If we take this dialectic approach towards autonomy seriously, we need to dismiss the antagonistic conception of autonomy (i.e., schools/teachers versus the state) that has been pervading much of the literature surrounding the pros and cons of neoliberalization, auditing, managerial control, and so on (Forrester, 2000; Helgøy et al., 2007). Likewise, to defne autonomy as the scope of decision-making (vis-à-vis control mechanisms; cf. Wermke et al., 2019) does not do full justice to the multiple (potential and actualized) relationships between agents and their environments.2 This section of the chapter therefore intends to pick up where Wermke et al. (2019, p. 310) have left, who explicitly concede that their conceptualization takes place "at the price of complexity reduction [… and] excludes other themes related to the question, such as teacher empowerment, the structure of teacher agency and also issues of teacher self-determination".

2See however the more elaborated discussion of autonomy in Wermke and Salokangas (2021).

How is agency related to autonomy – and how does this make a difference for teachers? Existing attempts at capturing 'teacher agency' are problematic for several reasons. Firstly, and frequently, professional autonomy and teacher agency are used interchangeably, with no clear distinction between the two concepts, at times outright confating the two terms (e.g. Lundström, 2015). Secondly, many defnitions of teacher agency are normative and somewhat instrumentalist, clarifying what and how a teacher should be, and how this can be achieved, such as in the defnition by Toom et al. (2021, p. 2):

[P]rofessional agency […] in addition to being a teacher's core capability in the sense that it offers a key for active and skilful teacher learning, also provides understanding of the dynamics of the preconditions for such learning in their work. Yet, professional agency embodies a capacity that allows teachers to learn actively and skilfully, regulate their own learning, learning competencies needed in their work, develop professionally, promote students' and colleagues' learning, as well as innovate and promote change in schools.

A third approach turns against this instrumentalization of teacher agency, and instead views agency as "an emergent 'ecological' phenomenon dependent upon the quality of individuals' engagement with their environments" (Priestley et al., 2015, p. 136).3 Environments, in turn, consist of "a confguration of infuences from the past, orientations towards the future and engagement with the present" (ibid., p. 137), which individual teachers, due to their diverse life histories, expectations, and actual choices, navigate differently. Interestingly, Priestley et al. note that teachers' self-perception of agency it not necessarily congruent with actual agency: teachers may feel to possess agency when "they simply go with the fow" (ibid., p. 144).

This observation points to a weak spot in Priestley's et al. conceptualization: From what vantage point can it be assessed whether agency is real or not, if the relationships between agents and environment are only insuffciently defned, and if autonomy is simply conceptualized as the absence of regulation? Scrutinizing these diverging measurements of agency, Moore (2016, p. 1) distinguishes, on the one hand, between a "feeling of agency" as a "lower level non-conceptual feeling of being an agent", and, on the other, a "judgment of agency" as a "higher level conceptual judgment of agency" which uses background beliefs and contextual knowledge when assessing an action. While this compensates for the somewhat lacking clarity of Priestley et al. regarding (internally) perceived and (externally) observed agency, it does not solve the problem of the contextual embeddedness of judgment, as noted above with reference to critical higher-order refection: Depending on the context in which agent and observer are located, both the content and extent of agency can be interpreted very differently. Moore attempts to escape this relativism by assuming an "objective reality" from which "the sense of agency can be quite divorced" (ibid., p. 2). But who is to draw the line between an objective and a subjective reality of a teacher who is then observed to develop either a real or a false

3Note however that Priestley's et al. defnition reads in parts tautological, by defning agency as the "individual capacity of teachers to act agentically" (Priestley et al., 2015, p. 136).

sense of agency? Has Teacher Zhu, from the beginning of this chapter, developed a real or a false sense of agency when diversifying her teaching methods? One can easily fall prey to circular reasoning when addressing this question.

A possible way out of this circular argument is to adopt a nested model of agency (see Fig. 3.1), which places both individual and collective agency within the context of professional autonomy, which again interacts with the educational system, the latter embedded in a wider environment consisting of other systems, such as the political, economic etc. Each of these embeddings, or interfaces, can be considered a potential nexus in which policy-practice relations are being negotiated and enacted. While (individual/collective) agency is most closely connected to professional autonomy, as this is where professional and personal identities are being formed, the nested model also allows for other relationships, visualized by the darker and lighter links in Fig. 3.1, which represent stronger, routinized relations and weaker, shifting relations, respectively. Accordingly, teacher agency forms nexuses with organizational arrangements within the education system, as well as with political, religious etc. requirements and narratives.

System approaches such as the one developed by Luhmann have not been particularly interested in the workings of agency, since they view agents mainly as communicative elements executing the logics of a system. However, drawing on feminist studies (e.g. Abrams, 1999), there might be a way to bring a systems-based perspective on autonomy and an agent-based concept of agency together. Feminists in particular have been concerned with questions of individual agency and

**Fig. 3.1** Interdependency relations between teacher agency, professional autonomy, the educational system, and other systems

empowerment on the one side and structural constraints on the other. Similar to Sen's (2003) development of the capability approach, feminists have been struggling with the dilemma of choice: namely, with the fact that there is no free choice, since there are always mechanisms (cultures, beliefs, upbringing etc.) that pre-structure our seemingly "free" choices.

Agency, against this background, implies the power of self-defnition (as opposed to structure and pre-defnition) and, based on this self-defnition, the capacity for action; or according to Sherwin et al. (1998, p. 12), it captures the "ideal of informed choice". Autonomy, they continue, constitutes something more than "actively choosing": It denotes "a more comprehensive notion of freedom where not only is the immediate choice uncoerced but the circumstances that structure that choice are also free of the coercive dimension of oppression." To be sure, feminist literature, as a body of theories for social change, and system theory, which is mainly oriented towards accurately describing and explaining processes of systemic interaction, are positioned very differently when it comes to conceptualizing oppression. Empowerment and freedom from oppression are moral imperatives in feminist research; while Luhmann's (2017, p. 114) "sources of power in order to oppress pedagogical intentions" only call into question the autonomy of the education system, without however passing a moral judgment on how such an encroachment is to be related to values. The closest Luhmann comes to connecting inter-system interaction with questions of legitimacy, is when he raises the question of "which possibilities of intervention the owner [i.e., the state, which provides infrastructure and resources to the education system; BS] has. Under older (and more small-scale) conditions, a pietist king such as Christian VI of Denmark could result in a pietist orientation of school-based instruction. Nowadays such developments are conceivable, if at all, only under an ideologically oriented one-party regime." (Luhmann, 2017, p. 118) Hence, from a Luhmannian perspective, the state as a pedagogue is an interesting exception to the rule.

As different as these responses to 'oppression' may look, they share the view on autonomy as an interconnected concept: in contrast to notions of autonomy in the liberal tradition, which references the disconnected, authentic, proactive autonomous self, both system and feminist theorizing propose a relational, situated, reactive autonomous entity (see e. g. the discussion in Abrams, 1999). In a sense, the feminists' entangled woman is the equivalent to system theory's networked element; both are marked by social reproduction or, in Luhmann's terms, autopoesis. Despite these overlaps in thinking about autonomy, the differences regarding agency are pronounced and important: While feminist theory works towards raising individual and collective awareness of one's own situatedness in order to override (parts of) the system's workings, system theory reduces individual agency largely to "the attribution of decision rights to the communication roles of alter and ego" (Blaschke, 2015, p. 466), resulting in proxy agency (that of the system) rather than individual and/or group-based agency.

Both perspectives, however, can be used to draw a distinction between autonomy and agency. As exemplifed in Fig. 3.1, a relational, nested approach allows for diverging types of interaction between, on the one side, agency and different environments, and, on the other, autonomy and its environments. For example, while the relationship between professional autonomy and the wider environment (beyond the educational system) may impact on teachers' social status or entail forms of political recognition, this environment's relationship with individual or collective agency may assume forms of ideological infuence or moral engagement. Since agency is embedded within professional autonomy, it is within this nexus of agency and autonomy that identities are formed and spaces are created for enacting these identities. Consequently, such a differentiated approach towards agency and autonomy also opens up for diverging directions of agency and autonomy: a high amount of agency (whether perceived or observed) does not necessarily translate into extensive autonomy; conversely, strong autonomy does not automatically lead to high levels of agency. To return to the case of history teacher Zhu at the beginning of this chapter: Zhu may have developed a considerable extent of agency when designing her history lessons by using quasi-propaganda flms not sanctioned by the education system. However, this agency has emerged within a space that decreasingly operates according to the rules and norms of professional autonomy (cf. e.g. Evetts, 2009). Zhu could be considered, as we will discuss in the next section, a 'zealous teacher', marked by high agency, low professional autonomy, and located in a weak educational system with an intrusive state.

# **Less State Equals More Agency: Does It, and for Whom?**

From the perspective of this nested approach, teachers can be considered agents with potentially multiple roles and connections. Depending on how the education system interacts with other systems, autonomy and agency can unfold differently within these interactions. Since agents do not mechanically execute predefned tasks but imbue their actions with meaning and values, their agency is tightly connected to their political, socio-cultural, economic etc. environments. Elsewhere, I have called this enactment (of e. g. the curriculum) the 'politics of use'. 'Politics', in this concept, means a very broad practice determining "which and whose political values will be put into use when implementing policy" (Schulte, 2018, p. 634):

When policies, reforms, and new curricula are put into use in the classroom, they become necessarily imbued with normative conceptions and values. Whose values the politics of use mobilizes depends both on the teachers' previous training and socialization, and on the school's/ subsystem's autonomy vis-à-vis other sectors, including the state. It can be assumed that the more teacher education is aligned with the objectives of the state, and the more in-service teachers are directly and continuously exposed to state narratives, the less likely it is that organizational levels and actors in between will interfere in the process of policy implementation. Thus, in the case of minimal autonomy of the subsystem and maximum exposure to state narratives, teachers will try to align policy implementation with what they perceive to be the state's interests. This results in an implementation short-cut in which centrally released policies can jump various levels of implementation: intermediary actors and organizations are being side-stepped. (ibid., p. 630)

However, a strong state and a weak education system are not the sole determinants for teacher actions but need to be related to these teachers' spaces of autonomy and agency. If teachers were simply agents of the state (or partisans challenging the state), we would again get caught in a dichotomous and rather one-sided approach that we have already criticized above. Instead, teachers, when implementing the curriculum, are differently positioned to resort to norms and rules on which they can base their actions (see Fig. 3.2): At a higher level, with regard to the interrelations between educational and other systems, spaces of autonomy and possibilities of agency depend on the extent to which the education system as a whole can assert itself against other systems, such as the political one (strong vs. weak educational systems). At an organizational and institutional level, these spaces and possibilities are shaped by the extent to which, on the one hand, educational environments such as the school can defne and prescribe their own professional rules and norms (autonomy vs. heteronomy); and on the other hand, to which self-defnitions (including e. g. ideas about professional ethos or teaching philosophies) harmonize with the organizational and institutional environments (agency vs. proxy-agency).

Correspondingly, in Fig. 3.2, we can identify different ideal types of teachers as they emerge in a feld between the poles of autonomy/heteronomy and agency/ proxy-agency.4 In the upper right quadrant, we can locate teachers who both possess a considerable amount of agency and can rely on an environment (such as the school) that operates according to the rules of the specifc system (the education system in this case). As Fig. 3.2 shows, the relative educational autonomy of the organizational environment can be found in two different settings: On the left side, we would assume the organizational environment to be embedded in an education system that acts autonomously, with little political interference, and educational norms and rules as primary reference; on the right side, the education system as such is subject to political interference which attempts to replace educational norms by political ones, but as a system it still generates environments that can operate by

**Fig. 3.2** Teachers in a strong vs. weak educational system (with non-intrusive vs. intrusive state)

4 I am using the term 'ideal types' in the Weberian sense, i.e., as an analytical construction and not as a true refection of empirical reality (cf. Weber, 1984).

their own rules. Agentic teachers emerge differently within the two settings: In the setting to the left, the 'professional teacher' denotes the maximum overlap between self-defnition and professional norms, within an environment that strongly protects these norms. In contrast, the 'renitent teacher' on the right side, while equally aligning self-understanding with professional norms, is forced to act in an environment that is vulnerable to forces that attempt to dismantle precisely these norms and replace them by political ideologies.

The teacher types in the lower left quadrants constitute the exact opposites: Their agency is severely limited, meaning that they have no self-determination in developing their identities as teachers; and they lack the support of an autonomous environment, resulting in constant exposure to infringements from outside the education system. In the setting to the left, the policy and practice of 'scripted lessons', i. e. ready-made lessons that can be taught in a copy-and-paste fashion, are a good example of low autonomy/low agency. In politically intrusive settings (setting to the right), teachers can be easily degraded to puppet agents, with the state pulling the strings. The remaining quadrants – lower right and upper left – are marked by divergent extents of autonomy/agency. A highly autonomous, strongly protected educational environment which however grants little agency to its teachers (lower right quadrant) reduces them to mere executors of the logics of the system: to technocrats. If the system of which the environment is part is not even able to assert itself against political encroachment (setting to the left), these technocrats become disengaged proxy-agents. Finally, as represented in the upper left quadrant, teachers can develop a high amount of agency even when their educational environment is not facilitating these teachers' alignments with professional norms and values. In strong educational systems, these agents without routinized links to professional norms can be called 'unorthodox teachers'; while in weak educational systems with an intrusive state, these agents connect to values and ideologies outside their system, becoming 'zealous teachers' – like Teacher Zhu from the beginning of this chapter.

Such a conceptualization can explain why teachers, within one and the same socio-political system, can develop highly different identities – that is, develop different ways of calibrating their self-defnitions with spaces for agency and autonomy. This contradicts conceptualizations of teachers as exclusively professional educationists. But it also calls into question an overly politicized view of the educational system as the state's stooge, in contrast to much of the critical literature on education. For example, Apple (2003, p. 1) writes that the educational system, "as inherently part of a set of political institutions, […] will constantly be in the middle of crucial struggles over the meaning of democracy, over defnitions of legitimate authority and culture, and over who should beneft the most from government policies and practices." Empirically, and in contrast to these claims, most present-day societies, even autocratic ones, have become suffciently differentiated to also feature education systems with distinct rationales and routines. Only in the case of a complete overlap between political and educational system – which arguably is the case merely in totalitarian societies – would teachers act as direct agents of the state.

Yet, as the example of Teacher Zhu and other feldwork observations show, politics does matter, and it matters to a particularly large extent in the education system. The reason for this is to be found in the nature of the different subsystems within the education system: Apart from the legal and administrative management of education in the form of laws and regulations, education, on the one hand, materializes in a school system, and is implemented, on the other hand, in the form of an instructional system. While school systems are strongly intertwined with both legal and administrative systems and have thus been displaying considerable inertia when responding to changes, instructional systems are much more dependent on ad hoc, face-to-face communication and interaction, and are hence more prone to change (Vanderstraeten, 2003). This means that teachers, despite their reliance on teacher training and their knowledge of regulations, need to decide rather spontaneously what kind of class interaction is pedagogical, or 'good', and what is unacceptable, or 'bad'. Mostly, these daily operations occur unproblematically, and contribute to the (partial) independence of classroom instruction. What is expected of the system and how its agents actually operate constitutes, to a certain extent, a process of "loose coupling" (Gaus & Drieschner, 2014).

How are processes of loose coupling to be understood when related to spaces and enactments of autonomy and agency? To answer this question, we need to be able to distinguish 'loose coupling', which would be situated *within* the education system (or instructional subsystem), from 'interference', which would point to a larger degree of porousness, or weakness, of the education system. 'Loose coupling' occurs when teachers make active choices, in congruence both with their selfunderstanding as teachers and with the constraints and options that characterize the specifc situations in which they need to act; it thus happens within the refection processes typical of the instructional situation. 'Interference', in contrast, constitutes a situation in which this refection process is interrupted by forces that are external to the education-instructional system *and that are beyond the control of educational agents (such as teachers)*. In a different context – namely with regard to inter-national rather than inter-system interactions – Schriewer (2014, p. 92), drawing upon a system-theory approach, has pointed to the centrality of "interruptions in relations of interdependence" and "externalization" when it comes to breaking up, and to some extent, disturbing processes of refection and self-reference:

Such interruptions typically take the form of the refection and communication process opening itself to its external environment, however selectively this may be done, for it is through the incorporation of "supplemental meaning", as extractable from external points of reference, that circular self-reference becomes amenable to specifcation (Luhmann 1995a, 466). (Schriewer, 2014, p. 93)

Externalization is a powerful concept to account for change: If the education system (and the instructional sub-system) were a forever self-referential, autopoetic system, any change would be an impossibility. Hence, a certain degree of porousness is necessary for a system to undergo any kind of change. This becomes the case when existing modes of refection are no longer considered suffcient to handle educational/instructional situations, and "supplemental meaning" needs to be fetched from outside the indigenous system in order to fnd adequate solutions elsewhere. For example, Teacher Zhu, perceiving the present-day, exclusive focus on exams to be detrimental to educational and pedagogical objectives, externalized to ideologies outside the education system in order to restore what she conceives as the pedagogical spirit.

However, as pointed out in the previous section, system theory is interested in intra-/inter-system communication, not in questions of autonomy/agency from the perspective of these systems' agents. Connecting the very useful concept of 'externalization' with those of autonomy and agency as developed above, we can establish that pure instances of 'loose coupling', without any kind of 'interference', are located in the upper right quadrants of Fig. 3.2, as these denote the cases in which teachers can retain both their professional autonomy and their agency. While in a strong educational system, without an intrusive state, such a teacher may (perhaps tautologically) be called 'professional', in societies such as the Chinese one, 'renitent' teachers would fulfll an equivalent function, as they would enact their selfdefned teacher identities by drawing on professional norms and routines, however threatened these norms and routines might be. In all the other quadrants, teachers inadvertently experience some form of infringement: Either other systems (such as the political) override the distinctive rules of the educational profession; or these rules are in fact enforced, but at the expense of the teachers' self-defned identities.

Such a differentiated approach towards autonomy and agency, as they operate in different contexts and draw on different strategies of externalization (or change), is also useful for distinguishing 'agency' from 'empowerment', or even from some sort of positive force contributing to grassroots democracy in favor of students. In some cases, and depending on the respective norms and values of the interacting systems, teacher agency may be conducive for student empowerment. For example, the "renitent" and "unorthodox" teachers in Fig. 3.2 may be imagined as agents who, sometimes in spite of all odds, nourish a sense of democracy or civic awareness amongst students. In many other cases, teacher agency may just as well exacerbate practices of disempowerment and oppression. As also Imants and Van der Wal observe, agency "should not be treated *a priori* as a positive factor for reform and development" but can instead result in (to the external observer) "inadequate teaching practices or beliefs about teaching" (Imants & Van der Wal, 2020, p. 4). Even though Imants and Van der Wal have in mind teachers who resist educational reforms and development, their observation is equally valid regarding teachers who overzealously respond to political (or other) ideologies.

# **Conclusion: The political in Policy Implementation – And Policy Implementation Research?**

This chapter has presented a nested approach towards autonomy and agency, taking into consideration, on the one hand, the interaction between different, distinct systems when spaces of autonomy and enactments of agency become operative, and, on the other, paying attention to how different degrees of autonomy/agency, when contextualized in specifc educational and political environments, allow for different types of teachers and different forms of (non-)interference. It thus attempts to reconcile a systemic perspective with that of individual and collective agency. It also relativizes, on one side, the view that processes of policy implementation are to be seen as hierarchical mechanisms of policies 'trickling down' from the top to the bottom; and, on the other, the perspective that policy implementation is to be understood as largely a process of appropriation and indigenization on the ground. While the latter approach is in a sense a truism – there can be no policy implementation without some sort of local processing of the respective policy – it has so far been insuffciently conceptualized, since policy appropriation has been mainly subsumed under the rather generic concept of local agency, without however clarifying how the concept of agency can be understood in relation to different systemic and agentic constellations.

This chapter has argued that such a differentiated approach is necessary in order to better understand, and assess, the ramifcations of teacher agency and professional autonomy in diverse contexts. Contrary to an understanding of autonomy as the absence of regulation, in which teachers then develop real or false agency – as maintained by Priestley et al. (2015) – the chapter emphasizes the highly regulated and specialized nature of autonomous spaces, where rules and norms are the prerequisites for building and maintaining autonomy, and for creating spaces for agency in alignment with professional norms. Depending on how sharply demarcated the borders are between the education system and other systems, and on how subsystems such as the school are able to operate according to the educational system's principles of autonomy, teachers have different options for developing various forms of agency, which in turn are fed by different norms and values. The chapter hence attempts to complement Wermke et al.'s (2019) conception of autonomy as emerging between decision-making and control, by systematically addressing the question of whose rules, norms, and values are being enacted in processes of decision-making and control.

Ultimately, the policy-practice nexus is deeply political, if we understand politics – in line with our argument above, with reference to the politics of use – as a practice of signaling and enacting particular norms and values. Norms and values are (co-)produced both individually/collectively, in processes of social interaction and (self-)defnition, and systemically, in processes of specialization and differentiation. Therefore, any kind of (inter-)action, including that of teachers, will need to resort to those norms and values that are, frstly, compatible with the respective agents' environments; secondly, available to these agents as resources in specifc (long-term and short-term) situations; and, thirdly, desirable to agents as meaningful instruments of legitimizing their actions.

In conclusion, we may pose the question of why much of the literature on teacher agency and professional autonomy has tended to neglect this political dimension. A straightforward answer could be that empirical research on teachers and school systems in less democratic contexts has not (yet) succeeded in theory-building: While adding to our knowledge about what is happening in these contexts, fndings from these studies have not been suffciently brought into a conversation with concepts and theories developed elsewhere. As a tentative and perhaps provocative conclusion, I would like to put forward a different explanation: part of the reason for this neglect may also lie in our own ideological blindfoldedness regarding conceptions of agency and autonomy. As already critically noted by Abrams (1999), autonomy as a concept has been largely developed within the liberal tradition, treating relative values such as authenticity and freedom as if they were absolute truths. Likewise, it may be argued that ideas revolving around 'agency' have been blended largely with normative conceptions, fed by the (latent or explicit) conviction that agency is a desirable objective in itself. Much of the normatively framed debates on education today are deeply entrenched in the emancipatory tradition of pedagogy (see e.g. Cloonan et al., 2019; Samoukovic, 2015). In this tradition, teacher agency is often confated with learner autonomy (Benson, 2007), and is therefore considered inherently good. However, research on cultural and political contexts characterized by traditions and rationales that contrast starkly with, or have moved away from, the emancipatory perspective reveals that more agency for teachers, or even more 'participation' for students, can result in increased indoctrination, rather than more autonomy or empowerment (Schulte, 2019). Therefore, an analytical, rather than normative, approach towards agency and its interrelationship with autonomy in diverse systems can help denormalize our own ways of thinking about agency and autonomy, and it can enhance our capability to compare policy implementation processes across a broad variety of cases.

# **References**

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# **Chapter 4 Understanding Education Reform Policy Trajectories by Analytical Sequencing**

**Wieland Wermke and Eva Forsberg**

**Abstract** This chapter exemplifes a strategy for understanding and examining Policy and Practice Nexuses concerning education reform trajectories. Education policy-making is an increasingly complex process, mostly neither linear and rational nor unidirectional. However, to understand such processes, we advocate complexity reduction through analytical distinctions, sequencing, and entity-relationship-thinking. While policy-practice nexuses are confated in the reality of public education, our analytical approach must produce a somewhat linear, sequential understanding. Drawing on this argument, we propose a model which displays education reform trajectories and explore the model in terms of empirical objects. With the distinction between entities and relationships, we facilitate analytical defnitions in Policy-Practice Research regarding what affects what and how it does so. Relationships are units of re-contextualization, process, and transfer, which demand the presence of at least two entities. Moreover, Time becomes an analytical device. Each unit conditions the next. The prior development of ideas always conditions the current context of the analyses. Finally, we advocate comparative education reform policy analyses. While selecting (national and sectorial), cases become critical. Comparisons may uncover the different layers of universality and particularity.

**Keywords** Education policy · Education practice · Policy-practice nexus · Reform trajectories

W. Wermke (\*)

Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
E. Forsberg (\*) Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
© The Author(s) 2023

T. S. Prøitz et al. (eds.), *From Education Policy to Education Practice*, Policy Implications of Research in Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36970-4\_4

# **Introduction**

This chapter stems from an ambition to describe and explain education reform policy trajectories (henceforth reform trajectories): namely the path from policy text production (henceforth policy) to policy enactment at different levels in the complex system of public education (Cheng, 2005). The term reform comes from the Latin "reformatio", meaning renewal, and is defned by Merriam Webster as a "change into an improved form or condition". Due to the multidimensional, dynamic and value-based nature of reform policy processes and the complexity of public education systems, this area of study is challenging, ambiguous and full of pitfalls (Capano, 2009). The chapter aims to contribute to a further understanding of the complex nature of Policy and Practice Nexuses, the focus of this book volume. We aim to present conceptual considerations concerning how we can display various relations between the multiple arenas in which policy might be negotiated and translated. We also argue that, from policy to practice, several nexuses might exist.

We will construct and describe a model that can provide guidance for knowledge accumulation within the research feld of education policy. Our work on depicting reform trajectories is conceptual and relational. We argue that analytical distinctions and complexity reduction will enable us to be as specifc as possible in each analytical unit and in the analyses of the relations between different units. As a complex system, education is open, recursive, organic, non-linear and emergent (Gough et al., 2012). Complexity reduction provides an educational ontology that enables us to think productively about the drivers for educational change and improvement, as well as for processes of stability and stagnation or decline. Initially, scholars approached policy-making as a rational and linear process characterised by chronological stages. Later, there was a shift from the idea of stages to cyclical policy models, comprising e.g. problem defnition/agenda-setting, policy formulation, decision-making, implementation, change and evaluation. Over time, scholars also came to emphasise feedback and the impact on various target groups and sectors as well as unintended consequences and side-effects. However, most studies have been concerned with particular stages rather than the whole cycle, and, frequently, policy has been approached as a top down and unidirectional phenomenon. In addition, many studies have been context-insensitive and generic rather than domain specifc. Strong criticism has been put forward of epistemic assumptions of order, structure, function, cause and effect. Further, failure to capture the realities of infuence, pressure, confict and compromise in the policy-making process has been noted.

Scholars of education policy have shown that reform trajectories are, for the most part, neither linear (Lindensjö & Lundgren, 2000) nor unidirectional. Moreover, policy enactment is highly affected by contextual factors (Schulte & Wermke, 2019). In order to explain the complexity, non-linearity and non-causality of reform policies, several approaches have been developed (Schriewer, 1999). Some focus on narratives of success and failure, as a result, characterised education reforms as processes of borrowing and lending (Kauko & Wermke, 2018). Others have considered policy-making as an endless trial and error of reform endeavours, leading to

changes (or not) constituting a "tinkering towards utopia" (Tyack & Cuban, 1995). It has been stated that such reform stories are mostly important for politics and the input side of reforms. As artefacts of the political system, reforms are only loosely coupled to the pragmatic levels in schools and classrooms (Weick, 1976). Historically, reform processes oscillate or circulate mostly between only very particular alternatives, such as form versus content or decentralisation versus centralisation (Broadfoot, 1996). Education reforms can also be seen as instruments of disciplining (Foucault, 1972), operating to remind the "practice" about what is signifcant in the contemporary society (Ingersoll, 2003). Moreover, what is seen as signifcant is dynamic and differs across time and space (Pinar, 2003).

Public education has frst and foremost been a national endeavour, with curriculum as the 'program of the school' (Fries et al., 2013), by which the state aims to plan what is to be taught to, and learnt by, a nation's youth in order to secure the continuation of the society (Hopmann, 1999). Thus, the nation state has been the overall frame of the curriculum, and a clear-cut reference. During the last decades, we can see an increased complexity in public education due to processes of globalisation, digitalization and marketisation. These processes impact both the production and enactment of education reforms, and thus the complexity of the relation between policy and practice. Today, the powerful process of globalisation challenges the borders of the nation-state and the framing of curriculum requires a rescaling of what can be considered national, global or local (Lingard & Rawolle, 2010). In a similar way, digitalisation and marketisation have impacted the way time and space, and public and private appear in policy-making. Related to globalisation, this added complexity has been described in terms of policy spaces (ibid.), policyscapes (Carney, 2012), spaces conceived of as fuid scales (Robertson et al., 2002), glocalisation and glonacalisation (Marginson & Rhoades, 2002), cosmopolitanism (Popkewitz, 2003), and so forth. While these terms are indeed useful, they may actually complicate in-depth analyses of what happens with reforms on the road from policy production to enactment. In the end, everything might relate to everything else.

Like Ball (2012), we approach reform trajectories as historically and culturally embedded policy-making comprising policy text production and policy enactment. Trajectories relate to policy as a social entity, which moves through space and changes as it moves, and also changes the spaces it moves through. The model we put forward enables us to explore processes of interpretation and translation through which agents enact policy. Policy-making highlights not only the context of text production and the context of practice, but also the context of infuence.

Against this backdrop, in this chapter we present and explore reform trajectories as historically embedded policy-making, which, while interrelated can analytically be neatly distinguished into conceptual maps, in which each entity can be examined as a unit in its own right, but above all as a discrete process focused on relationships between different entities. Such maps can be used to plan complex research designs of policy-making. Moreover, the maps provide an analytical structure for research syntheses and thus the production of cumulative knowledge in the feld of education policy.

First, we develop the idea of analytical distinction and theoretical complexity reduction by drawing on the work of Margaret Archer and Henry Mintzberg. Next, we present the graphical form of the so-called entity-relationship models (ERM), in order to map complex reform trajectories in a comprehensive way. Then, we give an example of such a model, employing insights from relevant policy studies. Following this, the model is employed to systematically organise studies of reform trajectories focusing different empirical objects. Further, consequences of different epistemological approaches for the structure-agency duality are discussed. The model exemplifes a strategy for cumulative knowledge building through analytical distinctions and entity relationships.

# **Complexity Reduction Through Analytical Distinctions, Sequencing and Relationships**

The organisation theorist, Mintzberg (1979), argues that, in a sense, structural confgurations do not exist at all, but rather constitute a theory, and every theory necessarily simplifes and distorts reality. However, this should not lead to a rejection of the confguration. The choice is not between theory and reality, so much as between alternative theories, and the

choice of theory is normally based on two criteria: How rich is the description, that is, how powerfully it refects the reality (or, alternatively, how little it distorts the reality), and how simple it is to comprehend. The most useful theories are simple when stated yet powerful when applied, like E=MC2. (Mintzberg, 1979, p. 469).

Coming from a similar perspective on theorizing, Archer (1988) warns against the fallacy of confation: Fundamentally, what is wrong with confationary theorizing is that it prevents clear cut analysis of the interplay between structure and agency. This is because mixing up the two elements withdraws any autonomy or independence from one, if not from both of them. In many theories, structure and agency are intertwined, and both parts without autonomy. Archer's suggestion is to analytically separate structure from agency, chronologically, as they relate sequentially to each other. This is further explored in her idea on morphogenesis (change) and morphostatis (stability) of social systems.

As a process morphogenesis refers to the complex interchanges that produce change in a system's given form, structure or state (morphostasis is the reverse), the end product being termed "elaboration". Of course, action is ceaseless and essential to both the stable continuation or the further elaboration of the system. However, when morphogenesis results, then subsequent interaction will be different from earlier action precisely because it is now conditioned by the elaborated consequences of that prior action. Hence, the morphogenetic is not only dualistic but sequential. (Archer, 1988, p. xxii)

While recognising the nonlinearity of reform trajectories, as well as direct and indirect interactions between units, we argue for the beneft of analysing trajectories sequentially. For the sake of understanding the different nexuses, analytical devices must have a certain linearity - one "step" follows another. Reforms can result in change (morphogenesis) or stability (morphostasis). In order to analyse such processes, we must analytically decide, when and where we start our investigation. In doing so, it is not necessary to state whether we believe that change processes are bottom-up or top-down, or some combination of both. Instead, we decide analytically for a starting point, e.g. the formal introduction of a reform. From this starting point, the reform can be tracked on its way to a potential teacher practice in order to improve educational outcomes. Time and space can be included in each unit/entity of our model. In our reform tracking, we have an analytical time dimension, the sequence of structures and agency, and structure again. Consequently, new structures (change) or the confrmation of old structures (stability) are the results of present agency in the trajectory of a reform.

Still, there are various logical perspectives on how agency relates to structures given and structures created. We put forward three main conceptualisations of how agency may draw on different epistemological ideas in social science: An *interactionist approach* which argues that meaning and structure are produced through the interactions of individuals; A *structural-functional (also functionalist) approach*, which assumes society is a complex system whose parts work together regarding a particular function. This function results in both structure and agency among the system's parts. Both units relate to each other in a complementary or sequential way. Finally, there is the *cognitive epistemological approach*, which focuses on mental (cognitive) activities such as thinking, planning, or learning. To clarify, we suggest an openness to various epistemologies, enabling different ways of conceiving of the relation between structure and agency.

# **Entity Relationship Models: Mapping Education Reform Trajectories**

To clarify analytical units and relationships, we employ a so-called *entityrelationship-model (ERM),* originally developed to sketch out the design of a database and show the relationships between entities and entity sets stored in it.1 In our context, an entity is a key object or component of fundamental data within the research feld of education policy. Entities, in turn, have attributes that defne their properties. The advantage of employing the ERM is that we can distinguish analytically between entities (objects of what) from relationships (objects of how), while retaining the ability to relate objects to each other in a conceptual map. Moreover, the use of commonly shared symbols makes collaboration between scholars easier, and increases the potential for cumulative knowledge production within a feld of research. Figure 4.1 shows a generic ERM which depicts the sequential format of

1 https://www.smartdraw.com/entity-relationship-diagram/. ER models have for example been used in education by social network scholars (see Roldan & Schupp, 2005).

**Fig. 4.1** Generic Entity Relationship Model (ERM)

**Fig. 4.2** An education reform trajectory map using ERM symbols

the model and various elements of the model, i.e. entities and their attributes, and the relationships between entities.

In Fig. 4.2, a reform trajectory using ERM symbols is presented. Following the rationale of ER modelling, by depicting entities connected to each other by relationships and defned by attributes, this provides a common space for exploring and analysing various trajectories. In addition, the database enables comparisons over time and in different contexts. Below, the generic model is employed to explore a policy reform trajectory, i.e. policy-making in terms of policy text production and policy enactment within the context of a public education system. Even though the analytical model starts with the introduction of a new formal policy, we recognise that reforms are indeed often inspired by practical problems. Thus, there are no arrows in the model, which would indicate bottom-up or top-down rationales. Rather, the relationship represents the way a reform is re-contextualised (Bernstein, 1977). *Thus, the relationships are the nexuses in the map, the mediating devices. Here, entities meet and policy is enacted, negotiated, and at times, contested.*

As stated, starting on the left-hand side of the map with the entity *Policy* does not imply a unidirectional or linear and rational direction of reform trajectories. Policies are made through negotiations, affected by national and international trends, cultures, ideologies and public opinions. Key attributes of policy as text production are e.g. *Agenda setting* and *Policy formulation*. These attributes are related to the employment of specifc policy instruments, such as regulation through law, ideology, economy, organisation and evaluation (see e.g. Forsberg & Nordzell, 2013). Policy agents at different spatial levels and arenas are involved, but, analytically, they occur within the entity. In other words, in this entity, agenda setting or policy formulation, as in our conceptual example, might indeed occur through the intersection of various spatial levels. These can be of a local, national or international character.

Policies made in public education condition two basic pillars that make public education practice possible: the entity labelled *Organisation* and the entity labelled *Profession* (Vanderstraeten, 2007; Luhmann, 2002). The public education systems constitute what Vanderstraeten (2001) calls organisationally framed interactions, interactions that to a certain extent are plannable. The education system is primarily characterised by social, face-to-face meetings, which open up particular forms of interaction within the system (ibid.). Inside every school, for example, the teaching profession is responsible for facilitating interaction with students, other teachers, parents and the school principal in different aspects of the school's everyday functioning. However, there is always an element of surprise in interaction, which takes on a life of its own depending on the participants and the context in which the interaction takes place (ibid.).

Consequently, there are organisational frames, which reduce the complexity of possible reactions in interaction and there is a certain professional scope of action for teachers which allows them to respond to different reactions from their students. Simply put, the public education system itself cannot handle the social interaction of education, but needs specially trained people to undertake this task: teachers, who can communicate educational objectives. Teachers, in turn, need the school organisation to reduce the complexity of practice. For example, teachers do not need to search for students every morning, but due to the organisation of schools they can regularly meet the same students of the same age group, who are to be educated on a given subject, which is regulated by the curriculum (Luhmann, 2002).

For sure, the organizational setting can be used to increase the freedom of professionals: the effective freedom to choose one's special line of work, to have access to the appropriate clients and equipment, to organize one's time and effort in accordance with one's plans and goals, to engage in conversations with competent colleagues that will sharpen one's knowledge and skill, and so on. But it is also well known that professionals frequently develop a critical, if not hostile, attitude vis-à-vis the 'bureaucratic' structures and methods of large organizations. To employed professionals, the organizational bureaucracy often appears as a *Fremdkörper* whose routine rules and hierarchical structures are at odds with the exigencies of intimate face-to-face contact […]. They have diffculty coming to terms with organizational requirements or expectations. (Vanderstraeten, 2007, p. 629).

However, when analysing reform trajectories, it is critical to address the entities of both organisation and profession. Thus, the map has a bifurcation: It is possible to address mainly the professions in education, i.e. the groups who are responsible for the interactions of teaching and learning. Policies address, also, the organisations of education that refer to the structure or framework of schooling, for example the sequenced structuring of student cohorts by age, school buildings, behavioral codes, forms of co-operation and arenas of teachers, or local manifestations of school laws, or the content of schooling laid down by curriculum. Included also is the organisation of home-school relations. Potential attributes of this entity can be *School structures* or *School culture* (Berg et al., 1999). Considering our example attributes here, we must clarify again that the trajectory followed in our chapter is just one example. In the organisation, we also see leadership practices both in schools and school districts as they might be constitutive of school structures and school cultures.

The *relationship* between *Policy* and *Organisation* can be described as a set of processes of *Administration*, which is the legal creation and enactment of curricula and other policies, e.g. related to inclusion or pandemic crises. Even if the ERM does not comprise variables of time and space, each unit (entity or relationship) is historically embedded in particular contexts. This can be illustrated by the example of the relationship labelled *Administration*, which connects policy and organisation. School administration has developed over time, and the emergence of compulsory schooling made it necessary to organise schools for all, where a certain subject matter is taught to a great number of students (Hopmann, 1988). Forms of organisation and curriculum had to be established. Mass schooling does not only mean a great number of individual schools; it means the existence of a public school *system*, in which various schools also are related to each other. Mass schooling systems emerged after developments of state, society and bureaucracy formation. These developments relate to negotiations of interests and focal ideas around necessary structures, such as mandatory schooling, years, subjects etc. (Ohlhaver, 2005). The creation of the organisation of public schooling institutionalised certain arenas, and processes and roles emerged.

This process has been called functional differentiation, manifested in chains of decisions in which one decision leads to the next (Luhmann, 2002; Stichweh, 2016). In order to make the task of public mass education possible, school administration historically underwent several processes: It was didacticised, i.e. the school administration came to be exercised by persons with a schooling background, educated in the science of teaching and instructional planning, didactics. A relation to academic disciplines was established, i.e. the school administration came to be differentiated in terms of school forms and curricula. A differentiation of various tasks in the administration was executed, i.e. school administration today comprises various departments with a particular expertise, such as curriculum making, school inspection, hygiene, examinations, and so forth (Ohlhaver, 2005).

Education reforms can also aim to affect the other pillar of public education: the entity called *Profession*. Signifcant attributes of *Profession* are *Professional standards* and *Professional culture* (e.g. needs, duties and status), often collected under the conceptual term "professionalism" (Evetts, 2003). Critical to professional work are prominent societal values such as health, justice, good education, and, today, also technical innovation (Pfadenhauer, 2003). Problems which professions are assumed to resolve, cannot, for the most part, be managed by technical knowledge alone. Professional knowledge builds on rules and regulation, but also on a certain number of complex (experience-based) routines to which specifc problems can be adjusted. Such routines are foundational to professional action. They reduce risks and provide security, but they are also dynamic as well as learnable. Professions are also attached to a set of universal values which guide their orientation, such as an interest in the public good. Professions are expected to be virtuous and prudent (Luhmann, 2002). Taking the example of the teaching profession: teaching started to professionalise in many parts of Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century, becoming a life-long, primary occupation, not only a side occupation for individuals attached to the church. Responsibility for school administration was given to individuals from the same group (teachers). The practice of teaching was expected to be professionally autonomous and, through increased salary and status, the occupation became attractive to the appropriate people.

To characterise the *relationship* between *Policy* and *Profession*, we suggest *Teacher education and teacher professional development.* Here it is possible to examine how education reforms affect the issue of who is allowed to become a teacher, what characteristics are preferred among teachers, what teacher expertise is, and how teachers should (be) develop(ed) for educational practice. In teacher education and development, academic and practice training merges, and this has various consequences for teachers' professional knowledge and identity formation. More generally, over time, teacher education and development might be characterised by oscillations between emphases on either generic knowledge of schooling (e.g. meta-cognitive knowledge), or on subject and more specifc expertise knowledge (e.g. subject knowledge) (Luhmann, 2002).

From the entity labelled *Organisation* and the entity labelled *Profession*, the trajectory continues towards the entity labelled *Practice*. "Practice" is indeed a broad term, referring to what happens in and around classroom instruction. Potential attributes include *Teaching*, *Student composition* and *Professional expertise*. Teaching is the core activity of education and involves the didactic triangle of student body, teacher and content as well as interaction and assessment. Student composition refers to the grouping of students and relates to issues of tracking, streaming and ability grouping, which are critical to students' learning, performance and educational outcomes. These questions are directly linked to educational differentiation. Differentiation is the management of heterogeneity and complexity reduction in schooling: It can be done by providing different settings for different kinds of learners (Bönsch, 1995). The *Professional expertise* attribute relates to the practice of teaching which draws upon specifc knowledge, applied planning, teaching and evaluation of classroom practice. Professional expertise is applied to describe individuals who exert a particular occupational practice, for which, in order to successfully solve various problems, long educational and practical experience is necessary (Bromme, 1992). Bromme (ibid.) sees expertise as the core (and content) of professionalism in a certain occupation.

The *Organisational differentiation* relationship, which occurs between Organisation and Practice, points on the one hand to the organisational framing of teaching, student composition and professional expertise, and on the other hand to the way in which the practice may set the conditions for school organisation at different levels. Teachers arrange their work within given structures that are partly negotiable with their direct colleagues and superiors at their school. Both school organisation and collegial cooperation are necessary to enabling equality and equity between the various classrooms and schools in a public education system (Wermke & Salokangas, 2021). As Wermke and Salokangas (2021) have argued, this is a delicate balance which can be examined by focusing autonomy in education. There are many examples of how schooling professionals in different contexts negotiate with school management, defned as representatives of the school organisation: school internal curricula, end of term examinations, fnal grading, timetabling, disciplinary policies, allocation of resources etc. involve both individual teachers, the teacher collegium and school management at the school and school district level.

In a similar way, the *Educational differentiation* relationship, connecting Profession and Practice, emphasises how professional standards and culture are foundational to the teacher's didactical classroom decisions on subject matter, interaction and assessment. Likewise, the practice, through its various attributes, frames the development of both professional standards and culture. With Pfadenhauer (2003), we argue that professionalism can be seen as the institutionalised expertise of an occupation. In the words of Luckmann and Sprondel (1972, p. 15 cited in Pfadenhauer, 2003, p. 30):

Professionalization means the process of the social stabilisation of vocational roles through the systematisation of a knowledge domain, the length and complexity of an institutionally specialised education and training, the confrmation of vocational categories (licenses) and a mesh of special knowledge related typologies of the own and other's occupations. And such vocations, which as result of historical professionalization processes – have gained an extended autonomy in the building of such issues, will be called professions (Our translation).

As stated above, in the entity labelled *Practice*, policy enactment links various attributes such as teaching, student composition and professional expertise. Moreover, it is in the practice that the core activity of education takes place. Thus, this is where all the other entities and relationships intersect in both direct and indirect ways (see Fig. 4.3 as an example). This does increase the complexity of the model, but also makes it possible to grasp the whole policy-making process. At the same time, entities and relations can be individually investigated, or various parts of the trajectory can be examined separately. Ultimately, the approach of policy enactment, in combination with the sequential ERM, enables scholars to study and analyse whether education policy reforms do indeed develop and become components of the

**Fig. 4.3** Direct and indirect relations in the reform trajectory

knowledge, identity and practice of education and whether this feeds back into new policies, teacher education and research on teaching.

# **Re-Assembling Analytical Units and Relationships, and Conclusion**

In this fnal section, we delineate briefy how reform trajectory maps may be used to organise and synthesise previous research in a cumulative way. We link a partial and illustrative rather than comprehensive and systematic selection of empirical objects to the various units in the above developed ERM. These objects are in turn based on different ways to make sense of structure-agency in research on policy-making. Frequently, *interactionist*, and *structuralist-functional* approaches are used in the reform trajectories. More infrequently, and mainly in relation to teacher professionalisation, *cognitivist* approaches are used. The contingency of how structure-agency can be understood opens up discussions on eclecticism in education policy research. With Gilberto Capano (2009), we would emphasise the importance of coherence in frameworks and awareness of epistemological choices and their consequences. We argue that the employment of the sequential ERM, with its analytical distinctions and relationships, may increase scholars' ability to manage such problematic issues in the design of reform trajectory research.

In Table 4.1, the headings represent entities, relationships and specifc empirical objects which it is possible to study within the different analytical units. Together, they depict a selection of potential empirical objects which can be linked to the overall process of reform trajectories. The empirical objects represent sites, organisations, activities, agents and interests that infuence and at the same time are infuenced by reforms. A conceptual map such as we have suggested, facilitates the design of empirical work, also taking epistemological issues into account. This would increase the validity of the research methodology.

An overall depiction of the entities and relationships enables the planning of studies in terms of which results will be possible to combine with each other to illustrate a specifc reform trajectory. Moreover, this supports an understanding of what can actually be explained by what. In the words of Capano (2009, p. 8):

The explanandum (change) is too frequently defned in an ambiguous manner, or its complexity is played down (when the contents of law or policy programmes are employed as a proxy for policy change). Too often the explanans (the independent variable or set of noncausal factors) is chosen in the biased belief that what really matters is that "theory must be validated". Too often we do what we are supposed to do without really refecting on "what we are actually doing". The truth is that when designing a theory (or theoretical framework) of social, political, and policy change, we frst need to solve (or decide on) certain structural epistemological and theoretical (and sometimes methodological) puzzles.

To put this in a statistical language. The categories can be employed in analyses of variance, i.e. the comparisons of which category can be associated with certain values. Categories at different levels can, with non-parametric measures such as Phi or

**Table 4.1** Entities and relationships in reform trajectories linked to empirical objects

Rho, be related to each other. A statistical approach can indeed help to plan reform trajectory research in particular, since, in a quantitative research paradigm, it is absolutely necessary to decide beforehand which independent and dependent variables should be used in the analytical models. Furthermore, the entity-relationship models for the design of databases forces the researcher to make such considerations, since databases do not function with ambiguous, poorly defned relationships.

In conclusion, we have argued and illustrated a sequential and relational logic of Policy and Practice Nexuses as individual entities and relationships. With the distinction between entities and relationships we have facilitated analytical defnitions in Policy-Practice Research, in terms of what actually affects what and how it does so. Relationships are units of re = contextualisation, process and transfer, which demand the presence of at least two entities.

Moreover, we have made decisions considering time and space. In the words of Archer (1988), what we observe empirically, both in entities and relationships, is always the present, situated historically.

However, this present time is peculiarly pivotal in the morphogenetic approach. As Markovic expresses it, both "past and future" are living in the present. Whatever human beings do in the present is decisively infuenced by the past and by the future. […] The future is not something that will come later, independently of our will. There are several possible futures and one of them has to be made. (Archer, 1988, p. xxvi)

What we investigate empirically is always local (in a very particular space) and possible to observe as a practice. Thus, when we investigate trajectories, we string together present, local, practical and analytical units. Time becomes our analytical device. Each unit conditions the next. In other words, while the reality is non-linear and complex, our analysis must possess a certain linearity. It is always the prior development of ideas (from earlier interaction) that conditions the current context of the analyses. Finally, we advocate comparative education reform policy analyses. While the selection of (national, sectorial) cases becomes critical, comparisons may uncover the different layers of universality and particularity, i.e. what is broadly universal, what is possible to generalise and what is unique to the given instance and context. The search for universals is indeed only made possible by attending to the details of the concrete case at hand (Erickson, 1986). Only in the particular case, i.e. the very particular practices, and their development over time, may we see change or stability. As researchers working in education policy, we draw on a comment made by Diane Arbus, the iconographic twentieth-century photographer, that "the more specifc you are, the more general it'll be."

# **References**

Bromme, R. (1992). Der Lehrer als Experte [*The teacher as expert*]. Hans Huber.

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# **Chapter 5 'Research Use' in Education: Conceptualising the Teaching Profession Within the Policy–Research–Practice**

### **Sølvi Mausethagen and Hege Hermansen**

**Nexus**

**Abstract** In this chapter, we examine 'research use' as a concept that informs the role of the teaching profession in the policy–research–practice nexus. As a policy construct, research use has gained signifcant attention over the past decade. However, the concept and particularly its translation to practice are often left undefned, both regarding the meaning of 'research' and of 'use'. In this chapter, we examine how the specifcation of these terms contributes to producing particular manifestations of the policy–research–practice nexus. We pursue two lines of argument. The frst line of argument is that the approaches to defning, operationalising, and discussing research use have implications for the construction of the policy– research–practice nexus. The second line of argument is that the characteristics of this nexus will inform the understanding of the role of the profession in simultaneously relating to education policy, researchers, and the development of professional practice. Finally, we present an analytical framework that aims to advance a multidimensional approach to studies on research use, which provides opportunities for developing more profession-sensitive understandings of research use. The framework also facilitates analytically unpacking relations between policy, research, and practice.

**Keywords** Research use · Teaching profession · Policy-research-practice nexus

In this chapter, we use the notion of 'research use' as an analytical entry point for exploring manifestations of the policy–research–practice nexus. Education policy in the past two decades has seen an increased emphasis on the development of research-based teacher education and the use of research to strengthen relationships

OsloMet, Oslo, Norway

S. Mausethagen (\*) · H. Hermansen

e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS><EMAIL_ADDRESS>
© The Author(s) 2023

T. S. Prøitz et al. (eds.), *From Education Policy to Education Practice*, Policy Implications of Research in Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36970-4\_5

between research knowledge and teachers' professional practice (Burn & Mutton, 2015; Cordingley, 2015; Kvernbekk, 2014; Winch et al., 2015). A general assumption underlying policy initiatives and considerable research is that research use is important for strengthening educational quality in schools and improving educational outcomes. Many policy initiatives have also aimed to strengthen teachers' performance and legitimacy. These policy initiatives have comprised attempts to increasingly hold teachers accountable for their performance and professional development efforts and an intensifcation of the production and use of research. While the teaching profession often resists accountability measures, strengthening teachers' use of research-based knowledge—and thus the scientifc knowledge base for teaching—has been a better ft for the profession's agenda for professionalisation (Mausethagen, 2013). However, the kinds of knowledge that teachers should prioritise and utilise remain contested (Biesta, 2007; Bridges & Watts, 2008; Slavin, 2008). The call for 'research-based knowledge' also challenges the more traditional notion of teacher knowledge as primarily experience-based and contextual (Larsen, 2016). A key debate has been whether professional autonomy decreases with the use of evidence-based programmes and standardised teaching methods (e.g. Prøitz & Aasen, 2018).

These policy developments and their contested nature make the notion of research use a fruitful empirical entry point for exploring manifestations of the teaching profession in the policy–research–practice nexus. In policy documents, descriptions of the notions of research and evidence are typically in rather general terms, often offering impressions of alignment and transfer between educational research and professional practice. In existing research on the use of evidence and data on student performance, there are great variations in the approaches to describing and discussing this relation (e.g. Penuel et al., 2017; Schildkamp et al., 2017). For example, an evaluation paradigm and empirical studies on improvement and effectiveness have tended to dominate research in the Anglo-American context, while research in the continental European context has adopted a more critical stance (Prøitz et al., 2017). Such differences are related to different research traditions but also to different educational systems, including different positions for the profession within the systems.

Rational-linear conceptions that envisage research use as a one-way process from production (researchers) to use (policy and practice) have characterised both policy discourse and research over time (e.g. Weiss, 1979). Such conceptualisations are problematic because they do not suffciently account for the heterogeneity of teachers' knowledge base and the need for teachers to integrate different kinds of knowledge sources in their everyday work (e.g. Grimen, 2008; Shulman, 1987). Such linear conceptions also tend to downplay the complexities of both educational policymaking and professional practice, as outlined in the introductory chapter to this volume.

In summary, debates surrounding research use trigger fundamental questions regarding the knowledge base, autonomy, and responsibilities of the teaching profession and the interrelationship between educational policies and professional practice. The concept of research use therefore represents a fruitful entry point for unpacking the complexities of the policy–practice nexus. We are particularly concerned about how the notion of research use acts as a mediator between policy and practice and how this concept contributes to legitimising certain perspectives on professionals and professional work. This analytical focal point recognises that expressions of the policy–practice nexus are often constitutive of the teaching profession itself, for example, by highlighting particular forms of agency or the formation of the profession through specifc policy initiatives. At the same time, researchers themselves play a mediating role in the formation of relationships between policy and practice through the ways in which the researchers theoretically and empirically frame such relations. As we proceed with our argument by analysing existing research on the phenomenon of research use, we fnd it fruitful to expand the notion of the policy–practice nexus to the *policy–research–practice nexus*.

We pursue our argument as follows. We start by reviewing some existing perspectives on research use in policy and practice. We then proceed to examine, using three illustrative studies, how the conceptualisation and operationalisation of research use legitimise particular perspectives on professionals and professional work. Finally, we aim to expand existing analytical perspectives on research use by introducing a multidimensional framework for analysing research use and analytically unpacking the role assigned to professionals in this particular expression of the policy–research–practice nexus.

# **Generations of Research on Research Use in Policy and Practice**

Taking a historical view, Boaz and Nutley (2019) outlined three generations of thinking on evidence use and research use. The frst generation emphasises rationallinear models and one-way processes from production (researchers) to use (policy and practice). The second generation emphasises relational approaches, examining interactions between people in networks and partnerships as they create and use evidence. However, the second generation also incorporates rational-linear principles of dissemination and diffusion. Third-generation thinking highlights systemswide approaches, acknowledging that the diffusion and dissemination processes and relationships are shaped by and embedded in structures that mediate the ongoing interaction. The developments that Boaz and Nutley described are also illustrative of how the feld of education has addressed research use. Despite the movement towards a third-generation thinking, an ongoing systematic review of research on research use in education shows that there remain signifcant amounts of frst- and second-generation thinking: Several recent publications have adopted a rationallinear view and several have focused on research use in partnerships (Niederberger et al., 2022). This indicates that it might be more precise to describe the feld in terms of parallel developments rather than sequential generations.

These contributions provide a solid foundation for thinking about research use with a specifc focus on research use in public policy and governance. We can also employ a complementary perspective from the sociology of professions to describe policy initiatives to increase research use as 'professionalisation from above' (Evetts, 2003). Professionalisation from above describes government initiatives aimed at convincing professionals to perform in ways seen as appropriate and effective. In the Nordic and German contexts, however, researchers have characterised professionalisation by an interconnectedness of impetuses from above—that is, from the state—and from within the professions themselves (Larsen, 2016; McClelland, 1990). Professionalisation from within describes initiatives within the profession to develop and construct an identity in ways that can secure and maintain its autonomy and discretionary power.

It is possible to also make an analytical distinction between performative and organisational dimensions of research use. Research use in education arguably has two different aims: to strengthen students' learning and to strengthen teachers' professionalism. These two aims are interrelated but also distinct: while research use directed towards improving teachers' practice—thereby having an impact on student learning—has a primarily performative focus, research use directed towards developing teacher professionalism has a more organisational emphasis. While the performative dimensions of professions concern professional practice, the organisational dimensions involve the ways in which the profession maintains and develops its autonomy and trust in society. A contested aspect of the organisational dimension, from both historical and contemporary perspectives, has been whether, and how, to strengthen the scientifc knowledge base of the profession.

# **Positioning the Teaching Profession in Research on Research Use**

So far, we have demonstrated why and how research use, both as a political construct and as a concept discussed in educational research, remains contested. An underlying reason for this contestation is that policymakers (and researchers) use the notion of research use to initiate changes within the profession. Such changes will typically be associated with a normative understanding of what the profession should be and how teachers should develop their professional practice. Analytically, we have shown how such research use can relate to different understandings of the role of research (e.g. instrumental, conceptual, or symbolic) and different approaches to constituting the phenomenon of research use (rational-linear, relational, or systems approaches). Other conceptualisations relate more explicitly to the profession itself, including the notions of professionalisation from 'above' and 'within' and the performative and organisational dimensions of the profession. We will now employ these analytical categories to explore contestations related to research use in more depth, emphasising the implications of constructions of research use for

perspectives on the profession and professional work. We examine three published studies to illustrate variations in how notions of research use can inform conceptualisations of the teaching profession.

We selected these studies on the basis of a preliminary analysis of an ongoing systematic review on research use in education (Niederberger et al., 2022). The studies exemplify three distinct ways of positioning the teaching profession as a consequence of particular conceptualisations and operationalisations of research use: (a) research use as representing the closing of a defcit among professionals, (b) research use as representing the 'maturation' of the profession, and (c) research use as a communicative endeavour between professionals and researchers.

# **Research Use as a Means to Close a Defcit in the Profession**

The framing of several studies on research use highlights what can be described as a 'defcit': Professionals in education are not using enough research. For example, Lysenko et al. (2014) adopted a defcit framing in their study of the predictors of Canadian school practitioners' (*N* = 2425) use of educational research. They argued that despite considerable efforts, unsystematic use or non-use of educational research in professional practice still deters the progress and success of educational development efforts, with references to Hattie (2009) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. They presented a model examining practitioners' limited use of educational research in relation to four factors. Out of these, 'opinions about research' had the most explanatory power and 'research expertise' was the second most important determinant of use. Such expertise includes the abilities to read, understand, and assess the quality of research; to use information technology to access research; and to translate research into practice. They found that practitioners had used research of any sort an average of only once or twice in the previous year. Overall, the authors described the results of the survey as challenging.

Lysenko et al.'s (2014) study primarily foregrounded individual factors through an analytical focus on teachers' perceptions and practices related to research use. An implication is that to address the identifed defcit in the profession, there must be changes in individual perceptions and practices. However, the authors concluded by also calling for a more systemic approach involving teacher education, knowledge brokering institutions, and the improved dissemination of research fndings. Academics working in teacher education have particular responsibilities for supporting the teaching profession to address challenges with research use. The article is mainly related to the second and the third generations of research on research use. Although the conclusions and recommendations highlighted some organisational factors, the study design clearly had a performative focus, and the authors advocated professionalisation from above is critical to increase teachers' use of research and the role of researchers in this endeavour.

# **Research Use as the Maturation of a Profession**

A framing that we term 'maturation' was also prominent in several studies, particularly in the early contributions on research use. The term maturation denotes that the profession has not yet realised its full potential in terms of research use. In some studies, the authors accomplished this by means of comparing different professions. For example, Hemsley-Brown and Sharp (2003) asked if medical practitioners make greater use of research fndings than practitioners in the teaching profession and what the reasons might be for discrepancies between the two professions. In this muchcited, early contribution to the feld, they took as a starting point a well-known call from Hargreaves, who in a keynote address to the Teacher Training Agency Annual Conference in 1996 suggested that teaching could become an evidence-based profession if educational researchers were more accountable to teachers. The authors' concern with examining what existing research says about improving the impact of research on education aligns somewhat with Hargreaves' call to develop the profession.

Hemsley-Brown and Sharp (2003) concluded that there appear to be common barriers to research use in medicine and education and that creating cultures in the public sector that support and value research is a general challenge. They argued, however, that several factors seem specifc to education due to the approach to constructing research knowledge in the social sciences, particularly concerning the context, generalisability, and validity of the research. For these reasons, the authors argued, the development of communication networks, links between researchers and practitioners, and greater practitioner involvement in the research process have emerged as important strategies for improving the impact of research. While the starting point for this study, in particular the reference to Hargreaves' lecture, places the study within the frst generation of research on research use, the authors' main argument can related to the second generation of research.

This study, and the notion of maturation more generally, refected an idea of research use as a matter of historical development, in which the authors—either through a comparison between education and other felds or from a historical perspective—asserted that the teaching profession is on a path to mature as a profession. The study emphasised the organisational dimension by highlighting the importance of establishing networks and links between researchers and practitioners, and on professionalisation from above by emphasising the need to create cultures in the educational sector which greatly supports and values research.

# **Research Use as a Communicative Endeavour Between Professionals and Researchers**

In a review article, Coburn and Penuel (2016) analysed so-called research-practice partnerships, defned as long-term collaborations between professionals and researchers organised around problems and solutions relating to educational practice in schools and school districts. Their main interest in the study was to investigate existing knowledge of the degree to which such partnerships foster research use among professionals and thus support educational improvement. The review suggested that many interventions developed in the context of partnerships had shown positive outcomes in this regard. However, while several studies have provided evidence that participation in partnerships is associated with greater access to research, there is mixed evidence to support whether participation in partnerships is associated with increased use of research for decision-making: Some studies have shown extensive use, others have shown limited use, while still others have shown that research use varies within and between school districts.

Although building capacity within educational systems to engage in researchinformed development work is a key goal of partnerships, the authors noted that existing research has investigated to a limited extent whether participation builds a deeper understanding of the research process or the research fndings, an appreciation for the value of research to inform decision-making, the capacity to engage in research-informed practices and policies, or the use of research as a part of continuous development work in collaboration with researchers.

This way of conceptualising research use relates to both the second and third generations of research use. It addresses both organisational and performative dimensions, and although there is a focus on professionalisation from above in terms of the role of researchers in the partnerships, the direction of 'use' is somewhat different than in the frst two examined articles: While the frst two evinced somewhat more linear conceptions of research use, the latter represents a more nonlinear relationship in terms of roles, responsibilities, and respect for various knowledge forms—at least in theory.

# **Across and Beyond Defcit, Maturation, and Communicative Endeavours**

We do not intend for our notions of defcit, maturation, and communicative endeavours to be defnite or exhaustive categories. Rather, they illustrate the more general point that constructions of research use matter to the conceptualisation of the teaching profession's role. For example, whether a study relates to a particular generation (as per Boaz & Nutley, 2019) informs whether the framing of research use is as a one-way or bidirectional process, or whether the analytical emphasis is on individual teachers or the broader networks and systems of which they are a part. Such distinctions have implications for the positioning of professionals either as receivers or implementers of research or as agentic participants that co-create research use within broader social and organisational structures.

The studies differ in terms of their emphasis on performative and organisational aspects. This has implications for whether the ascribed responsibility for improved research use mainly falls upon teachers, in either their individual or collective

capacities, or upon the organisational, political, and epistemic support structures that surround them. Finally, we fnd variations in whether the studies recognised research use as professionalisation from above or below. Such nuances have implications for the agency and autonomy of the teaching profession in the development of their knowledge base and professional practice.

In summary, the overall framing and analytical and methodological operationalisation of research use emerged as an important mediator of the conceptualisation of the teaching profession in existing research. These studies often positioned researchers as performing the important role of improving the state of research use in the school sector. These fndings have motivated our suggestion that we can fruitfully expand the notion of the policy–practice nexus to the policy–research–practice nexus. Put briefy, researchers inform the construction of policy–practice relationships both through the research they produce about research use and the role that they themselves play in developing teachers' research use.

These fndings imply that there are different conceptions of the profession among researchers depending upon both what research tradition they adhere to and their national and local contexts. For example, the three articles discussed above differed in whether, and how, they included a conception of the profession. Such differences might also refect how the researchers themselves view the policy–research–practice nexus itself. These fndings lead us to ask how we can address this variation analytically. As the 'use' in research use directs attention to processes in which the profession plays a key role, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of studies on use, including identifying how the researchers frame, analyse, and discuss research use in education. Moreover, we argue that there is a need for a more nuanced and multidimensional analytical approach to the study of research use that acknowledges empirical variations that exceed temporal and spatial dimensions (i.e. Boaz & Nutley, 2019; Weiss, 1979) and that incorporates an analytical focus on the role of the profession and professional work within the policy–research–practice nexus. In the fnal section of this chapter, we propose a multidimensional framework intended as a methodological contribution to further advance this research agenda. Although the focus here is on research use, this framework is applicable to other policy concepts in the feld of education.

# **A Multidimensional Analysis of Research Use**

We propose that investigating fve aspects of research use is particularly important to develop a fuller understanding of this concept and how the notion of research use is constitutive of the role of the teaching profession:

These analytical dimensions are intended for the analysis of studies that have empirically examined teachers' research use. Analysing these aspects in relation to each other yields deeper insights into the conceptualisation of the profession in studies on research use. As a starting point, the term 'use' implicates the profession since teachers are the actors intended to do the using. It therefore becomes important to examine on what terms and under which conditions the conceptualisation and enactment of this use occur and who has the power to shape different aspects of use. Additionally, the analytical gaze of the researchers' conceptual position provides an additional layer in the constitution of research use as a phenomenon. The above questions guiding the analysis are intended to shed light on the complex and multifaceted context in which research use occurs. We now apply this analytical approach to two studies, both published in 2018 in the journal *International Journal of Educational Research*—one conducted in England and the other in the Netherlands.

# *Example One: Research Use as Professionalisation from Above*

In the frst article, titled 'Exploring the Impact of Social Relationships on Teachers' Use of Research: A Regression Analysis of 389 Teachers in England', Brown et al. (2018) aimed to examine the extent to which social infuence affects teachers' research use, how such social infuence relates to teachers' perceptions of whether they work in a trusting environment, whether school leaders encourage the use of research in their schools, and whether there is encouragement for teachers to innovate. Regarding the defnitional aspect, they defned research use as follows:

Research-informed teaching practice refers to the use of research evidence by teachers in order to improve how they teach and, as a result, student learning outcomes. The use of research by teachers is considered both benefcial and desirable (a situation we describe as optimal rational). As such, research-informed teaching should be both encouraged and facilitated. At the same time we are still to discover the most effective ways of supporting and fostering teachers' engagement with research. (p. 36)

Use here concerns improvement in teaching practices, which infuence student learning. In this sense, it depicts quite a linear relationship; word clusters, such as 'improvement', 'outcomes', and 'effectiveness', constructing a discourse throughout the article support this. The discourse thus primarily addressed the performative dimension of professionalism and did not address the organisational dimension, despite analytical interest in social relations within organisations. Moreover, the use of analytical perspectives on so-called rationality types and an optimal rational position matrix strengthened the individual and performative aspects.

Turning to the in-action aspect, or how research use takes place, the authors' hypotheses, which they tested in a survey (*N* = 828), were (a) whether teachers' research use increased if and when their colleagues' use of research increased, (b) whether teachers perceived that they worked in a trusting environment, (c) whether teachers perceived that they worked in an environment that supports research use, and (d) whether teachers perceived that their school encouraged them to experiment with new ways of working. The results show that although all four factors had some relevance for the teachers, by far the most infuential factors were how the teachers experienced the supportiveness of their school in encouraging them to use research fndings and the extent to which teachers reported that research played an important role in informing their teaching practice.

Thus, societal ties emerged as crucial for mobilising research use. Based on this fnding, and also by shedding light on the power dimension, the authors drew the implication that besides encouraging research use from the top down—including ensuring that teachers have opportunities to share and engage in research-informed learning conversations—there should be a focus on using social network approaches increasingly to support research use, for example, by identifying teacher 'opinion formers' to lead local processes towards increasing research engagement among their colleagues. If we then turn to the phenomenological aspect, this study mainly depicts teachers as recipients and users of research to be enacted in their practice, and the focus was mainly on the factors that could enhance research use. The fndings, however, identify the teachers themselves as key drivers in the enhancement of research use in schools, recognising the need for the agentic position of the profession.

Despite concluding by recognizing the need for an agentic position of the profession, the study can be mainly placed within a broader discourse emphasizing improvement and implementation. Using the multidimensional framework assisted us in getting a deeper insight into how the teaching profession in this study was positioned.

# *Example Two: A More Agentic Perspective*

In the second article, titled 'Barriers and Conditions for Teachers' Utilisation of Academic Knowledge', Schaik et al. (2018) presented a defnitional starting point regarding research use that differs from the article in example one above:

Yet the expertise of teachers is mostly based on insights they have acquired in their own practice, whereas knowledge from educational research hardly plays a role. Although teachers' practical knowledge and expertise are valuable for everyday classroom practice, new and innovative teaching practices can beneft from educational research. (…) This gap between research and practice is commonly acknowledged; researchers claim there is a knowledge base that teachers can use, but the latter experience barriers to access it. (p. 50)

The defnitional aspect here is more tension-oriented as the authors took as their starting point the characteristics of the knowledge forms that characterise the profession as well as teachers' work. As such, it delimits itself from more linear conceptions of research use; at the same time, the authors emphasised the need for the increased use of research as it is likely that it will beneft teaching and, in turn, the students.

Following from the defnitional aspect, there was a greater emphasis in the discourse in the article on the profession, its knowledge base, and how teachers learn and develop. At the same time, the framing of the study, in terms of its literature review, evinced a defcit discourse as the literature offered reasons as to why teachers do not use research, such as time constraints, limited access to research, competence concerns, and so forth.

Turning to the in-action aspect, the article, on the basis of a systematic review, identifed that research is increasingly showing structural collaboration—such as school–university partnerships and innovative communication networks—to be a promising strategy for improving teachers' utilisation of research knowledge. Moreover, the authors identifed barriers and conditions for research use. They found that barriers at the individual level were related mainly to accessibility and competence, while a positive opinion about and interest in research knowledge were important conditions for research use. Concerning barriers at the research knowledge level, research has often shown both the content and form of research communication diffcult to access and understand. Organisational factors, however, matter more than individual factors, particularly a supportive organisational structure. However, creating the right structures is not suffcient if doing so fails to create a culture for broadening knowledge sources seen as relevant. At the communication level, many articles emphasised the importance of effective communication between teachers and researchers while citing as barriers limited opportunities to meet researchers and the tensions that often arise when they do meet.

The authors of this article compared their results of Hemsley-Brown and Sharp's (2003) study and emphasised how the barriers to the use of research knowledge at all of these levels appear to be similar. However, they pointed to one specifc shift namely, that of the increased communication between teachers and researchers—as well as the call in several studies to establish more such structures to foster teachers' research use. While the authors emphasised this as a promising strategy, they rarely addressed its power aspects. There are clearly power aspects to discuss regarding relationships between researchers and teachers, in terms of both institutional structures and knowledge forms. Concerning the phenomenological perspective, however, teachers clearly had a more agentic position in research use than in example one.

Through this analysis, we have gained insight into the studies' depictions of the profession, and how it partly differs from the frst article (Brown et al., 2018), upon which we further elaborate in the following discussion.

# **Conceptualising the Teaching Profession Within the Policy– Research–Practice Nexus**

The multidimensional analysis of research use showed variations in the ways in which the two articles, published in the same year and in the same journal, depicted the profession (Brown et al., 2018; Schaik et al., 2018). In example one, the main emphasis was on improvement and implementation, and in example two, the article gave the profession a more agentic position. Despite these differences in the framing, the two articles' in-action aspects pointed in similar directions in terms of the characteristics of teachers' research use: The main conclusion in both articles was that increased collaboration between teachers and researchers—including the importance of establishing structures where, for example, teachers serve as key innovators—is the way forward to increase the use of research in education. Although the two articles framed the positioning of the profession quite differently—from a more top-down professionalisation from above perspective in the frst article to a stronger focus on professionalisation from within in the second article—this difference was not clearly refected in the conclusions of either article in terms of a discussion about what this means analytically about how we understand and also then should understand research use. Put differently, when confronted with actual practices and knowledge, the key characteristics of the profession became visible—but the authors only addressed this to a limited extent in the discussion and implication parts of the articles.

Greater attention to the profession's conceptualisation in studies on research use could have led to the inclusion of perspectives that would have contextualised the conclusions differently. Including such a conceptualisation would also have consequences for the outline of the practical implications concerning how best to stimulate teachers to make more use of research in their daily work. This involves the relationship between professionalisation from above and professionalisation from within, both in terms of the performative and organisational dimensions. For example, previous research suggested that professionalisation processes beneft from a fruitful interaction between policy initiatives, and in the case of research use, it also refers to research initiatives and local development processes.

On the basis of this analysis, and going back to Boaz and Nutley's generations of studies on research use, we propose that there is a need for considering the development of studies that could represent *a fourth generation* of studies on research use—a generation of studies including a conception of the teaching profession to develop more profession-sensitive concepts and analytical perspectives. We argue that this is a necessary development to advance the research and discussions on research use and to encourage fruitful research use in professional practice, both in performative terms (how research use can contribute to developing professional practice) and in organisational terms (how research use can contribute to strengthening the professional collective).

Professionalisation from above has arguably gained another meaning in the case of research use in this chapter as it is the researchers who have the great responsibility to enhance research use. The concept of research use has thus been a fruitful entry point to enhance our understanding of the challenging area of relations between policy, research, and practice. Although researchers have often used the term 'nexus' to describe the ambivalence in different viewpoints over problems and solutions in education, they have described it only to a limited extent (see introductory chapter). The analysis of research use has shown that although policy presents it as a somewhat ideal way to develop professional practice and the profession, the conceptualisation of the profession can be decisive for its integration, and the creation of more detrimental tensions, into professional practice. Research use can be an idea, a theoretical place, a meeting point, and an intersection where, ideally, different felds, actor groups, practices, or theoretical constructs meet in a productive manner. We argue that research on research use, including the conceptions of researchers working with professionals to encourage research use, requires a conception of the profession in order for research use to be a phenomenon where policy, research, and practice share some similar viewpoints. Otherwise, it could be an example of a nexus where different worldviews do not come together and therefore have limited infuence.

# **Concluding Remarks**

As the analysis in this chapter has shown, defnitions of research use often utilise other terms and framings, and studies often investigate research use in terms of how we as researchers talk and write about it. A key question to ask is, 'What kind of research use develops the profession?' Yet there is also a need to scrutinise how the researchers using this term conceptualise it. Only with a conceptualisation of the profession can we develop a fuller understanding of the policy–research–practice nexus. A multidimensional analysis of studies on research use can assist us in getting a frmer grip on this problem by asking questions such as the following: 'How do researchers defne research use?' 'How do researchers talk about research use?' 'Where and how does research use take place?' 'Who is participating in research use and in what roles?' 'How do researchers understand research use?' Studying teachers' research use by including a conception of the profession within this policy–research–practice nexus will contribute to the development of more profession-sensitive analytical concepts for both studying research use and employing research use in professional practice. Such a development is essential for developing research on research use, policymaking on research use, and actual research use in professional practice.

# **References**

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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# **Part II Nexus Formations in Time, Space and Place**

# **Chapter 6 The Curriculum as a Standard of Public Education**

#### **Stefan Hopmann**

**Abstract** This contribution frst searches for historical and empirical evidence for whether and how curricula act or acted as a measure of public education. The problem is explicated on account of a short history of curriculum work and distinguished in a analytical, a political, programmatical and practical discourse of curriculum work. Curriculum work always underlies premises of planning, learning and effects. Three models are fnally developed and brought in touch with the different discourses. Curriculum work proves to be an attempt to make publicly acceptable the empirically impossible accountability of schools.

**Keywords** Curriculum · History of curriculum work · Public education · Discourses on curriculum · Accountability of schools

There is a certain double meaning to the German expression 'öffentliche Bildung'. On the one hand the term 'öffentliche Bildung' can be used as a designation of what is called 'public education' in English. In this case the curriculum would have to be examined as a standard of what is happening in public schools. On the other hand, 'öffentliche Bildung' can also be translated with 'education of the public', in this case it can be understood as a generic term or as the total of education which is accessible to the public. Both concepts are directly connected with each other.

The topic allows for various approaches. One can start from the plan of an ideal curriculum which is then used as a standard of public education. In the Swiss context, for example, Anton Hügli has recently demanded this by taking up a tradition which goes back as far as Plato's Politeia. One could also move to a curriculumtheoretical metalevel and come up with the question of what a curriculum would look like if it were to take up its assigned function as a standard. In the German tradition of curriculum theory, the name Erich Weniger is especially connected with

University of Vienna, Wien, Austria

S. Hopmann (\*)

University of South-Eastern Norway, Notodden, Norway e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
© The Author(s) 2023

T. S. Prøitz et al. (eds.), *From Education Policy to Education Practice*, Policy Implications of Research in Education 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36970-4\_6

this theory. Instead of following these traditions, I would like to understand the curriculum topic mainly from a historical and empirical point of view, i.e., as a search for theoretical and empirical indications to whether and how curricula have functioned or still function, in the double sense indicated above, as a standard of public education. I base myself mainly on two research projects: on the one hand on the historical and empirical investigations into curriculum work which I carried out in the eighties together with Henning Haft and others (cf. Haft, 1986; Hopmann, 1988a, b; Haft & Hopmann, 1990), and on the other hand on a current research project which empirically examining the connection between curriculum planning and lesson planning in Germany, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, and the USA.1

# **A Short History of the Curriculum Work**

A curriculum develops when it is no longer self-evident what should be taught. It is diffcult to determine since when this has been the case. Since Josefph Dolch's monumental history of the *Lehrplan des Abendlandes* (1971–1973) the beginning of curriculum history has been in Greek and Roman Antiquity. More recent research indicates that there may have been similar curriculum considerations even earlier, for example in the training of civil servants in advanced civilisations (cf. e.g., Assmann, 1995). It is certain that written evidence of refections on curriculum problems can be found since about the ffth and fourth centuries BC, and it is surely no coincidence that one of the centres of such refection is the Republic of Athens. Its existence was guaranteed for the frst time through an organised public and seemed to depend on a minimum of public education. Complex systems of interaction, like the military system of Athens or the public jurisdiction, required understanding and communication of the participants to a degree which could no longer be presupposed as natural. This has been demonstrated especially by Christian Meier (1993). In the chapter on curricula of his *Politics*, Aristotle pointed out the loss of naturalness in teaching which necessitates a curriculum.

There must be educational rules and that education itself must become a public matter. But we must not forget the question, how this education should be, and how people should be educated. Because in our time we do not agree on the goals we should set and there exist different assumptions on what young people should learn to achieve virtue or the ability to lead useful lives; it is also not clear, whether education should aim rather at the development of the mind or the heart. It is not known whether one should teach young people what is of use for practical life, or what leads to virtue and great deeds. For all these viewpoints have found their advocates. (Book 8 introduction).

1When this paper was frst published, it relied heavily on not yet published material from an ongoing international research project (Organizing Curriculum Change: OCC). The project work started in 1993 with the Swiss part, the German part followed in 1995, all other parts of the project started in 1997. Since then key results have been published e.g. in a monography by Frank Ohlhaver (2005) and a special issue of the Journal of Curriculum Studies (Westbury et al. 2016).

Aristotle supports a prescribed and fxed circle of educational goods, as in the *enkyklikos paidea*, the circle of necessary general education. In Roman times the system of the *septem artes liberales* developed through many intermediate steps from the *enkyklikos*. It is the system of the seven free arts, with the *Trivium* of grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, and the *Quadrivium* of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, and it remains stable for a good millennium. The most well-known curriculum-theoretical work of that epoch, besides Aristotle's *Politics*, is surely the *Politeia* already mentioned, Plato's far-reaching attempt to base the state on organised education (especially Books 5 and 7). From a curriculum-historical point of view the premises on which this draft is based are of special interest.

from antiquity until today, despite differences between the individual parts. However, the request to leave the curriculum planning to the philosophers, a request which is shared even today by some curriculum theorists, was not well received by the contemporaries, as they did not want to leave the curriculum decisions and even less all other state affairs to Plato and his philosophy colleagues.

The *frst* of the three premises which began to falter was the one of the *one order of* knowledge.2 Already at the closing of the frst century Quintilian had fought for the right order of the subjects in his *Institutio oratoria*. On the Christian side, for example around the year 400, it was Augustine who emphasised the necessity to prepare the subjects, which are determined by the canonisation, according to the learning conditions and the learning history of the pupils (*De catechizandis rudibus*). The differentiation and increase of knowledge since the beginning of the second millennium fnally went beyond the scope of the *septem artes*, which had been stable for many centuries. It was especially the monks of the leading monastery schools like, for example, Hugo from the monastery St. Victor near Paris, who tried to solve the problem through a new order, through a *disciplining* of knowledge and learning which could be taught (*Didascalicon*). Thus, the order of teaching was set apart from the social order of knowledge.

In the following centuries, other premises also misted their credibility. Because of the limited space, I can only pinpoint some of the cornerstones of the later development. The third premise, namely the hope that what is learnt through teaching corresponds in its social effects to what was intended by the teaching, never had much empirical evidence to support it (remember Plato's complaint about young people not following the example and guidance of their parents and teachers). It fnally faltered together with the reformation concept of educating to Christianity, which was at the heart of Luther's theology, but didn't work out as wanted. The most substantial critique of the underlying assumption was brought forward from those Christian movements like pietism, which did not believe that true faith could be learned by teaching but is based in the individual experience of God. However, this is but one of many examples in the history of organized teaching, where schooling or other forms of planned instruction have hardly ever produced exactly those changes in attitudes, behaviour, or social life which they were supposed to enhance.

It is more diffcult to sum up the history of the frst premise, namely that teaching can and must be planned publicly. In fact, reformation brought about a massive development towards public planning. In the wake of reformation, more and more local and state governments moved actively into the feld of schooling. They established committees, advisory boards, administrations and the like, which should develop and formulate a frame of schooling, including – among other things – detailed syllabi or other types of curriculum guidelines. However, there is

2The following refections are based especially on Rudolf Künzli's basic study on the "Topik der Lehrplanung" (Künzli, 1986) as well as on my own papers; cf. also Künzli (1998).

overwhelming historical evidence that these syllabi or curriculum guidelines did not have much impact on what was going on in schools, except for a few schools close to the surveillance of the church or other social powers. At least there was a huge difference between what the guidelines asked for and what was possible in the everyday life of average schools. This fact was fnally acknowledged by the school authorities themselves by developing a system of planning, in which the central guidelines were nothing more than very generalized tools of administrative control, leaving the factual planning of teaching and instruction to the schools and the teachers. This loosely coupled double structure of central planning and relatively autonomous local teaching was brought into a systematic fashion by the Prussian school administration in the early nineteenth century. Since then and until today most European countries follow this basic pattern.

From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the teachers and their organizations increasingly complained that, even this loosely coupled system of control gave politics and administration too much infuence on what they believed were pedagogical issues and which only could be solved by pedagogical professionals. This critique contributed to a new step of differentiation. The public planning was reduced to decisions on very general principals of schooling (e.g., by school laws), leaving the development of the curriculum guidelines to highly specialized expert committees (mainly dominated by the teachers themselves). As a result, in most European countries, there exists a tripartite structure of curriculum planning: At the top there is the public discourse on education, which results in political decisions about the structure and goals of schooling. It is accompanied by the development of curriculum guidelines. However, this is done by educational experts (most of them chosen by the educational administration and most of them active or former teachers). The public has no direct access to curriculum making. In most cases, it doesn't even know what is going on inside the curriculum making. The experts must function as a kind of intermediary agency, i.e., their curriculum development must consider the public discourse and its results as well as what they believe might work in schools. The school practitioners do their own planning – within the framework of the guidelines provided by the experts. In fact, there is overwhelming evidence from different European countries that teachers do not feel that these guidelines have much impact on what is going on in schools. They only relate themselves to these guidelines if forced to, i.e., in situations where it is questioned whether their instruction is in accordance with the guidelines – which almost never happens. Thus – even though there exists a public planning of teaching – these plans have no great impact on what in fact is taught. At best, they refect what is going on in schools anyway.

The curriculum makers of today are aware of their intermediary function in the area between school political and school practical discourse. Asked about the reasons for their curriculum reform, they point out structure changes in school, political requirements, and social changes. In fact, most curriculum revisions are evoked by political-administrative decisions. This happens on average every seven makers are asked what plays a role in their curriculum decisions, then they no longer talk about politics and society: then only specialist, didactic and pedagogical arguments

count. The extent to which the political dimension of curriculum work is recognised by curriculum makers seems to depend on the periods of time and on regional circumstances. An active minister can remind people of this political dimension. According to the empirical investigations which have been done until now, all curriculum makers agree when decisions on concrete matters must be made; they give to politics what belongs to politics – at best in the preambles. The decisions on curricula, however, remain part of the inner-didactic discourse. The curriculum makers only must be careful that the conditions which they want to prescribe for pedagogical reasons, do not obviously contradict the political preconditions. That they mostly succeed can be seen in the fact that the curriculum drafts prepared by curriculum makers are only rarely changed in the process of political decisions concerning their validity.

# **Curriculum Work as a Division of Discourse**

The curriculum discourse was eventually divided into three parts:

This division into three has not changed in essence in the German language area since the turn of the century and at the same time it is the predominant model for curriculum work of most European countries (cf. Hopmann & Künzli, 1994). In the history of the curriculum there have always been attempts to resolve this division into three, either through a greater degree of detail in the political preconditions, or through a didactic detailing of the curriculum which levels out the freedom of method; but none of these attempts could hold its own in the long run. For every loss of the discursive independence of the three levels would burden every curriculum decision with the expectation of legitimacy of all three levels. How closely or loosely the discourse levels are intertwined may differ from case to case. In general, the room to move is quite large. For example, it is quite possible that the political preconditions change several times during the curriculum work without the concrete forming of the curricula having to change. Let us record some of the results of this short passage through history which could be backed up even further by many empirical and historical individual fndings (comp. For the following Hopmann, 1988a, b):

1. *Planning premise:* The curriculum has become a public matter as was the wish of Plato – and Aristotle – its actual making, however, is largely closed to the public. This is made possible through a division into three of the curriculum discourse. It leaves the dealing with general matters to the politicians and the public, and the concrete curriculum decisions to the discourse between educational administration and school experts. This discourse is open but to a few and is connected only loosely with the course of practical educational work in schools. The co-ordination between these levels occurs only negatively, i.e., each discourse sets limits to the others, but cannot determine positively what happens in the other discourses.

Curricula are usually common sense recorded in documents – or as Peter Menck once formulated pointedly – the selection of the selected (Menck, 1989). When they go beyond this scope in the direction of the political discourse, then the difference between what is planned and what is generally accepted indicates how far the education of the public is from the education outlined in the curriculum. This can lead to ferce political battles, as in Hessen in the nineteen seventies – but they only marginally affect the actual school and teaching practice. Because of the political costs such transgressions are very rare compared to the number of public curricula. When curricula go beyond school practical common sense, then the difference usually indicates the distance between the social expectations regarding school and what is usual and possible in a school practical sense. Seen from a curriculumhistorical viewpoint this is more often the case (even the Stiehl regulations of 1854, which were infamous because their restrictions went far beyond what was customary at schools at that time). The effect of such transgression is not immediate; it usually only has a discursive character, i.e., the scope of the possible changes in a certain direction. Whether and how this scope is used is not decided by curriculum work, but in the practical discourse, as it develops in classrooms and staff rooms.