The Production of Quality of Life Knowledge

Abstract

This chapter explores the process of transmission of quality of life research results to the field of public policy and looks in particular at one of its stages: the production of knowledge. It analyses the process of construction of knowledge and the characteristics of the academic field, recognizing the difference between what scientists and policy makers consider to be knowledge. In addition, the chapter discusses the importance of creating international research networks as an opportunity for researchers to work jointly and show their research results, particularly in light of the exceptional circumstances arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter presents three cases: the experience of a university professor holding a political office; the creation of an international research network; and an analysis of the opinions of university students who attended a course in quality of life and happiness for the construction of better societies concerning the relationship between quality of life and public policies. Likewise, the chapter addresses the possible ways in which research results may be reflected in the policy making arena and explores the need to identify the obstacles and facilitators in this process.

Cases

3.1.1 Case 1. When a University Professor Holds a Political Office: The Case of Secondary Education Curriculum Design by Marina Paulozzo

This case narrates the construction of the curriculum design for secondary education in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, for which I interviewed the university professor in charge of said process in her role as political officer.

Firstly, it is worth highlighting that, according to data from the latest national census (2010), the province of Buenos Aires has a population of 15,625,084 inhabitants. It is divided territorially and administratively into 135 districts. The Province is made up of two different areas: the districts that comprise the Great Buenos Aires, with around 9,916,715 inhabitants, and the districts in the interior of the province of Buenos Aires, with a population of 5,708,369.

The following is a summary of the story of the Director of Provincial Secondary Education, who held that office for 7 years.

I started this process in the Province of Buenos Aires at the time when the Provincial Education Law was enacted. That was also the time of enactment of the National Education Law, which abrogated a highly controversial law—the Federal Law. The National Education Law changed the structure of the system, put an end to what until then was known as Basic General Education (EGB), which comprised 9 years, and restored the primary and secondary school scheme. However, the Law introduced an addition: it made secondary education (which could last for 5 or 6 years, depending on the province) mandatory, which was not until then.

The curriculum proposal for mandatory secondary education was intended to ensure the continuity of studies, democratic formation and preparation for the world of work. This entailed changes in the curriculum—such are the big issues that emerge from a decision like that one. If secondary school is for all, until that moment secondary school in our country had only been for some. Kids would finish primary school, and if they did not start secondary school, that was not a serious problem because after ninth grade, secondary school was not mandatory and millions of kids did not continue their studies. Then, as secondary education became compulsory, legal changes had to be introduced in connection with the structure, the number of school years, the functions and purposes of secondary education. And that put some pressure on curricular decisions, because these young people who now had to attend secondary school for 6 years, and who were expected to be very democratic and to keep on studying and prepare for the world of work, had to receive proper training. This triggered the decision to undertake a process for changing the curriculum; in other words, to start to think about what things a citizen from the Province of Buenos Aires should be taught and should learn when he/she studied at secondary school.

That was the big decision, the origin of the decision to change the curriculum: shifting from secondary education for a few to secondary education for all. In this sense, the political value of the curriculum is self-evident. Subsequently, changes had to be introduced to the structure and to teaching positions, and new buildings had to be put up because there was no space. The gap has now been bridged, but compulsory secondary education legislation is still not enforced—not all kids continue to study.

The fact that each province was empowered to choose between 5 and 6 years for secondary school was an important issue, because it involved rethinking the structure of the educational system and the curriculum structure. The duration of that period was an important decision for our work. So, what were the first decisions?: to explain the curriculum perspective, that is, how we interpreted the curriculum; to choose a theoretical definition to work on; to define the curriculum. We said: “for us the curriculum is”: a political project that is negotiated, that is subject to an internal dispute and defines a cultural synthesis, a synthesis of cultural elements, and that will be developed through negotiation with the different actors, in that space of dispute, that will have a methodology and that will be defined in that discussion.

The most important definitions involved a political dispute. We needed a technical team because we had to define the methodology of work and decide the political and technical levels of participation for the discussion that we were going to have. We also needed to define which actors would participate in that discussion; who we were and were not going to talk to. And what we were going to talk about with each of them. We had to define the cultural synthesis—what people usually call the study plans. We had to put in writing what teachers, professors, were going to teach and what kids (we hoped) were going to learn. We needed to make that definition, but in order to do so, we had to talk to many people and work things out. And we needed to do that on an appropriate scale. Because we had to define the curriculum designs for a certain level, for the Province of Buenos Aires, involving a million and a half students. Just picture thinking of a design for a million and a half young people starting secondary school every year in a province. As the minister in office at the time said: “It impresses me every morning, when I get up and read the newspaper, to think that 5 million students will be leaving home for school”. In the Province of Buenos Aires—not now, because of the pandemic, but in non-pandemic times—we know that at 8 am, there begins a movement of five million students and, at least, a quarter million teachers who leave home for school to teach. That is a very powerful image.

So, how do you approach this? We had to think about a million and a half students starting secondary school, and how to design a curriculum proposal, a cultural synthesis, or—in the parlance of some authors—a cultural arbitrary, which can cover the interests, concerns and worldviews of the citizens of the province, of future adults, of these young people with interests of their own in a school that had just been decided it was mandatory.

What were the things that had to be done as mandated by the law? Some things were already defined: school would last for 6 years, it would have two cycles (a basic and a higher cycle), and we would respect the functions of mandatory secondary school, as I was telling you, students were expected to continue their studies, prepare themselves for the world of work and value democratic life.

Our first discussion was with the teachers’ unions. When we began to define who we were going to talk to and what issues would be subject to negotiation, it was clear to us that we had to prepare a six-year design, which would be divided into two cycles (first and second cycle). At stake here would be the defense of teachers’ positions. While we had to think about that cultural arbitrary, that synthesis that was connected with what had to be taught and learnt, we never forgot what we had to do with teachers, as none of them could lose their job. Because, on top of that, there was an article in the teachers’ collective wage agreement that stated that no change in the curriculum could affect teachers’ positions… just like that. That is why I was telling you before that some things were not subject to discussion. I was bound by certain limitations… it was like painting a picture with your hands half tied and figuring out how much of it you could paint.

Another actor that I like to mention quite a lot, also in my lectures at University, is the Minister of Economy. One of the decisions concerned the inclusion of a space for citizen formation in the first cycle of secondary school, as it was one of the axes of secondary school—the three axes being citizenship, continuity of studies and preparation for work. So, we designed a course called Construction of Citizenship. In that opportunity, the first comment of the governor was: “let’s budget this”. In other words, the first one that could tell us whether we could include a new course was the Minister of Economy. Here the issue of financing was crucial. To give you another example, it was not only important to work out how much that cost in salaries, but also in what classrooms the subject was going to be taught. And in fact, that was a subject that was challenged by many people, because it was related to the democratization of secondary school. Some schools said that they were not going to implement it because they had no physical space. They scheduled the subject after regular school hours and told the students it was not compulsory. We had all kinds of scenes. That’s why I say that financing not only involves having the funds to pay teachers’ salaries, but also having the appropriate space and equipment.

Another clear illustration of this was our discussion of whether we should keep the course of ICT. I said that we could not teach ICT because there were no computers. Private schools had computers, but state schools did not. State schools had computers that had been donated to them and I asked, “why are we going to teach a course like that, which needs that equipment, if we don’t have it?” What was the problem? There were 20 thousand teachers teaching that ICT. So I was told, “ok, let’s remove it. What do we do next?” It was a big discussion. Fortunately, the national government implemented the Program “Conectar Igualdad” (Argentina’s national scheme to bridge digital, educational and social gaps) and that sorted out the problem.

Another actor was private education. According to law, the Province has public schools, which can be either state-managed or privately-managed. That means that the provincial State has responsibility over all of them, and it funds, or subsidizes, a large number of privately-managed schools. One of the reasons for this is the lack of state schools. And as secondary education was not compulsory, there were no state-managed secondary schools in many parts of the Province. Secondary schools were privately-managed. Thus, state-managed schools had to be opened in those locations. And, of course, private secondary schools in those locations are subsidized by the state, as they were the ones making up for the lack of state schools, although it is worth mentioning that expensive private schools are not subsidized. The most important actor in private schools is the Catholic Church, which in many cases runs free-of-charge schools that are subsidized by the state to pay for teachers’ salaries. We had a serious and interesting dispute with the Church, because a bishop argued that, with the new design, we did not respect the family because it includes the issue of sexuality, which incorporates freedom of sex choice. This project falls under the scope of the national comprehensive sex education Program (ESI).

In this sense, the consultations we held with the actors involved in the first cycle and those involved in the second cycle of secondary school were different. The Province of Buenos Aires is divided into 25 educational regions. When we were preparing the curriculum design for the first three years of secondary school, we asked ourselves: “how do we have the whole Province represented?” Well, we said, there will be representatives of the schools of the 25 regions. In some cases, this was quite unequal, because the regions in the Greater Buenos Aires have far more schools than the regions in the interior of the Province. But even so, we made the attempt and what happened was that the schools from the Greater Buenos Aires—which are quite a lot—said they were underrepresented, while those from the interior—which are much fewer—said they had the right to have a representation. We then decided that there would be three schools per educational region, taking into account the percentage of private schools (30%). Thus, one of the three schools was private. That was the structure of the consultation and participation in the design for the first cycle. They were the so-called 75, the 75 pilot schools that took part in the implementation of the design. A massive and highly technical device was put in place. But the important thing is that we thought about everything—the representations of the different types of schools, the different districts, the types of school: we made sure that rural, small urban and large urban schools were represented, taking into account the percentage of state—and privately-managed schools.

The higher cycle followed a different logic because the curriculum structure of the higher cycle is based on orientations. So, we decided to meet with representatives and we had up to a thousand teachers in a meeting discussing the different orientations.

Coming back to the key actors, then: teachers’ unions, the private sector, the Church; we obviously sat on the private education commission, which is overseen by a private education agency with which we met to discuss the designs. I took drafts to those in charge of private education in the Province, I took drafts to the teachers’ unions and we also took drafts to the opposition parties.

At that time, we had meetings with representatives of the other political parties, because the minister considered that this was a state policy and that we had to ensure its continuity beyond our administration. So, we had meetings with people that later held senior positions in subsequent administrations.

Another actor that we engaged with—perhaps the toughest one in terms of the curriculum—was academia and professors’ associations. We consulted a group of academics chosen by the minister —upon the recommendation of the provincial director in office then—with whom we discussed the curriculum logic, especially for the higher orientation cycle. We had famous pedagogues. They were keen to meet with us, they participated in some meetings, but their participation made no difference at all. I would say that I do not remember any contributions by them having had an impact on the design process. They made no proposals. At most, they would give their opinion about what they thought was more convenient from what we showed them. But since this was only a consultation, I interpret that, as we asked them to meet with us every once in a while, they were not given a protagonist role in the sense of making their participation more formal, they had no place in the process. So, they were keen to meet with us and give their opinion about what we showed them, but they did not work on that, they just said what came to their mind.

With respect to professors’ associations, I remember that the Philosophy and Geography associations took very strong actions. We had a few disputes over the academic/scientific approach that we had adopted for these academic fields. The first thing they demanded was that the topics were kept in the curriculum because they involved teaching positions held by their members. It was the same as with teachers’ unions, although obviously they did not have the power of a union in negotiations, as a union defends everyone’s job, not just jobs related to a specific field.

In the case of universities, we had a heated dispute with some schools such as the school of Journalism. At the beginning they thought we were going to remove the field of Communication and they wrote protest graffiti and posted signs on the walls of the ministry. Then they ended up taking part in the preparation of the communication design.

One more thing that I cannot fail to mention is the dispute we had with the mass media. There was an editorial from a leading national circulation newspaper against the design of Geography, as the new proposal leant toward human Geography rather than only physical Geography.

All throughout this process, we faced pressures from all sides, in addition to our own pressures, of course.

While I went through this process in administration, I relied on my experience as a university professor. It was near ten-year period in which the bulk of my work took away my ideas and production. Needless to say, my academic production declined in those years because my office in administration required full dedication. I would not be able to do it today; I would not do it. But I celebrate having had the opportunity. It was a unique opportunity for me, because I understood—having gone through the actual experience myself—the political dimension of the curriculum. Before that, I could speak about this from a theoretical perspective, but through these disputes that I have described to you (and many others), I got to fully understand what it meant.

And this is what allowed me to continue in office. I still work at the Office of the Undersecretary of Education, not directly overseeing the curriculum design, but coordinating processes. And thus, today I can understand and produce ideas about the curriculum field and contribute to the advancement of the curriculum field in our country; because these things that happened, that are described in theory by many authors, I would say today that, rather than a dispute, I like William Pinar’s idea of a complicated conversation. I like that idea very much. It has allowed me to understand and produce, perhaps, research studies explaining that situation in a country like ours, in the current political landscape, and maybe—this is what I’m doing now—contribute to the constitution of the curriculum field in Argentina. This is something about which I can now say that we existed as a group; we managed to meet and talk about this. I think that I was able to generate this because I went through that experience. There are many professors and academics working on the curriculum field that have never taken part in a design process. And, as this is a field that has the characteristics we were just discussing, I feel this is a limitation for my colleagues. I think that it should be mandatory to undertake a curriculum design experience in order to be able to participate in its production—I would say it is almost a condition.

In the field of education, it is very difficult for a conversation not to be aimed at convincing the other of what I am thinking. Maybe something else can be achieved later on, maybe, after a process of participation. When we held meetings with professors to discuss the contents of the subjects and we told them about the approach we had adopted, at the beginning, we were met with nothing but insults. And when we managed to sustain the process over time, and we met over and over again, in the second meeting they could see that we had included what they had said. We made sure that we started the meetings by showing them what we had shown them in the previous meeting and the changes we had introduced on the basis of their contributions, which we sometimes included and some other times we did not. As we did this repeatedly, they became more reassured. And then we managed to do some serious talking. Because they actually saw that we included what they had said, and if we did not, we explained to them why. That took years, we did that for years, because we had to convince them that we were not going to cheat them.

That’s the question. When teachers meet to discuss something, they think that you have already written it all down and that the discussion will be about something that is already done. Our big job was to convince them that this was not so and, once they saw it, we could work as a team. I am speaking about thousands of people. It was a very long and hard-to-sustain process and we showed them that we indeed listened to what they told us.

3.1.2 Case 2: The Creation of an International Research Network by Tobia Fattore

To discuss the issue of the creation of an international research network, we consulted one of the organizers of the Children’s Understanding Research Network (CUWB) who told the process of building this network.

I recall being at the International Society for Child Indicators Conference in Seoul, Korea in 2013. The conference was brilliant and much praise needs to go to the Organizing Committee of organizing such a wonderful conference. The large majority of papers were technically brilliant, with extremely competent and confident academics discussing different aspects of children’s well-being and quality of life. However, I had a sense of unease at that conference. Despite one of the stated aims of the field being to understand children, most of the research I was listening to was research being done on children, rather than with children or about them. Moreover, despite the conference being on children’s well-being, there was clearly a developmental orientation to a large majority of the papers, reflecting the dominance of developmental psychology in child research. The discipline of psychology has much to offer in understanding human behavior, however the social framing of development is rarely questioned by psychologists themselves, despite the robustness of their analysis. This is entirely understandable of course as these kinds of questions are not the core interests of the discipline.

However, I saw two papers at that Conference which stood out as providing something quite different. One was by SF which was an ethnographic piece based on one pre-school aged girl’s discussion of a secret place she goes to at her pre-school and the significance of that place for her well-being. The other was by CHK who spoke about the migration experiences of Azerbaijani children and the significance of identity work for their well-being. Both foregrounded children’s perspectives but in a way that was conceptually sophisticated, trying to understand the larger social significance of the data provided to them by the children. I was able to orchestrate a coffee between the three of us. SF and CHK already knew each other, which helped, but essentially this was the research meeting version of a ‘cold call’. At that meeting we discussed the need for other interpretive and qualitative research on children’s well-being as a necessary complement for the excellent work which was already being done in the field. At that time the Children’s Worlds Study was flourishing and we were quite inspired by the boldness of its vision and its explicitly comparative approach.

Of course our aspirations were far more modest, but we were inspired nonetheless, and consequently we came up with the idea of putting out a call to researchers involved in this study, asking them if they were interested in complementing their survey research with a small qualitative counterpart. Our sense was that these were researchers with significant expertise in children’s well-being already, who were working in the field with children and could use this as an opportunity to expand on their fieldwork. We also felt that these were people who had deep knowledge of the local context conditions in which they were doing their research, which is especially important in undertaking more ethnographic research. Even so, we thought that perhaps two or three other like-minded researchers would respond to our call and believed this could make a worthwhile contribution. A comparative study across a few countries, based on a handful of interviews in each location, was something we felt could be achieved and certainly something unusual in qualitative research.

You can imagine our surprise when 19 different researchers responded to our call-out within the day. We had obviously hit on something. The degree of enthusiasm in the responses was overwhelming and perhaps we shouldn’t have been so surprised. These were people who were committed to advancing the interests of children and young people and whose research was about promoting the perspectives of children—the reason they were involved in quantitative research in the first place. So, there was a shared intellectual moment that we were lucky to capitalize on. CHK, SF and I had a kind of synchronicity in our interpretation of the research field. We shared a similar idea of what was required we had been thinking about and working on these issues for some time. Similarly, other researchers who had been working quantitatively on children’s well-being, whilst starting from a different epistemological premise, nonetheless saw the merit in us proposing the study because of what we were proposing resonated with them politically and intellectually. There was a shared understanding of what the problem was and why we were at that point in knowledge production.

We had to build on that momentum and that point in time was a pivotal one. That interest could dissipate and it was quite apparent that a study of, at that time, 22 different research teams, required some coordination. This presented a number of issues. The first was the degree of direction that should be provided. Whilst we had our own theoretical and methodological preferences, we didn’t want to dictate the approach that should be taken as we felt this would not respect the diverse range of expertise and experience amongst the nascent research group. Yet we had to provide some parameters as the study would not contribute what we were aiming for if it was essentially 22 unrelated qualitative projects. Our solution to this dilemma was to develop a shared set of principles of practice, rather than to specify exactly what kinds of questions and techniques needed to be used in the research.

The way we operationalized this was to develop a research protocol, which outlined a set of guiding principles and a series of research activities and modules that researchers could use if they chose to do so. Below is part of the invitation letter we send to researchers demonstrating an interest in joining our network:

The research protocol outlines the study processes and methods. It includes a number of modules which can be adapted to suit the local context in which your research is being undertaken. For example, some teams have used photo-voice methods or created a storyboard resource. Other teams have focused on schooling as their central theme. However we ask that all teams: Undertake interviews that include children between 8 to 14 years of age. Interviews can also include children and young people older or younger than this age, but we agreed to at least include this age group for some degree of comparability; attempt to include between 30–50 children in their sample; that the sample of children reflects relevant heterogeneity of social categories for the context in which the research is being undertaken. We will be guided by you as to what the relevant social categories are, as you know the relevant social context. However, as in all good qualitative research, we are guided by purposive sampling techniques, rather than statistical sampling; record ethnographic field notes documenting the context in which the fieldwork is undertaken and its process; undertake module 1.2 of the research (mapping exercise), which can be adapted using different task-oriented or interview techniques. The aim is to obtain some data about what people, places, things, spaces, events and so on, that are important to children and/or make them feel well; collect demographic information on the participants, using a brief questionnaire, included as Appendix A in the research protocol. You may wish to use a different instrument. That is fine.

Beyond that, the research can be adapted to suit your research interests and needs. You can use or adapt any of the modules as you feel is appropriate. I have included an indicative research schedule which gives an example of how the project could be organized in the field (Fattore et al., 2015). Our attempt in this text is to strike a balance between a set of shared principles and practices that can be used for comparative purposes, yet encourage adaptation and flexibility, so that the research builds on the knowledge strengths of the researchers, including their knowledge of how research can be done within their local contexts. However, along with this invitation is a 20-page manual, which includes interview schedules, sampling principles, instructions to undertake a range of task-oriented activities and so on. The point was not to dictate, but to make it as easy as possible for researchers to go into the field and conduct the research by providing them with a set of resources that they can use, adapt, improve and innovate. One of the unexpected outcomes of this was that our colleagues didn’t feel as though they were being dictated into doing our vision of the research. Instead, by freely sharing these resources our colleagues felt both guided and supported, but also took this sharing as a demonstration of trust in them. All that we asked in return was a degree of transparency amongst the network members—that they would likewise share their experiences and methodological innovations. By doing this we have run counter to the prevailing trends in academia, which rewards competition and opportunity hoarding. We have tried instead to cultivate a process where people share ideas openly. By providing base-line resources but encouraging our colleagues to use these resources in ways that build upon their unique strengths, applied to their own interests, the research generated from the network has investigated a diverse range of topics associated with children’s well-being, often in ways that push the frontiers of the child well-being research field. This raises another key issue that has been a challenge and strength of our network, and that is its interdisciplinarity.

Much has been written about the benefits of interdisciplinarity but it is difficult to put into practice, in part because academics are trained in highly specialized fields, where making small points of difference are a valued currency and consequently this encourages a defensiveness of our own theoretical and methodological preferences. By being a loose network we have been able to create a space in which the individual disciplinary preferences of researchers have been able to contribute to the study. We have anthropologists, educational scientists, psychologists, health scientists, sociologists and social work academics involved in the CUWB network. Of course, a topic like child well-being invites interdisciplinarity because its complexity requires diverse perspectives for it to be understood. However, we have also fostered interdisciplinarity by not implementing a notion of strict comparability, We have tried to create a space where all the researchers involved can identify with the study, by seeing themselves contributing to a larger program.

The returns on this have been remarkable. All of our colleagues have contributed to improving the research design. The number of publications generated out of the study are close to 100. We have had special issues of journals and edited collections of books devoted to our research. The research has been used to inform various government policies. The degree of cooperation and collaboration has been remarkable, with a number of off-shoot collaborations and side projects blossoming independently. This is something we have encouraged and in our role as coordinators have attempted to support.

The role of resource transfers has become a critical factor in making the network successful. Unlike other projects, the research has not been funded out of a foundation grant. Rather, funds have been scrapped together from wherever possible. For some of the researchers, especially from wealthier nations, they have been successful in securing national research body funding for their specific fieldwork. However, for most the resource they have is time, building the conduct of the research into their role as paid academics. The key mechanism through which the network runs is via our research meetings and conferences, where we come together at strategic points in the study and discuss our plans for collaboration. We have had several of these meetings (Berlin twice, Sion Switzerland and Zurich Switzerland), using nation-based research network meeting funds for this purpose. However, we have attempted to allocate these funds in ways that takes into account global inequalities in access to resources. In the context of limited funding, our colleagues from wealthier nations are expected to contribute something to the costs of their own travel, which is usually absorbed by the Universities they work for. This allows us to more fully subsidize the costs of our colleagues who have far more limited access to these kinds of resources.(T).

3.1.3 Case 3: An Online Course on Quality of Life and Happiness for the Building of Better Societies by Graciela Tonon

This case shows my own experience as a teacher of an online course dedicated to Quality of Life.

In 2018, I organized the online course entitled Quality of Life and Happiness: Building Better Societies, as an innovative pedagogic space within the framework of the Online Education Program at Universidad de Palermo, Argentina. From that moment I teach that course twice in the year with an attendance of 150 students per year. This is an elective course offered to all the students of the University, becoming an interdisciplinary pedagogic space.

Students from different careers take this course: Psychology, Law, Architecture, Public Relations, Business, Management, Advertising, Interior Design, Textile Design and Clothing, Image and Sound Design, Information Technologies, Human Resources, Music Production, Journalism, International Trade, Marketing, Industrial Design, International Relations.

The course is organized in eleven modules, each one dedicated to one topic. One of the modules presents the relationship between quality of life and public policies. The module dedicated to happiness has as an exercise in integrating knowledge, a forum in which the need and importance of measuring happiness are discussed.

It is striking that among the eleven modules that comprise the course, it is observed that in 2019, the module that students express that they have found most interesting and important not only for their academic knowledge but for their life in general, is precisely the module dedicated to public policies and Quality of Life: 29,4% of students from a total of 143, referred to the relationship between happiness and public policies (Tonon et al., 2021).

In the case of the first semester of 2021, Fig. 3.1 shows the opinions of the students (70 people) about the relation between quality of life and public policies and the importance of this relation.

Fig. 3.1

Student’s opinions about the relation quality of life-public policies

The different opinions that students have about the different relationships observed between quality of life and public policies, recall what Veenhoven (2008, p. 248) expressed “so far the data show that happiness is a realistic goal for public policy” and he added “the available data suggest that most gains can be made by policies that focus on freedom and justice” (Veenhoven, 2008, p. 251).