Policy Sociology in the Contemporary Global Era: Continued Importance and Pressing Methodological Considerations

Abstract

The intensities of the contemporary moment continue to prompt reflections on the strengths and limitations of approaches typically used to study education policy reform. The central contention of this essay is that policy sociology and its application within education offers needed vantage points on contemporary pressing global policy problems. Future studies would do well to keep the footprint of existing frameworks, which emphasize policy networks and mobilities, power dynamics within these flows, and the focus on doing research that speaks to concerns of stakeholders. The next generation of policy sociologists can further strengthen the relevance and rigor of the analytic scheme by leaning into methodologies that further attend empirically and descriptively to power asymmetries within policy networks.

Keywords

educational policy globalization international education/studies policy policy analysis qualitative research research methodology

Introduction

The tumult of 2020 continues to prompt reflections on the strengths as well as the limitations of approaches typically used to understand the scope and pace of education policy changes underway. The theories and approaches that drive education policy analysis are diverse, drawn broadly together by the basic principles that public policy is central to a functioning democracy (Stone, 1988). In this essay, we discuss one of those approaches—policy sociology. We begin with an overview and discussion of policy sociology as an analytical scheme that has been applied by education policy researchers. We emphasize its continued relevance in framing global dimensions in education policy. We then offer an expanded set of principles for guiding the next chapter of policy sociology research in education and highlight several methodological considerations and opportunities linked to this work.

Policy Sociology as an Analytical Scheme for Education Policy Research

Policy sociology gained traction in education during the 1980s and 1990s as a sociological orientation to the study of policy analysis with a goal of generating new insights into the dynamics of policy as they are linked to political, economic, cultural, and social changes within and across different systems (Ozga, 1987). According to the public sociologist Michael Burawoy (2005), policy sociology aims to provide solutions to contemporary, client-generated problems (as opposed to those primarily of academic interest). Burawoy viewed policy sociology as one of four types of sociological knowledge that also included public sociology (engaging with public issues), professional sociology (a scientific or academically oriented sociology), and critical sociology (interrogating assumptions of professional sociology). Consistent with Burawoy’s call for “necessary coexistence of these models,” policy sociologists in education, such as the early works of Ozga (1987, 1990), Ball (1989, 1993a, 1993b), and Dale (1989), sought to bring the different types of sociological knowledge into conversation. These efforts tended to frame education policy studies as distinctive from more technocratic, linear, and managerialist orientations (Lingard, 1993), or what might be termed a more policy sciences approach. Policy sociology has generally aimed to center people, time, and contexts in its approach in order to better understand policy formation processes and their effects, whereas some traditional policy sciences approaches have tended to focus on “what works” and place blame on policy actors in implementation for failures of school policy (Thomson, 2005).

Policy sociology, as it continued to evolve and become operationalized within education, concentrated on national and global shifts in educational reform, such as privatization and the continued thinning out of state structures, the dislocation and disruption of democratic forms of governance, and the intensifying precarities that flow from deepening economic and social inequalities. It became useful in framing dynamics of nationalism, transnationalism, and globalism in education policy as central contentions; highly localized education policies were not taken up in isolation, but instead, they were positioned in relation to broader global processes (Ball, 1998, 1999). In doing so, education policy formation was framed in ways that cut across state/nonstate demarcations, geographies, and sectoral boundaries outside the nation-state as the dominant territorial and methodological subject of analysis (Dale, 2005; Scholte, 2000).

Policy sociology shares its focus on globalization dynamics in education with other bodies of research in sociology and comparative education, including approaches that have applied neo-institutional theory and world culture perspectives to explain education policy reform (Meyer et al., 2010; Pizmony-Levy, 2011). There are differences, however, in how scholars approach agency and make sense of globalization’s impacts within education policy. For example, some applications of world culture theory have emphasized institutional stasis and global institutional logics in reform discourse, tending to see global education policy trends as isomorphic (Wiseman et al., 2014). In contrast, many policy sociologists have been centrally concerned with how global tendencies are adapted and mitigated by policy actors in local, subnational, and national spaces, emphasizing more divergent patterns of global manifestations in local and domestic education policy spaces (Burawoy et al., 2000; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Verger et al., 2016; Wallner et al., 2020).

As education policy researchers working on studies of globalization and education, we have drawn on policy sociology perspectives in our own respective research, such as in the examination of global dynamics of neoliberal governance and patterns of neo-colonialization in education policy (Burch, in press; Burch & Miglani, 2017; Miglani & Burch, 2020) and education policy shifts in federal contexts that are linked to the “global turn” in schooling (Engel, 2008; Engel & Frizzell, 2015; Maxwell et al., 2020). We also have increasingly turned to policy sociology in our graduate-level courses in education policy studies and comparative/international education. In both our scholarship and teaching, we have appreciated policy sociology approaches as advancing perspectives on education policy processes related to fundamental shifts in the role of the state and the market, and to the inextricable linkages between globalization and domestic education policy formation. And yet we have been at times challenged methodologically, both in our own research and in advising of students’ research, with how to operationalize the core principles of policy sociology in ways that attend to contemporary policy dynamics concerning power, agency, and privilege. Toward this end, we offer several principles to guide the next chapter of policy sociology research in education. The approach we advise blends core components of policy sociology work to date with deepened attention to issues of power, agency, and privilege (see Table 1).

Table 1

A New Policy Sociology in Education Research: Research Principles and Design Directions

	Existing Policy Sociology	New Policy Sociology
Principles	• Policy networks and mobilities • Power dynamics within these flows • Research relevant to stakeholders	• Reflexivity on power dynamics and hierarchies within networks and in “field” of policy sociology
Research focus	• Focus on national and global shifts in education reform • Attention to agency over diffusion • Focus on production of policy over what works • Contribution of policy networks to thinning out of state structures, dislocation/disruption of democratic forms of governance	• Mapping networks through which power flows and is sustained • Policy assemblage with attention to how power is diffuse and multinodal • Multidimensionality of power differentials
Research methods	• Qualitative with elite interviews with government officials and analysis of documents	• Multiple or mixed method approaches that include mathematical approaches and deep ethnographic work • More centered research by Black, Indigenous, and historically minoritized scholars • Critical perspectives on geographies elected as cases or ignored (global south/north), and the implicit or explicit norms of governance used to analyze these cases • Organization and maintenance of power within networks at all levels

Toward a New Policy Sociology in Education

As we look toward the next chapter of policy sociology in education, it is vital that as policy sociologists we remain reflexive about the power dynamics and the hierarchies within our work and our research communities. In the design of our studies, we advocate a continued set of critical questions: Whose voices are we privileging, and to what extent are we advancing gender-based and anti-racist critiques? What geographies (global north or south) are we electing as cases, or alternatively ignoring, and what are the implicit or explicit norms of governance we use to analyze policy processes? Within the methods frequently employed in policy sociology, we must critically consider questions of how communities, locations, and contexts are engaged and portrayed, and by whom? Whose voices are privileged and whose are silenced? In our own research communities, we need to leverage this reflexivity to consider issues of inclusivity within policy sociology itself to better capture who is leading this research and who is counted as a policy sociologist, centering more research by Black, Indigenous, and/or minoritized scholars of color in the field.

To be sure, some of the questions just identified echo early critiques of policy sociology, which highlighted the minimal inclusion of anti-racist and/or gender-based critiques in policy analysis, in favor of a more neutral problematizing of policies (Troyna, 1994). In the evolution of policy sociology, scholars have repeatedly underscored and illuminated dimensions of equity and social justice along class, race, and gender lines (Blackmore, 2011; Gewirtz & Cribb, 2002). A growing body of policy sociology work, for example, has sought to take up concepts of policy flows, networks, mobilities, and assemblages in order to further attend to power and power asymmetries in both the design and methods used to frame and assess education policy processes (Maguire, 2019). To that end, scholars have emphasized that power is not centrally located in a singular node but is instead “diffuse” in policy formation and assemblage processes (Gorur, 2011). Attending centrally to power as multinodal in the education policy process has also allowed policy sociologists to pose more critical research questions about the production of policy. Yet what is not always emphasized enough in policy sociology research is that policy flows emerge within forms of governance that have long excluded people of color, women, and other marginalized and minoritized groups. Moving beyond traditional sociological categories and analysis is necessary to fully consider how existing power structures insert and reproduce themselves in equity-oriented policy reforms, even in reforms that are expressly critical of neoliberal principles (Maguire, 2019). Moreover, deepening attention to the complex power dynamics and issues of interdependency and intersectionality within education policymaking, and its effects, require continued reflexivity on the part of policy sociologists in research designs and methods. Here we wish to highlight several important considerations within a body of emergent research focused on combining analysis of policy networks with ethnographic accounts.

Addressing Methodological Considerations

The reflexivity necessary in the next chapter of policy sociology research means leaning into methodologies that attend empirically and descriptively to power asymmetries within policy networks. The concern of policy sociologists with networks has evolved and developed productively around tracing policy formulation across both space and scale, such as work focused on globalization and its effects on policy formation in and across contexts, utilizing conceptions of policy networks (see, e.g., Ball, 2012; Ball et al., 2017; Münch, 2020) and policy mobilities (a term originating in the work of critical geographers, Peck and Theodore [2010], and used by other scholars, such as Ball et al. [2017], and Gulson et al. [2017]). Researchers focused on tracing, following, and mapping education policy changes in different environments have aimed to cultivate new understandings of the relationalities of power and agency within policy formation across vertical and horizontal policy scales, local to global (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2015). Given that research designs have relied on network ethnography, we discuss several important research design and methodology considerations for policy sociologists in order to better attend to issues of power, agency, and privilege in the study of global dimensions of education policy.

First, network ethnography has continued the focus in earlier policy sociology work on elite interviews with key stakeholders, linked with internet searches, all combined in an effort to develop maps “of the form and content of policy relations” (Ball & Junemann, 2012, p. 387). Network ethnography allows for a visualization of policy interrelationships and structures that cross multiple territories. It aims to attend to power as multinodal to frame which policy actors and institutions are being referenced, when, and how. And yet, at the same time as it seeks to portray the meaning, dynamism, multiple flows, and complexity, it can be limited by its more descriptive, and at times static, explanations (Hogan, 2015). Understanding power flows in policy dynamics must then involve mapping the networks through which power flows and is sustained. Ball et al. (2017) noted,

Much of the currently published work on policy networks has been limited to identifying and describing connections . . . [and must] move on to begin to understand “how” policies move, and the labour of mobility, the work of networking. (pp. 5–6)

What we wish to highlight is that while the labor of policy networks is accomplished by elites, it is also born by those on the ground. And therefore, scholars, in methodologically leveraging key principles of the policy sociology approach, must be critically mindful of how relying on elite interviews can sustain dynamics of power and privilege of the status quo. This includes more intentional foregrounding of the voices and perspectives of those marginalized in the policy process, rather than continuing to foreground the perspectives of elites, as has so often been the case in policy sociology scholarship that relies primarily on interviews with policymakers and government officials. Similarly, in the naming and mapping of policy actors and institutions, it is important to consider which groups are being excluded from those institutions and provide avenues for considering how to ensure that their voices, or the silence within policy interviews and policy texts, are heard. To that end, we would encourage researchers to ask a set of framing questions in their research design and analysis, including the following: What are the values that orient and bind those working in the networks together in social fields and where are the fault lines in value orientations (Burch & Miglani, 2017)? How do those working in those networks market and brand policy, but also how do schools, educators, and communities, as well as parents and students encountering policy interpret, transform, and at times resist and/or reject the policy? (Maguire et al., 2020; Münch, 2020). The agency of local actors and stakeholders in resisting particular policy and policy interpretations can further advance an understanding of dynamics of power and privilege, as policy sociology has often claimed to do.

Second, while social network analysis can “trace the origins, trajectories and transfers of ideas and people,” it is limited by “its form of representation and the difficulty of identifying how such relations are formed and sustained” (Gulson et al., 2017, p. 235). Moreover, the growing focus on “following” policy across multiple scales and places (as we see in Ball & Junemann, 2012; Ball et al., 2017) can be limited by “assumptions of presence, as well as difficulty in capturing the speed and intensity of movement of policy” (Gulson et al., 2017, p. 225). As power (and resistance) from a policy sociology perspective is understood to be polycentric and multinodal, policy sociologists can consider how maps and visuals emerging from network-oriented research may portray the multidimensionality of power differences within and across education policy spaces, including how they may potentially flatten power dimensions by portraying nodes as all the same sizes. Likely due to its qualitative traditions, policy sociology scholarship has tended to underutilize quantitative methods of social network analysis (Finnigan et al., 2018). To further capture notions of power in network relationships and dynamics, as well as relative power of different stakeholders and actors, scholars could make further use of measures of centrality and modularity in network analysis (Borgatti, 2005; Freeman et al., 1991; Opsahl et al., 2010). These techniques would enable policy sociologists to extend beyond the ethnographic network techniques to also include more quantitative network analysis, helping to deepen the visualization and framing of power dimensions across nodes, from global to local.

Last, we would also emphasize that new “inventive” methods must not exclude the mapping of complex flows of policy across different geographic contexts, particularly as pertaining to and intersecting with contexts in the global south. To that end, we need to integrate more varied empirical data in order to examine whether and to what extent these networks are used to solidify and grow political power in different contexts, and to examine the relationship between networks and policy decisions that mediate social justice work. Given the popularity of network analysis across the social sciences, policy sociologists can continue to be intentional in linking network analysis to social justice work and studying networks as political entities (Finnigan et al., 2018). Moving forward, in addition to leaning into inventive methods, policy sociologists can simultaneously lean back into ethnographic orientations of policy sociology to extend rich descriptions of policy processes that can maximize the importance of culture, race, and language. Much more work is needed, for example, on how students and families in highly segregated, defunded, socioeconomically disadvantaged communities experience global policy dynamics. Rich ethnographic accounts, which involve reflexivity on researchers’ positionalities, are imperative to giving these perspectives the attention they deserve.

Conclusion

Our central contention is that policy sociology and its application within education offers needed vantage points on contemporary pressing global policy problems. Future studies aimed at education policy analysis would do well to keep the footprint of early and more contemporary policy sociology frameworks, specifically the emphasis on policy networks and mobilities, the power dynamics within these flows, and the focus on doing research that speaks to the concerns of stakeholders. In addition, the next generation of policy sociologists can strengthen the relevance and rigor of the analytic scheme by, among other issues, leaning into methodologies that attend empirically and descriptively to power asymmetries within policy networks.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Laura Engel

Note

The authors would like to thank Haley Nelson of University of Southern California for preliminary research and editorial work contributing to this article.

Authors

LAURA ENGEL, PhD, is associate professor of International Education and International Affairs at The George Washington University; 2134 G Street, NW Washington, DC 20052; Lce@gwu.edu . Her research focuses on globalization and education policy reform, including the internationalization of schooling.

PATRICIA BURCH, PhD, is professor of education at the University of Southern California; 3551 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA 90089; pburch@usc.edu . Her research focuses on equity issues in the design and implementation of education policy and practice.

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