How It Works: Mapping Implementation Dynamics from a Public Administration Perspective in Resource-Constrained Education Contexts

• In Event: Roundtable Session 7

Group Submission Type: Refereed Roundtable Session

Proposal

It is widely understood that much of the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of education policies depends on how those policies are implemented in practice. While the comparative education literature is rich with scholarships on how education policies manifest across diverse social and cultural contexts; the focus predominantly remains on schools and classrooms where teaching and learning transpires. Considerable attention is also paid to the politics and economics of the policy processes and policy priorities. Put differently, how education policies come into being and what kinds of impacts they generate in schools and classrooms, have a rich body of empirical scholarship internationally.

However, there is much less understanding about the public administration bureaucracies of education - and how those structures at the national and subnational levels advance or hinder implementation of education policies. While important theoretical contributions and frameworks – including principal-agent relationships (Pritchett 2015), coherence (Fullan & Quinn 2015), alignment (World Bank 2017), delivery approaches (Barber et. al. 2015) – continue to advance the field of implementation studies in education; much remains to be unpacked in the “missing middle” of education administration in low and middle income countries of the Global South (Asim et al 2023). Equally important is to contextualize the implementation actors at the frontlines of education service delivery in low and middle income countries of the global south (Lotta et. al. 2022). These issues are the focus of the proposed roundtable. These issues are explored in the four presentations of this roundtable.

1. Dilemmas at the Top – Insights from the Brazilian Federal Ministry of Education in implementing recent policy priorities in Secondary Education. This presentation, delivered by a technical professional from the Federal Ministry of Education will explore and compare decision-making agendas and policy designs at the Federal level that allow for varying degrees of discretion among the managers responsible for implementation. The focus here is on the differences between two major education policies of the Ministry of Education in recent years, both of which have been central to the Ministry’s agenda since the onset of the third Lula administration: the revision of the New High School Reform, passed in 2017, and the program to reduce high school dropout rates, known as Pé-de-Meia, approved by Congress in 2023.
2. The ‘global VET toolkit’ of governance reforms, and how it has weakened local colleges in South Africa. This presentation will explore a contrast in the roles that public technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges are envisaged to play in South Africa and the governance and funding models that have shaped institutional form and implementation over time. The presentation will demonstrate how the core idea that vocational education should meet the short-term needs of employers undermines institutional capacity and coherence, and ability to develop public administration and higher education systems that can actively engage with social and economic development and inclusion.
3. Managing Implementation in a Humanitarian Crisis – Insights from a Collaborative Teaching Model from the Rohingya Camps in Bangladesh. The third presentation - a joint effort between a university based researcher and a practitioner in a development agency – will examine the design and delivery of education in one of the most challenging humanitarian contexts: the Rohingya Refugee Camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The presentation will analyze the roles of international, state and non-state actors that engage to shape the implementation of teacher support and primary education delivery mechanisms in the backdrop of an uncertain political landscape.
4. Large Scale System Change Programs in India: What Works in Working with the Government? Language and Learning Foundation (LLF) is a system-focused and impact-driven organization dedicated to improving student learning at scale in Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN). Based on LLF’s current experience of working in close collaboration with eight state governments in India, this paper examines the limitations of the public education system in implementing high quality programs and system reforms. The presentation will highlight certain ways of working with the government that have worked well in particular contexts, as well as what has been seen to not work well in such collaborative arrangements with governments.

As education systems worldwide grapple with “COVID learning loss”, the need for system-wide improvement in education has become more urgent than ever. The digital era – the theme of CIES 2025 – holds much promise in achieving large scale improvements in education systems worldwide with innovative approaches and uses of technology. It will be critically important however to resist the inherently contradictory pursuit of implementation templates that could be “replicated” at scale (Elmore 2016). Rather, as the complexities of system transformations in education (Rivas 2023) remind us, large-scale improvements will critically depend on our improved nuanced and contextual understanding of implementation dynamics at all aspects of education systems. The proposed roundtable contributes to this knowledge by bringing a public administration perspective into the relational space of actors and institutions engaged in education policy implementation in diverse geographies (Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia), and varied education sub-sectors (secondary education, vocational education, primary and teacher education).

Asim, M., Mundy, K., Manion, C., & Tahir, I. (2023). The “missing middle” of education service delivery in low-and middle-income countries. Comparative Education Review, 67(2), 353-378.
Barber, M., Rodriguez, N., & Artis, E. (2015). Deliverology in practice: How education leaders are improving student outcomes. Corwin Press.
Elmore, R. F. (2016). “Getting to scale…” it seemed like a good idea at the time. Journal of Educational Change, 17, 529-537.
Fullan, M., & Quinn, J. (2015). Coherence: The right drivers in action for schools, districts, and systems. Corwin Press.
Lotta, G., Pires, R., Hill, M., & Møller, M. O. (2022). Recontextualizing street‐level bureaucracy in the developing world. Public Administration and Development, 42(1), 3-10.
Pritchett, L. (2015). Creating Education Systems Coherent for Learning Outcomes: Making the Transition from Schooling to Learning
Rivas, A. (2023). The long road to systemic improvement in education: a comparative multi-level case study in federal countries. Comparative Education, 59(1), 77-98.
World Bank. (2017). World development report 2018: Learning to realize education's promise. The World Bank.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Organizer

• Tamo Chattopadhay, American University of Central Asia

Chairs

• Barbara TOURNIER, UNESCO IIEP

• Stephanie Allais, University of the Witwatersrand

Individual Presentations

• Managing Implementation in a Humaniratian Crisis – Insinghts from a Collaborative Teaching Model from the Rohingya Camps in Bangladesh. - Md. Tanvir Rahman Bhuiyan, UNICEF Bangladesh; Tamo Chattopadhay, American University of Central Asia

• Large Scale System Change Programs in India: What Works in Working with the Government? - Dhir Jhingran, Language and Learning Foundation; BIDISHA BOSE, Language and Learning Foundation

• Dilemmas at the Top – Insights from the Brazilian Federal Ministry of Education in implementing recent policy priorities in Secondary Education - Tassiana Cunha Carvalho, Ministery of Education