Infrastructuring the nation

European Educational Research Journal

Smirnova

Santos

2023

Self Cite

This article analyses discussions in the Russian media of the proposal to introduce the Unified State Exam (USE) in English as a mandatory test in the last year of (high) school education 2010s. The decision not to implement the mandatory USE in English was taken in August 2020. In the aftermath of the decision, we investigate the decade-long media debates. Building methodologically on frame analysis, we examine the frames used in the online media to present the pros and cons of English testing, and the qualitative modifications of these frames over time. We argue that media coverage of English as a compulsory test parallelled changes in the politics of nation-building and language policies. First it reflected the idea of Russia as a global economic actor, striving to reap the benefits of a global economy, and framed the acquisition of English as part of the global economic and political community. However, as the state’s prerogatives changed, English began to be discussed as a threat to national unity, national security and the mastery of Russian. Moreover, the ‘national’ became associated, with separation from the rest of the world and its perceived threat.

Section: Nationalism Language and Educationmentioning

confidence: 63%

The politics of language: The case of national examinations in English in Russia

European Educational Research Journal

Smirnova

Santos

2023

Self Cite

“…Already noting the typical reproduction of national imagery and language selection, their main focus is nevertheless on how platforms are used by teachers and students in their local settings, and whether these local practices – in their multiplicity and even brevity – challenge, perpetuate, or introduce (new) forms of nationalism. This way they join the discussions on how seemingly universal solutions and globally mobile policies promote the ongoing reconstruction of state-centric nationhood (see also Piattoeva and Vasileva, 2023a, 2023b). These policies and the accompanying bureaucratic and technological solutions are not only incorporated into an environment where nation-ness is an endemic condition, but actively reproduce the world as one of existing or aspiring nations and nations as ‘real’ entities with defined borders and shared cultural attributes.…”

Section: An Overview Of the Contributions To The Special Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to the special issue ‘Return of the nation: Education in an era of rising nationalism and populism’

European Educational Research Journal

Viseu

Wirthová

2023

This Special Issue of the European Educational Research Journal (Special Issue) contributes to the ongoing debate on the relationship between education, nationalism and populism to enhance scholarly understanding of the construction and maintenance of nationalism. The special issue consists in total of six original articles that cover different sources, spaces and forms of nationalism: banal and virulent, strategic and habitual, reproduced by state actors and power elites versus individuals or groups who echo, subvert or extend the official narratives and nationalism as both nested in topographical spaces as well as in topological relations. It foregrounds the specificity of nationalism as a discursive-material-affective practice that unfolds contextually. The articles highlight, for instance, the relationships between nationalism and other `isms’ (populism, religious conservatism and authoritarianism) and the evolving processes such as climate emergency, improving recognition of indigenous rights, ambiguous expertisation or ubiquitous digitalisation. Overall, for the sociologies of education, the special issue highlights the importance of exploring both how education reproduces nationalism and how nationalism (as a strategy, practice, discourse, place-building and position-legitimating or affect) intervenes in and takes advantage of education.

“…Our overall theoretical approach builds on understanding the exercise of power and governance as discursive, sociomaterial, and technoscientific-that is, as functioning through diverse impersonal and indirect means (Piattoeva & Vasileva, 2022). We turned to Mukerji's (2010) theory of logistical power to shed light on how governance is exercised through ordering objects and taming the natural environment by developing and modifying various material things-from infrastructures to user manuals-thereby shaping the conditions of political possibilities and forms of collective life on a bounded territory (Joyce & Mukerji, 2017;Mukerji, 2010).…”

Section: Logistical Power and The Taming Of Timementioning

confidence: 99%

“…As examinations are highly technology-intensive, the time-prescribed activities do not only concern those human actors who are directly linked to the examinations but also extend to and rely on technical matters and the exam infrastructure. Originally initiated as a simpler procedure consisting of filling out examination sheets under the supervision of a local teacher, the exam began to be supplemented with metal detectors, a video surveillance system, a token, computers, and printers, all of which depend on access to the infrastructures of electricity and the internet (Piattoeva, 2016;Piattoeva & Vasileva, 2022). The infrastructure has started to play the leading role in enabling the examination, and any failure, lag, or disconnect can jeopardize the entire assessment project as a uniform performance.…”

Section: Taming the Time Zone By Technical Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

Taming the time zone: National large-scale assessments as instruments of time in the Russian Federation

Vasileva

2023

EPAA

Nationwide large-scale assessments (NLSA)—an example of cross-border policy mobility—manifest a proliferating means of governing formal schooling. In the Russian context, NLSA takes the form of a compulsory graduation examination called the Unified State Examinations (USE). In this article, we explore how a mobile policy instrument of the NLSA participates in the relational processes of time- and space-making in a particular federated context of Russia, and how this process intertwines with and is shaped by the presence of multiple time zones. We argue that NLSA is an instrument of time that attempts to achieve centralization of the complex federated structure of the Russian Federation. Yet, the work of the NLSA is not a smooth process in a country characterized by territorial vastness, a complex federated structure, and the existence of multiple time zones. Guided by the theory of logistical power and sociological perspectives on time, as well as empirical insights, we show how the time zones need to be tamed in order for the NLSA to exercise its centralizing role. Discursively, the time zone is introduced and publicly discussed to symbolically characterize Russia and justify political actions or their outcomes. Bureaucratically, the desire for simultaneity and synchronicity takes the form of a meticulous ordering of a sequence of actions through prescriptive documentation that regulates the NLSA. Technologically, synchronicity, simultaneity, and instantaneousness rely on and engender an expanding national infrastructure that mediates social relations and the processes of conducting the NLSA, cutting across the time zones and federal units. Based on this analysis, we propose that scholarship on policy mobility and education policy sociology at large could benefit from examining the relationship between time and education policy and governance in four intertwined ways: the time of policy, context as time, policy instruments as instruments of time, and time in policy instruments.