EPAA/AAPE is a peer-reviewed, open-access, international, multilingual, and multidisciplinary journal designed for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and development analysts concerned with education policies. EPAA/AAPE accepts unpublished original manuscripts in English, Spanish and Portuguese without restriction as to conceptual and methodological perspectives, time or place. EPAA/AAPE publishes issues comprised of empirical articles, commentaries, and special issues at roughly weekly intervals, all of which pertain to educational policy, with direct implications for educational policy.
Gary Alberto Cifuentes University of Los Andes Colombia
Gary Cifuentes is an educational researcher with a focus on the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education. His experience and interest are devoted to critical analysis of education policies, ICT leadership in institutions, and assessment on virtual learning environments. As an assistant professor at the Faculty of Education (Loa Andes University, Colombia) he is the formal leader in the group on ICT and education.
The problem of ICT policy translation: Contributions to overcome a technical rationality
Gary Alberto Cifuentes, María Camila Valbuena Osorio
Abstract
Education policies for the use and appropriation of ICT (information and communication technologies) in Latin America are in their best moment. All across the region are emerging educational innovation systems aiming to close the gap of inequity and guarantee the access of quality education. Beyond a common discourse analysis approach on these national programs and their promises of development and productivity, it is necessary to understand what occurs locally when policy translations take place, that is, mobilization of actors, artifacts and heterogeneous practices. Drawing on policy enactment theory as a theoretical framework and using a comparative case study design, it is shown that beyond a technical rationality of ICT policy implementation or its interpretation by different actors, the problem of policy translation deserves a critical analysis from a sociomaterial approach. In order to underpin this work, a set of national programs for ICT integration are analyzed in Colombia, in three municipal contexts in which policy translation is performed through heterogeneous but effective forms enacting discourses on innovation and quality in education. This work is also a methodological contribution to map translations of educational policies, useful for researchers on this field.
Codd, J. (1988). The construction and deconstruction of educational policy documents. Journal of Education Policy, 3(3), 235–247.
Cowen, R. (2009). The transfer, translation and transformation of educational processes: And their shape‐shifting? Comparative Education, 45(3), 315–327. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03050060903184916
Koyama, J., & Varenne, H. (2012). Assembling and dissembling: Policy as productive play. Educational Researcher, 41(5), 157–162. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189X12442799