Seeing Through Transparency: Controversy as Collective Learning

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

Abstract

Introduction

Contemporary education policy has witnessed the development of a variety of devices of transparency, including standardization, measurement, and comparison. Transparency encourages the articulation of policy problems in clear, technical terms for which solutions can be specific and evaluations definitive. “Objective” and technical measurements displace “subjective” practices of assessment and demand standardized and sophisticated statistical expertise, limiting the development of necessary psychometrics and analysis to small groups of specialists, processes, and institutions. However, transparency also encourages a public circulation of this “data”. With these data, “informed publics” are able to challenge the technical narratives of transparency. Thus what is framed as a technical issue unravels into a socio-technical controversy, allowing for the participation of a various groups in “hybrid forums.”

Objectives

We examine two linked performances of transparency in New York City and in Australia as they unfold into socio-technical controversies to show that this separation of ‘science’ and ‘politics’ is difficult to maintain and is also unproductive. We interrogate how “like-school comparisons” as transparency devices take the form of collective and public experiments. By showing how technical narratives come undone in two sites, we point to ways in which citizens, policymakers and experts can work together in hybrid forums to engage in ways to seek better solutions to real and consequential problems.

Theoretical Framework

We draw upon the conceptual resources of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and its material-semiotic cousin, actor-network theory (ANT). STS interests itself with the analysis of policy and the processes of social change and is concerned with examining the complexities of knowledge. ANT retains these interests and focuses on the material and discursive practices by which things may “assemble” or fail to do so. Following these perspectives, we recognize like-school comparisons as a technical device whereby the complexity of the classrooms and schooling is reallocated and redistributed through sophisticated statistical operations.

Methodology & Data Sources

This piece draws upon two complementary studies, one conducted in New York City by the first author, and the other in Australia by the second author. These studies share theoretical and analytical framings. The NYC piece emerges from an ethnographic study conducted by the first author. The Australian component of the study was conducted by the second author as part of a larger doctoral study that examined assemblages of evidence-based policy at international and national levels between 2008 and 2010.

Results and Scientific Significance

We reveal how socio-technical controversies afford a dialogical space where efforts are made not just to defend or oppose programs, but to continually seek ways to build collaborations. We argue for understanding policy processes as one of continuous and collective learning and constructing. From this perspective, policymakers are no longer situated as ineffective if they modify their stance; rather they are viewed as good listeners and learners. The public and the opposition need not dispute for the sake of conflict, but can engage in dialogue. Paradoxically, embracing controversy as a political opportunity creates spaces for genuine policy engagement that can lead to cooperation rather than conflict.

Authors

• Jill P. Koyama, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Radhika Gorur, Victoria University - Victoria Institute for Education Diversity and Lifelong Learning