How (Not) to Talk About Education Today? From Evidence-Based to Concern-Oriented Policy

• In Event: Beyond Evidence: Toward a Politics of Concern

Abstract

Introduction and Objectives

In Flanders (Belgium), as in other countries, performance measures and standards increasingly function as a common ground to talk about education. These measures are not just collected in order to create an evidence base for policy preparation and decision making; rather, through instruments such as (public) rankings, feedback reports and competence profiles, the distribution of evidence becomes part of educational governance. Launching from the current usage of educational performance and standards, our contribution aims to: a) map the discursive-material assemblages that make these measures operative; b)examine how the idea that education and teaching are in need of increased performance and standardization is being installed; and c) confront the emerging evidence-based assemblage with a concern-oriented assemblage where education is turned into a public concern and in need of other and more varied spokespersons/diplomats.

Perspectives/Theoretical Framework

In this contribution, we draw on the sociotechnological perspective suggested by science and technology studies (STS) and actor-network theory (ANT), focusing on the analysis of emerging assemblages at the level of the interplay between specific actions and devices in their material/immaterial environment. This implies that we take ‘the making’ of local practices as point of departure rather than general contexts, grand narratives, or frameworks as a means of clarification of these practices. Practices are considered as a mutual intertwinement of both social (how humans constitute the practice) and material (how materialities and technicalities co-constitute this practice) dimensions.

Methodology & Data Sources

Data sources analyzed in this study consist of several recent practices of knowledge fabrication through policies in Flanders and their reception by different actors in the educational field (legislative period 2004-2009): 1) school feedback reports, 2) PISA-studies, 3) periodic assessment tests and 4) screenings and audits by the inspectorate. These concrete practices were analyzed by considering them as ‘device’ and hence by scrutinizing their concrete (working) characteristics; policy documents and reports about these practices were analyzed by conducting discourse analysis.

Results & Scientific Significance

This study clarifies how these practices operate as calculative and inscription devices that install an immanent normativity, that is, a factual description that is at once a value judgment (Berns, 2009). Consequently, a space of equivalence is opened for actors in the educational field to come to understand themselves in terms of performance and standards levels, and to embrace the “virtues” of comparison and self-improvement. This “calculative space of equivalence” correlates with the evidence-based politics of mobilization and responsibilization of all towards educational improvement. In contrast with this “highly modern” assemblage which allows performances and standards “to speak for themselves”, our analysis points at issues which gather people around education and turn them into a matter of public concern. Contrary to the figure of the detached expert/policymaker, we introduce the figure of the attached and concerned spokesperson/diplomat that constitutes a ‘public space of composition’, that is, a democratic composition of education as a shared part of our common world.

Berns, T. (2009). Gouverner sans gouverner : Une archéologie politique de la statistique Paris:Presses Universitaires de France.

Authors

• Mathias Decuypere, K.U. Leuven

• Maarten Simons, University of Leuven

• Carlijne Ceulemans, University of Antwerp