Chapter 5: Literature Review -- Big Policies/Small World

5a

Big Policies/Small World

   What Stephen Ball was noticing when he wrote this article in 1998 was that world wide education policies were showing similarities, that many big policies were being written that responded to the new economic realities appearing such as ‘globalization’. The big policies were overlapping, there was bricolage and borrowing. The focus of interest for Ball was not the differences between them but the similarities, and the similarities are referred to as an ‘ensemble’. He summarizes,

I want to end by returning to the side of my argument which is concerned with the generic aspects of education policy rather than its specifics and to Offe’s (1984) ‘real social effects’. My point is that careful investigation of local variations, exceptions and hybridity should not divert attention from the general patterns of practical and ideological, first-and-second-order effects achieved by the ensemble of influences and policy mechanisms outlined above.

He writes that education is being tied more closely to national economic interests, but at the same time is being removed from direct state control. He identifies “an ensemble of generic policies.” These are parental choice, institutional competition, site-based autonomy, managerialism, performative steering and curricula fundamentalism.” Apparently the purest of these versions are found in England, New Zealand and Alberta, Canada. Ball doesn’t explain what Alberta policy in particular is associated with the ensemble but the 1993 report reviewed in this research is the likely culprit. 

    Translating the Ball article to a consideration of public education policy in Canada in general, and notwithstanding specific comment on Alberta, is education being tied in more closely to national economic interests as we examine the policy products of late 20^th century? How do we consider the additional observation that education is at the same time being removed from direct state control? I interpret this as underlining deeper fragmentation between and amongst provinces and territories, and I refer to the reality of increased fragmentation in chapter one of this dissertation and a reason to reverse the trend in Canada and move towards some centralization for the 21^st century. In many ways, Ball defends the value of the local policy. Ball writes that some solutions are products of the ritual of public education policy making, but that they are ‘magical’. They are intended to provide reassurance and constrain critique. In defense of policy making at the local level Ball emphasizes the ‘importance of local politics’ and the value of local policy making through the public education policy to culture. These policies are products of a necessary process. Generic solutions offered in education policy are translated into ‘practical policies and institutional practices’. He doesn’t want to undermine the value of local policy, but yet he wants us to see also, that the ‘big picture’ needs to be interpreted. On the other hand, Ball’s argument does speak to the matter of centralization. In our Canadian world many ‘big policies’ (R1, royal commissions) are the reality. It is also a “small world,” however, and perhaps so many ‘big policies’ are not necessary.  Policies produced by provinces and territories would be responding to the ensemble of generic policies Ball mentions, and so they would in fact be presenting many similarities to us, thus and therefore a national commission on public education would integrate all supposed divergences, bring them together, and provide a forum for genuine exploration of differences.

   Further following Ball, in Canada, the ‘big policies’ are the royal commissions on public education produced by the provinces and territories across the country. The ‘small world’ is now Canada as a nation in the international arena. According to the Ball article we can expect the late 20^th century public education policies to be more about their similarities than their differences. At the same time Canadians can further expect deepening fragmentation at the same time that the policies produced by the provinces and territories have more in common than they perhaps have had at any time in Canadian history. Viewing this through the dichotomy of the big pictures/details split, we can redefine the ‘details’ as the policy products of the provinces and territories. In order to construct the big picture toward the end of the 20^th century a Canadian policy step that is necessary is to bring the ‘similarities’ existing in the ‘details’ together in one continuous text.