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

2021 ◽  
pp. 0013189X2110091
Author(s):  
Laura Engel ◽  
Patricia Burch
Keyword(s):  
Policy Reform ◽  
Policy Networks ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Global Policy ◽  
Global Era ◽  
Policy Sociology ◽  
Methodological Considerations ◽  
Vantage Points ◽  
Policy Problems

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.

Puzzling and powering in the city: two case studies on collaborative research

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Duiveman
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Collaborative Research ◽  
Knowledge Development ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Living Labs ◽  
Urban Issues ◽  
Policy Problems ◽  
Collaborative Knowledge

Abstract Cities are turning to urban living labs and research consortia to co-create knowledge that can better enable them to address pervasive policy problems. Collaborations within such practices help researchers, officials and local stakeholders find new ways of dealing with urban issues and developing new relations with one another. Interestingly, success in the latter is often closely related to accomplishing the former. Besides of analysing this phenomenon in terms of learning—as is common—this paper also delves into the power dynamics involved in collaborative knowledge development. This perspective contributes to a better understanding of how puzzling and powering are simultaneously involved in making research relevant to policy-making. By presenting two collaborative research consortia in the Netherlands, we demonstrate how developing knowledge involves both re-structuring problems and the urban practices involved in governing such problems. Collaborative research practices are predominantly concerned with learning as long as restructuring the problem leads to research findings that are meaningful to all actors. Power becomes manifest when one actor insists on restructuring (often reproducing) problems in a manner judged unacceptable by others. Analysis of two case studies will show how the familiar three faces of power express themselves in collaborative knowledge development. It is recommended that these new practices also require methods for better orchestrating power besides a methodology for successful structuring learning through collaborative research practices.

Researching “Black” Educational Experiences and Outcomes: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations

2007 ◽  
Vol 36 (9) ◽  
pp. 541-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla O’Connor ◽  
Amanda Lewis ◽  
Jennifer Mueller
Keyword(s):  
Black Students ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Educational Experiences ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Methodological Considerations

This article delineates how race has been undertheorized in research on the educational experiences and outcomes of Blacks. The authors identify two dominant traditions by which researchers have invoked race (i.e., as culture and as a variable) and outline their conceptual limitations. They analyze how these traditions mask the heterogeneity of the Black experience, underanalyze institutionalized productions of race and racial discrimination, and confound causes and effects in estimating when and how race is “significant.” The authors acknowledge the contributions of more recent scholarship and discuss how future studies of Black achievement might develop more sophisticated conceptualizations of race to inform more rigorous methodological examinations of how, when, and why Black students perform in school as they do.

Condom migration resulting from circumcision, microbicides and vaccines: brief review and methodological considerations

Sexual Health ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Crosby ◽  
JaNelle Ricks ◽  
April Young
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Male Circumcision ◽  
English Language ◽  
Allied Health ◽  
Entire Body ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Cumulative Index ◽  
Methodological Considerations ◽  
Biomedical Interventions

Objective: To provide an updated review of condom migration as a means of highlighting methodological issues for future studies of this behavioural issue. Methods: Electronic searches of PubMed, MEDLINE and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) databases were carried out in October 2010 and updated in January 2011 for English-language articles published from 1994 onward. Results:Evidence addressing condom migration from microbicides and vaccines is vastly underdeveloped, simply because these products are still experimental. In contrast, the more advanced evidence regarding male circumcision is hopeful because it suggests that migration may not be an overwhelming issue. Nonetheless, the entire body of empirical evidence on this question could be substantially expanded and improved. Conclusion: Until stronger evidence suggests that condom migration is unlikely, it is important to be mindful of the potential for condom migration to occur in response to biomedical interventions (circumcision, microbicides and vaccines).

The Rise of Global Policy and Transnational Administration

2019 ◽  
pp. 2-22
Author(s):  
Diane Stone ◽  
Kim Moloney
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
Global Policy ◽  
Methodological Nationalism ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Policy Communities ◽  
Policy Problems

The sovereign domain of policy making and administration of the last century is increasingly supplanted by multiple public spheres and policy communities carving out new transnational spaces of policy making and public administration. The old methodological nationalism or ‘Westphalian grammar’ no longer exclusively describes a proliferation of delegated and decentralized policy and administration. This new global policy and transnational administration includes a diverse set of institutions, actors, and individuals interacting with non-state actors and other networks to help states and the global community respond to its most pressing problems. Global policy problems require scholars and practitioners to move past their sector-specific foci and narrow disciplinary (and nation-focused) endeavours to create space for new disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological emphases in which the boundaries between domestic and global are neither finite nor clearly defined.

The framing of Australian childcare policy problems and their solutions

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kay Cook ◽  
Lara Corr ◽  
Rhonda Breitkreuz
Keyword(s):  
Staff Development ◽  
Policy Reform ◽  
Quality Standards ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Educational Investment ◽  
Financial Pressure ◽  
Development Costs ◽  
Childcare Policy ◽  
Policy Problems ◽  
Policy Solutions

Using discursive policy analysis, we analyse recent Australian childcare policy reform. By examining the policy framings of two successive governments and a childcare union, we demonstrate how the value of care work was strategically positioned by each of the three actors, constructing differing problems with different policy solutions. We argue that women’s care work was recognised by one government as valuable and professional when it aligned with an educational investment framing of enhanced productivity. This framing was capitalised upon by a union campaign for ‘professional’ wages, resulting in a government childcare worker wage subsidy. However, prior to implementation, a change of government re-framed the problem. The new government cast mandatory quality standards as placing unnecessary financial pressure on families and business. Within this frame, the remedy was to instead subsidise employer staff-development costs without increasing workers’ wages.

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