Mobilization through (mis)representation: Juxtaposing the promotion, problems, and personification of impact evaluations

• In Event: Knowledge mobilization practices and problems from the global to the local level

Proposal

Purpose
In 1999, a charter school model was introduced in Bogotá, Colombia, known as Concession Schools. The city built and financed new and well-resourced schools to be managed by private organizations, though the schools were open to all students who met requirements for proximity and poverty. This model has since gained considerable attention within and beyond Latin America in key publications and conferences for being an innovative and successful way to implement public-private partnerships (PPPs) in education in order to improve access, test scores, and student dropout rates. Yet previous studies have not critically evaluated the research foundation on which its fame is based. Nor have previous studies examined how that research has been mobilized and leveraged in the international politics of education, as this paper does.

Perspective
This study situates its critical analysis within the political economy of knowledge production and mobilization in global education governance. This means examining not only the methodological limitations of the underlying studies but also the organizational incentives that affect knowledge production and the ways these studies, once produced, are circulated within the field of global education policy (Author, 2018). Figure 1 visually represents this approach.

Methods and Data
This paper draws on previous research conducted by the author that has entailed a critical review of the studies on this program (Author, 2014), a case study of the operation of this program in practice (Author et al., 2017; Author & X, forthcoming), and a bibliographic ethnography of how this program’s knowledge base has been mobilized through its citation by others (Author et al., 2017).

Results, Conclusions, and Significance
First, the findings show the extent to which this program has been cited by others as evidence of how PPPs can be successful in education. Second, and crucially, the findings demonstrate that the impact evaluations of this program do not show what they claim to show (see Table 1). Third, despite this contradiction, the paper argues that the combination of respected methods (in the form of impact evaluations) and the reporting of positive results (even when erroneous) lend credibility to researchers themselves, who then are able to leverage that knowledge as they “embody” it in organizational settings that are central to the global education policy field (Thomas, 2018), such as think tanks and international development banks, who then continue to repackage the results of their researchers as they produce publications aimed at influencing the global education reform agenda. The significance of this paper stems from the example it sets regarding how to work on multiple KMb fronts simultaneously. That is, the paper shows the necessity of going beyond (a) a critical review of a program’s knowledge base to also consider (b) the organizational biases that shade the presentation of findings and (c) the ways that such problematic knowledge is then circulated and strategically cited to advance policy positions which are, ironically, not supported by the underlying research. Clarifying the misuse of research is a first step to salvaging the role of research in this post-truth era.

Authors

• D. Brent Edwards Jr., University of Hawaii

• Stephanie M Hall, University of Maryland

• Jeana E. Morrison, Boston University