with norms and ideas. The state governs the future through regulating the present and disciplining what deviates from the norm in order to achieve what was planned for.

In the neoliberal state, increasing performance is the immanent norm. The state should learn from good performances (examples about what works better). It is about what exists and is happening now and how that can be improved and not about how we can change what exists now in what we have planned for the future. Governing happens through monitoring the present and designing the future.

Actual performance is used to design the future, based on examples of better performance. This happens by permanently monitoring performance.

🖼 If someone else is doing better in an area, you should study what he is doing to innovate yourself.

Governing though responsabilisation

Creation of a space of equivalence

By comparing schools, you assume that they can be compared.

Techniques of contextualization/personalization:

The context becomes extremely important in comparisons. It is used as something that can be changed

🖼 In Flanders teacher education was studied because this was different from Finland where students perform better.

Distribution of locus of control and responsibility

Statistic creates space for comparison. In statistical procedures, some factors are controlled for. This is not neutral, by controlling for a factor you say that this is something that cannot be accounted for. By not controlling for something you state that this is someone’s responsibility.

🖼 MyPISA: schools can compare their PISA-results with other similar schools across the world

In the neoliberal state, evidence is informed by research and informs the government, the schools and the institutes for teacher training. There is a clear shift from governing the future through regulating the present and discipling the

possible in the social state to governing the possible through monitoring the present and designing the future.

C. Case: learning analytics and algorithmic governing

1) From (institutional) ‘education’ to (personalised) ‘learning’The learning process starts from the learner, not from the educational system or the institutions.

2) New inter-mediating organisationsThink-tanks, media labs, … Blurring distinctions between the state, civil society and commerce. We get a combination of politics, science, data and tools

3) New ‘sociality’, new forms of governingInteractions become data-based and monitored or calculated. Decision-making is delegated to algorithmic forms of governing.

4) Data-based personalised pedagogiesLearning analytics allow to make learning environments more personal.

🖼 Toledo: follow student actions, make profiles and link these to student achievement to see what are the profiles that get high achievement

D. Towards a new form of power?

How are we being governed? What kind of power is used today to govern?

1) From ‘modernisation’ to ‘globalisation’Historical // institutional Momentary // ecological

Past – present – futureThere is a norm in the future, we have to break with the past to reach it

Here and now / instantHow are we doing now and how can we improve that?

Nature – culture Resources – production

Change concept: progress, reformChange happens over time

Change concept: innovationHow can we use resources in a different way to increase performance?

Emancipation Social mobility

EmpowermentLearning mobility, what kind of potential is there available right now

Employment Employability

Education as bridge between past and future

Learning as investment in human capital

Virtues: conservative vs. progressive Virtues: pro-active vs. re-active

Conservative: maintain the present to stay good for the futureProgressive: break with the past in order to design the future

Pro-active: looking forward and strive for potential innovationsRe-active: wait on performance measures to see in what area you should innovate

Issue of tradition Issue of context

Instrumentation: watch / clock, CVExplaining where you came from

Instrumentation: GPS, portfolioWhat you have at the moment

2) Towards a new diagram/paradigm of power

Panopticon: norm as instrument, discipline as mode of subjection and inspection as technique. You must always perform to the norm because inspection can happen anytime. If you deviate from the norm, you get disciplined.

Synoptic diagram: rules as instruments, submissions as mode of subjection and example setting as technique. If someone does not obey to the rules you put gather an audience to watch his punishment so that people see what happens. → international comparisons follow the same mechanism

360° feedback diagram: performance or profile as instrument, monitoring as mode of subjection and feedback as technique. A person gets asked to evaluate himself, the environment (boss, customers, co-workers, etc.) are asked to do the same. The self-evaluation is compared to the evaluation by the environment. If there is a mismatch, something has to be done.

Feedback is the power mechanism of our time. We have an obsession with how we are being seen (~ Instagram, Facebook). We constantly try to find feedback for how we are doing (likes) and develop a need for permanent monitoring and comparison. Without the security of feedback there

is a fear to act, we are lost and insecure without feedback. It is becoming the basis for acting and policy.

There is a shift from wanting to be normal and wanting to be the norm to wanting to be recognized and be treated as the Other.

The other: I am someone special, I need a personal approach

E. Concluding thoughts: laboratory life

Modernists became globalists: someone who is no longer struggling with tradition but with context, no longer concerned with reform and planning but with innovation and learning and hence, someone who is nod in need of a fixed point of orientation but who is lost without permanent positioning systems.

There exist so much data about everything. Evidence-based policy becomes policy making based on what works. This transforms the whole education or learning system in one big laboratory. We compare everyone and everything to see what is best.

🖼 PISA: every country has differences in their education system, what country performs the best?

This has as a consequence that everything has to be monitored but also that we can manipulate variables. Policy making in the strict sense no longer exists, it is about manipulating the variables and test what happens with your output.

🖼 Students take too long to finish their studies, let’s manipulate the system by implementing the 30%-rule and check if student behaviour changes.

Governing education without reform: the power of the example

Simons, M. (2015). Governing education without reform: The power of the example. Discourse: Studies in Cultural Politics of Education, 36(5), 712–731.

This article attempts to examining in detail how soft evidence, among other elements, constitutes the current governing configuration. This configuration includes several mechanisms that appear as evident but have far-reaching consequences.

A. Introduction

The basic message in nowadays policy making seems to be that educational reform should be evidence-based or evidence-driven. In this article, the focus lies on the particular issue of the role of soft evidence in governing education. Soft evidence is qualitative evidence such as examples of good practice, narrative accounts, etc.

B. What counts as evidence today? The case of Belgium (Flanders)

As a point of departure, two examples of education policy are given.

The current policy discourse questions the assumption that central government and centralized policy are to be considered as the source and driving force of reform in education. They want to respect the freedom of the member state and consider their responsibility.

Education quality is put in terms of output or performance levels. This can easily be seen as part of New Public Management → governing by numbers, steering by evaluation

C. The governing configuration: what counts as evidence for whom?

The shift from a governing configuration that puts policy reform central stage to a configuration where governing circles around learning for innovation.

Governing configuration = a more or less stable and strategic assemblage of practices, discourses and relationships that creates an arrangement to govern people, education, and society as a whole → methodological tool for explorative description

3 steps:

1. Further description of the kind of knowledge that counts as evidence

Knowledge has to indicate what works.

🖼 Good practices, testing grounds

The main objective is to look for concrete initiatives and projects that have proved to be working. Governing though evidence is not only about governing by numbers but also about governing by examples.

2. Exploration of the modification in the shape and of and relationship between the figure of educational practice, policy-making, educational research and promoted professionalism

Description of these relationships in the welfare state: what counted as evidence is either knowledge with professional relevance that is mobilized in teacher training or knowledge with policy relevance as part of central reform and planning.

→ evidence on what is the case

Nowadays, there is a clear focus on local reform and innovation initiated by local actors. The field of practice is framed as a field of learning in view of optimal performance and optimal learning. What works is translated into learning gains or school and teacher effectiveness.

What counts as evidence is knowledge of competencies that allow for innovation or increased performance through modes of productive learning.

3. Outline of the central problematic that takes shape in today’s mode of governing

Particular problematic of governing: not in terms of planning or training but in terms of responsibilisation. Two complementary strategies are distinguished: governing through what works and governing through responsibilisation.

D. Opening up the black box

Governing through what works assumes that in evidence should speak for itself and governing through responsibilisation implies actors com to see themselves as the locus of responsibility for innovation.

1) Governing through what worksOperations and mechanisms that make the evidence speak for itself

We no longer work towards an ideal or norm but we take the norms embedded in the current state of affairs.

The comparison is made with liberalism with the difference that today we no longer belief society to be a natural state. We need enabling policies to keep on functioning.

Knowledge becomes evidence as far as it offers an indication of the quality of constructions and operations. We have to know if the policies are doing their job, if they work and not if society reaches its natural state.

Knowledge is always evaluative. Learning no more bridges the gap between the real and the normative but between the real and the possible. The learning process needs an indication of the available potential. This can be done by comparison to the past or to someone else.

Examples are already part of the reality, they are not an ideal but they are existing. We thus need permanent monitoring in view of permanent positioning ourselves in relation to others and permanent learning.

2) Governing through responsibilisationConstitute actors for whom the evidence actually is considered an incentive for self-improvement.

Actors should come to believe that there is no reference anymore to something outside themselves sand beyond their control that explains their performance. The strategy used contains four mechanisms:

Establishment of spaces of equivalence

Through the inscriptions of numbers and narratives, things are made equivalent and thus comparable.

Use of techniques of contextualization and personalization

Taking the context into account to explain differences in performance. To define what is possible and what not given the circumstances.

🖼 MyPISA

Replacement of the logic of historical orientation by the logic of global positioning. Context refers then to the environmental factors that influence actual performances and that raise the problematic of how to govern the possible.

Distribution of responsibility and control

The unit of analysis and the level of aggregation of performance are not neutral, the impose a locus of control and responsibility for innovation.

🖼 The added value of a school shows what is possible for the school to increase and what is outside its control.

Consequences:

Focus lies mainly on what has an effect at the performance level

Leads to new classifications and labels: effective / ineffective schools, excellent teachers, etc.

Emergence of a particular way of exercising power

Welfare state: power though regulation and disciplinary power (= panopticon)

Governing the future by regulating the present and discipling the possible

Today: performance evidence and responsibilisation are central. Focus is on permanent control and monitoring.

Governing the possible by monitoring the present and designing the future.

→ synopticon

E. Concluding thoughts: the world as an educational laboratory

Concerns about the manipulative in current modes of governing that rely on monitoring and exemplification

The message seems to be that the future is now and it is all in our hands, examples show possible futures that the present holds for us. We are no longer modernists but globalists. These two positions are compared.

The society becomes a laboratory that needs constant monitoring and where variables can be manipulated.

Governing software: networks, databases and algorithmic power in the digital governance of public education

Williamson, B. (2015). Governing software: networks, databases and algorithmic power in the digital governance of public education. Learning, Media and Technology, 40(1), 83–105.

Researchers are urged to examine how software changes what they study and how they study it. This article seeks to address how digital technologies have become interwoven with the new governance of educational institutions with a focus on network-based communications and database-driven analytics software.

A. Software studies

What is considered software? Software is constructed by its code and algorithms. This code has a governing power because it can make things happen. Software code is not inert, it is fundamentally performative.

Software is studied from a sociotechnical perspective as something that is both inseparable from its social, cultural, political and economic process of production and its socially, culturally, politically and economically productive effects. Software materializes particular ways of perceiving the world, as modelled and represented in the code that instructs is. the system is an expression of how the world can be captured

We are increasingly subjects of governing software, code and data processing algorithms are everywhere in daily life.

Intermediary organisations are preoccupated with social media software as a platform for new forms of socially networked learning and with database software through which learners are to be analysed by data processing algorithms.

B. Intermediaries

The intermediary organisations are identified and their connections and relationships are traced.

Policy text and discourse analyses happens from a Foucauldian discourse analysis perspective. It is argued that software has been justified and naturalized discursively as a seemingly common sense solution to a whole range of educational problems.

The intermediaries are organizations that contribute to networks of governmental, civil society and business actors and interests and motivate educational change.

The analysis traces how ideas and discourses related to software are now being produced and circulated by these intermediary actors in their imagining of digital governance in public education.

C. Software in digital governance

Overall vision of digital governance promoted by intermediary organizations across public services

D. Social networks

How a series of initiatives focused on network-based learning – utilizing various social media and social network sites ad pedagogic platforms- have been promoted as new ways of acting on learners capacities

E. Database pedagogies

How intermediary organizations have begun to promote the power of database-driven processes of big data collection, analysis and visualization in ‘knowing’ learners.

F. Conclusion

The consequences of these developments for the governing and shaping of learner subjectives.

Issue 5: Governing education through privatization

Slides

A. Ontology of the present: fragments

Private companies set up education initiatives with different purposes.

→ education = business

B. Backgrounds & terminology

If we want to understand educational policy, we should also look at private actors and commercialisation because they also play a role in how education is being governed.

Decentralisation: space for new actors Financial crisis: new forms of private-public partnerships

Privatisation and commercialisation are not natural processes. It is policy allowing the private market to intervene in education. Private for-profit organisations play an increasing role in education and how it is being governed. They do this out of self-interest, get people used to their product.

C. Different forms of privatisation

1) Privatisation in public educationUse techniques from the private sector in education

🖼 Organisation of quasi-markets, performance management, accountability and performance-related pay, modes of New Public Management

2) Privatisation of public educationPrivate for-profit companies play a role in providing education. Public education for private profit.

🖼 Contracting out services, private education, …

D. Impact of privatisation

There are different forms of privatisation but we can no longer exclude them because they are private. They are part of governing and they are introducing commercial logics.

Consequences:

Tension quasi-markets and equal opportunities: the market from itself has no interest in equal opportunities

New roles/identities (from head teacher to managers, teacher to technician, student to input/output number/indicator)

Linkages and tensions between individual development (professionalisation) and growth of organization (quality assurance)

Differentiation among teachers (due to competition, contracts…) New moral environment: culture of self-interest, commercial calculus, … Education: from public good to private commodity Creation of new markets, new needs…insecurity and risk…

Hidden privatisation in educationBall, S. J., & Youdell, D. (2008). Hidden privatisation in education. Brussels: Education International.

A. Executive summary

Increasingly, forms of privatisation are explicitly pursued as effective solutions to the perceived inadequacies of public service education. These policies are often not articulated in terms of privatisation but draw on techniques and values from the private sector or introduce private sector participation or have the effect of making public education more like a business.

Two key types:

Privatisation in public education (endogenous privatisation): importing of ideas, techniques and practices from the private sector in order to make the public sector more like businesses.

Privatisation of public education (exogenous privatisation): opening up of public education services to private sector participation on a for-profit basis

Several impacts of this privatisation are mentioned.

Privatisation is a policy tool, it is part of an ensemble of innovations. It is not simply education and education services that are subject to forms of privatisation. Education policy itself is being privatised.

B. Introduction

1) Overview2) Background

Roots of privatisation in neoliberalism and historical overview.

3) SignificancePrivatisation tendencies are at the centre of the shift from education being seen as a public good that serves the whole community to education being seen as a

private good that serves the interest of the educated individual. Through the privatisation mechanisms, educations is rendered into the form of a commodity. Its worth as a collective public good, something from which we all benefit, is systematically ignored.

4) Scope of the report

C. Forms of privatisation in and of public education

1) Schools being business-like or like-businesses: endogenous privatisation

Quasi-markets The manager and New Public Management – making the public sector more

business like Performance management, accountability, and performance related pay

2) Bringing the private sector into public schools: exogenous privatisation

Public education for private profit Private sectors supply of education: contracting out services Private sector supply of education: contracting out schools Public-private partnerships International capital in public education Commercialisation or cola-isation

D. Global patterns of privatisation

Comparison of privatisation tendencies in a highly industrialised nation and developing nations.

Global privatisation: intentional escalation and unintentional drift

E. The impacts of privatisation

The impact of different strategies of privatisation is analysed by presenting research on the effects on achievement, equality, etc.

The impact of quasi-markets The impact of new public management and performance management Raising student achievement Privatising educational identities Privatisation and the transformation of identities

o Headteacher to managero Teacher to techniciano Student to output asset or liability

Privatisation and educational inequalities Transforming labour relations and teachers’ work

Privatisation as new moral environment Transformation of education from a public good to a private commodity

F. Privatising policy

Networks of social relations are established between politicians, civil servants and business. Within these networks, the distinction between advice, support and lobbying for work are sometimes hard to see.

Policy and reform ideas and school improvements solutions are being sold at the national, local and institutional level by private sector education businesses and management consultancy companies.

G. ConclusionsH. Recommendations

Conclusions

ReminderThe previous lectures, the teacher did not try to pass his knowledge to invest in silent learners. Instead he wanted to share his re-readings as attempt to turn how we are governed and governing ourselves in education into a matter of public concern again. He tried opening up the black box of neoliberalism to make it public again so that is not taken for granted anymore.

Short summaryCritical education policy studies are about re-reading how issues are being framed and problematized and considering theoretical and methodological challenges. It tries to turn what is self-evident or perceived as facts or evidence into a matter of public concern.

The guiding questions and focus are:

How are we being governed and how are we governing ourselves? Focus on what ‘what we do’ does.

Classic neoliberalism → welfare state → neoliberalism → progressive neoliberalism

💣 is progressive neoliberalism really introducing the social again or is it a further economisation of the social?

Manifestations of neo-liberal modes of (self-)governing (= what else is in the black box of neoliberalism?)

Governing through learning/qualification: from social apparatus to learning apparatus. “I want to invest in myself/produce competences, I want my competences to be recognized/qualified.”

Governing through performance, corporate, contract or consumer accountability, governing through professionalisation, governing through quality assurance and standardisation. “I want to perform, create win-win, rights/duties, have satisfied consumers”

Governing through numbers and examples: on ‘what works’, governing through feedback. “I want to have feedback, I want to be recognized”

Governing through privatisation in and of education. “I want to own, compete, sell and promote”

To move beyond (progressive) neo-liberalism?There are a lot of challenges that follow from neoliberalism but going back to the welfare state is not possible.

Maybe P2P movement and focus on the commons?

👤 Michel Bauwens: from classic capitalism to cognitive capitalism to post-capitalism → goes beyond the market and the state

Three coordination mechanisms:

State: centralised planning Market: allocation based on scarcity, offer and demand Civil society: people association, doing things together not as a market

mechanism but based on peer production processes ❤ Michel Bauwens🖼 associations, P2P

Our economy is based on private labour: corporations sell our labour, our work, our creations, our added value. The state allows and even facilitates this system. The civil society is perceived as a rest category because it produces no added value and is thus economically irrelevant.

Shift of material capitalism to cognitive capitalism: what is adding value today is not materials or natural resources but ideas, knowledge, inventions, … The knowledge economy is extensively based on peer production.

🖼 Facebook: we create this all together, without users there would be no Facebook. This is a netarchical corporate platform: the users create the added value without being paid for it. We are all slaves of Zuckerberg.

Local initiatives: groups of people buying / providing things together. The product becomes common, this means not private our publicly owned.

🖼 Wikipedia (= life): everyone can use it and benefit from it no one really owns it

It is increasingly recognized that civil society is also a public sector. This is mostly for free, people are sharing initiatives and this also produces some added

value. People are creating commons, things that are not owned privately or by the state.

We cannot be naïve, we need some sort of economy and private companies but is it fair to let these companies use our commons without giving something in return? The people should be treated as shareholders instead of slaves. What about that Zuckerberg?

If we recognize this, we need the state to take up the role of the partner state. The state that supports the commons.

How to govern education?

💣 neoliberalism: market coordination → competition, private ownership, freedom, learning as investment, etc.

💣 welfare liberalism: state coordination → state regulation, public ownership, equality, learning as socialisation, etc.

💡 education as a common? Education as a peer-to-peer mechanism where things are constructed together. The state then becomes a partner state and private companies can use it ethically. This means that they can use the common as long as they also contribute to it.