Governing through Learning:School Self-Evaluation as a Knowledge-based Regulatory Tool

This paper discusses knowledge-based regulation tools (KBRTs) as new forms of regulation through an exploration of school self-evaluation (SSE) in Scot­land. We conceptualise self-evaluation as a hybrid regulatory instrument, combining data-based knowledge with knowledges “performed” by institutions and individuals to order to demonstrate their progress on the “journey to excellen­ce” in learning (HMIe, 2009) that is expected of schools, teachers and learners in Scotland. We see the development of self-evaluation in Scotland and more widely as arising from earlier over-reliance on data and from the proliferation of information that together combine to produce the problem of “evidence” as a governing technology. Data require continuous and demanding work – including interpretive work – if they are to be effective. SSE, we suggest, offers a combination of data-based knowledge with professional expertise and individual responsibility, that enables the governing and shaping of the school as a “learning organisation” and, in the context of Scotland on which this paper pri­marily focuses, reflects the presentation of governing as learning activity, in which pupils, teachers, local authorities and government itself are collectively engaged

The New Production of Governing Knowledge:Education Research in England

This article draws on critical discourse analysis (CDA) to explore the extent to which there is an interdependence between new governing forms, often characterised as 'post-bureaucratic' and new knowledge forms, that are often described in terms of 'mode 2' knowledge - that is, knowledge that combines the academy, the State and the private sector in co-production. The discussion is based on the analysis of a large number of policy texts concemed with education research as well as scrutiny of academic literature on research policy in England from 1945 to the present. Much recent policy and academic discourse, we suggest, characterises new knowledge forms as sociallyresponsive, and as potentially democratising knowledge, because of their apparent interactive, iterative, problem-focused and trans-disciplinary character. We suggest that such an analysis is insufficiently attentive to the discourse of the knowledge economy, and the related (discursive) turn in new knowledge production towards governing knowledge

Mapping Alternative Impact: Alternative approaches to impact from co-produced research

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Governing Education through Data in England: From Regulation to Self-Evaluation

This paper explores the relationship between changing forms of the governance of education and the growth and uses of data in the context of England - a context that can be described as the most 'advanced' in Europe in terms of data production and use. The paper links the shifting relations between the central department of education (variously known between the 1980s and the time of writing as the Department of Education and Science [DES], Department for Education and Skills [DfES] and the Department for Children, Schools and Families [DCSF]), the local education authorities and the schools to the growth and development of data-based systems of inspection and performance management, and suggests that the massive growth of data has unbalanced the relations of governing and created highly centralised system steering. Recent attempts to 'rebalance' steering through 'intelligent accountability' invoke network principles and self-regulation through self-evaluation, and thus give the appearance of deregulation, but the centre maintains control through its management and use of data, and local government remains peripheral