Representation and Responsibility: Constructing Epistemic Inequality in International Education Policy

• In Event: Whose in Charge? Peripheral Governance in Education Policy Making

Abstract

This paper examines how education consultants use an everyday technology of academic knowledge production – the PowerPoint presentation -- to seize epistemic authority and disempower local actors. Such consultants are typically “contextually blind” (Rappleye & Un, 2018) and are viewed with skepticism by local education department staff (e.g., Koch, 2020; Choy, 2011). Yet the consultants succeed in effectively silencing local actors and dominating reform discourse in post-colonial settings. Drawing from a study of international education policy dynamics in a large South Asian country, we examine how international consultants seize epistemic authority in interactions with national education departments and show how technologies such as PowerPoint function as mechanisms of discursive and frame control in such relations.

Authors

• Jan K. Nespor, The Ohio State University

• Khizar Nasir, The Ohio State University - Columbus