Global–local imbrications in education policy: Methodological reflections on researching the sociology of Teach for Bangladesh

Abstract

This article documents the methodological thinking that underpined a sociological study of Teach for Bangladesh ( TFB ), a globally mobile yet locally embedded education policy situated in a developing world context. In order to reassess education policy vis-à-vis spatialities–power, relationships–resources, culture– change and imaginations–flows of globalization, this methodological thinking has to be both flexible and innovative. Analysis (topological) has demanded a combination of global ethnography and network ethnography, the former allowing global forces to be understood as spatially and culturally imbricated within intersecting policy worlds ([g]local cases), and the latter mapping and analysing spaces (networks and relations) and places (cultural negotiations) that characterize power within such imbrications. Data were collected both online and on site, resulting in both empirical advantages and practical challenges. As a sociological attempt to study policy mobilities in education in a Southeast Asian context, this study offers an innovative methodology and a befitting set of analytical vocabulary.

Policy mobilities in federal systems: The case of Proyectá tu Futuro, a social impact bond for education and employment in the city of Buenos Aires

“…The framework that guides the analysis is grounded in policy borrowing (Steiner-Khamsi, 2014) and the concept of global policy mobilities in education, focusing on the role of glocal actors. While policy mobilities stress the evolving nature of traveling policies that are re-assembled locally in the process of diffusion (Peck & Theodore, 2010), the concept of glocal refers to those agents who not only operate at different scales in the policymaking process but have the capacity to combine localizing and globalizing forces to translate the global tool into the domestic setting (Adhikary & Lingard, 2019). Furthermore, as we will show, by occupying different positions throughout the design and implementation of the SIB, these policy actors blur the frontiers between the private and public spheres, fostering changes in the governance of education itself (Verger et al, 2016).…”