proof cover sheet

PROOF COVER SHEET Author(s): Article title: Article no: Enclosures:

Pat Thomson Romancing the market: narrativising equity in globalising times CDIS 770245 1) Query sheet 2) Article proofs

Dear Author, 1. Please check these proofs carefully. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to check these and approve or amend them. A second proof is not normally provided. Taylor & Francis cannot be held responsible for uncorrected errors, even if introduced during the production process. Once your corrections have been added to the article, it will be considered ready for publication. Please limit changes at this stage to the correction of errors. You should not make insignificant changes, improve prose style, add new material, or delete existing material at this stage. Making a large number of small, non-essential corrections can lead to errors being introduced. We therefore reserve the right not to make such corrections. For detailed guidance on how to check your proofs, please see http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/production/checkingproofs.asp.

2. Please review the table of contributors below and confirm that the first and last names are structured correctly and that the authors are listed in the correct order of contribution. This check is to ensure that your name will appear correctly online and when the article is indexed. Sequence 1

Prefix

Given name(s)

Surname

Pat

Thomson

Suffix

Queries are marked in the margins of the proofs.

AUTHOR QUERIES General query: You have warranted that you have secured the necessary written permission from the appropriate copyright owner for the reproduction of any text, illustration, or other material in your article. (Please see http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/preparation/permission.asp.) Please check that any required acknowledgements have been included to reflect this. AQ1

Bacchi 2000, the journal title has been replaced using data from CrossRef.

AQ2

Ball 1993, please provide URL for this reference.

AQ3

Gorard & Smith 2004, please provide URL for this reference.

AQ4

Sinclair, Ironside, & Seifert 1996, please provide URL for this reference.

How to make correcons to your proofs using Adobe Acrobat Taylor & Francis now offer you a choice of opons to help you make correcons to your proofs. Your PDF proof file has been enabled so that you can edit the proof directly using Adobe Acrobat. This is the simplest and best way for you to ensure that your correcons will be incorporated. If you wish to do this, please follow these instrucons: 1. Save the file to your hard disk. 2. Check which version of Adobe Acrobat you have on your computer. You can do this by clicking on the “Help” tab, and then “About.” If Adobe Reader is not installed, you can get the latest version free from hp://get.adobe.com/reader/. If you have Adobe Reader 8 (or a later version), go to “Tools”/ “Comments & Markup”/ “Show Comments & Markup.” If you have Acrobat Professional 7, go to “Tools”/ “Commenng”/ “Show Commenng Toolbar.” 3. Click “Text Edits.” You can then select any text and delete it, replace it, or insert new text as you need to. If you need to include new secons of text, it is also possible to add a comment to the proofs. To do this, use the Scky Note tool in the task bar. Please also see our FAQs here: hp://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/producon/index.asp.

4. Make sure that you save the file when you close the document before uploading it to CATS using the “Upload File” buon on the online correcon form. A full list of the comments and edits you have made can be viewed by clicking on the “Comments” tab in the boom le-hand corner of the PDF.

If you prefer, you can make your correcons using the CATS online correcon form.

{CDIS}articles/CDIS770245/CDIS_A_770245_O.3d[x]

08-02-2013

21:55:58 CE: A.C.; QA: N.D.

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2013 Vol. 00, No. 00, 115, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2013.770245

Romancing the market: narrativising equity in globalising times Pat Thomson* School of Education, The University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK 5

10

15

20

Despite the ongoing production of statistics about inequities in education, national policy agendas seem incapable of getting traction on the everyday realities of the schooling which re/produces them. This paper is a think-piece which uses narrative analysis to explore some of the meaning-making processes that are implicated in this stalemate. Mobilising Lyotard’s notion of a performative master narrative, that of the globalised market economy with its attendant trope of the market, equity policy is conceived as a parallel story of distribution of knowledge-as-athing, where outcomes are privileged over purposes and processes and learning is assumed to proceed in the same way for all. The ways in which this equity story supports the master narrative through the display of test results for example are signposted, and illustrations are presented to show how blame and sequestration are used as rhetorical strategies to silence equity critics. This kind of deconstructive critique of course has its limitations: debate about norms and ideals, as well as persuasive counter-narratives and exemplars are also needed in order for political action to be undertaken. Keywords: equity; narrative; policy; globalisation; deconstruction; performativity

Romancing the market: narrativising equity in globalising times

25

30

35

40

Futures are being blighted. Horizons are being limited. Generations of children are being let down. And the response of those ‘campaigners’ is to say hands off. Hands off the unacceptable waste of talent. Hands off the chronic, ingrained educational failure. Hands off our failing school. It is ironic if you think about it. The popular critique of our reform programme has most been that of its unpinning motives. The talk was of an ‘ideologically driven Academies programme’; and ‘ideologically motivated school reforms’. . . And yet the truth is rather different. The Academies programme is not about ideology. It is an evidence-based, practical solution built on by successive governments both Labour and Conservative. The new ideologues are the enemies of reform, the ones who put doctrine ahead of pupil’s interests (Michael Gove, 2012). Educational sociologists in the West have provided robust empirical findings about the inequitable effects of educational systems. Post-war (WWII) deliberations on the scope and causes of educational inequities largely agree that systems of education are shaped by historical social, economic and political trajectories and pressures that extend beyond geographical borders. Whether scholars argued for a theory of reproduction (Apple, 1982; Bowles & Gintis, 1976), organic class relationship (Connell, Ashenden, Kessler, & Dowsett, 1982), or some kind of correspondence between the economic and education fields (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1979), *Email: [email protected] # 2013 Taylor & Francis


2

45

50

55

60

08-02-2013 21:55:58

P. Thomson

educational sociologists historically sought to connect schooling and further and higher education to more holistic analyses of society. The efforts to understand the persistence of the correlations between income, social positioning and education continue to this day (e.g. Apple, Ball, & Gandin, 2011; Weis & Dolby, 2012). Ironically, whatever evidence was and is produced about equity appears to have little traction on what it is that states actually do. This paper is a think-piece (Petrie & Rugg, 2011) which seeks to make a contribution to the scholarship that explicates this intractability. It does so by focusing on the semiotic work of national equity policies. It does not draw on any particular texts but rather on a general archive in order to explore the allied notions of ‘master-narrative’ and policy as narrative. It is important to acknowledge that this is an exercise in deconstructive analysis, not in empirical exemplification. I return to this point in the conclusion. This paper focuses on equity policy and associated story lines, easing out their logics and interrelationships and their operationalisation in and as education policy. The intention of this paper is also to offer an illustration of how narrative theory might be useful in tackling meta-level questions. It is written from, and influenced by, events and policies in England although it attempts to make connections at a broader scale. Theoretical premises: master narrative and parallel narratives

65

70

75

80

85

I take as my starting point that language, a cultural construction, is insufficient in itself to make sense of the world. Rather, sense-making puts together a set of ideas in language and these not only offer frames and explanations about experiences, natural phenomena, events and relationships but they also guide actions. It is relatively common in policy sociology, for example, to think of language-based sense-making practices as discourse (Bacchi, 2000; Ball, 1993). In this paper, I offer an alternative approach, that of narrative. It is relatively uncommon to analyse education policy as a narrative (but not unknown, see Hampton, 2011; Luke, 1997), although the term narrative is frequently used in reference to policy. Narrative research is more often conducted on educators’ working lives (e.g. Ah Nee-Benham & Cooper, 1998; Ceroni et al., 1996) and sometimes used in connection with pedagogical practices (Goodson, Biesta, Tedder, & Adair, 2010). A narrative approach is however less unusual in the wider field of public policy research (e.g. Roe, 1994; Yanow, 2000). Narrative is generally understood by its synonym ‘story’ but it is important here to note some of its characteristics. It is a rhetorical form which brings together a series or sequence of events, delineates the actions of main and minor characters, conveys moral maxims and cultural norms and operates simultaneously in cognitive and affective domains. Narrative typically has some kind of plot, mobilises syntactical features such as metaphor and metonym, and contains multiple voices and intertextual references (Abbott, 2008; Altman, 2008). It takes many forms and can be explicitly fictional, the means of making ongoing ‘identity’ (Bruner, 1986b) or a way of representing the findings of social science (Clough, 2002). Narrative does not contain meaning per se, and readers/listeners bring their own interpretations within the delimitations of culture/space/time (Fish, 1980). In this paper, I take as my starting points that narrative is a way of dealing with the temporality of existence


08-02-2013 21:55:59

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education

90

95

100

105

110

115

120

3

(Ricoeur, 19841988), a mode of thought profoundly different from scientific rationality (Bruner, 1986a) and a prime mode of organising human experience (Herman, 2002). I work with three further understandings which guide the analytic approach taken in this article: The first understanding is drawn from literary theories of narrative structure (e.g. Bal, 1997). These suggest that narratives can have a major storyline but also a series of sub-stories. The major narrative is interconnected with these more minor narratives, but they also each have some autonomy. These lesser narratives may work in parallel to the major story, as in Victorian novels and contemporary television miniseries, but they generally exhibit ‘family’ patterns, or themes. Parallel stories provide a commentary on the major narrative, even though they exist in a subordinate and fractal relationship with it, and with each other. The second understanding is based in social theory. Lyotard (1984/1993) proposed that modern/Western societies have been, until recently, underpinned by an Enlightenment narrative of progress. He argued that this comprehensive, peoplecentred view of human history offered a set of ‘truths’ which supported particular kinds of knowledge-building practices which were said to lead to ongoing development, health, wealth and happiness. The power of this master narrative arose from the way in which it legitimated an apparently rational rationale for colonising the future. Lyotard suggested that the Enlightenment master narrative has now lost currency. Truths no longer stand unchallenged. Instead we are left with heterogeneous knowledges which must be continually performed, which compete with each other and which are variously mobilised in the interests of the status quo. Nevertheless, an Enlightenment master narrative remains dominant, albeit no longer one which resides on a truth its dominance depends on its continued operationalisation and adaption/ adjustment. It is this performativity principle which characterises (post)modern life. This dominant master-narrative can be seen, according to Lyotard, as both utopian, in that it offers a view of an ideal society produced through continued progress, but also as utilitarian, in that it guides what can and ought to be accomplished in the present. It professes a teleology of reason which is neutral, rigorous and universal. This teleology is enacted through taxonomies which classify every aspect of everyday life, and empirical processes which manage and measure improvements (the way of progressing). The third understanding is drawn from the philosophy of narratives (Carroll, 2009; Carroll & Gibson, 2011; Currie, 1990, 2010; Walton, 1990). This body of scholarship argues that:

125

130

Narratives do not necessarily need to be attributed to an external or real author, since they also contain an internal narrator. I will suggest, following Lyotard, that in the case of the Enlightenment meta-narrative, the internal narrator is universal, rational, reasonable, empiricist. The egocentric internal narrator always explicates the story in relation to itself and its interests. The narrative is thus inevitably partial and offered from a particular point of view. In the next section, I take this point of view to be that of the nation state. The partiality of the internal narrator frames the way in which attention is guided to key events, characters, emphases and lessons, making certain responses more likely than others. The narrator thus guides the construction of


4 135

140

145

150

155

160

165

170

175

08-02-2013 21:55:59

P. Thomson events as well as they can be understood. The notion of guided framing speaks to the ways in which narrative as social action, via repetition and adaptation, creates a world with its own internal logics and practices.

In this paper I bring these understandings together. I use the notion of an operationalised and performative master narrative of progress which supports and uses parallel sub-stories; the one I address is that of equity in education. To do this I take up notion of storylines (c.f. Needham, 2011), as an element of the guiding and framing work done by the internal narrator. Storylines operate within and between the master and parallel narratives, not only connecting the two, but also working to legitimate each other and mutually producing, reproducing and modifying each other. Globalising progress: a dominant master narrative In recent times, the Enlightenment narrative of health, wealth and happiness via scientific development has taken a new twist, that of ‘globalisation’. This turn addresses the ways in which the world is now multiply and inextricably interconnected and interdependent. The narrative sutures together rapidly shifting economic, technological, semiotic, environmental and political vectors, and its attendant movement of people, images, money and jobs (Appadurai, 1996; Wiseman, 1998), positing as both a moral and homogenising maxim that human progress is now only able to be to achieved through a knowledge economy. The global knowledge economy (GKE) requires the population to become consumers and a knowledge economy workforce. Without a population which acts in these two ways, the nation state cannot function; the threat/risk is that progress will be denied to both the state and the population. This is a classic romance narrative in which the hero’s (nation state) quest is to find a better life for those deserving of rescue from the dreadful fate of not progressing. As Jameson (1981) notes, such romantic fictions tend to offer both nostalgic and utopian perspectives on what life can and should be. This romance is operationalised and performed by global capital, but also by nation states. Social scientists generally agree that the notion of knowledge economy has provided the rationale for a common pattern of responses from nation states (Held & McGrew, 2002; Weiss, 1997). Whether they are in the West or in the majority world, it is now hard to think of a national government which does not now frame and legitimate its policy agenda via a determinist narrative about the inevitability of a knowledge-driven future (see Giddens, 1999, for an exemplar) at the same time as it actively encourages the growth of international policy quangoes which re/produce the self-same inevitabilist narrative (Henry, Lingard, Rizvi, & Taylor, 2001; Novoa & Lawn, 2002). With the apparent collapse of socialism, an alternative pathway to utopia which held considerable attraction for some countries in the twentieth century, the mechanism to achieve progress left is that of the market, the metonym for global capitalism. The task of nation states, even those which avow some version of a socialist future, now seems irrevocably tied to advancing their own futures through the thrill/thrall of the market (Bauman, 1998; Beck, 2000). Alternative views of how nation states might work in current times fare badly, it seems, in the face of the romance of the world as a largely unregulated bazaar.


08-02-2013

21:56:0

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 180

185

190

195

200

205

210

215

220

5

National public policy agendas, including education, can be seen as the means of producing and reproducing, modifying and adapting GKE to local circumstances in the attempt to sustain local legitimacy and advance or at least not lose position in international economic, political and symbolic economies (Kennett, 2008). National policy articulates and sanctions inter alia the ways in which the law and systems of audit and regulation function, the ways in which services are provided, and the ways in which the population is to be managed and supported. These are now all tied to the GKE narrative. The internal narrative point of view of national policy is the nation state itself. What can and should be seen, said and done is derived from this point of view and its associated egoistic interests. What is morally right and what are taken as cultural truths are from the point of view of the internal state narrator. The state equates its interests with those of the population as a whole. What is in its interests are taken to be the interests of the population. This narrative self-interest is legitimated by GKE that nation states must simultaneously advocate for, justify and act in order to bring into being the globalised market with all of its attendant technological, cultural and economic architectures without which the population would not progress. The constellation of responses made by many nation states, the operationalisation and performance of the GKE narrative, is often called neoliberalism (Harvey, 2005) an approach to government which seeks to manage the reduced power of direct state regulatory levers and fluctuating state income derived from shifting and shifty businesses. The hallmarks of this agenda are the marketisation, contractualism and privatisation of public services, regulation of services via intense and often punitive regimes of surveillance and audit and the development of new forms of governance to ‘steer’ the work of governing ‘from a distance’ (Osborne & Gaebler, 1993) and which harness together public and private providers in labyrinthine interconnecting networks (Hood, 1998; Newman, 2001; Power, 2007). Let me concretise this in an example. In English schools, this agenda played out in a first wave of the shifting of responsibility for running schools to the local level, the introduction of school ‘choice’, the contracting out of most educational services and punitive and league tabled test and audit regimes (Ball, 2007; Chapman & Gunter, 2009). The second wave of activity has focused on proliferating types of schools all of which are ‘free’ to make management decisions and ‘personalise’ their operations, and the whittling away of local authorities. This amounts to a virtual de-systematisation of the state system just as Tooley (2000) advocated at the turn of the century and its replacement with new forms of governance (Ball, 2012; Hatcher & Jones, 2011). However, it is an agenda in which discussions of equity, conceived in a particular way, are still highly important. I now bring these understandings, together with those discussed in the previous section, to a discussion of national policies related to equity in education. I propose this as a parallel story that is part of a family of narratives which elaborates, mediates, performs and embeds the GKE within the nation state. Equal shares: a parallel narrative

225

Around the world, equity in education is equated in policy with the achievement of equal outcomes.1 This equity narrative rhetorically brings together groups deemed as needing support or intervention, actors and institutions that are to provide the


6

230

235

240

245

250

255

21:56:1

P. Thomson

support or intervention and a sequence of action and audit. The nation state is the agent which dictates expectations and pace of change in relation to equity and other policy goals, arbitrates disputes, and receives and distributes reports of achievements. Via policy, the state also establishes the relative importance of equity vis-a`-vis other goals, and it patrols, guards and/or attempts to change cultural norms.2 The means through which equity is to be effected in contemporary nation states are generally through ‘equal access and equal opportunity’ strategies: these mean the state-led or state-required removal of obvious and uncontentious barriers to involvement. In some cases, equal access and opportunity stretches to additional measures deemed necessary to redress disadvantages (Bacchi, 2009). This equity narrative operates simultaneously in cognitive and affective domains and it is important to note the affect that is called upon. ‘Equal shares’ and ‘being fair’ are notions which have strong roots in childhood. Among children, the perception that another has had more than their fair share becomes a cause for righteous indignation and can lead to squabbles, tantrums and sulking. Among adults equity still has strong emotional components. It is not too far a stretch to see the kinds of responses that are made to equity strategies such as positive discrimination as possessed of the same kind of emotional responses ‘it’s not fair, they’ve got more than I have’. It is hardly surprising then that the state arbitration role in equity policy is a key to how much progress, if any, is made in shifting the distribution of power and advantage (Fraser, 1997). The narrativisation of equity-as-equal outcomes and equal-opportunity-as-theremoval-of-barriers has become in national policy the arithmetic equation of the distribution of goods/benefits among population groupings in roughly the same proportions as they are in the wider society. This is a common-sense idea which has the same emotive appeal as sharing out a cake in the playground, making sure that everybody has a piece which is about the same size. It is a distributive notion of equity and social justice (Thomson, 1999, 2002) which shares the characteristics of GKE, namely:

260

265

270

08-02-2013

it is utopian, in that it offers a view of an ideal society in which goods/benefits are equally allocated; it is also utilitarian, in that it guides what can and ought to be accomplished in the present and future; these accomplishments are specified via taxonomies which classify them so that that they can then be distributed; that which is to be apportioned among the population requires the deployment of empirical processes which manage and measure them. Such measures work across time, place and context; the distributive notion of progress and distribution requires ongoing audit in order to see what improvement is being made. These audits are represented as neutral, rigorous and universal; the distribution notion of equity thus enacts a teleology of reason which seems entirely justifiable since it has both an internal logic and the GKE imperative.

The ‘world’ created by the equity narrative is one which is seductive in its appeal to both reason and value. Justice is assumed to occur via an arbitrary distribution of proxy measures of life chances. It seems to be entirely logical in its premises. It is only


08-02-2013

21:56:2


275

280

285

290

295

300

305

310

315

7

when some of the distinctive themes are examined that the effects of these logics become clearer. Equity in education has its own variations on the Enlightenment narrative: these frame and guide what it is that is actionable. These are the performatives not truths, but utilitarian categories that shape what is said and done, namely: First, knowledge, dispositions and skills become a thing to be dealt with. Knowledge is seen as amenable to being parceled up in syllabus artefacts and ‘delivered’ through transmission pedagogies or forms of coercive constructionism (Collins, 1989). Debates about what knowledge is important, to whom, why, how and in whose interests knowledge is constructed and how these issues might be intimately connected with matters of equity and justice are sidelined because they are not about the utility of the knowledge thing, but rather about the basis of the truths and ethics that produce choices about what knowledge is important. Differences of view about knowledge are officially relegated to ritual periods of contestation during official policy periods dedicated to use-value i.e. during times of curriculum development (see, for example, the tracking of curriculum changes and debates in Evans, 2005). Second, knowledge outcomes are privileged over purposes and processes. Getting to an educational outcome is rhetorically made analogous to driving a car on different roads to the same destination (differentiation, personalisation). This ignores the reality that why and how something is done can and often does have consequences for where one ends up (Thomson, 2011). There are no neutral processes. Choices about the purposes of education provide the bases for the choices made about which knowledge, skills and dispositions are important and what affordances will allow all students the best chance of learning. However, debates over purpose and process are not simply utilitarian, they potentially question the GKE and the notion that different purposes are possible/desirable (e.g. Wrigley, Thomson, & Lingard, 2011). Third, it is assumed that learning occurs in the same incremental way for all (Claxton, 1999). That learning might not be linear or logical or proceed according to neat stages of development is a difficult notion to bring together with distribution, since it potentially troubles the notion that at any point in time a statistical snapshot of distribution will reflect ‘equity’. However, the GKE logic of distribution suggests that all those below the median/average are just ‘behind’. It is not a question of learning in a different way or learning different things. When students are homogenised in this way, difference becomes a problem rather than a potential resource and strength (Gonzales, Moll, & Amanti, 2005). Non-recognition of difference makes difficult any debate of whether learning below a mandated norm is a problem with the student or the norm. Fourth, learning can be measured. This aspect of the equity narrative is the one that is most obviously contested. The teaching profession continues to be vocal about the inadequacy of tests to do more than take a snapshot of narrowly defined learning, at a particular point in time, in ways which privilege particular ways of demonstrating learning over others (McNeil, 2000; Ravitch, 2010). However, the debate often leads to thinking about a better test, rather than considering whether testing is actually what is required in order to assess and to achieve equity. As Porter (1995) argues, quantification is an economical, transcultural/global language for communicating ‘beyond the boundaries of locality and community’ (p. ix); it also has the added benefit of appearing to exclude the fallibilities of human judgement. Once this rhetorical distributive framing is accepted holistically, then it is entirely logical and right that nation states concerned with equity focus on enacting it


8 320

325

08-02-2013

21:56:3

P. Thomson

through the development of national curricula, against which a small number of audit measures can be applied regularly and subsequently displayed as a signifier of progress. No Child left behind (USA) and Every Child Matters (UK) use this logic and the same moves can be seen over 30 years of Australian equity policy, albeit less reductively. All three nation states, inter alia, now subscribe to OECD measures which work in the same distributive way, with the same performative equity framing and guiding.

Fairness and markets

330

It might seem that an equity narrative would cause trouble for GKE. However, it not only speaks to GKE utopian elements and offers a moral twist but also serves the highly utilitarian ends of GKE. Take for example these three storylines:

335

340

345

In order to retain their legitimacy, contemporary nation states need to be seen to attend to GKE, realised through the market. Because this is a foundational premise, it becomes common sense to assert that all nation states need to create conditions attractive to fleet-footed capital. An essential component of this ‘readiness’ is a population educated in the kinds of competencies and skills that are likely to be required literate and numerate enough to manage technologised systems of production (Farrell, 2006). This assumes that all jobs are connected to the knowledge economy and that they all require these kinds of competencies; questions about what happens when capital exits the nation state or when humans are replaced with technological applications, or what the nation state is to do are conveniently sidestepped. Thus, national curriculum and testing regimes bring particular kinds of literacies and numeracies to the fore. These privilege particular ways of knowing, writing and speaking (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996).

350

355

360

Storyline one: The competitive nation state. In order to survive in GKE, nation states must have a workforce in which a majority is able to ‘do’ knowledge work.

Storyline two: The work-ready citizenry. The duty of all citizens in GKE is to ensure that they are equipped and ready to work.

As Marginson (1997a, 1997b) has noted, in a marketised nation state, education becomes a privatised positional good. However, it also becomes the duty of potential employees to: continually prepare to account for themselves and their work, be able to adapt what they know and can do to meet changing circumstances, be prepared if necessary to manufacture the kind of self which is attractive to those the market seeks to attract and be able to accomplish the moral duty of choice (Du Gay, 1996; Kuttner, 1998). The nation state seeks out those who can be categorised as unready, that is not in education, employment or training (NEET), and coerces them into compliance. In the name of equity, the nation state ensures that the opportunity to work, should the market provide this, is distributed among the population. The equity storyline is operationalised and performed through ‘workfare’ regimes (Daguerre, 2004; McDowell, 2004) the manipulation of benefit rights, the targeting


08-02-2013

21:56:4


9

of those who are out of the education and training systems and the policing of those who refuse to participate.

365

370

375

380

385

The distributive approach to equity in education serves this storyline very well. Not only can key competencies and skills deemed necessary for the market be specified via national curricula, but they are also made amenable to testing. The results of testing are displayed nationally to ‘demonstrate’ progress being made, and used internationally to ‘show’ how a nation stands in the league table of other nation states. International league tables generated by the equity sub-narrative contribute to the imaginary of GKE, and simultaneously signify the nation and education as integral to it (c.f. Castoriadis, 1987/1998). There are of course other equity GKE storylines, but these three the competitive nation state, the work-ready citizenry and the prepared nation state illustrate the point that the interests of the egoistic internal narrator of GKE, the nation state, is able to benefit from the parallel equity narrative and vice versa. Because both are performative, equity as policy becomes something to be done and something that has use-value, rather than being a normative basis for discussions which might disrupt and make difficult a schooling which can be seen, as demonstrated by the very same GKE statistical processes, to perpetuate status quo. Disconcerting GKE data, such as the OECD PISA league tables (see www.pisa. oecd.org) are in the public arena and create a legitimation problem that the nation state must address. But there are ways for policy-makers to deal with potentially difficult internal contradictions. I focus here on only two storylines that are used in order to accommodate this equity problem. One is internal, confined to education policy, and the other addresses the broader nation state policy agenda. These examples illustrate the ways in which master and parallel narratives provide the means through which sense is made of material circumstances.

390

395

400

Storyline three: The prepared nation state. Nation states need to show (each other) that they are committed to GKE progress.

Storyline four: The recalcitrant citizen-leaders. The nation state has empowered local sites and leaders to get on with it. If equity is not happening, then it is their fault.

The equity narrative relies, as I have argued, on the development of an apparently neutral, universalised and scientised process of national curriculum, examination and testing to achieve the utopia of equal distribution of results. When this appears to falter one possible explanation is that the system is actually not fair and reasonable at all and its basic principles and their operationalisation are at issue. Current equity and more general public policy narratives have a way around this. In order to keep the overall logic intact, the causation of problems is directed away from policy and the central government and its political vulnerabilities. Instead, the enactment of devolution and marketisation allows a rhetorical shift of responsibility for equity to those in charge of educational institutions. Inequity becomes solely the responsibility of those who are responsible for enacting policy schools and teachers (Gewirtz, Mahony, Hextall, & Cribb, 2009; Sinclair, Ironside, & Seifert, 1996), and those who choose schools badly or not at all, those who do not aspire enough, and those whose


08-02-2013

21:56:5

10 P. Thomson 405

410

parenting is deemed inadequate (see quotation at the start of this article, and Ball, Macrae, & Maguire, 1999; Gorard, Taylor, & Fitz, 2003). This story line is a winwin for the nation state. If the initiatives alleged to redress blame succeed (e.g. the turning of schools into academies in England), then this proves that the attribution of blame was correct. If initiatives fail, then this is evidence that the attribution is correct, since those blamed are clearly too feckless to respond to the additional help that is offered to them. Shifting responsibility has been and continues to be a remarkably robust and successful rhetorical move for the nation state and its spokespeople.

415

420

425

Storyline five: The resistant citizenry. Talking about the importance of context is making excuses; the focus must be on what can be done, not what cannot.

When evidence about the inexorable nexus between social class and student achievements are produced, as in the linkages made in the analyses of PISA results (Gorard & Smith, 2004), this is acknowledged but then sequestered. That is, the problem is confined to education and within the equity narrative, rather than being connected more widely to other social and political phenomena. Because the master narrative is a rationale for, and the recipient of benefits from education, debates about equity and markets tend to be strictly demarcated. The borders between public policy are rhetorically patrolled and subject to intervention. Equity is reframed for example as issues around correct choosing or selection policy. The policy strategy is one of the sequestrations of the sphere deemed a legitimate arena for activity. Two examples of this are: a. the definition and delimitation of effects

430

The notion of context creates a metaphor of education working within a local crucible which affects students and their families (Seddon, 1993), but not the universal neutral ‘equitable’, marketised, school system. Context is a particularly helpful notion for a rhetorical strategy of sequestration, since it suggests a backdrop rather than a space/ time which is (re)productive of social relations, including those of and in education (Lupton, 2003; Thomson, 2002). b. the delimitation of scope for intervention

435

440

445

Rationales for confining policy solutions to the education sphere, such as school effectiveness research (see Slee, Weiner, & Tomlinson, 1998) are taken up to avoid more general discussion of public policy overall or indeed, the very idea of markets. Context is ascribed as beyond reach. However, sometimes, as in the case of New Labour in the UK, when context is seen to require intervention in order to effect changes within education, policy is either welfarist in orientation and maintains a strict separation of economic from social policy as in the Social Inclusion agenda, or works at a geographical scale through which economic solutions are unpredictable, as in urban regeneration and other area-based projects (Byrne, 1999; Gough, Eisenschitz, & McCulloch, 2006). When these territorialising moves are publicly challenged, the response of official policy-makers acting as spokespeople for the nation state, verbalisers of the internal


08-02-2013

21:56:6


450

455

11

narrator, is that discussions of contextual reasons for inequities are inaccurate/ inappropriate/patronising. References to poverty, race and gender are in essence saying that these ‘population groups’ are not capable of participating and achieving. This kind of perverse attack, as seen at the start of this article, puts those wishing to challenge the narrative world created by GKE and its associated policy parallel narratives on the rhetorical back foot, as they must not only defend themselves from this position, but also mount an argument about the misconstruction of the equity problem something not amenable to sound-bite politics (Drew, Lyons, & Svehla, 2010). Towards a conclusion: the development of counter-narratives?

460

465

470

475

480

485

490

Having begun this article by positioning it as one which aimed to raise questions, it would be highly contradictory to offer an assured conclusion about the implications of the analysis. My concern in this paper was to explore the possibilities of bringing a meta-narrative analysis to a globalised equity policy agenda which is rapidly becoming de rigeur across the world. I have argued, using a deconstructive approach that the ways in which equity is constructed and enacted/performed does particular kinds of work which are not necessarily equitable or just. I want to conclude by noting an inherent paradox as well as what my analytic approach has not accomplished. First, the paradox is one with which all critics of equity policy must grapple in order to argue that a different approach to equity is required, one must assume that the status quo is inequitable and unjust. Doing this of course relies on the very statistics and processes that are subject to critique. This is not a situation unique to this paper, but it is one that cannot be ignored. We inevitably work, as Lather (1991) has suggested, both with/against policy and its statistical operations. Second, the work of deconstruction is both necessary but also insufficient to develop a coherent alternative or form the basis for political action. Deconstruction does not establish new normative positions. However, deconstruction does allow for some of the lacunae of particular ways of thinking to be identified, and for particular logics to become more visible. This may have benefits, namely, deconstructive reasoning writ large may loosen some of the linkages in what Ian Hacking has called ‘the matrix’. . . ‘an idea, talk about the idea, individuals falling under the idea, the interaction between the idea and people, and the manifold of social practices and institutions that these interactions involve’ (p. 34). The equity narrative as I have represented it relies on particular kinds of assumptions and beliefs each of which is open to challenge, and indeed each is regularly challenged. However, it is the totality which a narrative analysis (like that of discourse) allows us to comprehend and hold open to scrutiny. It is ‘the matrix’ which comes centre stage and its flawed logics become visible and holistic. A counter-strategy of course needs more than this; it requires a normative basis from which to act in the world and this means having both an explicit working understanding of justice and equity, as well as material practices. Interestingly, narrative can also play a part here. Philosophers suggest that it is through narrative that we construct understandings of past, present and future and this is integral to the processes of developing new normative positions (Nussbaum, 1990). Specific narrative genres, such as parables and stories of hypothetical situations which require moral reasoning are also common in philosophical traditions (e.g. Walzer, 1983).


08-02-2013

21:56:7

12 P. Thomson

495

500

505

510

So while this paper has not explored the utility of narrative to debate and develop an explicit alternative norm, a conscious mobilisation of narrative approaches could be very helpful in this endeavour. As well, a coherent alternative equity strategy also requires the production of resistant and counter-practices. I want to suggest that narrative plays a part here too. One of the known concerns with the notion of a master narrative relates to the way in which it implies that counter-activity is impossible at anything but a small scale (see Herman, Jahn, & Ryan, 2007). How in the face of the operationalised master narrative is it possible to build strategies that not only challenge but might also lead to substantive social change? Narrative can not only create utopian views of what kinds of societies we might want (as suggested above), but also build anthologies of small stories which show the possibilities for different kinds of educational (and other social) practices (Giroux, Lankshear, McLaren, & Peters, 1996). Counternarratives are repositories of discursive resources that can be drawn on by individuals and groups to not only disrupt and engage in localised counter-activities (Bamberg & Andrew, 2004) but also to bring together in social movements (Anyon, 2005). In a time of widespread anxiety about the future, these three narrative endeavours deconstruction, debating and developing alternative norms and material practices offer hope as well as avenues for action. This paper has undertaken only one of these activities, but offers some pointers for logics to avoid in the other two. Notes

515

1. See, for example, No Child Left Behind (www.ed.gov/esea, USA) and Every Child Matters (www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DfES/1081/2004, UK). 2. See, for example, the role of the nation state in debates about boys’ educational outcomes (Lingard, Martino, & Mills, 2009).

References 520

525

530

535

Abbott, H. P. (2008). The Cambridge introduction to narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ah Nee-Benham, M., & Cooper, J. (1998). Let my spirit soar! Narratives of diverse women in school leadership. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Altman, R. (2008). A theory of narrative. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Anyon, J. (2005). Radical possibilities. Public policy, urban education and a new social movement. New York, NY: Routledge. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large. Cultural dimensions of globalisation. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press. Apple, M. (1982). Cultural and economic reproduction in education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Apple, M., Ball, S., & Gandin, L. (Eds.) (2011). The Routledge international handbook of the sociology of education. New York, NY: Routledge. AQ1 Bacchi, C. (2000). Policy as discourse: What does it mean? Where does it get us?. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 21(1), 4557. doi:10.1080/01596300050005493 Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing policy: What’s the problem represented to be?. Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Australia. Bal, M. (1997). Narratology. Introduction to the theory of the narrative (2nd ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.


08-02-2013

21:56:8


13

AQ2 Ball, S. (1993). What is policy? Texts, trajectories and toolboxes. Discourse, 13(2), 311. 540

545

550

555

560

565

570

575

580

585

590

doi:10.1080/0159630930130202 Ball, S. (2007). Education plc. Understanding private sector participation in public sector education. London: Routledge. Ball, S. (2012). Networks, new governance and education. Bristol: Policy Press. Ball, S., Macrae, S., & Maguire, M. (1999). Young lives, diverse choices and imagined futures in an education and training market. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 3(3), 195224. doi:10.1080/136031199285002 Bamberg, M., & Andrew, M. (Eds.). (2004). Considering counter-narratives: Narrating, resisting, making sense. London: John Benjamins. Bauman, Z. (1998). Globalisation. The human consequences. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Beck, U. (2000). What is globalisation? Cambridge, Oxford & Malden: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. C. (1979). The inheritors, French students and their relation to culture. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America. New York, NY: Basic Books. Bruner, J. (1986a). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. (1986b). Life as narrative. Social Research, 54(1), 1132. Byrne, D. (1999). Social exclusion. Buckingham: Open University Press. Carroll, N. (Ed.) (2009). The poetic, aesthetics, and philosophy of narrative. New York, NY: Wiley-Blackwell. Carroll, N., & Gibson, J. (Eds.). (2011). Narrative, emotion and insight. Pittsburgh, PA: Pennsylvania University Press. Castoriadis, C. (1987/1998). The imaginary institution of society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ceroni, K., Garman, N., Haggerson, N., MacMahon, P., Piantanida, M., & Spore, M. (1996). Disturbing our universe: The dissertation as personal narrative. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting April 1996, New York. Chapman, C., & Gunter, H. (Eds.). (2009). Radical reforms. Perspectives on an era of educational change. London: Routledge. Claxton, G. (1999). Hare brain, tortoise mind. Why intelligence increases when you think less. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press. Clough, P. (2002). Narratives and fictions in educational research. Buckingham: Open University Press. Collins, C. (1989). The changing nature of the academic curriculum. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research. Connell, R. W., Ashenden, D., Kessler, S., & Dowsett, G. (1982). Making the difference. Schools, families and social divisions. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Currie, G. (1990). The nature of fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Currie, G. (2010). Narrative and narrators A philosophy of stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Daguerre, A. (2004). Importing workfare: Policy transfer of social and labour market policies from the USA to Britain under New Labour. Social Policy and Administration, 38(1), 4156. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9515.2004.00375.x Drew, J., Lyons, W., & Svehla, L. (2010). Sound-bite saboteurs. Public discourse, education, and the state of democratic deliberation. New York, NY: SUNY. Du Gay, P. (1996). Consumption and identity at work. London: Sage. Evans, N. (2005). Curriculum change in secondary schools, 19572004. An educational roundabout?. London: Routledge. Farrell, L. (2006). Making knowledge common: Literacy and knowledge at work. Dordrecht: Peter Lang. Fish, S. (1980). Is there a text in this class? The authority of interpretive communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fraser, N. (1997). Justice interruptus. Critical reflections on the ‘postsocialist’condition. London: Routledge. Gee, J., Hull, G., & Lankshear, C. (1996). The new work order: Behind the language of the new capitalism. Australia: Allen and Unwin.


08-02-2013

21:56:9

14 P. Thomson 595

600

605

610

615

620

625

630

635

640

645

650

Gewirtz, S., Mahony, P., Hextall, I., & Cribb, A. (Eds.). (2009). Changing teacher professionalism. International trends, challenges and ways forward. London: Routledge. Giddens, A. (1999). Runaway world. How globalisation is reshaping our lives. London: Profile Books. Giroux, H., Lankshear, C., McLaren, P., & Peters, M. (1996). Counternarratives. Cultural studies and critical pedagogies in postmodern spaces. New York: Routledge. Gonzales, N., Moll, L., & Amanti, C. (2005). Funds of knowledge. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Goodson, I., Biesta, G., Tedder, M., & Adair, N. (2010). Narrative learning. Abingdon: Routledge. AQ3 Gorard, S., & Smith, E. (2004). What does PISA tell us about equity in education systems? Comparative Education, 40(1), 1628. Gorard, S., Taylor, C., & Fitz, J. (2003). Schools, markets and choice policies. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Gough, J., Eisenschitz, A., & McCulloch, A. (2006). Spaces of social exclusion. London: Routledge. Gove, M. (2012). Speech on academies. Accessed 20 March 2012, from www.education.gov.uk/ inthenews/speeches/100202425/michael-gove-speech-on-academies. Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what?. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hampton, G. (2011). Narrative policy analysis and the use of the meta-narrative in participatory policy development within higher education. Higher Education Policy, 24(3), 347358. doi:10.1057/hep.2011.8 Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hatcher, R., & Jones, K. (Eds.) (2011). No country for the young. London: Tufnell Press. Held, D., & McGrew, A. (Eds.) (2002). Governing globalisation: Power, authority and global governance. Oxford: Polity Press. Henry, M., Lingard, B., Rizvi, F., & Taylor, S. (2001). The OECD, globalisation, and education policy. Oxford: Pergamon. Herman, D. (2002). Story logic. Problems and possibilities of narrative. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Herman, D., Jahn, M., & Ryan, M.-L. (2007). The Routledge encyclopaedia of narrative theory. London: Routledge. Hood, C. (1998). The art of the state. Culture, rhetoric and public management. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jameson, F. (1981). The political unconscious: Narrative as a socially symbolic act. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kennett, P. (2008). Governance, globalisation and public policy. Canada: Edward Elgar Publishing. Kuttner, R. (1998). Everything for sale. The virtues and limits of markets. New York: Alfred A Knopf. Lather, P. (1991). Feminist research: With/against. Geelong: Deakin University Press. Lingard, B., Martino, W., & Mills, M. (2009). Educating boys: Beyond structural reform. London: Palgrave. Luke, A. (1997). New narratives in human capital: Recent redirections in Australian education policy. The Australian Educational Researcher, 24(2), 121. doi:10.1007/BF03219645 Lupton, R. (2003). Poverty street. The dynamics of neighbourhood decline and renewal. Bristol, UK: The Policy Press. Lyotard, J.-F. (1984/1993). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Marginson, S. (1997a). Educating Australia. Government, economy and citizen since 1960. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Marginson, S. (1997b). Markets in education. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. McDowell, L. (2004). Work, workfare, work/life balance and an ethic of care. Progress in Human Geography, 28(2), 145163. doi:10.1191/0309132504ph478oa McNeil, L. (2000). Contradictions of school reform. Educational costs of standardised testing. New York: Routledge.


08-02-2013

21:56:9


655

660

665

670

675

680

685

690

695

15

Needham, C. (2011). Personalising public services. Understanding the personalisation narrative. Bristol: The Policy Press. Newman, J. (2001). Modernising governance. New Labour, policy and society. London: Sage. Novoa, A., & Lawn, M. (Eds.) (2002). Fabricating Europe: The formation of an education space. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Nussbaum, M. C. (1990). Love’s knowledge: Essays on philosophy and literature. New York: Oxford University Press. Osborne, D., & Gaebler, T. (1993). Reinventing government. How the entrepreneurial spirit is transforming the public sector. New York: Plume, Penguin. Petrie, M., & Rugg, G. (2011). The unwritten rules of PhD research (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill, Open University Press. Porter, T. (1995). Trust in numbers. The pursuit of objectivity in science and public life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Power, M. (2007). Organised uncertainty. Designing a world of risk management. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ravitch, D. (2010). The death and life of the great American school system: How testing and choice are undermining education. New York: Basic Books. Ricoeur, P. (19841988). Time and narrative. Volumes 13. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Roe, E. (1994). Narrative policy analysis. Theory and practice. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Seddon, T. (1993). Context and beyond: Reframing the theory and practice of education. London: Falmer Press. Sinclair, J., Ironside, M., & Seifert, R. (1996). Classroom struggle? Market oriented reforms and their impact on the teacher labour process. Work Employment & Society, 10(4), AQ4 641661. Slee, R., Weiner, G., & Tomlinson, S. (Eds.) (1998). School effectiveness for whom? Challenges to the school effectiveness and school improvement movements. London: Falmer. Thomson, P. (1999). How doing justice got boxed in: A cautionary tale for policy activists. In B. Johnson & A. Reid Contesting the curriculum (pp. 2442). Sydney: Social Science Press. Thomson, P. (2002). Schooling the rustbelt kids. Making the difference in changing times. Sydney: Allen & Unwin (Trentham Books UK). Thomson, P. (2011). Whole school change. A reading of the literatures (2nd ed.). London: Creative Partnerships, Arts Council England. Tooley, J. (2000). Reclaiming education. London & New York: Cassell. Walton, K. L. (1990). Mimesis as make-believe. Boston: Harvard University Press. Walzer, M. (1983). Spheres of justice. New York: Basic Books. Weis, L., & Dolby, N. (Eds.) (2012). Social class and education: Global perspectives. New York: Routledge. Weiss, L. (1997). Globalisation and the myth of the powerless state. New Left Review, 225, 327. Wiseman, J. (1998). Global nation? Australia and the politics of globalisation. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Wrigley, T., Thomson, P., & Lingard, B. (Eds.) (2011). Changing schools: Alternative approaches to make a world of difference. London: Routledge. Yanow, D. (2000). Conducting narrative policy analysis. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

proof cover sheet

proof cover sheet

Suggest Documents