Following policy: networks, network ethnography and education policy mobilities

Abstract

Based on the ‘case’ of educational reform in India, this paper explores the emergence of both new trans-national spaces of policy and new intra-national spaces of policy and how they are related together, and how policies move across and between these spaces and the relationships that enable and facilitate such movement. The paper is an attempt to think outside and beyond the framework of the nation state to make sense of what is going on inside the nation state. In particular, it takes seriously the need to rethink the frame within and scales at which the new policy actors, discourses, connections, agendas, resources, and solutions of governance are addressed – and the need to move beyond what Beck calls ‘methodological nationalism’ . In other words, the paper argues that thinking about the spaces of policy means extending the limits of our geographical imagination. To address this argument, it combines the presentation and discussion of data with some more general discussion of policy networks and mobilities.

Keywords:

• Comparative
• actors institutions

Notes

1. I am very aware of the various telling criticisms of the ontology of networks and I have sought to address and incorporate some of these in the way networks are conceptualized and researched here. Rather than import the idea of assemblage, as a new language of description for network analysis, I have attempted to elaborate on the characteristics of the network to encompass some aspects of the sensibility of assemblage

2. More precisely this is one version, one assembly of what are a set of overlapping networks of various kinds, that focuses on relations related to or focused on processes of education policy.

3. See: http://download.ei-ie.org/Docs/WebDepot/ei_palf_publication_web_pages_01072015.pdf.

4. See: http://educatingthegatesfoundation.com/tag/wayne-au/).

5. The visits to these events were undertaken by my research colleagues Carolina Junemann and Diego Santori.

6. In the data we see ‘how different actors and activists narrativise assemblages through spatial metaphors and organizsing logics of, for example, scale, network, federation and so on’ (McFarlane 2009, 566)

7. On a national level, the network contributes to the proto, roll back – and roll out stages of neoliberalization.

8. See: http://www.ficci.com/spdocument/20,380/CSF-FICCI_Public-Private-Partnerships_Mar-2014.pdf.

9. Justin van Fleet is Chief of Staff to the UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Rt. Honourable Gordon Brown, and nonresident fellow at the Center for Universal Education, Brookings Institution and formerly deputy chair for education at the Clinton Global Initiative.

10. See: http://www.teachingleaders.org.uk.

11. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Pattillo.

12. Katelyn Donnelly leads the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund (PALF), which was launched in May 2012 with a mandate to invest in the creation and servicing of low-cost private schools and education solutions around the globe. She was recently named as one of the world’s most influential under 30 year olds working in education.

13. Sir Michael Barber joined Pearson in September 2011 as Chief Education Advisor, and is Chairman of the PALF. Prior to Pearson, he was Head of McKinsey’s global education practice.

14. Jay Kimmelman is Co-Founder and CEO of Bridge International Academies, the largest chain of private schools in Africa (see Junemann, Ball, and Santori 2015).

15. We can follow ‘plots’ through these paths and chains outwards and inwards and the literal circulation of people and things. These paths can make ideological homophily and heterogeneity visible. For example, CSF funds Teach for India, which is part of the Teach for All network which emerged from Teach for America, which is heavily funded by the Gates and Broad foundations, who are also advocates and funders of US Charter schools, including KIPP, who have supported the work of Akanksha, and whose Chief Executive Mike Feinberg has visited ARK India and CSF etc.

16. M-CRIL India is a micro-finance credit ratings firm, see: http://www.educationinnovations.org/program/school-assessment-school-improvement-sasi.

17. http://www.theugandanjobline.com/2014/04/british-council-dfid-project-jobs.html.

18. See http://www.teachthought.com/blended-learning-2/the-definition-of-blended-learning/.

19. http://beta.livemint.com/Opinion/zKv5gI4TpzYiu4riO0gJ6O/Target-educational-outcomes-not-inputs-in-the-budget.html.

20. See http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/KIPP-leaders-help-global-partners-adopt-its-model-4547647.php.

21. PALF.

22. EI is also working with leading organizations like World Bank, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Google, Azim Premji Foundation, Duke University, USA and is doing large-scale assessment projects with various State Governments. In the last 12 years, EI has assessed over 2 million students, with more than 55,000 students experiencing personalized learning through Mindspark in cities like Lansing and Michigan, USA.

Today, EI has worked with over 3000 schools with over 3.5 lakh students taking the EI’s International Benchmarking Test – ASSET every year and has a presence in UAE, Kuwait, Singapore and USA. EI, in association with Google, has also conducted one of the largest studies to know the student learning levels in government schools in 21 states of India, along with a Students Learning in Metros Study conducted in association with Wipro. The Government of Bhutan has also partnered with EI to conduct Student and Teachers Assessments on annual basis. (http://www.ei-india.com/about/).

23. CSF has published a report Public-Private Partnerships in School Education: Learning and Insights for India (See more at: http://www.centralsquarefoundation.org/publications/#sthash.acNUB7Fp.dpuf.)

24. e.g. https://www.edsurge.com/n/2013-09-24-building-a-perspectful-edtech-ecosystem-in-india.