Center and periphery: Narrative differences and power relations among the state, schools, and the public in teacher qualification advancement policy

• In Event: Education Policy, Democracy and Reform (I)

Proposal

As post-positivism and post-modernism gradually entered the field of public policy in the late 20th century, narratives received increasing attention from researchers. In this context, the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), as an emerging research paradigm in policy process theory, is considered an important contribution to policy research as it attempts to apply objective methods (science) to subjective social reality (policy narrative). However, compared to the vigorous development of NPF, its use in the field of education is still quite limited. In this regard, Ertas and Mcknight (2019) pointed out that the introduction of NPF into the analysis of education policy is necessary as it can help expand the understanding of the education policymaking process.
On this basis, this study took a Chinese policy to upgrade teachers' academic qualifications as a typical case, and used "PhDs working as schoolteachers" as the keyword to search and collect online qualitative data covering 21 official media news, 24 school reports, 195 self-media news, and 1093 forum responses. By using content analysis and discourse analysis, the public discussions generated by the state, the public, and schools after the policy is released were analyzed, thus presenting the narrative differences and power relations of different actors, and complementing the literature on the use of NPF in the field of education policy.
This study found that in terms of narrative form, the roles of hero, villain, as well as victim, were present to varying degrees. In particular, in the national and school narratives, Ph.D. teachers were portrayed as a hero who could improve the quality of the teaching force and who had advantages in subject knowledge and comprehensive literacy. However, in the narratives by the public, Ph.D. teachers were depicted as favored outliers or unqualified candidates who lacked pedagogical competence in the teaching force, implying that the Ph.D. teachers were unlikely to be heroes in addressing teaching force quality issues. And, on top of that, they could even be the villain who inspired educational inequality. In this perspective, those students of low socio-economic level became potential victims.
In terms of narrative content, differences in the narrative strategies of the state, the schools, and the public can be clearly observed in this study. In particular, the state, as the primary policymaker, purposefully portrayed the inclusion of Ph.D. teachers as a result of its own prior policy efforts, such as overall salary enhancement. Meanwhile, for issues that were difficult to fully respond to, the state used a shift in focus, i.e., focusing on something similar but not entirely consistent. Beyond this, both the state and the schools were consciously weakening the conflict. In contrast, the public, as a marginalized actor, used an entirely different strategy—the devil-angel switch, by insisting on the negative consequences of employing Ph.D. teachers.
In addition to comparing the differences in the narratives of the different actors, this study also endeavored to explore the power relations between them, which has received less attention in previous NPF studies. In this study, the state and the schools could originally be seen as a loose policy alliance, that is, both aimed to promote teacher qualification enhancement. Then facing the accession of the public, the state began to change its attitude, mainly in terms of agenda-setting. Specifically, in the early stages of policy implementation, the narratives used by the state and schools were relatively simple, that is, hiring highly educated Ph.D. teachers to improve the quality of the teaching force. However, after the public joined the public discussions, the agenda-setting began to shift: the relationship between advanced academic degrees and qualified teachers shifted from full equivalence at the beginning to partial equivalence at a later stage. In contrast, schools, as the main recruiters of teachers, did not make any changes, but continued to emphasize the causal chain of "hiring highly educated teachers—improving the quality of the teaching force—supporting the development of students". At this point, the power relations between the state, schools, and the public have changed. In the past, the state and schools were a clear policy alliance, while the public was on the periphery. However, as the public gained more agenda-setting power, the state began to move towards a more intermediate position, tilting towards schools while trying to find a balance between schools and the public.
This study expands the application of NPF in the field of educational policy and further extends the context of use to Eastern countries. On this basis, the choice of the three actors of the country, schools, and the public in this study is of great significance for educational policy research as well as for the development of NPF. In the case of the former, educational policies are often in a complex ecosystem of regularity and irregularity. However, previous researchers have taken the public mainly as background information in this ecosystem, ignoring the fact that it may also be part of a potential policy coalition through narratives. In the latter case, the complexity of educational policy also opens up new possibilities for the development of NPFs. In particular, when considering competing coalitions, education policymaking often involves multiple actors and stakeholders, further complicating the scenario. Beyond this, this study demonstrates an effort to use the concept of power in NPF and policy process theory, presenting how the public, as a marginalized actor, can gain agenda-setting power, which has received less attention in the past. The findings of this study suggest the need to look beyond the realm of the elite and regain attention for these hidden actors.

Authors

• YANSI HOU, Faculty of Education, East China Normal University

• shuangye Chen, East China Normal University