Department of Politics, People & Place

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Browsing Department of Politics, People & Place by Type "Presentation"

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    Doing curriculum reform: what allows expert practitioners to mediate policy enactment in Japan?
    (World Education Research Association, 2023-11-22) Bamkin, Sam
    This presentation considers the role of professional (educational/pedagogic) knowledge in the enactment of policy during neoliberal times. Education policymaking in Japan, like elsewhere, is changing. Over the past twenty years, the central government has displaced the Ministry of Education as the driver of education policy, including most recently in curriculum policy. However, in Japanese curriculum reform, professional knowledge continues to inform how policy is understood and enacted on the ground, alongside the imperative for performative enactment. My recent research, based on two years’ fieldwork in and around eight schools, questionnaire survey data, textbook databases and elite interviews, shows that expert practitioners can leverage this knowledge to mediate how curriculum policy is enacted in compulsory education. This presentation re-examines these findings from a comparative perspective to consider the particular structural mechanisms in the policymaking process and education system of Japan that facilitate the operation of professional knowledge in policy enactment, and how they are changing. It further comments on the extent to which the Japanese data questions the universality of well-established theory of ‘policy work’ (e.g. Stephen Ball and colleagues, 2012) grounded in data collected in the Anglo-American contexts.
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    How Curriculum Reform Happens in Japan: A Multi Layered Analysis
    (2022-11-26) Bamkin, Sam
    Education policymaking in Japan is changing. Over the past twenty years, the prime ministerial executive has taken leadership in high-level policy formulation, including curriculum policy. The Ministry of Education has turned to accountability tools to legitimise its work. And local governments have encroached on the independence of boards of education. What is less clear is how new policy structures change the work of teachers and their capacity for the professional interpretation of policy based on pedagogical knowledge of ‘classroom’ practice. Based on 2 years’ fieldwork in and around eight schools, this research examines how the reform of moral education unfolded between 2015 and 2020, from its formulation at cabinet level, to its evolution in the Ministry of Education, to its enactment in schools. The workshop will present findings on how teachers and school administrators mediate policy in the contemporary Japanese education system; and how this informs our understanding of curriculum reform and educational policymaking.