How the Political Economy of Knowledge Production Shapes Education Policy: The Case of Teacher Evaluation in Federal Policy Discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 016237372110039
Author(s):  
Sarah Reckhow ◽  
Megan Tompkins-Stange ◽  
Sarah Galey-Horn
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Teacher Evaluation ◽  
Education Policy ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Policy Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Financial Infrastructure ◽  
Congressional Hearing ◽  
Elite Interviews ◽  
Support Teacher

Using congressional testimony on teacher quality from 2003 to 2015 and analysis of 60 elite interviews, we show how the political economy of knowledge production influences idea uptake in education policy discourse. We develop and assess a conceptual framework showing the organizational and financial infrastructure that links research, ideas, and advocacy in politics. We find that congressional hearing witnesses representing groups that received philanthropic grants are more likely to support teacher evaluation policies, but specific mentions of research in testimony are not a factor. Overall, our study shows that funders and advocacy groups emphasized rapid uptake of ideas to reform teacher evaluation, which effectively influenced policymakers but limited the use of research in teacher evaluation policy discourse.

Sociology’s encounter with the decolonial: The problematique of indigenous vs that of coloniality, extraversion and colonial modernity

2020 ◽  
pp. 001139212093114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sujata Patel
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
Everyday Knowledge

How did the process of decolonization reframe the social sciences? This article maps the interventions made by theorists of and from the ex-colonial countries in reconceptualizing sociology both as practice and as an episteme. It argues that there are geographically varied and intellectually diverse decolonial approaches being formulated using sociological theory to critique the universals propounded by the traditions of western sociology/social sciences; that these diverse knowledges are connected through colonial and global circuits and that these create knowledge geographies; that collectively these diverse intellectual positions argue that sociology/social sciences are constituted in and within the politics of ‘difference’ organized within colonial, nationalist and global geopolitics; that this ‘difference’ is being reproduced in everyday knowledge practices and is being structured through the political economy of knowledge; and that the destabilization of this power structure and democratization of this knowledge is possible only when there is a fulsome interrogation of this political economy, and its everyday practices of knowledge production within universities and research institutes. It argues that this critique needs to be buffered by the constitution of alternate networks of circulation of this knowledge.

Resisting Piratic Method by Doing Research Otherwise

Sociology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Tilley
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
The Political ◽  
The South ◽  
The Core ◽  
Intellectual Commons

The reconstruction of sociology into connected sociologies works towards a truly global and plural discipline. But if undoing the overrepresentation of European epistemology in sociology requires a deeper engagement with epistemologies of the South or worlds and knowledges otherwise, how can we ensure that such engagements do not simply reproduce colonial forms of appropriation and domination? Here I consider means of resisting extractive, or ‘piratic’ method in sociology research by drawing lessons from recent debates around geopiracy and biopiracy in geography and the life sciences. The core claim of this article is that any decolonial knowledge production must involve a consideration of the political economy of knowledge – its forms of extraction, points of commodification, how it is refined as intellectual property, and how it comes to alienate participating knowers. Against this I suggest a relearning of method in an anti-piratic way as a means of returning our work to the intellectual commons.

scholarly journals The Political Economy of Ivory as a “Conflict Resource”

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natasha White
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Policy Discourse ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Opportunity Costs ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Media

The past year has seen attention directed, both in policy discourse and the media, towards the implication of Central African non-state armed groups in poaching and ivory trafficking. Engaging with both mainstream political economy analyses and work on the “geographies of resource wars,” this paper turns to the case of ivory as a “conflict resource,” through the case study of the Lord’s Resistance Army. It begins by outlining the contextual specificities and conditions of access, before assessing the compatibility of the resource’s biophysical, spatial and material characteristics with the needs of regional armed groups and the LRA in particular. Though the direction of causality is difficult to untangle, the paper finds that poaching and the trade in ivory by armed groups in Central Africa appears to incur low opportunity costs for relatively high potential gains. Moreover, that ivory qualifies as a “conflict resource” under Le Billon’s (2008) definition in the extent to which it is likely to be implicated in the duration of conflict in the region, both financing and benefitting from a context of insecurity. Future research would benefit from more accessible and robust data; interesting avenues would include an evaluation of the effects of the increasing militarization of poaching strategies - including shoot-to-kill policies - and the potential of igniting grievance-based conflict.

scholarly journals Indicators, Rankings and the Political Economy of Academic Production in International Law

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-304
Author(s):  
GEOFF GORDON
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Law ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Publishing Industry ◽  
Editorial Board Member ◽  
Academic Publishing ◽  
The Political ◽  
Academic Production ◽  
Market Practices

Rankings and indicators have been with us for a while now, and have increasingly been objects of attention in international law. Likewise, they have been with the LJIL as a journal for a while now. Our so-called ‘impact factor’ is, to my untrained eye, the most prominent feature on the LJIL webpage hosted by our publisher. So this editorial is something of a rearguard action. The indicators and rankings, however, keep piling up. Proliferation may afford a perverse sort of optimism, about which below but, as will be clear, I do not share it. The increasing number and command of indicators and rankings reflects a consistent trend and a bleak mode of knowledge production. Knowledge production has been a topic in these pages recently, for instance Sara Kendall's excellent editorial on academic production and the politics of inclusion. I mean to continue in that vein, with respect to other aspects of the political economy of the academic production of international law, especially at a nexus of publishing, scholarship and market practices. There is an undeniable element of nostalgia in what will follow, but I do not really mean to celebrate the publishing industry, status quo ante, that has put me in this privileged position to wax nostalgic. The academic publishing business is flawed. What we are preparing the way for is worse. When I say we, I mean to flag my complicity, both as an individual researcher and as an editorial board member. I use the word complicity to convey a personal anxiety, also in my role as editor, so let me be clear: the LJIL board has no policy concerning rankings, and rankings have never influenced review at the journal. Moreover, while I cannot claim to speak for the LJIL as a whole concerning the topic of rankings or any other matter, nor is mine exactly a dissenting voice on the board. The tone of this polemic is mine alone; the concern is not.

scholarly journals For an international journal in transnational times

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (267-268) ◽  
pp. 213-218
Author(s):  
Joseph Sung-Yul Park
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Academic Capitalism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Academic Journals ◽  
Linguistic Practice ◽  
A Site ◽  
Colonial Capitalism

Abstract Academic journals are a site of tension between the perspective of the transnational and international – between an emphasis on the agency and creativity of linguistic practice that transcends boundaries of nations and languages and a focus on the enduring relations of colonial capitalism that impose bounded and hierarchized order upon our social and linguistic life. Being an international journal in transnational times comes with the challenge of having to facilitate transnational flows of knowledge without reifying the oppressive structure of the political economy of knowledge production. The International Journal of the Sociology of Language’s response to this challenge may lie in its commitment to solidarity and collaboration, where it serves as a ground for resisting the pressures of academic capitalism and for collectively seeking an agenda for research which dismantle hierarchies and boundaries that sustain and rationalize inequalities.

scholarly journals On the political economy of compulsory education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Balestrino ◽  
Lisa Grazzini ◽  
Annalisa Luporini
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Education Policy ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Compulsory Education ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Probabilistic Voting ◽  
Redistributive Taxation ◽  
Laissez Faire

AbstractWe consider an economy with two categories of agents: entrepreneurs and workers. In laissez-faire, the former gain from having their children educated, while the latter, although they may profit from their own education, have no interest in sending their children to school. We first characterise the preferred education policy-cum-redistributive taxation for the two groups, and find that entrepreneurs favour a compulsory education policy while workers prefer a purely redistributive taxation. Each group would like the policy to be entirely financed by the other group. Then, we introduce a political process with probabilistic voting and verify that an equilibrium with both a compulsory education policy and some redistribution may exist in which the workers are constrained but the entrepreneurs, who benefit from hiring educated workers, are not. The redistribution compensates the workers for being constrained by the education policy.

scholarly journals The Acting Class and the Myths of Meritocracy

2022 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Deirdre O'Neill ◽  
Mike Wayne
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
Practice Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Industries ◽  
Sociology Of Culture ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Class Stratification ◽  
The Uk

Our feature documentary The Acting Class (2017) is here contextualised in the context of a critique of the cultural industries as part of the ideology of meritocracy and a resurgence of work around class in the sociology of culture. The Acting Class focuses on the question of class stratification in the UK acting industry. We here review our research on this issue and contextualise it within the scholarly literature on diversity and inequality, the creative industries and the broader reconfigurations of the political economy of British capitalism. We also discuss the importance of the interview in creative practice research as a way of democratising knowledge production and socialising experience.

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