Skip to main content

Transnational Power Relations in Education: How It Works Down South

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Palgrave Handbook of Institutional Ethnography

Abstract

This chapter examines how transnational policy maneuvers that draw on advanced liberal mechanisms have affected teachers’ everyday work in Australia. While dominant global discourses tend to frame educators’ work in terms of individual performance (for example via professional standards, and targets on large scale tests), many teachers have taken to social media to argue against policy ensembles they believe are harmful for students, teachers, and communities. This chapter explores the disjuncture between educators’ lived realities and official accounts of education policy. We provide an overview of IEs that have explicated these tensions, including research projects that we have worked on. Assembling this body of scholarship reveals the operation of ruling relations from early years’ education through to post-secondary education. After considering the broader ideological codes that underlie significant education policies, we show how educators’ work is textually orchestrated via transnational forces flowing from governments to bureaucrats and ultimately into education institutions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 149.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Acker, J. (2006). Inequality regimes gender, class, and race in organizations. Gender & Society, 20(4), 441–464.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Apple, M. W. (2001). Educating the right way: Markets, standards, god and inequality. London, UK: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Apple M. W. (2013). Knowledge, power, and education: The selected works of Michael W. Apple. New York, NY: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority. (ACECQA). (2012). Assessment and rating instrument. Retrieved May 12, 2019, from http://files.acecqa.gov.au/files/National-Quality-Framework-Resources-Kit/NQF-Resource-03-Guide-to-NQS.pdf.

  • Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority. (2009). The shape of the Australian curriculum. Retrieved from http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Shape_of_the_Australian_Curriculum.pdf.

  • Australian Department of Education and Training. (2018). Nationally consistent collection of data: School sudents with disability. Australian Department of Education and Training. Retrieved from http://www.schooldisabilitydatapl.edu.au/data-collection-steps/introduction-to-the-steps.

  • Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2011). National professional standards for teachers. Canberra, ACT: The Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs (MCEECDYA). Retrieved from http://www.aitsl.edu.au/australian-professional-standards-for-teachers/standards/list.

  • Ball, S. J. (1997). Policy sociology and critical social research: A personal review of recent education policy and policy research. British Educational Research Journal, 23(3), 257–274.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ball, S. J. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy, 18(2), 215–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268093022000043065.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ball, S. J. (2016). Subjectivity as a site of struggle: Refusing neoliberalism? British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(8), 1129–1146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Comber, B. (2012). Mandated literacy assessment and the reorganization of teachers’ work: Federal policy and local effects. Critical Studies in Education, 53(2), 119–136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Comber, B. (2016). Poverty, place and pedagogy in education: Research stories from front-line workers. Australian Educational Researcher, 43, 393–417.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Comber, B., & Cormack, P. (2011). Education policy mediation: Principals’ work with mandated literacy assessment. English in Australia, 46(2), 77–86.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cormack, P., & Comber, B. (2013). High-stakes literacy tests and local effects in a rural school. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 36(2), 78–89.

    Google Scholar 

  • Doherty, C. (2015). Making trouble: Ethnographic designs on ruling relations for students and teachers in non-academic pathways. The Australian Educational Researcher, 42(3), 353–370.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Doherty, C., & Dooley, K. (2018). Responsibilising parents: The nudge towards shadow tutoring. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 39(4), 551–566.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dunn, J., & Stinson, M. (2015). Media informed or research informed? Some reflections on changing the game of education. NJ, 39(2), 97–100.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, J., & Spina, N. (2019). Caught in the frontline: Examining the introduction of a new national data collection system for students with disability in Australia. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2019.1614231.

  • Grace, L. (2005). Language, power and ruling relations in vocational education and training. Doctoral dissertation, Deakin University, Deakin, Australia. Retrieved from http://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30023271/grace-languagepower-2005.pdf.

  • Grace, L. (2006, August). Mapping the social relations of the Australian vocational education and training sector. Paper presented at the annual meeting of The Society for the Study of Social Problems Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grace, L. (2014). Accountability circuits in vocational education and training. In A. Griffith & D. E. Smith (Eds.), Under new public management: Institutional ethnographies of changing front-line work (pp. 255–262). Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grant, S., Comber, B., Danby, S., Theobald, M., & Thorpe, K. (2018). The quality agenda: Governance and regulation of preschool teachers’ work. Cambridge Journal of Education, 48(4), 515–532.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grant, S., Danby, S., Theobald, M., & Thorpe, K. (2016). Early childhood teachers’ work in a time of change. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 41(3), 38–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Griffith, A. I., & André-Bechely, L. (2008). Institutional technologies: Coordinating families and schools, bodies and texts. In M. DeVault (Ed.), People at work: Life, power and social inclusion in the new economy (pp. 40–56). New York, NY: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Griffith, A. I., & Smith, D. E. (2005). Mothering for schooling. New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Griffith, A., & Smith, D. E. (2014). Under new public management: Institutional ethnographies of changing front-line work. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Harris, J., Carrington, S., & Ainscow, M. (Eds.). (2018). Promoting equity in schools: Collaboration, inquiry and ethical leadership. New York, NY: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hewson, S. (2013). Control, shift, insert: Living and enacting policy in teachers’ day/night work. Doctoral dissertation, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Retrieved from https://eprints.qut.edu.au/63495/1/Sandra_Hewson_Thesis.pdf.

  • Hosken, N. (2010). Social work and welfare education without discrimination: Are we there yet? Practice Reflexions, 5(1), 3–16.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hosken, N. (2017). Exploring the organization of social injustice in Australian social work education. Doctoral dissertation, University of Tasmania, Tasmania, Australia. Retrieved from https://eprints.utas.edu.au/27194/1/Hosken_whole_thesis.pdf.

  • Kerkham, L., & Nixon, H. (2014). Literacy assessment that counts: Mediating, interpreting and contesting translocal policy in a primary school. Ethnography and Education, 9(3), 343–358.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kostogriz, A., & Doecke, B. (2011). Standards-based accountability: Reification, responsibility and the ethical subject. Teaching Education, 22(4), 397–412. https://doi.org/10.1080/10476210.2011.587870.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lingard, B. (1991). Policy-making for Australian schooling: The new corporate federalism. Journal of Education Policy, 6(1), 85–90.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lingard, B., Rawolle, S., & Taylor, S. (2005). Globalizing policy sociology in education: Working with Bourdieu. Journal of Education Policy, 20(6), 759–777.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, P. (1994). Accounting and objectivity: The invention of calculating selves and calculable spaces. In A. Megill (Ed.), Rethinking objectivity (pp. 239–264). London, UK: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, P., & Rose, N. (2008). Governing the present: Administering economic, social and personal life. Boston, MA: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nakar, S., Bagnall, R. G., & Hodge, S. (2018). A reflective account of the VET FEE-HELP initiative as a driver of ethical dilemmas for vocational education teachers in Australia. The Australian Educational Researcher, 45(3), 383–400.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ozga, J. (2009). Governing education through data in England: From regulation to self-evaluation. Journal of Education Policy, 24(2), 149–162.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peacock, D. R. (2014). Practising equity: The activation and appropriation of student equity policy in Queensland higher education. Doctoral dissertation, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Retrieved from https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:337500.

  • Pence, E. (2001). Safety for battered women in textually-mediated legal systems. Studies in Cultures, Organisations and Societies, 7, 199–229. https://doi.org/10.1080/10245280108523558.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N., & Miller, P. (1992). Political power beyond the state: Problematics of government. British Journal of Sociology, 173–205.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, D. (2008). Making change from below. Socialist Studies/Etudes Socialistes, 3(2), 7–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, D. E. (1987). The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, D. E. (1990). The conceptual practices of power: A feminist sociology of knowledge. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, D. E. (1992). Sociology from women’s experience: A reaffirmation. Sociological Theory, 10(1), 88–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, D. E. (1993). The standard North American family SNAF as an ideological code. Journal of Family Issues, 14(1), 50–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, D. E. (1999). Writing the social: Critique, theory and investigations. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, D. E. (2002). Institutional ethnography. In T. May (Ed.), Qualitative research in action (pp. 17–51). New York, NY: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, D. E. (2005). Institutional ethnography: A sociology for people. Lanham, USA: Altamira Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, D. E. (Ed.). (2006). Institutional ethnography as practice. New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spina, N. (2019). “Once upon a time”: Examining ability grouping and differentiation practices in cultures of evidence-based decision-making. Cambridge Journal of Education, 49(3), 329–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spina, N. (2021). Data cultures and the organization of teachers’ work: An institutional ethnography. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tait, B. L. (2013). “Talking up and talking down”: The presentation of educational need in an age of inclusive education policy reforms. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 17(6), 555–570.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Talbot, D. (2016). Evidence for no-one: Standards, accreditation, and transformed teaching work. Teaching and Teacher Education, 58, 80–89.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nerida Spina .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Spina, N., Comber, B. (2021). Transnational Power Relations in Education: How It Works Down South. In: Luken, P.C., Vaughan, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Institutional Ethnography. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54222-1_14

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54222-1_14

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-54221-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-54222-1

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics