Understanding Knowledge Mobilization in the Context of Global Education Policy: A Bibliometric and Discursive Analysis of World Bank Publications

• In Event: The International Politics of Knowledge Mobilization: The Intersection of Funding Agencies, International Organizations, Epistemic Communities, and Policy Entrepreneurs

Abstract

This study examines the knowledge mobilization work of the single largest financier to education programs worldwide: the World Bank (OECD, 2015). Although the World Bank—as a “Knowledge Bank” (Broad, 2007)—is the leading producer of international development knowledge, it is not well understood how the Bank mobilizes development knowledge, nor how this institution attempts to ensure that this knowledge impacts policy and practice. In order to clarify these issues, one must examine the World Bank not only as a generator of knowledge but also (a) as a key mediator between research-producing contexts and research-using contexts and (b) as a producer of discourse, discourse which helps to create favorable conditions for the continued mobilization of the Bank’s development knowledge, knowledge which is of course embedded with a particular worldview with particular ideological assumptions. The present paper unpacks these issues by presenting findings from a study on knowledge mobilization in relation to one of the most contentious policy prescriptions the Bank has supported: private sector engagement in education (Mundy and Menashy, 2014).

While focusing specifically on the issue of private sector engagement in education, this study uses both bibliometric and discursive analyses so as to (a) trace the citations in selected key World Bank publications on education in order to clarify the origins of the evidence used; (b) map the spread of this research through its online uptake by other organizations; and (c) analyze the disciplinary and ideological underpinnings of the knowledge exhibited in these publications. In so doing, this study provides baseline data about the knowledge mobilization efforts of the World Bank around private sector engagement in education and contributes to the broader discussion in the literature on who is included in (and excluded from) the conduct and mobilization of research on education. This study, moreover, offers insights into the disciplinary grounding and ideological foundations of the knowledge produced and disseminated by the Bank. We conclude that the World Bank’s knowledge on private sector engagement in education has been overwhelmingly produced in the Global North; suffers from a disproportionate degree of self-citation; and is predominantly grounded in market-based discourse derived from the discipline of economics.

Despite the significance of the World Bank’s influence in international development education, and despite its own assertion that it is a “Knowledge Bank,” very little research has probed the ways that this institution creates, selects and extends research and development knowledge. This is a key gap in the literature since the World Bank is often a mediator—or conduit—that brings a very narrow and ideologically tinted kind of knowledge to bear on the agenda-setting conversations and the policy-related work in which it is involved. Put differently, given that the World Bank often occupies a position of influence vis-à-vis ministries of education and ministries of finance in the setting of national educational policies throughout the Global South, it is critical to interrogate the knowledge mobilization efforts of this multilateral institution in order to better understand in what ways its influence is wielded and the potential implications of this influence.

Authors

• Francine Menashy, University of Massachusetts - Boston

• Robyn Read, OISE/University of Toronto