Abstract
This chapter analyzes the processes of mediation which affect or orient what classic policy analysis calls “the implementation” of policy. We show the localized recontextualizations and interpretations of these policies, that is, the mediations, by intermediate actors. We consider first the implementation of performance-based accountability policies from the perspective of their convergence/divergence among French académies and among Quebec school boards. Contrary to what an approach centered on formal institutions prevalent in the two case studies would suggest, we demonstrate that the divergence is strong in the French centralized system, while it is weak in the decentralized system in Quebec. This paradox can be explained by the fact that a number of factors of institutional isomorphism (normative, mimetic, or coercive) were at play in the Quebec situation, while they were weaker or absent in France. Second, we highlight the various logics of mediation present in the two national contexts. Drawing on Malen’s typology (Revisiting policy implementation as a political phenomenon. In: New directions in education policy implementation, SUNY Press, Albany, pp 83–105, 2006), we show that logics of dilution, appropriation, and amplification of national policies are present and result from a number of internal processes within the académies or school boards. In fact, these bodies constitute local educational orders, where mediations are modulated and affected by the context (institutional and market), managers’ ethos, actors’ configuration, and the problematization of educational issues. From these logics and factors of mediation stem different varieties of intermediate governance by results—bureaucratic, reflexive, and regulatory—with different consequences on the local actors.
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- 1.
Indeed, in their study of the degree of convergence of European environmental policies between 1970 and 2000, Katharina Holzinger and Christoph Knill Holzinger and Knill (2005) distinguish between “sigma convergence,” with an analysis concentrating on variations between countries—thus, they measure the degree of similarity in policies between countries that are “peers,” which share certain common characteristics—and “delta convergence” which designates the direction in which these policies converge, the study of which examines the gaps between a national policy and the available public policy options in a given period.
- 2.
Director general (directeur general in French). We will also use the acronym DGA (directeur general adjoint) to designate the deputy DG.
- 3.
- 4.
This is especially the case for the meetings of the Association des Directeurs généraux des Commissions scolaires (ADIGEC [the Association of School Board Directors-General]) which invites researchers to their annual conferences to present research on “good governance,” leadership, and “winning” or “effective” management or teaching practices. (See http://adigecs.qc.ca/congres/.) In addition, various forms of continuous training or professional development of school board administrators or school managers are offered by the universities (see Brassard et al. 2013, for an example).
- 5.
Since 1995, Ontario has developed policies which resulted in a system of accountability aiming to improve results without direct sanctions and seeking to foster team organizational learning (Anderson & Jaafar, 2006; Fullan, 2010; Levin, 2010). Indeed, the policies of the Conservative government (1995–2002) brought about a centralization of the system (a centralization of the curriculum, the development of a centralized evaluation, and the creation of an Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO)) and a loss of autonomy of “school councils” (a loss of the power to raise taxes, a merger of councils, alignment of the curriculum, and greater control over expenses). In addition, teachers were seen as more controlled by the creation of a professional order, imposed from on high. In a conflictual climate, the first Liberal government of McGuinty (2003–2007) then sought to appease the various stakeholders and parties and create consensus, in developing a policy of “positive” accountability, based on greater support (pedagogical and financial) for schools, rather than sanctions (Leithwood et al., 2003). Nevertheless, it does not eliminate curriculum standards, the objectives of improving performance, and the OQRE. It is a matter of encouraging improvement in the targeted areas (numeracy and literacy) by supporting the professional development of teams, with the spread of “good practices” and research results. Nonetheless, the direct intervention of the government and school districts can occur when, in the medium term, schools or districts do not improve their performances, despite the support offered in pedagogical and financial terms. In their typology, Maroy and Voisin (2014) characterize this system as “responsibilization and reflexive accountability” with moderate stakes and strong alignment among accountability tools.
- 6.
Quebec’s Ministry of Education (QME) (2009). La convention de partenariat, outil d’un nouveau mode de gouvernance: guide d’implantation [The Partnership Agreement, Tool of a New Mode of Governance: Implementation Guide]. Quebec: Government of Quebec.
- 7.
The notion of a professional learning community is derived from the work of Lave and Wenger on communities of practice Lave and Wenger (1991). Advanced by the school improvement movement, from the outset, they aim to create professional learning which draws directly from teachers’ classroom experience while decompartmentalizing this experience (with respect to both the relationship with colleagues and that with other forms of knowledge). This practice of “professional development” evolved in North America, specifically, in Ontario, in connection with a statistical monitoring of schools. More recently, in Quebec, Martine Leclerc (2012) developed a “guide” widely distributed to school principals to help them construct and use such a tool, to improve weak performances.
- 8.
This kind of data infrastructure does not seem as much crucial in France. Of course, the ministry of education provides several data infrastructures and algorithms. There is also a recent literature in French policy analysis addressing this topic in other policy sectors (e.g., Nonjon & Marrel, 2015). Nevertheless, in fine, the effective implementation of the steering by results policy in education little depends on this kind of data infrastructure in this country as illustrated in Chap. 7, even in the case of the secondary schools’ value-added indicators which are traditionally widely disseminated and frequently commented in the media.
- 9.
The Société de Gestion du réseau informatique des commissions scolaires (GRICS [Society to Manage School Boards’ Computer Network]) is a private, nonprofit organization, administered by the managers of different school boards since 1985. Its goal is to offer school boards (as well as other clients) services and support in the domain of information technologies. From this perspective, GRICS develops and administers various tools for data collection and data processing analysis for school boards, such as the software Lumix or GPI. GPI (an integrated management software for schools) allows for the computerization of a collection of data on the school, used by various actors from schools and school boards: for example, the management of the student file, student absences, student evaluation and learning, constructing a student timetable, etc. These data may be formatted, framed, and analyzed by Lumix which is an Excel software, programmed and reprogrammable for that purpose.
- 10.
The secondary schools’ budget reform (“réforme du cadre budgétaire et comptable” in French) designates a reform of the budget structure of secondary education the aim of which is to improve transparency and intelligibility of schools’ budgetary choices in order to favor their accountability.
- 11.
Directeur académique des services de l’Education nationale (Académie’s Director of Services for National Education, see Chap. 2).
- 12.
”Visualisation des contrats d’objectifs académiques (Visualization of the académie’s performance contracts).” This application, created by the Western académie’s rectorat, is a tool to formalize school projects, in which principals must introduce their project. This application comes with the modeling of the stages that a school project follows, from its inception to its final adoption, including the phase of discussion with the authorities of the rectorat. Behind this application was the recognition of the very great diversity in the format of school projects and, in particular, the fact that not all were necessarily based on the académie’s project. During interviews, the responsible individuals from the rectorat indicate that, on a number of occasions, the introduction of the VCOA application is also the time for the rectorat’s managers to “harmonize their practices” and organize departmental services to handle the school contracts systematically.
- 13.
The base entitled “Aide au Pilotage et à l’Auto-évaluation des Établissements (Help in Steering and Self-Evaluation of Schools)” was created in 2011, based on secondary schools’ former performance indicators. It brings together, in the form of summary or more detailed tables, four types of indicators that education professionals may consult online via restricted access: indicators allowing for the identification of the school and indicators characterizing the school population (social background and numbers), the personnel and means available, and, finally, the school’s performance (the students’ performance, orientation, and examination results).
- 14.
While it is difficult to conclude in the existence of a mimetic mechanism, nevertheless, we notice that certain regional academic councils serve as examples in the ministerial rhetoric and can be drawn upon for experimentation. This is the case, for example, of the regional academic council of Bordeaux for the RCBC.
- 15.
Fédération syndicale unitaire (Unitary Union Federation).
- 16.
The idea of this slogan that we found in several institutional documents is to stress that working in this académie is a highly formative experience for professionals. To some extent, it is an interesting way to talk positively of the difficulties of this académie and to reverse the stigmata: there are problems, but these problems teach professionals; the académie is not attractive and loses every year many teachers, but it has finally its implicit function within the system to train massively new generations of teachers and so on.
- 17.
In the course of the New Age project, three different recteurs managed this académie, and they each implemented distinct strategies of normalization. William Marois (2009–2013) followed a method which he had already been able to put to work in other académies. He relied on the intermediate officers (principals and territorial inspectors) to relay and legitimize his policy, with a classic top-down administrative approach. He favored public communication, aiming at constantly dedramatizing the events at issue and stressing pedagogical (rather than budgetary) questions. Finally, he relied a great deal on consensus-based measures to legitimize his general policy. Florence Robine (2013–2014), for her part, instead relied on her charisma and on a proximity management system focused on educational issues, while Béatrice Gille (in the role since May 7, 2014) seems to be putting greater emphasis on the systematization of procedures.
- 18.
We talk about “pedagogical biotope” because, as mentioned below, one of the defining features of the Southern académie is its important concentration of organizations thinking about educational issue.
- 19.
One of the first French chairs in the science of education was created in 1884 in the “Faculté de Lettres,” which became the “Institut de Psychologie, Sociologie et Sciences de l’Education” (IPSE) in 1968. It was then attached to Philippe Meirieu’s department of pedagogy in 1988 and became the “Institut des Sciences Pratiques d’Education et de Formation” (ISPEF) in 1994.
- 20.
Aside from Philippe Meirieu, editor in chief of Cahiers pédagogiques (Pedagogical Workbooks) of the “Cercle de Recherche et d’Action pédagogique” (CRAP [Circle of Research and Pedagogical Action]), we can refer to Alain Bouvier, recteur of the académie of Clermont-Ferrand, member of the “Haut conseil de l’éducation” (Higher Educational Council), director of the “Institut de recherche sur l’enseignement des mathématiques” (IREM [Institute for Research on Teaching Mathematics]), of the “Mission académique de formation pour l’Education Nationale” (MAFPEN [Académie’s Training Mission for National Education]) of the Southern académie, and director of the IUFM before P. Meirieu.
- 21.
Symptomatically, the person responsible for statistical analyzes has the title of “direction adjointe à la réussite educative (associate director of educational success).”
- 22.
The Ecoles supérieures du professorat et de l’éducation (Espé [Higher Institutes of the Teaching Profession and Education]) in 2013 replaced the former Instituts de formation des maîtres (IUFM [Teacher Training Institutions]) created in 1989.They assumed their mission to train future teachers and principal educational counselors. Belonging to a university, their interventions cover the territory at the level of the academies. They also take charge of some of the training at the level of académies and, depending on each school’s project, the training of other educational professionals.
- 23.
The performance of the Northern SB in 2009/2010 was rather superior to that of the Quebec public school system (e.g., in terms of the graduation rate, dropouts, and mastery of the French language) and slightly inferior or equivalent to that of the Eastern SB (depending on the year). Nonetheless, the targets set by the ministry for these two school boards were categorized according to the ministry’s fairly high, or indeed even unattainable and quite unrealistic, targets, according to some of our interviewees (from the Northern SB, in particular).
- 24.
They noted their support for an association explicitly challenging the functioning of school boards during the debate on Bill 88 (see Chap. 5).
- 25.
In France children are assigned to schools by place of residence.
- 26.
After our period of investigating the school board, in fact, we learned that the president of the Council of Commissioners had not been reelected in the school elections and that, subsequently, the new council did not reconfirm its confidence in the DG. The latter was then suspended and replaced by a deputy directeur (DGA).
- 27.
The DAPEP (Délégation académique à la prospective et à l’évaluation des performances [Académie’s Department for Forecasting and Evaluation of Performances]).
- 28.
The pedagogical practices concerned must be considered in the larger sense: pedagogical coordination between grades and among teachers of the same discipline; supervision of the relationship to teachers’ programs; organization and management of (students with) “learning difficulties;” and consistency and orientation of evaluation practices (among teachers, between internal and external evaluation, and between years of study).
- 29.
A quote from the chief of staff of the recteur’s cabinet when interviewed.
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Maroy, C. et al. (2019). Mediations. In: Maroy, C., Pons, X. (eds) Accountability Policies in Education. Educational Governance Research, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01285-4_6
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