Interpreting References as a Technology of Authorization

• In Event: Policy knowledge networks and lesson drawing in an era of international comparison

Proposal

The presentation provides an overview of the interpretive frameworks and the overall research design that the five research teams (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) in the Nordic study. The Nordic study is partially funded by a FINNUT grant (Research and Innovation in the Education Sector; Norwegian Research Council; PI is Kirsten Sivesind, University of Oslo) as well as the five participating universities. Two faculty members and a doctoral student from Teachers College, Columbia University (Chanwoong Baek, Oren Pizmony-Levy, Gita Steiner-Khamsi) serve as resource persons and advisors for the five-country study. In addition, Gita Steiner-Khamsi is funded by an UTNAM mobility grant for North American scholars to participate in the study (2017).

In terms of the interpretive frameworks, the research design is informed by theory debates on the politics of expertise (Littoz-Monnet, 2017), the sociology of expertise (Collins and Evans, 2007; Eyal, 2013), policy borrowing (Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012), and more broadly, from a system-theoretical perspective on the nexus between the science and politics sub-systems (Andersen, 2000; Luhmann, 1997; Maasen & Weingart, 2005).

In terms of the selected methodology, the presentation explains why bibliometrical network analysis lends itself for understanding the structure, processes, and path-dependent patterns of authorization in the policy process. The research projects considers the references in a text (either embedded in footnotes, endnotes, or listed in the reference section at the end of a text) to be a technical device which produces evidence. In today’s era of evidence-based policy planning, evidence has become a policy tool that has experienced an inflationary usage. As stated by others and also confirmed in the first few studies of the research project, policy experts often refer to other studies, reports, or academic papers to substantiate, justify or authorize their own viewpoint. All five research teams use the same methodology and the identical sampling procedure to identify source documents for the bibliometrical analysis of “official policy knowledge,” defined as texts produced by the government or government-sponsored expert panels in preparation of a new policy. Each national research team compares the use of “evidence” across different school reform periods within their country as well as cross-nationally with the other four Nordic countries. All research teams are interesting to understand the network structure of “official policy knowledge,” that is, identify texts that these policy makers and experts consider as central or peripheral, respectively, in their own national policy debates, and they relate to each other. Several research teams are in particular interested in scrutinizing “authorization by numbers” and “authorization by comparison" and therefore will analyze when, how, and by whom references are made to OECD country analyses as well as PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS and other international large-scale assessments.

Author

• Gita Steiner-Khamsi, Teachers College, Columbia University