Politics of Quality in Education Jaakko Kauko, Risto Rinne, Tuomas Takala / Jaakko Kauko, Risto Rinne, Tuomas Takala
2018, 20180511, 2018-05-11
eBook
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The question of quality has become one of the most important framing factors in education and has been of growing interest to international organisations and national policymakers for decades. ...Politics of Quality in Education focuses on Brazil, China, and Russia, part of the so-called emerging nations’ BRICS block, and draws on a four-year project to develop a new theoretical and methodological approach. The book builds a comparative, sociohistorical, and transnational understanding of political relations in education, with a particular focus on the policies and practices of quality assurance and evaluation (QAE). Tracking QAE processes from international organisations to individual schools, contributors analyse how QAE changes the dynamics in the roles of state, expertise, and governance. The book demonstrates how national and sub-national actors play a central role in the adaptation, modification, or rejection of transnational policies. Politics of Quality in Education will be of great interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduate students engaged in the study of comparative and international education, as well as educational policy and politics. It should also be essential reading for practitioners and policymakers.
The question of quality has become one of the most important framing factors in education and has been of growing interest to international organisations and national policymakers for decades. ...Politics of Quality in Education focuses on Brazil, China, and Russia, part of the so-called emerging nations’ BRICS block, and draws on a four-year project to develop a new theoretical and methodological approach. The book builds a comparative, sociohistorical, and transnational understanding of political relations in education, with a particular focus on the policies and practices of quality assurance and evaluation (QAE). Tracking QAE processes from international organisations to individual schools, contributors analyse how QAE changes the dynamics in the roles of state, expertise, and governance. The book demonstrates how national and sub-national actors play a central role in the adaptation, modification, or rejection of transnational policies. Politics of Quality in Education will be of great interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduate students engaged in the study of comparative and international education, as well as educational policy and politics. It should also be essential reading for practitioners and policymakers.
The question of quality has become one of the most important framing factors in education and has been of growing interest to international organisations and national policymakers for decades. ..."Politics of Quality in Education" focuses on Brazil, China, and Russia, part of the so-called emerging nations' BRICS block, and draws on a four-year project to develop a new theoretical and methodological approach. The book builds a comparative, sociohistorical, and transnational understanding of political relations in education, with a particular focus on the policies and practices of Quality Assurance and Evaluation (QAE). Tracking QAE processes from international organisations to individual schools, contributors analyse how QAE changes the dynamics in the roles of state, expertise, and governance. The book demonstrates how national and sub-national actors play a central role in the adaptation, modification or rejection of transnational policies. "Politics of Quality in Education" will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students engaged in the study of comparative and international education, as well as educational policy and politics. It should also be essential reading for practitioners and policymakers. Contents include: (1) Comparing politics of quality in education (Jaakko Kauko, Tuomas Takala, and Risto Rinne); (2) Layers of reflectivity in comparative research (Jaakko Kauko, Vera Gorodski Centeno, Nelli Piattoeva, Helena Candido, Galina Gurova, Anna Medvedeva, Iris Santos, Olli Suominen, and Zhou Xingguo); (3) Historical paths to shared interest in quality assurance and evaluation (Olli Suominen, Vera Gorodski Centeno, Galina Gurova, Johanna Kallo, and Zhou Xingguo); (4) Established and emerging actors in the national political arenas (Jaakko Kauko, Olli Suominen, Vera Gorodski Centeno, Nelli Piattoeva, and Tuomas Takala); (5) Changing expertise and the state (Risto Rinne, Zhou Xingguo, Jaakko Kauko, Romuald Normand, Anna Medvedeva, and Iris Santos); (6) Governance by data circulation? The production, availability, and use of national large-scale assessment data (Nelli Piattoeva, Vera Gorodski Centeno, Olli Suominen, and Risto Rinne); (7) Effects of quality assurance and evaluation on schools' room for action (Galina Gurova, Helena Candido, and Zhou Xingguo); (8) Alternative views of the future of quality assurance and evaluation (Johanna Kallo, Tuomas Takala, Vera Gorodski Centeno, and Olli Suominen); and (9) Conclusion (Jaakko Kauko, Risto Rinne, and Tuomas Takala).
We start the book with a reiteration of the idea that quality has become one of the most important framing factors in education policies and practices. The introductory chapter coins the concept of ...quality assurance and evaluation (QAE), its differing and contested interpretations, and its seemingly uniform transnational agenda. The chapter discusses how QAE is linked to the questions of politics and power as well as how it is used as a governance tool. The chapter also describes the project’s ontological premises, which are contingency and complexity theory. These ontological premises are then discussed in the light of contemporary comparative education and political science theories. The book’s analytical framework, called Comparative Analytics of Dynamics in Education Politics (CADEP), is introduced. The CADEP framework focuses the analysis on the dimensions of political situations, political possibilities, and the use of political space. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the book’s aim, which is to analyse how QAE as a transnational flow and governance tool changes the role of state, expertise, governance, and the room for action which exists for politicians, teachers, and other actors in varying contexts.
Conclusion Kauko, Jaakko; Rinne, Risto; Takala, Tuomas
Politics of Quality in Education,
2018
Book Chapter
The concluding chapter draws together our research’s main findings and reflects on their theoretical significance. It concludes that the politics of quality in Brazil, China, and Russia can be ...described with the help of three dynamics. Self-reinforcing and shared goal-setting reflects how QAE rather than quality has become the goal of education. Authorising but diverted governance describes how QAE enables a parallel trend of authorising more governance methods but at the same time creates increasingly complex systems. Destabilising and reorganising role-setting indicates how the mechanisms of QAE create new actors for the field, which at the same time bring instability to the political system because of the QAE data’s capacity to provoke change. The chapter concludes that ideas of the state’s diminishing role in the face of globalisation and theories about the directive nature of governance at a distance are not fully supported by a study of practice in Brazil, China, and Russia.
Abstract
In the field of comparative education there is a vast and growing amount of research on how education policy agendas are formed at the transnational level, and how these may influence ...policymaking in individual countries. Particularly the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) play an important role in the dissemination of education policies. This article seeked to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how the two organizations have formulated their policy advice concerning quality assurance and evaluation of school education toward the intended beneficiaries of such advice, either in standardized form or taking into account local contexts. The case countries were Brazil, China, and Russia (BCR), which in terms of their political power and economic resources differ from the typical World Bank client countries, but at the same time are not OECD members. Our data consisted of World Bank and OECD publications from the three BCR countries published during two decades from the mid-1990s onward. The document analysis was complemented by some factual information gained through interviews of relevant actors. In the analyzed material prescriptions given in the tone of “international best practice” were predominant. This position saw the quality of education as a concept that has a globally applicable definition. In addition, the advice directed at Russia and China has in an ambivalent manner acknowledged the sociocultural context of the concept of quality in the national pedagogical tradition.
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