Policy mobilities and methodology: a proposition for inventive methods in education policy studies

ABSTRACT

The argument of this paper is that new methodologies associated with the emerging field of ‘policy mobilities’ can be applied, and are in fact required, to examine and research the networked and relational, or ‘topological’, nature of globalised education policy, which cuts across the new spaces of policymaking and new modes of global educational governance. In this paper, we examine the methodological issues pertaining to the study of the movement of policy. Informed by contemporary methodological thinking around social network analysis and the ethnographic notion of ‘following the policy’, we discuss the limitations of these approaches to adequately address presence in policy network analysis, and the problem of representing speed and intensity of policy mobility, even while these attempt to solve the problem of relationality and territoriality. We conclude that the methodologies of policy mobility are inexorably intertwined with the (constantly) changing phenomena under examination, and hence require what Lury and Wakeford describe as ‘inventive methods’.

KEYWORDS:

• Education policy
• ethnography
• mobility
• network analysis
• relationality

Acknowledgements

This paper draws on research funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP150102098). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Educational Research Association’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., 2016. Sam Sellar was an author on this earlier version and we thank him for this contribution.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Also see Chapter 3 in Peck and Theodore (2015) and their methodological reflections in Chapter 2.

Additional information

Funding

This paper draws on research funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project [DP150102098].

Notes on contributors

Kalervo N. Gulson

Kalervo N. Gulson is an Associate Professor in School of Education, University of New South Wales. His research is located across social, political and cultural geography, education policy studies, and science and technology studies. Recent work includes: Policy, geophilosophy, education (with P. Taylor Webb, Sense, 2015) and Contemporary Theory and Education Policy: Implications for Research (Editor, with M. Clarke & E.B. Petersen, Routledge, 2015).

Steven Lewis

Steven Lewis completed his PhD in the School of Education at The University of Queensland. He has recently been appointed as the Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Deakin University, Australia, with his research focusing on how new global modes of standardised testing and data, and evidence around ‘what works’, help to reshape local schooling practices, teachers’ work and student learning in lower-SES communities. He has recently published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education, Comparative Education Review, Critical Studies in Education and Journal of Education Policy.

Bob Lingard

Professor Bob Lingard (PhD) works in the School of Education at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia where he researches education policy, globalisation, school reform, and international and national testing. He is Editor of the journal, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education and of the book series, Key Ideas in Education with Routledge, New York. His most recent books include, Globalizing Educational Accountabilities (Routledge, 2016) and Politics, Policies and Pedagogies in Education (Routledge, 2014).

Christopher Lubienski

Christopher Lubienski, PhD is Professor of education policy at Indiana University. He is also a fellow with the National Education Policy Center, and Visiting Professor at East China Normal University. His research centers on education policy, reform, and the political economy of education, focusing on issues of equity and access.

Keita Takayama

Keita Takayama is an associate professor at School of Education, University of New England, Australia. He obtained his MA from University of British Columbia and PhD from University of Wisconsin-Madison. He researches in the area of education policy and comparative and international education.

P. Taylor Webb

P. Taylor Webb is Associate Professor in the Department of Education, University of British Columbia. His work examines education policy in relation to ideas of neoliberalism, governmentality, and bio- and micro-politics. He likes wine. Recent work includes: Policy, geophilosophy, education (with K.N. Gulson, Sense, 2015).