Education Policy Analysis Archives

An analytic framework for theorizing the anti-gender agenda in education

Bruna Dalmaso-Junqueira — 2024-10-01

This article theorizes the global anti-gender movement in education. This conservative movement opposes “gender ideology,” which is perceived as a threat to traditional social values. Building on a systematic literature review of how the anti-gender movement shapes educational policies, politics, and practices, with a specific focus on Brazil and the US, this article presents a theoretical framework for conceptualizing: 1) the contested meanings of “gender ideology”; 2) its discursive components; 3) the characteristics and composition of anti-gender alliances; 4) the anti-gender agenda’s manifestations in curriculum, pedagogy, the social relations of schooling, and education policy. We attempt to highlight the ways in which anti-gender politics often operate together with racial politics to reveal the ways in which conservative, right-wing alliances, frequently predicated on and united through anti-Blackness, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny, exert influence on educational policies, politics, and practices to simultaneously maintain a white supremacist, cis-heteronormative, and patriarchal state. We conclude with a discussion of the contradictions of this agenda and resistances to these conservative attacks on equity, inclusion, diversity, and human rights.

Research on Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers: Developing and fortifying policies that diversify the educator workforce

Conra D. Gist — 2024-09-17

This special issue expands upon the Handbook of Research on Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers (Gist & Bristol, 2022a) and the practitioner-focused Phi Delta Kappan special issue, “Learning from the Voices of Black, Indigenous and People of Color Educators: Charting New Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice” (Gist & Bristol, 2021). The co-created articles in this special issue highlight the combined expertise of policy makers and education researchers. While the Handbook featured empirical research, and the Phi Delta Kappan special issue featured research briefs and teacher testimonies, the policy-driven articles in this special issue explore how research can be applied at district, state and national levels. A primary goal of this special issue is to provide evidence-based policy recommendations to support policymakers with strategies to address ethnoracial diversity related to one or more of the Handbook’s 11 research domains (i.e., recruitment, program design, mentorship, professional development, retention, pedagogical and leadership practices, induction and human resource development, intersectionalities, educational impact, minority serving institutions, and policy).

From innovation to routine: Hopes, challenges, ands frustrations among primary education teachers

Javier Maqueda — 2024-10-22

Difficulties in introducing active methodologies in the classroom may be related to the teachers’ lack of training, as they might not recognize the benefits that these methodologies offer or may not know how to implement them. Based on a qualitative ethnographic study conducted in two bilingual public primary schools in Andalusia, with a variable mix of middle-class and lower-middle-class students, this study investigated these assumptions and observed the relationship between the persistence of these innovative practices and their alignment with the grammar of schooling and micropolitics of the school. The results show that attempts to introduce these methodologies by a group of novice teachers seeking support from professionals to improve their practices led to the abandonment of the most effective tools for maintaining the legitimacy of their own position in the face of the intentions and interests of other agents. The difficulties generated by this dynamic resulted in the discrediting of specialist groups among these teachers and the emergence of a set of local pedagogical strategies that diverged from expert recommendations.

Policy rhetoric, realities, and burdens: Using critical policy analysis to center at-promise student success in the McNair program

Nathan Hutcherson — 2024-11-12

Educational policies designed to benefit students from first-generation, low-income, and racially minoritized backgrounds do not always consider the realities these students experience during college. Instead, students participating in compensatory education programs can endure further marginalization. Using critical policy analysis’ core tenets as guiding principles to frame our study and guide our analysis, we conducted a three-phase qualitative analytic study. We examined interviews with students and McNair program policy documents to interrogate policymakers’ hidden assumptions and the (de)centering of minoritized student perspectives in the McNair program policy. Students in the program discussed varied and conflicting definitions of success, such as learning they did not want to attend graduate school—a primary goal and measure of success for the federal government. They also highlighted advisors as a source of support. By centering the experiences of students, our findings highlight this critical gap and draw attention to the administrative burdens placed on at-promise students, emphasize the need for holistic socio-emotional support in federal policy, and underscore the powerful role of supportive faculty and staff.

The self-taught school: Inclusion of foreign students according to public action in Chile

René Valdés — 2024-08-06

The consolidation of migratory flows to Chile and the concentration of foreign students in public schools have led the State and the Ministry of Education to implement regulatory bodies and design guides and guidelines to promote school inclusion processes. The objective of this study is to analyze publicly accessible documents addressing the inclusion of foreign students based on what schools are expected to do in managing cultural diversity. Eighteen official documents were analyzed using the discourse analysis technique. The results show that the texts configure a voluntaristic school, responsible for a large number of tasks without the delivery of necessary resources and without a specific diversity management model. However, in the context of the pandemic, a shift towards comprehensiveness is perceived: new challenges and dimensions appear to address the inclusion of migrant communities.

Emo-entrepreneurs: Critical analysis of a legislative project on emotional education in Chile

Diego Palacios Díaz — 2024-08-13

Emotions have emerged as a focal point of governance within modern educational frameworks, involving both supranational entities and national governments, albeit with emerging contributions from new stakeholders offering perspectives on emotional aspects in education. This paper undertakes a discursive analysis of the formulation and dissemination of a legislative initiative concerning emotional education in Chile. Specifically, it examines the efforts of Fundación Liderazgo Chile, a civil society organization, which engaged in vigorous lobbying and media campaigns to obtain legislative approval. Emotions are posited as arenas of social control, shaping the discourse that influences educational policy contexts. A political discourse analysis of 23 documentary sources produced and disseminated by Fundación Liderazgo Chile reveals three key findings: first, the portrayal of contemporary society as deprived and violent; second, the depiction of educational stakeholders as lacking emotional literacy; and third, the advocacy for solutions focused on individual emotional training. The concept of “emo-entrepreneurs” is introduced to describe actors influencing educational policy through emotional lenses while potentially overlooking other dimensions of educational challenges. Lastly, the paper identifies risks associated with the legal and mandatory enforcement of legislative initiatives of this nature.

Knowledge networks in the construction of the Chilean Curricular Bases: Between national evidence and the global education policy field

José Miguel Fuentes-Salazar — 2024-11-19

We conducted a knowledge network analysis applied to the National Curriculum Bases to understand the morphology of the evidence used by policymakers in educational globalization. We ask: What evidence was valued for the construction of the Chilean school curriculum, and how did policymakers use the evidence provided by the emblematic actors of the Global Policy Field (GPC)? The results show significant patterns in international and scientific evidence use. Furthermore, our analyses reveal that the OECD, UNESCO, and emerging groupings such as ATC21 and P21 are positioned as predominant sources of authority to inform broad categories of schooling, such as general curriculum principles and the content of school disciplines. We argue that the externalization of knowledge in curriculum prescription has negative implications for the deliberation and democratization of curriculum policy, as well as for the possibilities of a pedagogical practice that is sensitive to cultural diversity and recognizes learning as a subjective experience.

How parents make decisions about PreK enrollment

M. Elizabeth Graue — 2024-07-16

Public PreK programs are an increasingly popular policy tool to equalize early learning opportunities. Programs can be universally available or targeted to support children’s readiness. At the intersection of early childhood and K-12 education, their hybrid status can be difficult for families to negotiate. Based on interviews completed in 2018, we describe how parents in a universal PreK program decided whether and where their child would attend PreK, comparing parents who chose school sites with those who did not. The part-time nature of the program was a barrier to many families, prompting us to ask whether a program is authentically universal if it is not accessible to all.

The funding of public basic education and educational results: Review of foreign literature and reflections on the Brazilian context

Weber Tavares da Silva Junior — 2024-07-09

With the aim of investigating the relationship between the funding of public basic education and the educational results achieved, this study analyzed a pre-selected set of foreign academic works and identified elements that can be used to encourage debate about the Brazilian model of educational financing. The study used the scoping review technique expanded by elements of the systematic literature of review to analyze the selected foreign studies. The study demonstrated that the availability of financial resources capable of providing an adequate set of inputs, accompanied by an efficient, responsible management process and subject to social control methods, is a crucial requirement for improving educational results and reducing the negative effects generated by low socioeconomic status (SES). It was also observed that although socioeconomic status is an important predictor of educational results, it can be mediated by actions carried out inside and outside school. Additionally, this study demonstrates that educational results need to be measured using indicators other than those obtained through standardized tests, such as: access; school performance; frequency; school dropout; student involvement; completion; progress between stages; improvement in social indicators/social mobility; compliance with the rights provided for in legislation, among others.

Problematizing the Black-White racial dichotomy inherent to high school graduation rate accountability: A mixed methods critical policy analysis

Samantha Viano — 2024-11-26

The U.S. Department of Education introduced the four-year adjusted cohort high school graduation rate formula in 2008 to usher high school graduation in as a high-stakes accountability metric. This policy sought to address disparate graduation rates by student race but did not attend to systemic reasons why minoritized students had lower graduation rates. Using a critical structural capital theoretical framework, this mixed methods critical policy analysis analyzes federal and state-level policy on high school graduation rate accountability and state administrative data from North Carolina to assess how policy ignores structural inequality in ways that result in divergent access to traditional forms of capital, dismissing non-traditional forms of capital necessary for college and career readiness. A critical discourse analysis of policy finds language that alludes to college and career readiness but relies on high school graduation alone as the metric. We use these findings to provide context for our quantitative analysis. In school-by-cohort fixed effects models, Black students were more likely to fail courses than similar White students but more likely to graduate high school. These findings indicate federal accountability incentivized schools to push more Black students to graduate but did so at the expense of their college and career readiness.