Methodology and Policy Mobilities: Multimodal Ethnography, Nonrepresentation/Affect, and Network Analysis

• In Event: Policy Mobilities and Education Policy Research

Abstract

Objectives
Education policy can be seen as a manifestation of global neoliberal policy imaginaries and reform movements, undertaken in particular places by actors with diverse ideological positions and commitments (e.g., governments, edu-businesses) (Ball & Junemann, 2012; McCann, 2010; Peck & Theodore, 2012). This paper focus on the methodological problem of studying relationality and territoriality; that is, the problem of studying policy that is ‘both in motion and…embedded in place’ (Cochrane & Ward, 2012: 7). The objects of study in policy mobilities are conceived in this paper as scope/ reach; movement/ intensity; and agency/ practices. This paper proposes three interlinked methodologies and methods to study these objects: multi-modal, network and global ethnography; non-representation and affect; and network analysis.

Techniques of inquiry and substantiated conclusions
The paper draws on an empirical study of data infrastructures and network governance in education across four nations: Japan, Australia, Canada, and the United States. It proposes ways to examine the representational and material aspects of education policy congruent with the conception of policy mobility as agency/ practices; movement/ intensity; and, scope/ reach.

First, to study agency/ practices we will use multi-modal ethnography, a multi-semiotic approach (Dicks, Soyinka, & Coffey, 2006). This approach enables the identification of the processes and practices of data mobility and translation across time and space. This can include combining interviews, observation and documentary analysis with digital data collection such as time-space plotting. Under multimodal ethnography, we will integrate network ethnography (Ball & Junemann, 2012) and global ethnography (Buroway et al., 2000).

Second, to examine movement/ intensity we will focus on the non-representational dynamics that accompany and modulate the representational strategies and effects of policy. Central to this approach is a particular conception of affect as the feeling of a body’s capacity for action as it changes through encounters with other bodies. This approach attends to the movement and enactment of policy as it registers bodily (e.g., feelings of anxiety or possibility) and in affective encounters with others, such as those enabled in meetings or through social media, which act as conduits through which policy ideas travel (Sellar, 2015).

Third, to investigate scope/reach we will utilise network analyses that offer multi-faceted methodological approaches for representing the origins, trajectories and transfers of ideas across time and space. This illuminates the roles of individuals, organizations, coalitions, etc., in facilitating these mobilities, even as they may re-shape the policies transferred across different contexts. Network approaches can include cartographies of power and influence, social networks, and the influence of particular ideas and advocates, as with bibliometrics, webometrics and twittermetrics (Goldie et al, 2014 ).

Scientific and scholarly significance of the study
The networked and multi-scalar nature of globalised education policy requires attention to ‘policy mobilities’ that cut across new spaces of policy making, and new modes of governance (Ball, 2012; Peck & Theodore, 2010). Outlining the inventive methodological approach of a large international study of policy mobilities in schooling, this paper will contribute to debates about how to conduct empirical research in rapidly changing policy contexts.

Authors

• Kalervo N. Gulson, University of New South Wales

• Sam Sellar, The University of Queensland

• Christopher A. Lubienski, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Robert L. Lingard, University of Queensland

• Taylor Webb, The University of British Columbia