‘Best practice as a governing practice: producing best practice in a European Commission working group.’

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that best practice is a powerful form of governing practice in education policy whose distinctiveness remains conceptually neglected in comparison to the burgeoning literature on governing by numbers. Moreover, the paper identifies how the practice of generating best practice knowledge remains under-explored and under-conceptualised: we know surprisingly little about how best practices come into being in international policymaking contexts. The paper seeks to address these two gaps by examining the production of best practice in the European education policy space through the Open Method of Coordination. Drawing on in-depth observation, interview, and document data the paper uses political discourse theory to analyse the frontstage and backstage interactions involved in generating best practices for governing school systems in a Working Group coordinated by the European Commission. Analysis identifies three dominant logics which underpin the production of best practice and reveals how these logics work to confine to the backstage of meetings specific practices which threaten to call into question the credibility of best practice. The paper highlights how best practice works as a distinctive form of governing practice which deserves further consideration in debates relating to the role of knowledge in transnational education governance.

KEYWORDS:

• best practice
• knowledge
• European education governance
• Open Method of Coordination
• European Commission

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Toni Verger for providing helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this paper, and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. I am also grateful to The Leverhulme Trust for generously funding the research on which this article is based (grant number SAS-2016-048).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Interviewees were selected on the basis of four country case studies, with each country displaying differing degrees of centralised schooling systems. The country case study selection reflected a different dimension of the empirical study which aimed to explore how Working Group outputs were disseminated in national contexts, although interview discussions were also highly relevant to understanding the production of best practice during meetings.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust [SAS-2016-048-00023].

Notes on contributors

Natalie Papanastasiou

Natalie Papanastasiou is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her research interests include exploring policymaking practices, the development of ‘best practice’ knowledge, the relationship between politics and space, and the politics of education policy. She is currently funded by a Juan de la Cierva Incorporaciόn grant awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.