The travel of the SAWA reform package over time: what exactly traveled and did it ever arrive?

• In Event: New directions in comparative education policy (Part 2): The translation and instrumentation of policy

Proposal

The presentation zooms in on the dual aspect of the spatial dimension – space versus place – and the triple aspect of the temporal dimension – time, timing, tempo – of comparative policy analysis. A good case in point is the global spread of school-autonomy-with-accountability (SAWA) as developed by the Autonomous University of Barcelona group (Verger, Fontdevila and Parcerisa, 2019). In policy borrowing research, any reform is seen as a package or a bundle of policies, each with its own instruments for change. In fundamental reforms such as the neoliberal SAWA reform package, there also is a market-oriented theory of change or change mechanism implied. From the perspective of sociological systems theory, an examination of the broader change mechanism which is more than the sum of the individual elements/politics or instruments of the package, is as relevant as tracing the selective adoption of SAWA features. In policy borrowing research, transfer is not copying. Precisely because any reform is only selectively adopted and then contextually translated, the questions become: what exactly has traveled? Are some elements more important than others for putting in motion the market-oriented change mechanism? Did externalization help to build political coalitions over the borrowed policy or over the borrowed instrument, or both (see Steiner-Khamsi, 2021)?

Using the example of the Canton of Zurich in Switzerland, the presentation investigates which features of SAWA were implemented in the New Public Management Reform entitled “outcomes-oriented school reform” (wirkungsorientierte Schulreform) over the period 1994 – 2023, which ones were resisted, and which ones were introduced and then dropped after a while.


References:

Steiner-Khamsi, Gita (2021). Externalisation and structural coupling: Applications in comparative policy studies in education. European Educational Research Journal, 20 (6), 806-820. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1474904120988394.

Verger, A., Fontdevila, C., and Parcerisa, L. (2019). Constructing school autonomy wit accountability as a global policy model: A focus on OECD’s governance mechanisms. In C. Ydesen, ed., OECD’s historical rise in education: The formation of a global governing complex, pp. 219-243. London: Palgrave.

Authors

• Gita Steiner-Khamsi, Columbia University Teachers College & NORRAG

• Amanda Nägeli, PHSG

• Stephanie Maria Appius, St.Gallen University of Teacher Education