Following policy: networks, network ethnography and education policy mobilities

Abstract

… the new strategic cosmopolitan serves as a nodal agent in the expanding networks of the global economy (Mitchell 2003). AbstractBased 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' (Beck 2006). 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. need to move beyond what Beck (2006) calls 'methodological nationalism'. In particular, it takes seriously the need to rethink the frames within and scales at which new education policy actors, discourses, conceptions, connections, agendas, resources and solutions of governance are addressed. In other words, thinking about the spaces of policy means extending the limits of our geographical imagination. It also means attempting to grasp the joining up and re-working of these spaces in and through relationships.

Early child care education: Evidence from the new law in Chile

“…Therefore, Law 20.835 complements Law 20.529 in the sense that it addresses the development of ECEC as a key stage in education. From the description, it is clear that the law is very short, which has led to a lack of clarity in the meanings within documents as well as public confusion and dissemination of doubt (Ball, 2016).…”

“…Recognizing physical policy spaces means extending the limits of our geographical imagination. It also means attempting to grasp the way in which these spaces are joined up and re-worked in and through relationships (Ball, 2016). These spaces can produce emergent and unanticipated relationships between different actors involved in the formulation of policy.…”

“…Mapping relationships contextualizes the geographic spaces in which policies are drawn up (Ball, 2016;Olssen, O'Neill & Codd, 2004). It is essential to recognize the geographic context in order to fully analyse policies.…”

Local enactment of the Swedish ‘advanced teacher reform’

“…Today, networks of policy actors, whether they are commercial, 'grey zone' (Lindblad, Popkewitz, & Petterson, 2015) or politically appointed, are interrelated in a variety of ways in transnational and intra-national spaces of policy (Ball, 2016;Sivesind & Wahlström, 2016). Such actors interpret international school system results and recommend specific national proposals aimed at educational improvement.…”

Discursive contestations and pluriversal futures: A decolonial analysis of educational policies in the United Arab Emirates

“…Recent scholarship on global education policy has examined multiple dimensions of globalization in education (Mundy, Green, Lingard, & Verger, 2016). This line of research has focused on how entrepreneurs engage in trading policies around the world (Ball, 2012(Ball, , 2016, how private sector actors promote reform packages to carve out niches in national education markets (Au & Ferrare, 2015;Steiner-Khamsi, 2016), and how international organizations -such as the OECD or the World Bank -use global policies as tools of global education governance (Klees, Samoff, & Stromquist, 2012;Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). The introduction of global policies into national spaces is often followed by changes that are only symbolic, reflecting how national elites engage with the "global speak" of transnational policy trade (Steiner-Khamsi, 2010.…”