Educational Policy Reform and its Impact on
Equity Work in Ontario: Global Challenges and Local Possibilities
Goli M. Rezai-Rashti
University of Western Ontario
Citation: Rezai-Rashti, G. M.
(2003, December 29). Educational policy reform and its impact on
equity work in Ontario: Global challenges and local possibilities,
Education Policy
Analysis Archives, 11(51). Retrieved [Date] from
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v11n51/.
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Abstract
In this article I discuss the effects of global policy discourses
on the educational restructuring of the work of equity workers in
Ontario, Canada. Research in two school boards with those
directly involved in equity work revealed that the restructuring
process had uneven and unexpected effects on the activities of
equity workers. Using the critical policy analysis framework, the
analysis moves into a discussion of the complexities of policy
studies. I argue that the policies introduced at the government
level are implemented and practiced on the basis of the
historical specificities found at each local site. (Note 1)
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Influenced by global policy discourses on education, the
Conservative government (1996-2003) introduced major changes in
the structure of the education system in Ontario. These changes
created a major shift in all aspects of education, such as
standardization of curriculum, reduction and amalgamation of
school boards, funding and staffing formulas, and more
specifically the centralization of power and control in the
Ministry of Education.
The objective of this article is to discuss the effects that the
restructuring process has had on the work of equity workers in
two school boards in Ontario. It aims at finding out the extent
to which the restructuring of education has changed the everyday
activities of those who are directly responsible for equity work
in these school boards. Using the framework developed by Ball
(1991, 1994); Dehli (1996); Gilborn (1994); Taylor & Henry (
2000), this analysis does not negate some of the negative effects of
the restructuring processes in education. Rather, it discusses
how policy implementation at local sites is a more complex and
uneven issue which requires further investigation at the level of
individual institutions to determine its various interpretations
and possibilities. Unlike more deterministic views of the
relationship between government policies and their impact on
individuals and groups in various educational settings, there are
good reasons to believe that possibilities for intervention by
those for whom these policies were expected to have a detrimental
effect are greater than anticipated.
Context of change
Education systems in many advanced industrial nations have
been experiencing significant changes. Reforms in management,
governance, assessment procedures and standardization; cuts to
education budget; privatization, and more control over curriculum
design and content are common elements of these changes. The
hegemonic discourses and perspectives around these reforms are
justified by the process of globalization, which claims to
require restructuring of education system in order to make the
nation-state more competitive in the face of the changes in the
world capitalist order. Globalization is thus used as a
legitimizing discourse that makes the policy changes in education
self-evident, necessary, and leaves current education systems
with no other alternatives (Bourdieu, 1998). Educational
globalization, then, is an attempt to create global policies
around education that makes the movement of labor around the
globe easier. Educational globalization, however, does not
always lead to policy uniformity and homogeneity:
Educational globalization does not imply policy
homogenization, but rather that there are tensions within
globalization processes that serve both to concentrate and
differentiate the policy agenda. Nor is it argued that
globalization implies the surrendering of national sovereignty.
However, the increasing polycentric nature of governance and
hence of policymaking is recognized (Taylor and Henry, 2000, p.
488).
Thus, it is important to discuss globalization not in a
deterministic way in which there is no space for resistance,
contestation and differences. On the contrary, there is a need to
look at globalization both as an impetus for homogeneity and at
the same time a stimulus for the production of differences. This
conceptualization of globalization is significant in that it
allows the local to resist, alter and reinterpret global policies
based on the histories of local condition. It is true that the
reform package that is introduced in many advanced capitalist
societies shares similarities which could be connected to global
and market mechanisms. Still, there are differences in the
implementation of such policies at the local levels that cannot
be ignored and which must be examined carefully.
The macro level analysis of educational restructuring and
reform (Apple, 1993, 2000; Burbules & Torres, 2000; Torres,
2002), although politically significant, does not provide much
analysis of their impact at the level of practice. As Stephen
Ball argued, “Any decent theory of education policy must
attend to the workings of the state. But any decent theory of
education policy must not be limited to the state control
perspective.” He argued that policies are shaped at the
local level of practice:
Policy is both text and action, words and deeds, it is what is
enacted as well as what is intended. Policies are always
incomplete as far as they relate to map on the “wild
confusion” of local practice. Policies are crude and
simple. Practice is sophisticated, contingent, complex and
unstable. Policy as practice is “created” in a
trialectic of dominance, resistance, and chaos/freedom. Thus
policy is not simple asymmetry of power. Control [or dominance]
can never be totally secured, in part because of agency. It will
be open to erosion and undercutting by action, embodied agency of
those people who are its object. (Ball, 1994, pp. 10-11)
Education policy at the provincial level in Ontario under the
Conservative government should be seen within such complex
understanding of the state policy formation. The reform package
that was introduced has been practiced in complex, unexpected,
and unstable ways in the two local settings. This research
reveals that the implementation of government policies have not
been practiced homogeneously in various local settings. The
implementations, interpretations, and the practices at the local
level were dependent on the complex histories, cultures and
agencies of individuals present in each specific local setting.
As Kari Dehli argues, “current transformations in late
capitalism have wide-reaching effects in every part of the globe,
but these effects are uneven and mediated locally in
unpredictable ways”. (Dehli, 1996:85)
In recent years, the impact of educational restructuring and
the resulting inequities for poor and minority students have been
well analyzed and documented by educational scholars and
researchers (Apple, 1993; Ball, 1993 ; Dei, 2001; Dehli, 1996 ;
McNeil, 2000; Rizvi & Lingard, 2000; Taylor, Rizvi, Lingard
& Henry, 1997; Whitty, Power& Halpin, 1998; Whitty,
2001). The debate over school choice and marketization of
education has been useful in understanding the dynamics of
neo-liberal reform in education. In Ontario, the education system
has been going through some similar policy reforms as other
advanced capitalist societies such as US and England. The task
ahead is to find out how these reforms are practiced at the local
level and their implications for students, teachers,
administrators, and for those who are actively seeking for an
education system based on principles of equity and social
justice. As Levin argued:
The task of the analyst, then, is to consider the ways in
which policies are driven by a particular logic or ideology, but
also the ways in which they are shaped by other
factors-historical, cultural, institutional, and political- that
they are less predictable. At the macro level, long-term changes
in societies and the role of the state are important. At the
micro level, chance, in the form of individual personalities or
unexpected events, is also an important consideration in
understanding reform. Neither the importance of means-ends
rationality nor the underlying contingency of life can be
ignored-both must be accommodated in an adequate theoretical
account. (Levin, 2001)
Today, the general view in Ontario is that the current
policies of educational restructuring have significantly reduced
equity activities and the institutional mechanisms to adequately
address equity issues. This is mainly attributed to the policies
introduced by the Progressive Conservative government that took
power in 1995 (Dehli, 1998; Dei 2001;Griffith, 2001; Goldstein,
1998; Majhanovich, 2002; Smith, 1998).
There is little doubt that changes to the education system
along with the massive cuts in education budget have had serious
consequences for all aspects of education. The new policies over
governance, funding formula, curriculum and assessment procedures
are all facets of the Ontario government’s education
policy. These policies are adopted and initiated at the
government level and they all have a short-time timetable for
implementation. These policies are significantly changing the
nature of teaching and learning in Ontario.
Educational policy reform in Ontario is predominantly
influenced by economic theory with its discourse of market
mechanism, efficiency and productivity. The long- term impact of
these reforms is not known. Ontario is still at the early stages
of such policy reforms and perhaps it is too early to fully
comprehend the social impact of such policies.
I do not challenge the view that these changes have
had drastic implications for Ontario education. Rather, it is
intended to show that policies adopted at the government level
are subject to local interpretations and implementation, and may
not necessarily achieve its intended objectives in practice. This
research shows that despite the draconian measures introduced by
the government, there still are spaces for oppositional work at
the level of individual institutions.
Methods
Research for this work was conducted during 2001-2002 and
used qualitative methods of inquiry (Note 2) in order to explore the impact of
policy reforms on equity education from the experience of those
actively involved in equity work at local sites. In this case, it
explores the institutional changes from the perspective of equity
workers’ (Note 3)
experience of their routine jobs. Six educators from two
different school boards (3 from each board) and one from the
Ministry of Education and Training who have been actively
involved in equity work were interviewed. The school boards were
selected based on their activities around equity education. One
school board had a long history of equity work and the other one
had no history of systematic and on-going equity work. There were
also two focus group interviews (two people in each group and one
in each board). The equity workers were not the objects of the
research. They were informants rather than subjects. The
intention was to draw on their knowledge and experience of their
everyday work situation, of their relationship with others (such
as administrators, teachers, and parents, trustees) and what the
current changes in education in Ontario have meant for them.
Interviews were one to two hours in length and
semi-structured. They were tape-recorded and then transcribed.
An Historical Overview of Equity Education in
Ontario
Until the late 1980s, little systematic attention was directed
to issues of equity and social justice in Ontario education. Some
school boards, though, developed policies related to race
relations and multiculturalism. In 1979, the Toronto Board of
Education became the first school board in Canada to set in place
an official policy on race relations. By 1990, there were about
40 boards of education in Ontario that developed some sorts of
policies dealing with issues of race and culture. (Rezai-Rashti,
1995) In 1985, the Ontario government, through its Ministry of
Education, moved to establish an Advisory Committee on Race
Relations. The mandate of this committee included, among others,
the following duties:
- to promote the development of a Race and Ethno-cultural
Equity Policy by all school boards in the province.
- to assist and advise the Ministry of Education in the
creation of guidelines for equity policy development and
recommend priority areas for policy development.
- to identify strategies that will assist boards in developing
and implementing racial and ethno-cultural equity policies.
- to place concepts such as multiculturalism, race, and
ethno-cultural relations and anti-racist education in their
historical context as an aid to their proper use in equity policy
development, and to identify the threads that link them.
(Ministry of Education of Ontario, 1987:2)
In 1987, the Advisory Committee on race relations published a
report entitled “The Development of a Policy on Race and
Ethnocultural Equity”. Although the report was validated
province-wide, not much happened until the early 1990s when the
centre-left New Democratic Party (NDP) won in the provincial
election.
During the NDP government, the Ministry of Education and
Training paid some attention to issues of racism and sexism in
Ontario schools. In 1993, the Ministry made it mandatory for
every school board in Ontario to develop and implement a policy
on Anti-racism and Ethno-cultural Equity. To that effect, the
Ministry established a unit within the Ministry of Education and
Training to support the work of school boards and to make school
boards accountable for their work on equity issues. The
Policy/Program Memorandum No, 119, in 1993, recognized
“there have been systemic inequities in educational
experiences of minority groups” and the Ministry of
Education acknowledged that the educational structures, policies,
and programs have been mainly European in perspective”
(Ministry of Education, 1993, p. 45). According to this policy, all
school boards in Ontario were to develop a policy on Anti-racism
and Ethnocultural Equity and they were to submit their policies
and the implementation plan to the ministry by March 31, 1995.
Boards were expected to begin implementation by September 1,
1995. This policy contained clear timelines, expectations, and
implementation plan attached to it. The implementation plan to be
carried over a five-year period included clear annual objectives
and outcomes, partnership with the local communities and the
establishment of mechanisms for evaluating progress.
In 1995, the NDP government lost in the provincial election
and the Progressive Conservative Party was elected with a
majority of seats and a platform of tax cuts, fiscal
responsibility, and the elimination of employment equity policy.
Soon after the new government took office, the monitoring of the
boards’ implementation of the policy on Anti-racism and
Ethnocultural Equity “just died”. From 1995 to 1997,
about two thirds of the budget of the unit was cut. The staff of
the unit was not allowed to monitor or interfere with boards. As
Laura stated:
By that time my staff was shrinking anyway because of budget
cutbacks…. I stayed for a couple of years, because they
didn’t get rid of us immediately. In 1997, the Anti-racism
and Ethnocultural Equity Unit was shut down. The few remaining
staff were either dismissed or re-distributed to the other
branches of the Ministry of Education and Training.
To sum up, liberal and NDP governments supported more equity
related initiatives, especially during the NDP, an institutional
mechanism for accountability was established. However, these
policies and initiatives were faced with various kinds of
responses from local sites and coupled with the
government’s commitment to consultation, by and large did
not achieve the expected goals.
Conservative Government and Policy Reforms in
Education
The interview data support the view that the restructuring
process in Ontario has had a serious impact on all aspects of
education, including the work on equity and social justice. This
is especially true for the school boards with a long history of
doing work in these areas. However, this research also reveals
that the actual work on equity and social justice does not
necessarily correspond with the Ministry of Education and
Training’s mandated policies. It shows that school boards
may interpret and implement these policies based on a set of
complex conditions in their individual institution. At the level
of local practice, people in various local settings have been
able to interpret such policies based on particularities of their
communities.
Two school boards were selected for this research on the basis
of their activities around issues of social justice prior and
after 1995. The Richmond school board has been a leading board in
terms of providing leadership in equity work provincially (work
on race, class, gender, culture, and sexuality). After 1995, the
effort of the equity workers to continue with the same level of
activities was drastically reduced. The Victoria school board
did not do much work on equity and social justice prior to 1995.
After 1995, some significant activities were introduced and in
some ways this board began to play a leading role in recent
times.
The Richmond School Board
The Richmond school board had a long history of
progressive work in education. Interviews with several members of
the equity department who have been working in this institution
for over twenty years revealed some of this history. Marjorie,
one of the interviewees, discussed this history from her
perspective as an educator in this school board. She talked about
how in early 1970s a group of social activists decided that they
would run progressive trustee candidates in order to try to get a
majority of seats on this board. Until then, political parties
were not involved in municipal elections. Trustees would run as
independents.
These trustees were interested in a range of equity issues
such as parents’ participation, multiculturalism,
alternative schools, and the education of working class and poor
students and parents. The board became a place where issues
related to gender, race and ethnocultural equity were actively
discussed. The board tried to create positions for people
responsible in the system running initiatives that would try to
level the playing field for groups that have been identified as
having less success in the school system. They also substantially
funded the equity initiatives. As Marjorie discussed:
We had the power of the purse to try to make things more even,
and we used our power. And…. They raised the mill rate in
order to fund these programs that they thought they needed. You
know, we had run these programs, we had made our research
department backing up some of our initiatives. We had an
organizational culture that, even though we didn’t always
agree with each other, this was the direction, and it was one of
the three parts of our mission statement that the last director
of the board, kind of pushed through—Equity, Excellence and
Accountability, with the emphasis on Equity, not on the
Accountability. In other words, his vision was, we have to be
accountable for equitable outcomes.
Therefore, before restructuring, this board had more than 20
years of experience dealing with various equity issues. They had
developed curriculum materials and their work with teachers and
students was a model for other boards of education in the
province and at the national level as well. When restructuring
was initiated and the amalgamation happened this board had to
amalgamate with several other boards of education that did not
have the same experience and the level of commitment to equity
issues.
Those who were interviewed and who work for the Richmond
School Board gave the following reasons for not being able to
continue the equity work with the same level of intensity:
- amalgamation- the board was amalgamated with several other
school boards. The size of the board became six times bigger than
the previous board of education.
- downsizing and reduction of staff with equity portfolios and
the elimination of some of the programs.
- devaluation of trustees as public figures.
- shifting of the organizational culture and difficulties of
generating interest in the system around equity issues.
- the province taking over funding and not allowing the school
boards to set the mill rate.
The interviewees indicated that these interrelated factors,
together affected equity work in this school board. As Tom, one
of the participants in this research summed up:
The old vehicle that was holding the system accountable was
the trustee.
On the one hand, trustees’ wards have now been expanded
to encompass federal ridings, they are huge, so that no trustee
has first-hand knowledge of any of the communities or their
schools or their principals, you know, they’re.. because
they have got dozens and dozens and dozens of sites. And the
second thing is that the provincial legislation said that
trustees could be paid a maximum of five thousand dollars a year
[from previous 45 thousand], which means there are no full-time
trustees, so not only do the people who are there have these
enormous areas that they’re responsible for, but they have
to have another job or to be independently wealthy…So that
it means that the kind of accountability, where before a parent
who was having trouble in a school with their child could phone
up the trustees if nothing else worked out, today if a parent can
find a trustee is a small miracle.
The devaluation of trustees as public figures in this board
with such progressive history of work around issues of equity and
social justice was a serious problem for equity workers.
Considering the history of the board and its unique development
since the 1970s, there is no surprise that equity workers within
this board perceived trustees predominantly as political allies.
This is one example of local particularities that is not
generalizable to other boards of education. In my interview with
equity workers from the two other boards, the devaluation of
trustees was a not an issue because there was no history of
trustees’ involvement and commitment to equity and social
justice.
Another participant, Maria, discussed the size of the school
board and the number of schools within the district. She
commented that the size of the current board makes it almost
impossible to do equity work:
Now, with amalgamation all of that changed. On the one hand
suddenly the board became huge… There are 600
schools… Three hundred thousand students. Attempting to
make anything work in that kind of massive structure suddenly
becomes an administrative nightmare. It becomes really, really
very difficult. So, just the size of this new formation itself is
a huge impediment to any kind of systematic change, because the
system itself is just too large to manage.
In terms of specific impact on equity issues, it was stated
that:
When amalgamation happened there were about a dozen people who
had different kinds of equity portfolios in the amalgamated
board…. Well, this year the equity department consists of
one district-wide coordinator, three …. they are not
consultants now, they’re learning something-or-other, but
they’re consultants [inaudible] yeah. And just two student
program workers left over, so basically there are six
people….
These views, as expressed by the interviewees, reflect the
serious impact of the government cutbacks and the restructuring
process in their efforts to teach about equity and social
justice. They expressed that several of the programs such as work
with students (residential camp) was drastically cut.
In addition, they mentioned that with the high speed of
restructuring process and the profound changes in the nature of
teaching and learning, teachers are just fed up and bitter. As
Peter mentioned, “ teachers are at their wit’s end,
and fed up, and any kind of talk of anything that may seem as
more work or something beyond what they’re already doing,
in a situation where they’re incredibly stressed seems like
add-on and they just don’t want to do it.”
In terms of their work as equity workers (in various
positions) they discussed that unlike the previous situation, now
they are mainly responding to crisis and trouble-shooting. As Tom
stated, “ I end up doing a lot of, you know, one-shot
workshops here and there, but generally I’m ending up doing
a lot more kind of administrative stuff and trouble-shooting and,
you know, stuff that is not particularly interesting or
exciting.”
To summarize, it appears that equity workers at Richmond
School Board are faced with several interrelated issues that
impact on their work with equity issues. Together, these issues
significantly changed the nature of their work, their
relationship to trustees, teachers, and students. A work that had
previously been pro-active and creative changed to one of
predominantly being a respond to crisis and the carrying out of
administrative work.
The Victoria School Board
The Victoria school board was not much involved in equity
issues prior to the restructuring of the education system in
Ontario. After 1995, however, this school board became involved
in some significant work on equity and social justice, initiated
several new curriculum documents, and an extra staff member was
hired to implement the new initiatives. Remarkably, it was not
the board’s trustees or administrators who initiated equity
activities. On the contrary, a number of people whose job was not
initially connected to the equity department pushed and struggled
for equity and social justice in the board. In some cases, this
work was beyond the job description of some of these people.
Despite limited success, they explained that the work on equity
issues was not easy and they had to deal with tensions and
resistance from people working in the board.
Those who were interviewed thought that some of the following
factors might have helped their limited success:
- the board did not have to amalgamate because it was already
huge.
- The existence of a network, or group of people connected to
the equity network in early 1990s (during NDP government) who
continued their work after the educational restructuring.
- some of the senior administrators, including the director,
were supportive of equity initiatives.
The initiatives during the NDP government in the early 1990s
(mandating a policy on Race and Ethnocultural Equity) created a
space for several people within this board to form a group and
organize in order to conduct workshops, seminars, and develop
proposals around equity issues. They explained how they met one
another at conferences, workshops and curriculum initiatives
related to equity education (outside of their board). In a focus
group interview one of the participants discussed how this all
happened and how the group was formed:
I don’t know. I really don’t. The only thing I can
think of is that it’s really the mix of people that have
come together to do this. We generally trust each other, I mean,
“the superintendent” trusts us, and we trust him not
to sort of forge off on his own to do something that won’t
work….
Another participant discussed how they decided on a strategy
that would work in their system:
We made connections (4 of them), we started talking about
how… we realized that in some ways being subversive would
be the only way to get something going on at the system level, so
we set up something called [Equity Group Support], which was a
network that met for four years, I guess six, five or six times a
year and we offered workshops on whatever people wanted….
The participants were teachers, elementary and secondary,
resource teachers, some of our professional support staff,
teaching assistants, principals, people who worked in this
building [board of education office], in the field office and so
on and there were about a hundred and fifty people or so on the
mailing list.
Most of the workshops were conducted at the teachers’
federation offices because some of the issues discussed (for
example gay and lesbian issues) were too sensitive to be
discussed at the board office. When asked what was the
involvement of people who officially had the equity portfolios
within the board, they responded:
They were and they weren’t [involved]. What we decided
to do was set it up as something that was grass root. We were
afraid that if it centralized it would get pulled in and
destroyed and sort of, you know, hidden away. We had many offers,
but we sort of said, “We’d like to run this out on
our own.
They discussed how, out of these workshops, they felt the need
to provide teachers with curriculum support and develop documents
that would support them with equity work in the classroom.
The question is how they could manage to do all of this
despite drastic cutbacks to the education system. Anna, one of
the participants, responded that most of the cuts were at the
management level and it seems that when the administration is
supportive, they always find a way to get the support. As Allen,
one of the equity workers discussed, “so, they have lost
money, it’s.. But I don’t know where they keep
finding it. I mean, we are not talking about big
bucks.”
Allen commented how the hiring of the new staff member
responsible for the implementation of new curriculum documents on
equity and inclusive curriculum happened. He discussed how a
combination of several factors made the board realize that there
was a need to hire a new staff member:
Yeah, you know, I’m thinking a couple of things might
have been happening. One is that as we were going through the
boxes of documents in the superintendent’s office, and the
amount of his time going to this work was just increasing. Like
although he kept trying to give stuff to four of us [those
involved in equity work], I mean, his…. And I think he
started… ‘cause we started to say, you know,
“well, we’re getting these kinds of requests. Who
will do this?” And the more and more we kept saying that, I
think he started to realize… And then we said, “you
know, there’s seven corporate goals, there’s a budget
for all of them except for this one…”
The fact that the administration at this board became
gradually supportive of equity work was mentioned several times
by those interviewed. Of course, they also mentioned that this
was not always the case.
Two of the participants in the focus group interview discussed
how sometimes they themselves do not believe the kind of progress
that they have been making:
We just pinch ourselves and say like “is this really
happening?” Like how can it all be happening? This
can’t be happening. We can’t be this far.” I
mean, when they approved the position I couldn’t believe
we’d get this position.
In summary, the Victoria school board has been engaged in
significant equity activities since 1996, including conducting
on-going workshops for their staff, curriculum development and
policy initiatives around issues of equity and social
justice.
Conclusion
The findings of this research suggest that the educational
policies introduced by the government had an uneven impact in two
local sites. It has been illustrated that policy implementation
is far more complex, and in the case of equity workers there have
been variations of interpretation, possibilities and spaces for
oppositional work.
The Richmond school board, with a long history of equity work,
could not continue the work with the same level of intensity.
Several factors were at work here, including the effects of the
amalgamation of school boards. The Richmond school board’s
amalgamation with other boards created two main issues for equity
workers, one being that the school board became a very large
organization and the other that it amalgamated with boards that
did not have the same history of equity work, thus raising a
challenge in terms of organizational culture. Another factor that
was mentioned earlier and seems to have had an impact for this
board was the trustees’ diminishing authority. As
mentioned, trustees played a historically significant role which
government made less important by reducing it to a part time and
marginal position. These and other factors contributed to the
reduction of equity work at the Richmond school board.
The Victoria school board was not amalgamated because the
board was already a large institution. In addition, during the
previous two governments (Liberal and NDP) there was a
significant shift in the administration of the board with the
creation of a network that consisted of a group of educators
(mostly teachers) who played an important role in continuing the
equity work with more intensity despite the elimination of the
Anti-racism and Ethnocultural Equity Unit of the Ministry of
Education and Training.
These two case studies show that policy process is never
straightforward. Based on various contextual, historical and
sometimes opposing interests (Taylor, Rizvi, Lingard and Henry,
1997) there are unpredictable consequences, some of which could
be either intended or unintended by the policy makers.
Practitioners do not confront policy texts as
naïve readers, they come
with histories, with experience, with values and purposes of
their own, they have vested interests in the meaning of the
policy. Policies will be interpreted differently as the
histories, values, purposes and interests which make up any arena
differ…. Furthermore, interpretation is matter of struggle.
(Bowe, Ball, and Gold, 1992, p. 22).
The final point that I would like to emphasize is that the
unpredictability of a policy text should not lead educators to
think that they should not be resisted or contested. In fact the
process of contestation and resistance by those from various
positions is natural and may result in testing and developing new
ideas and policies. The restructuring of education and the global
policy discourses on education that are based on market dynamic
and economic rationality have had significant effects for
minorities and working class students and teachers (Ball, 1993;
McNeil, 2000) and they should certainly be resisted by those who
support the creation of a more egalitarian society.
Notes
1. I would like
to thank Don Fisher and Roxana Ng for their thoughtful comments
on an earlier draft of this work. I am also grateful for the
support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada provided through Standard Research Grant No.
410-2001-1622.
2. The research
method in this study is influenced by the work of Dorothy Smith
and her method “Institutional Ethnography” and its
particular interviewing procedures. For further information see
Dorothy Smith, 1987, 2002.
3. Equity
workers are those whose work is specifically related to equity
issues such as race, culture, gender, social class, and sexual
orientation. They work with teachers, students, administrators,
trustees, etc.
4. Originally, 3 school boards were selected for this project.
The third board had no one officially doing equity work, and did
not systematically engaged with equity issues prior and after
restructuring of education. Only one teacher active in equity
work was interviewed.
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About the Author
Goli M. Rezai-Rashti teaches at the Faculty of
Education, University of Western Ontario. She has a scholarly
and activist interest in the areas of equity and social justice.
She has published a number of articles in scholarly books and
journals. Email: grezaira@uwo.ca.
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