Unit information: Researching Policy Networks in Education in 2019/20

Unit name	Researching Policy Networks in Education
Unit code	EDUCM0084
Credit points	20
Level of study	M/7
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Dr. Olmedo
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	EDUCM5202 Education Policy in a Global Context
Co-requisites	None
School/department	School of Education
Faculty	Faculty of Social Sciences and Law

Description including Unit Aims

This interactive unit will focus on will explore new models of doing policy in the field of education. We will identify and analyse a set of new policy actors, their discourses, connections, ideological influences and agendas on the ground. More concretely, it will revise the role of governments in contemporary networked political frameworks. Students will work on their own case studies and analyse different ways in which networks constitute policy communities, usually based upon shared conceptions of social and educational problems and their solutions. The unit will be mainly practical and introduce a number of pieces of software in order to create a database where to collate data and draw network diagrams based on Internet searches. It will also introduce and discuss new research methods, more concretely, Social Network Analysis and Network Ethnography and explore their application in the field of education policy analysis.

Aims:

• To consider the changing character, structure and configuration of the State, with an emphasis in the area of education policy.

• To analyse the current processes of repopulation of the public sphere and the roles that new and old policy actors play in the design, delivery and evaluation of public policy schemes.

• To explore different theoretical and methodological approaches to explaining the relationship between global processes and education policy enactments at different scales.

• To consider the implications of such new configurations, programmes and actors over existing processes of social justice.

• To develop the capability to understand and use effectively a range of academic and resources through the use of on-line databases and search engines, analytical software, etc.

Intended Learning Outcomes

By end of unit students will demonstrate:

1. a further theoretical and practical understanding of the relationship between education policies and practices and how these are shaped by economic, political, social and cultural processes at global, regional, national and sub-national levels;

2. knowledge of political schemes and solutions, silver bullets, that are being developed at present to reform existing public education policy programmes;

3. development of a distinctive personal voice in relation to the critical study of education policy.

4. the ability to independently create policy reports in different formats based on a policy actor or programme that is currently operating in the field of education policy;

5. building and sustaining the development of a coherent and convincing argument regarding the relationship between global processes and players in shaping education policy in oral presentations;

Teaching Information

Teaching will be divided in 3 taught sessions (6 hours) and 7 seminars (14 hours). All seminar sessions will imply practical work.

Assessment Information

Formative: feedback will be provided at the end of each seminar session based on the work developed by students during that day.

Summative:

• 30% poster presentation (ILOs 1, 2, 3, 5)
• 70% 2500 written case report (ILOs 1, 2, 3, 4)

Reading and References

Ball, S. J. (2012). Global Education Inc. New Policy Networks and the Neoliberal Imaginary. Abigndon, Oxon: Routledge.

Ball, S. J. (2016). Following policy: networks, network ethnography and education policy mobilities. Journal of Education Policy, 31(5), 549-566.

Hogan, A. (2015). Network ethnography and the cyberflâneur: evolving policy sociology in education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 29(3):1-18, 19(3), 1-18.

Jessop, B., Brenner, N., & Jones, M. (2008). Theorizing sociospatial relations. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26, 389-401.

Howard, P. N. (2002). Network Ethnography and the Hypermedia Organization: New Media, New Organizations, New Methods. New Media Society, 4(4), 550-574.

Olmedo, A. (2017). Something old, not much new, and a lot borrowed: philanthropy, business and the changing roles of government in global education policy networks. Oxford Review of Education, 43(1), 69-87.

Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2015). Fast Policy. Experimental Statecraft at the Threshold of Neoliberalism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.