Global education policy mobilities and subnational policy practice

ABSTRACT

Drawing on data from three levels of education policy-making in Canada, in this paper we identify variegated interactions of global circulations of sustainability discourses in education in relation to priorities and responses at subnational levels of government, including provinces and territorial ministries of education, local school divisions, and schools. Understanding ‘scale’ as mutable and practiced vs. fixed, we discuss instances of policy recoding or mutation when global UN priorities have been shifted to reflect language or priorities suited to education ministries and school divisions; as well as examples of policy immobility, where subnational education bodies did not engage with UN sustainability approaches. Cases of policy amplification are also highlighted, in which school division policy priorities appeared to increase the influence of provincial policy. In some cases, intentional efforts of ‘rescaling’ seemed to influence policy responses, such as through processes of school division amalgamation, or the growing attempts to relocalise policy in Canada’s north. We draw on data from across six Canadian provinces and territories and 10 school divisions to better understand the mobilities of sustainability in education policy in relation to subnational policy practice, including via topological influences such as policy actors and certification programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Education policy
• globalisation
• policy mobilities
• scale
• subnational policy
• sustainability education

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the participation of the study sites and interviewees, the contributions of other team members in research design and data collection and analysis, and to anonymous reviewers and journal editorial staff. The publication draws on research from the Sustainability and Education Policy Network (SEPN), supported by a Partnership Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant No 895-2011-1025). For more information visit www.sepn.ca.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 McFarlane (2009) also concludes that ‘refusing to use scalar concepts is a fruitless strategy given the prevalence of scalar narratives of political, economic, social and environmental relations’ (564).

2 In total across six provinces and territories, data were collected from staff at each ministry of education; additional provincial level key informants including at sustainability provincial specialist associations, teacher associations, and eco-certification programs; and school division administrators (one-two divisions per province).

3 There are 10 provinces and 3 territories in Canada, for a total of 13 subnational regions.

4 Data collection mainly occurred in the spring and fall of 2016.

5 This analysis responded in particular to one of three project research questions: ‘What are some of the influences on the development and enactment of sustainability-related policy and practice in the study sites, including local and global influences? This includes specifically but not only, the influences of policy and practice mobility (e.g., role of actors, networks, other policies) and materiality (e.g., land features, other material objects, cultural considerations, political context), and including where have these factors not played a role.’ (SEPN Theme 3 Methods Document, p. 1, nd, available at www.sepn.ca).

6 The earliest reporting on ‘sustainable development education’ in Canada was authored by the Manitoba Ministry of Education (CMEC 1999), with the report highlighting both UNESCO’s programme of ‘orienting educating towards sustainability,’ as well as the ministry’s work on integrating sustainable development into its department. Recently, CMEC has indicated a shift in focus from a framing of ESD to ‘global competencies’ being promoted and evaluated via the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), with sustainability embedded within one of the global competencies (CMEC 2017; OECD 2016). A ‘whole institution’ approach means mobilizing sustainability engagement in curricular content, but also in overall governance priorities (e.g., strategic planning or mission statements), operational considerations of buildings and infrastructure, evaluations and research, and in community outreach activities (e.g., partnerships with municipalities, organizations, business, community groups) (Henderson and Tilbury 2004; UNESCO 2014a, 2014b).

7 The northern territory of Nunavut was an exception here, as no participants indicated involvement with eco-certification. One participant school in Nunavut had previously been involved with a green schools program (SEEDS Green Schools), but no current teachers had continued with the program.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 895-2011-1025].