Applying the street-level bureaucracy framework for education policy discernment to curriculum and exam policies in India

Abstract

With their positioning in the bureaucratic landscape, affiliated colleges in India historically have had a limited role in curriculum and exam policies and development, yet they are embedded in local communities where meaningful knowledge to best support them often lies. Moreover, affiliated college members, purported street-level bureaucrats who work at the intersections of policy and discretion, have a notably limited role. This policy study explores high-impact and emerging high-impact practices of affiliated college faculty members in India with regard to curriculum and exam policies. It proposes a new framework, the Four Tenets of Street-Level Bureaucracy Framework for Education Policy Discernment, based on Michael Lipsky’s street-level bureaucracy framework, to guide the analysis. Four high-impact practices and two emerging high-impact practices offer Indian higher education policymakers, faculty members at universities and colleges, and higher education institutions meaningful insight for policy adaptation consideration. The four high-impact practices are flexibility, change, and adaptation; successful coping and adapting; connecting theory and industry/practice; and belief in one's training and capacity leading to de facto policymaking at the micro level. The two emerging practices are establishing feedback channels from the bottom-up and re-envisioning broader faculty involvement in bureaucratic structures.