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While higher education research has paid considerable attention to the impact of both ratings and rankings on universities, less attention has been devoted to how university subunits, such as Schools of Education, are affected by such performance measurements. Anchored in a neo-institutional approach, we analyze the formation of a competitive institutional environment in UK higher education in which ratings and rankings assume a central position in promoting competition among Schools of Education (SoE). We apply the concepts of “institutional environment” and “organizational strategic actors” to the SoE to demonstrate how such university subunits articulate their qualities and respond to the institutional environment in which they are embedded—by using ratings and rankings (R&R) to compete for material and symbolical resources as well as inter-organizational and intra-organizational legitimacy. Through findings from 22 in-depth expert interviews with members of the multidisciplinary field of education and a content analysis of websites (n = 75) of SoE that participated in REF 2014, we examine the stratified environment in which SoE are embedded (1). We uncover how R&R are applied by SoE within this competitive, marketized higher education system (2). Finally, we indicate the strategic behaviors that have been triggered by the rise of R&R in a country with a highly formalized and standardized research evaluation system (3). The results show both homogenization and differentiation among SoE in their use of organizational vocabulary and the applications of R&R while simultaneously revealing strategic behavior, ranging from changes in internal practices to changes in organizational structures.
Research evaluation systems in many countries aim to improve the quality of higher education. Among the first of such systems, the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) dating from 1986 is now the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Highly institutionalised, it transforms research to be more accountable. While numerous studies describe the system’s effects at different levels, this longitudinal analysis examines the gradual institutionalisation and (un)intended consequences of the system from 1986 to 2014. First, we analyse historically RAE/REF’s rationale, formalisation, standardisation, and transparency, framing it as a strong research evaluation system. Second, we locate the multidisciplinary field of education, analysing the submission behaviour (staff, outputs, funding) of departments of education over time to find decreases in the number of academic staff whose research was submitted for peer review assessment; the research article as the preferred publication format; the rise of quantitative analysis; and a high and stable concentration of funding among a small number of departments. Policy instruments invoke varied responses, with such reactivity demonstrated by (1) the increasing submission selectivity in the number of staff whose publications were submitted for peer review as a form of reverse engineering, and (2) the rise of the research article as the preferred output as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The funding concentration demonstrates a largely intended consequence that exacerbates disparities between departments of education. These findings emphasise how research assessment impacts the structural organisation and cognitive development of educational research in the UK.
Embedded in social worlds, education systems and research reflect distinct national trajectories. We compare two contrasting traditions of educational research (ER). Whereas British ER exhibits a multidisciplinary and pragmatic character, German ER reflects pedagogy and mainly humanities-based traditions. Yet, in both countries, policymakers’ growing demand for evidence in ER resulted in increased funding, specific research programs, and mandatory large-scale assessments. These have reshaped the field, suggesting more similar ER agendas. Based on a comprehensive original dataset of basic ER projects funded by the main grant-making agencies in both countries (2005–2015), we analyze five dimensions: levels, objects, disciplines, methodologies, and themes. We find epistemic drift, with partial convergence characterized by a multi-level focus, multidisciplinary approach, strongly empirical and quantitative methodology, and a premium on teaching and learning themes. The cases remain distinct in exploring systemic questions in a wider contextual frame (UK) or concentrating more narrowly on the individual learner (Germany).
Based on a Globally Structured Agenda for Education, this article presents the construction of the New Opportunities Initiative in Portugal. Thus, it analyses the relationship between the European Union and the Portuguese State with regard to the construction of this programme, identifying for this purpose the effects of governance processes. Through an analysis of Education and Training 2010 Program and New Opportunities Initiative documents, issued between 2000 and 2010, the strengthening of the discursive rhetoric based on a utilitarian and instrumental perspective of adult education and the incorporation of the principles of new public management in the field of education can be shown. In Portugal, the New Opportunities Initiative not only reflects these trends but also gives rise to a new way of constructing policies in the field of adult education.
Este artigo apresenta uma análise crítica da criação e implementação da mais emblemática medida política para o campo de jovens e adultos pouco escolarizados em Portugal: o Programa Novas Oportunidades. Recorrendo à proposta de Roger Dale sobre a agenda globalmente estruturada para a educação, discutiu-se a fabricação desta medida a partir de um cenário de regulação transnacional. Através da análise documental de um conjunto de documentos europeus e nacionais entre o período de 2000 e 2010 para o campo da educação de jovens e adultos, verificou-se que Programa Novas Oportunidades é consequência de um fortalecimento do processo de regulação das políticas educativas, levado a cabo pela União Europeia. Este fortalecimento resultou na construção de um programa político para o campo da educação de jovens e adultos em Portugal que comunga não só das mesmas ideologias instrumentais para a educação da União Europeia, como de uma gestão tecnocrática das políticas educativas, assente na procura de resultados.
Informed by multiple disciplines, theories, and methods, higher education scholars have developed a robust and diverse literature in many countries. Yet, some important (organizational) sociological perspectives, both more established and more recent, are insufficiently linked. In particular, we identify two theoretical strands – institutional and relational – that, when joined, help to explain contemporary developments in global higher education and yield new organizational insights. We review relevant literature from each perspective, both in their general formulations and with specific reference to contemporary higher education research. Within the broad institutional strand, we highlight strategic action fields, organizational actorhood, and associational memberships. Within the relational strand, we focus on ties and relationships that are especially crucial as science has entered an age of (inter)national research collaboration. Across these theories, we discuss linkages between concepts, objects, and levels of analysis. We explore the methodological approach of social network analysis as it offers great potential to connect these strands and, thus, to advance contemporary higher education research in a collaborative era.
The gradual transformation of the social contract of science, in which policy-makers demand value for money and relevant knowledge to contribute to the solution of societal problems, has contributed to change the model provision of funding for science. Such quests for relevance recognises its genesis in the idea of evidence-based policy and practice that originally started in the field of medicine and quickly spread to other fields, such as education, and the overall policy process. In the search for what has been called the “what works” movement, one of the funding arrangements that has recognised special momentum since the 1990s is the thematic research programmes, sponsored by governments or research state agencies, to directly targeted research topics and develop research capacity. Considerable sums of public research funding for educational research has been allocated through thematic national programmes in order to guarantee quality in research, to create research capacity, and to provide results that could inform practitioners and policy-makers. In this chapter, I discuss how intrinsically and extrinsically related aspects of programmification in the United Kingdom and Germany foresee and impact the sustainability in educational research.
Developed throughout the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, structural-functionalism profoundly shaped social sciences thinking, including Comparative and International Education. This school of thought analyzes the functions of the interrelated parts that constitute society, including education, to explain how they contribute to maintaining order and harmony in society. The first part of the chapter provides an overview of the antecedents and developments of the structural-functionalism by making reference to the main scholars and ideas that contributed to its elaborations. The second part of the chapter explores its applications in the field of comparative international education by providing several examples of how structural-functionalism influenced the analyses of early comparativists. The chapter ends with a conclusion, a list of further reading, and a mini-case study.
This book examines contemporary educational research and its governance, addressing key questions via a multidisciplinary theoretical framework of comparative institutional analysis with original data and applying multiple methods. The authors explore and explain important changes in the governance of educational research and the contents of scholarship in education and related disciplines across Europe since the 1990s. This volume synthesizes findings from a multi-year comparative research project, including in-depth empirical case studies of three distinct educational research cultures evolving in Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom. The authors reconstruct and compare changing conceptualizations of educational research, embedded in increasingly internationalized contexts of research, and examine shifts in its governance, including patterns of funding, publication, and evaluation. They examine the producers of European educational research and the distinct role of the European Union in constructing a European Educational Research Area, in establishing cross-border networks, and in (re)shaping educational research agendas. Through innovative empirical analysis of programs of research on various levels and education researchers' collaborations in scientific networks, they provide insights into (supra)national dynamics in education-related scholarship. Theory-guided content analysis of research projects funded by leading national funding agencies and by the most highly developed supranational research funding instrument - the EU Framework Programme - enables the authors to embed findings on Germany, the United Kingdom, and Norway in a broader European perspective.
Co-authored research articles in the disciplinarily heterogeneous field of higher education have dramatically increased in this century. As in other fields, rising international co-authorships reflect evolving international collaboration networks. We examine higher education research over two decades, applying automated bibliometric topic identification and social network analysis of 9067 papers in 13 core higher education journals (1998–2018). Remarkable expansion in the volume of papers and co-authorships has, surprisingly, not resulted in a more diverse network. Rather, existing co-authorship patterns are strengthened, with the dominance of scholars from a few Anglophone countries largely maintained. Researchers globally seek to co-author with leading scholars in these countries, especially the US, UK, and Australia—at least when publishing in the leading general higher education journals based there. Further, the two-mode social network analysis of countries and topics suggests that while Anglophone countries have led the development of higher education research, China and Germany, as leading research-producing countries, are increasingly influential within this world-spanning network. Topically, the vast majority of co-authored papers in higher education research focuses on individual-level phenomena, with organizational and system or country-level analysis constituting (much) smaller proportions, despite policymakers’ emphasis on cross-national comparisons and the growing importance of university actorhood. We discuss implications thereof for the future of the multidisciplinary field of higher education.