Policy networks in promoting social and emotional learning: a comparative study of policy trajectories in China and the United States

• In Event: Comparative Studies of Educational Policy: Examples from Hong Kong, Mainland China, and South Korea

Proposal

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) first emerged in the United States in the 1980s and then was mobilized to the United Kingdom, Australia, Spain, Singapore, China, and other countries (Shen & Wang, 2019). SEL has now become a globally popular concern of education policy and practice, endorsed by UNESCO, OECD, and World Bank (Williamson, 2021). It is considered a priority for future education and reforms, which is set against traditional and competence-based education. As the head of the Directorate of Education at OECD, Andreas Schleicher (2018,230) argued that the OECD is shifting its emphasis from “literacy and numeracy skills for employment, towards empowering all citizens with the cognitive, social and emotional capabilities and values to contribute to the success of tomorrow’s world”. The rhetoric is shared in policies in the United States, such as the No Child Left Behind (2001) and recently in Every Child Succeeds Act (2015). The federal government adjusted its central school evaluation system, shifting from emphasizing students’ test scores in core subjects to focusing on their SEL development. Later than the United States, SEL gained momentum in China’s policies in 2012 with the introduction of UNICEF’s SEL programs and in recent three years has been given particular attention due to the "double-reduction" policy. The "double-reduction" policy (jointly published by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council)requires all schools in compulsory education (Grade One to Nine) to reduce students’ excessive burdens of homework and strictly restricts students’ attendance at off-campus tutoring courses. SEL in this case has become a supplement for academic work and an interesting and meaningful course to be introduced to schools for implementing the “double reduction” policy (Huang, 2023). The above analysis shows different policy sensibilities involved in the popularity of SEL in China and United States. It seems to have become a “multiaccentual signifier” (Rappleye, 2006) to which different groups of people grant different understandings and meanings. The different interpretations and uses of SEL could also have different policy effects. In this sense, I did a comparative study of policy trajectories of SEL in China and the United States to understand different enactments of a convergent policy and possibly varied policy effects.

For examining the policy trajectory of SEL in the United States, I deployed the method of “network ethnography” (Ball, 2016, 2017) focusing on the node of the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL). CASEL is a non-profit organization specializing in SEL knowledge production and dissemination. It is ‘a significant SEL campaigning organization’ (Willamson, 2021: 137) in the United States and links with other key actors, such as Angela Duckworth and the Aspen Institute (Willamson, 2021). Network ethnography is a policy analysis method that can track and understand the work and effects of policy networks by following, visiting, and questioning policy nodes. It concerns not only network relations but also network dynamics (Ball, 2016). I collected social relation data of CASEL through intensive online searches, compiled significant documents and reports, and constructed an SEL-promoting policy network. The data collection and analysis was aimed to understand how CASEL connected with other key actors and constructed SEL as a policy priority in the United States, and what was the dominant policy discourse shaping the policy network.

For following and questing SEL development in China, I did a critical discourse analysis of key researchers’ academic work and public speeches, which I collected and compiled through searches on academic databases and major media outlets. Critical discourse analysis understands language as a form of social practice shaped by forms of domination. As such, it can attend to the power relations and politics involved and indicated in texts and conversations (Fairclough, 2013). I deployed critical discourse analysis methods in my study to understand how Chinese researchers, who are also deeply involved in policy consultancy to governments and partnerships with schools, ascribe meanings to SEL and relate it to China’s recent education reforms. My particular attention was paid to how these researchers compared the meanings and practices of SEL in China with those in the United States and other countries, to understand localized sensibilities for adapting and mutating mobilized policies.

My study indicates how CASEL and other key actors in the Unitted States drew on ‘traditional’ rationalities (e.g., academic achievements, social equality, employment, and human capital) to establish and enhance the policy meanings of SEL. My analysis shows that the practices of SEL are not as ‘new’ as depicted in governments’ policies and key actors’ documents; they are fit and embedded in the dominant education evaluation system and the human capital perspective. China’s introduction of SEL was shaped by the policy and practice experiments in the United States and involved a ‘colonized’ admiration and imagination for education innovations. Albeit with ways suggested by key researchers for modifying and localizing SEL, the conceptualization of SEL and especially evaluation methods closely follow the American model. This perspective of SEL, I would argue, is motivated by urgent ‘double-reduction’ policy demands, a seducing desire for efficiency, and a fear of costs for local experiments, which reflects the risks and consequences of ‘fast policy’ (Peck & Theodore, 2015).

Author

• CHEN WEI PENG