‘But all the wrong people are here…’: the emerging policymaking mode and its challenge for academic policy research: a commentary

Galvin, Conor

doi:10.1080/03057640801890020

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 8 publications

(7 reference statements)

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“…Pollard (2007) remarked that the program was intended to support high quality and highly relevant research that could "satisfy the ambition of 'Pasteur's Quadrant'" (p. 640), a reference to Stokes (1997) categorization describing a form of research that marries pure basic research to applied research. The ten-year £40 million program, which concluded in 2011, generated a series of ten principles of effective pedagogy in four broad areas and is widely regarded to have been successful in translating academic research into userfriendly forms and engaging users in culturally and politically current educational discourse (Earl, 2011;Galvin, 2008;Hogan, 2011;James & Pollard, 2011;Pollard, 2008).…”

Section: Research Evidence and Education Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Research and evidence in education decision-making: A comparison of results from two pan-Canadian studies

Galway

Sheppard

2015

EPAA

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In this paper we compare the use of research and other evidence in the policy formation practices of two groups of education policy elites, situated in different contexts – provincial education ministries and school districts. Data are derived from two pan-Canadian studies: Galway (2006) and Sheppard, Galway, Brown & Wiens (2013). The findings show that policy decisions at the ministry level are informed primarily by political and pragmatic factors, personal and professional beliefs and staff advice. The role of external research is shown to be relatively marginal and confined to quantitative studies and performance assessments. Decision makers at the school district level are less attendant to political and pragmatic influences relying more on personal beliefs, values and experiential factors supplemented by the advice of professional staff and in-house research/indicators. Results from both studies demonstrate limited reliance on external data and university-based research – the latter ranking 15th of 20 influencing factors. Consistent with Beck’s (1994; 1997) risk theory, we theorize that education policy making in both contexts is influenced by both macro- and micro-level factors, where choice of policy evidence is mediated by personal considerations and political risk factors. This suggests a weak policy development paradigm that is, to a large extent, resistant to independent research-informed evidence.

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Section: Research Evidence and Education Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Research and evidence in education decision-making: A comparison of results from two pan-Canadian studies

Galway

Sheppard

2015

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“…These are wholly defensible, indeed desirable, expectations on the part of those charged with either teaching or policy‐making, given the amount of so‐called research that is accessible and downloadable from the Internet. As Conor Galvin's work has made plain (Galvin, 2003, 2004, 2005) the opportunities (temptations, even) for policy and practice to be based on info‐nuggets and evidence‐lite, even downright misinformation, are growing all the time. I have argued elsewhere (for example, Saunders, 2004, 2007) that, however hedged about with theoretical and practical reservations and qualifications it may be, the rationalist ideal in public decision‐making is to be cherished.…”

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confidence: 99%

Preface

Saunders¹

2008

Journal of Philosophy of Education

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PrefaceThere are many reasons to welcome this collection of papers and to applaud the support given by the Directorate of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) for the work that has led to its production. The TLRP has been concerned with the question of how to demonstrate the 'warrant' of its wide range of research projects, not only to satisfy the complex but intrinsic obligations of educational research as a multidisciplinary field but also to fulfil the expectations of decision-makers in education-from classroom teachers to ministers of state-for assurance and practical guidance about what sorts of knowledge and evidence they can have legitimate confidence in.These are wholly defensible, indeed desirable, expectations on the part of those charged with either teaching or policy-making, given the amount of so-called research that is accessible and downloadable from the Internet. As Conor Galvin's work has made plain (Galvin, 2003(Galvin, , 2004(Galvin, , 2005) the opportunities (temptations, even) for policy and practice to be based on info-nuggets and evidence-lite, even downright misinformation, are growing all the time. I have argued elsewhere (for example, Saunders, 2004Saunders, , 2007 that, however hedged about with theoretical and practical reservations and qualifications it may be, the rationalist ideal in public decision-making is to be cherished. The alternative is that public life be dependent on revealed or idiosyncratic knowledge, in which case there would be no bulwark even in principle against opportunism, corruption, ignorance, solipsism and collective amnesia. So the question of 'warrant', the assurance that the grounds of our belief are solid under our feet, is crucial to the continued and strengthened influence of educational research on education in an increasingly competitive knowledge market-place.To judge by the approaches that have been taken by different TLRP project teams to warranting their findings, this assurance may be thought to rest on, for example, the protocols of peer review, on methodological propriety, on analytical cogency or on the utility and plausibility of the research findings and messages for non-research audiences. The papers in this volume attempt to place these different approaches in a more general and theoretical context and, in so doing, to fulfil two rather different needs. The first is to set out-for non-specialists-the underlying reasons why different kinds of research in education can and should be deployed as forms of trustworthy knowledge, together with the conditions under which they may be trusted. This has entailed saying some very interesting and useful things along the way about the contexts, criteria, underpinning values, constraints and limitations, and the making of meanings, in educational research. The second need is to explicate some specialist topics and issues about the enduring concerns of 'validity',

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Policy, Latent Error and Systemic Examination Failures

Baird¹,

Coxell²

2009

Cadmo

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- Politicians and civil servants are very much involved in examination developments in many countries. Policy development and implementation is notoriously difficult to unpick in terms of decision-making, roles and responsibilities. Nonetheless, three systemic examination failures are used to illustrate the problems caused by the policy context – in Scotland 2000, New Zealand 2004 and England 2008. Taking these cases and the literature together, it is argued that features of the policy environment conspire to generate latent errors: 1) evolving policy and competing perspectives; 2) lack of role clarity and diffusion of responsibility and 3) timeframe slippage. Human error theory indicates that to try to reduce errors we must understand their fundamental causes and that these usually run deeper than the first stories that are told. Understanding the full reasons for particular systemic examination errors is difficult because politics is slippery, and many perspectives have to be sifted.

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‘But all the wrong people are here…’: the emerging policymaking mode and its challenge for academic policy research: a commentary

Cited by 3 publications

References 8 publications

Research and evidence in education decision-making: A comparison of results from two pan-Canadian studies

Research and evidence in education decision-making: A comparison of results from two pan-Canadian studies

Preface

Policy, Latent Error and Systemic Examination Failures

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