8: Policy mobilities are more than global policy movement: concepts and methodologies in education policy research

Publication Date:
30 Jul 2024
Pages:
189–208
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51952/9781447368045.ch008
Restricted access
Rights and permissions Cite this chapter
Buy article/chapter (
GBP  £20.00
)

In this chapter, we focus on policy mobilities as a broad term that captures work identifying and conceptualizing how policy moves through multiple and diffuse means, including nonscalar modalities. We seek to highlight aspects of the continuing conceptual development of policy mobilities studies in education, and specifically those relating to the notion of topology. We use topological thinking to dig a little deeper into the intellectual lineages of the concepts that make up policy mobilities scholarship, including (i) networks, (ii) place, (iii) time and (iv) assemblage thinking. Next, we outline examples of the emerging empirical work that uses these policy mobilities concepts and approaches in the study of education policy. In addressing these two aims, we draw attention to concepts in policy mobilities and the methodological possibilities they might afford us, as well as the potential limitations of such approaches.

  • Allen, J. (2011). Topological twists: power’s shifting geographies. Dialogues in Human Geography, 1(3), 283–298.

  • Amin, A. (2002). Spatialities of globalization. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 34(3), 385–399.

  • Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (2002). Cities: Reimagining the Urban. Cambridge: Polity Press.

  • Baker, T. and McGuirk, P. (2017). Assemblage thinking as methodology: commitments and practices for critical policy research. Territory, Politics, Governance, 5(4), 425–442.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Baker, T. and Temenos, C. (2015). Urban policy mobilities research: introduction to a debate. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39(4), 824–827.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Ball, S.J. (2012). Global Education Inc.: New Policy Networks and the Neoliberal Imaginary. Abingdon: Routledge.

  • Ball, S.J (2016). Following policy: networks, network ethnography and education policy mobilities. Journal of Education Policy, 31(5), 549–566.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Ball, S.J. and Junemann, C. (2012). Networks, New Governance and Education. Bristol: Policy Press.

  • Beck, U. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

  • Burrows, R. and Savage, M. (2014). After the crisis? Big Data and the methodological challenges of empirical sociology. Big Data & Society, 1(1), 1–6.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Carney, S., Rappleye, J. and Silova, I. (2012). Between faith and science: world culture theory and comparative education. Comparative Education Review, 56(3), 366–393.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Cochrane, A. and Ward, K. (2012). Guest editorial – researching the geographies of policy mobility: confronting the methodological challenges. Environment and Planning A, 44(1), 5–12.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Colebrook, C. and Weinstein, J. (2017). Preface: postscript on the posthuman. In J. Weinstein and C. Colebrook (eds) Posthumous Life: Theorizing Beyond the Posthuman (pp ix–xxvii). New York: Columbia University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Cresswell, T. (2006). On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World. Abingdon: Routledge.

  • Decuypere, M. and Lewis, S. (2021). Topological genealogy: a methodology to research transnational digital governance in/through/as change. Journal of Education Policy. DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2021.1995629

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Decuypere, M. and Simons, M. (2016). Relational thinking in education: topology, sociomaterial studies, and figures. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 24(3), 371–386.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Decuypere, M. and Simons, M. (2020). Pasts and futures that keep the possible alive: reflections on time, space, education and governing. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(6), 640–652.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Decuypere, M. and Vanden Broeck, P. (2020). Time and educational (re-)forms: inquiring the temporal dimension of education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(6), 602–612.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Decuypere, M., Hartong, S. and van de Oudeweetering, K. (2022). Space- and time-making in education: towards a topological lens. European Educational Research Journal, 21(6), 871–882.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Edwards, D.B., Le, H. and Sustarsic, M. (2020). Spatialising a global education phenomenon: private tutoring and mobility theory in Cambodia. Journal of Education Policy, 35(5), 713–732.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Galloway, A. (2011). Are some things unrepresentable? Theory, Culture & Society, 28(7–8), 85–102.

  • Gulson, K.N. and Sellar, S. (2019). Emerging data infrastructures and the new topologies of education policy. Environment & Planning D: Society and Space, 37(2), 350–366.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Gulson, K.N. and Symes, C. (2017). Making moves: theorizations of education and mobility. Critical Studies in Education, 58(2), 125–130.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Gulson, K.N. and Witzenberger, K. (2022). Repackaging authority: artificial intelligence, automated governance and education trade shows. Journal of Education Policy, 37(1), 145–160.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Gulson, K.N., Sellar, S. and Webb, P.T. (2022). Algorithms of Education: How Datafication and Artificial Intelligence Shapes Policy. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Hartong, S. (2018). Towards a topological re-assemblage of education policy? Observing the implementation of performance data infrastructures and “centers of calculation” in Germany. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 16(1), 134–150.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell.

  • Harvey, P. (2012). The topological quality of infrastructural relation: an ethnographic approach. Theory, Culture & Society, 29(4–5), 76–92.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Hassan, R. (2017). The worldly space: the digital university in network time. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(1), 72–82.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Jessop, B. (2000). The crisis of the national spatio-temporal fix and the tendential ecological dominance of globalising capitalism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24(2), 323–360.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Larsen, M.A. and Beech, J. (2014). Spatial theorizing in comparative and international education research. Comparative Education Review, 58(2), 191–214.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Lash, S. (2012). Deforming the figure: topology and the social imaginary. Theory, Culture & Society, 29(4–5), 261–287.

  • Lata, I.B. and Minca, C. (2016). The surface and the abyss/rethinking topology. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34(3), 438–455.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Latour, B. (2018). Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge: Polity Press.

  • Lea, T. (2020). Wild Policy: Indigeneity and the Unruly. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.

  • Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.

  • Lewis, S. (2017). Policy, philanthropy and profit: The OECD’s PISA for Schools and new modes of heterarchical educational governance. Comparative Education, 53(4), 518–537.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Lewis, S. (2018). PISA “yet to come”: governing schooling through time, difference and potential. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 39(5), 683–697.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Lewis, S. (2020). PISA, Policy and the OECD: Respatialising Global Educational Governance through PISA for Schools. Cham: Springer.

  • Lewis, S. (2021). The turn towards policy mobilities and the theoretical-methodological implications for policy sociology. Critical Studies in Education, 62(3), 322–337.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Lingard, B. (2021). Multiple temporalities in critical policy sociology in education. Critical Studies in Education, 62(3), 338–353.

  • Lingard, B. and Rawolle, S. (2011). New scalar politics: implications for education policy. Comparative Education, 47(4), 489–502.

  • Lingard, B. and Thompson, G. (2017). Doing time in the sociology of education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(1), 1–12.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Lorimer, H. (2008). Cultural geography: non-representational conditions and concerns. Progress in Human Geography, 32(4), 551–559.

  • Lury, C. and Wakeford, N. (2012). Introduction: a perpetual inventory. In C. Lury and N. Wakeford (eds) Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social (pp 1–24). Abingdon: Routledge.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Lury, C., Parisi, L. and Terranova, T. (2012). Introduction: the becoming topological of culture. Theory, Culture & Society, 29(4–5), 3–35.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Martin, L. and Secor, A.J. (2014). Towards a post-mathematical topology. Progress in Human Geography, 38(3), 420–438.

  • Massey, D. (1994). Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

  • Massey, D. (2005). For Space. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

  • May, J. and Thrift, N. (2001). Introduction. In J. May and N. Thrift (eds) Timespace: Geographies of Temporality (pp 1–46). Abingdon: Routledge.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McCann, E. (2011). Veritable inventions: cities, policies, and assemblage. Area, 43(2), 143–147.

  • McCann, E. and Ward, K. (2011). Introduction. Urban assemblages: territories, relations, practices, and power. In E. McCann and K. Ward (eds) Mobile Urbanism: Cities and Policymaking in the Global Age (pp xiii–xxxv). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McCann, E. and Ward, K. (2013). A multi-disciplinary approach to policy transfer research: geographies, assemblages, mobilities and mutations. Policy Studies, 34(1), 2–18.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McCann, E. and Ward, K. (2015). Thinking through dualisms in urban policy mobilities. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39(4), 828–830.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McKenzie, M. and Aikens, K. (2021). Global education policy mobilities and subnational policy practice. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 19(3), 311–325.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McKenzie, M. and Wilson, A. (2023). Sustainability as wild policy: mobile SDG interventions and land-informed policy in education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 44(5), 679–694.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McKenzie, M., Bieler, A. and McNeil, R. (2015). Education policy mobility: reimagining sustainability in neoliberal times. Environmental Education Research, 21(3), 319–337.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McKenzie, M., Lewis, S. and Gulson, K.N. (2021). Response: matters of (im)mobility: beyond fast conceptual and methodological readings in policy sociology. Critical Studies in Education, 62(3), 394–410.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Message, K. (2010). Territory. In A. Parr (ed.) The Deleuze Dictionary (Revised Edition) (pp 280–282). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Meyer, J.W. (1971). Economic and political effects on national educational enrollment patterns. Comparative Education Review, 15(1), 28–43.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Nayak, A. (2010). Race, affect and emotion: young people, racism, and graffiti in the postcolonial English suburbs. Environment and Planning A, 42(10), 2370–2392.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Peck, J. and Theodore, N. (2010). Mobilizing policy: models, methods, and mutations. Geoforum, 41(2), 169–174.

  • Peck, J. and Theodore, N. (2015). Fast Policy: Experimental Statecraft at the Thresholds of Neoliberalism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Prince, R. (2017). Local or global policy? Thinking about policy mobility with assemblage and topology. Area, 49(3), 335–341.

  • Rabinow, P. (2008). Afterword: concept work. In S. Gibbon and C. Novas (eds) Biosocialities, Genetics and the Social Sciences: Making Biologies and Identities (pp 188–192). Abingdon: Routledge.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Ramirez, F.O. (2012). The world society perspective: concepts, assumptions and strategies. Comparative Education, 48(4), 423–439.

  • Rappleye, J. and Komatsu, H. (2016). Living on borrowed time: rethinking temporality, self, nihilism and schooling. Comparative Education, 52(2), 177–201.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Rhodes, R.A.W. (1997). Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity and Accountability. Buckingham: Open University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Rizvi, F. and Lingard, B. (2009). Globalizing Education Policy. Abingdon: Routledge.

  • Rowe, E.E. (2021). Venture philanthropy in public schools in Australia: tracing policy mobility and policy networks. Journal of Education Policy, 38(1), 1–22.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Savage, G.C. (2020). What is policy assemblage? Territory, Politics, Governance, 8(3), 319–335.

  • Savage, G.C., Gerrard, J., Gale, T. and Molla, T. (2021). The politics of critical policy sociology: mobilities, moorings and elite networks. Critical Studies in Education, 62(3), 306–321.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Savage, G.C. and Lewis, S. (2018). The phantom national? Assembling national teaching standards in Australia’s federal system. Journal of Education Policy, 33(1), 118–142.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sellar, S. and Cole, D.R. (2017). Accelerationism: a timely provocation for the critical sociology of education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(1), 38–48.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sellar, S. and Thompson, G. (2016). The becoming-statistic: information ontologies and computerized adaptive testing in education. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 16(5), 491–501.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Shahjahan, R.A. (2020). On “being for others”: time and shame in the neoliberal academy. Journal of Education Policy, 35(6), 785–811.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sheller, M. and Urry, J. (2006). The new mobilities paradigm. Environment and Planning A, 38(2), 207–226.

  • Shields, R. (2013). Spatial Questions: Cultural Topologies and Social Spatialisations. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

  • Sobe, N.W. (2015). All that is global is not world culture: accountability systems and educational apparatuses. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 13(1), 135–148.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Soja, E.W. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Spaces. Oxford: Blackwell.

  • Stahelin, N. and McKenzie, M. (2023). The role of meetings in the network governance of UN policy programmes on environment and education. ECNU Review of Education, 6(4), 597–622.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Steiner-Khamsi, G. (ed.) (2004). The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending. New York: Teachers College Press.

  • Takayama, K., Lewis, S.,Gulson, K.N. and Hursh, D. (2017). Fast policy: experimental statecraft at the thresholds of neoliberalism. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 38(2), 292–316.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Thompson, G., Sellar, S. and Buchanan, I. (2022). 1996: The OECD policy-making assemblage. Journal of Education Policy, 37(5), 685–704.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Thrift, N. (2003). Performance and … Environment and Planning A, 35(11), 2019–2024.

  • Tuck, E. and McKenzie, M. (2015). Relational validity and the “where” of inquiry: place and land in qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 21(7), 633–638.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press.

  • Webb, P.T., Sellar, S. and Gulson, K.N. (2020). Anticipating education: governing habits, memories and policy-futures. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(3), 284–297.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

Content Metrics

May 2022 onwards Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 108 108 62
Full Text Views 2 2 0
PDF Downloads 3 3 0

Altmetrics