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The Multiple Worlds of Expertise

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The Changing Epistemic Governance of European Education

Part of the book series: Educational Governance Research ((EGTU,volume 3))

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Abstract

‘The Multiple Worlds of Expertise’ describes different modalities of expertise the academic work is required to produce through a utilitarian and short-term knowledge for decision-making. From a position of insider–researcher, different modes of policy learning linking experts and policymakers have been studied. Far from being a direct and linear process, expertise provided by academics in different European networks is defined through multiple interactions, while knowledge production is related to different socialising experiences. Types of encounters between expertise and policy have different features, while expert content itself influences more or less decision-making. However, while the worlds of expertise are plural, they produce and legitimise sciences of government which compete with knowledge produced by the academic world, while other institutions like think tanks and agencies become more influent.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Shaping narratives begun during the 1970s–1980s when US neoconservatives created their own think tanks to lead the intellectual fight against the principles of political liberalism and the Welfare State (Smith 1991). The development of conservative think tanks is explained by the dissemination of liberal ideas by other think tanks such as the Brookings Institution, the RAND Corporation or the Institute for Policy Studies. The Brookings and RAND Corporation are typical institutions which convey technocratic thought and Keynesian politics of the Johnson and Kennedy administrations (Smith 1991; Ricci 1993). They were favourable to the development of social sciences and funded an important research programme to support the Great Society project and the war against poverty. The Institute for Policy Studies had a key role in the creation of ideas of the New Left with its defence of liberal values and a pluralistic approach to social issues. The conservatives’ reaction arose from their fear that the ‘establishment’ would weaken the ideals of American society and that social sciences would disseminate a relativist thought undermining the US people’s attachment to tradition. The creation of these institutions was a means of becoming an intellectual force capable of producing solid criticism of political liberalism and its allies. Through the recruitment of researchers, the dissemination of political recommendations and access to politicians, a complex network of think tanks and neoconservative foundations were built to disseminate ideas which became part of the political agenda in education after the publication of the report A Nation at Risk (Spring 2005).

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  1. Research Unit CNRS SAGE, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

    Romuald Normand

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Normand, R. (2016). The Multiple Worlds of Expertise. In: The Changing Epistemic Governance of European Education. Educational Governance Research, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31776-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31776-2_5

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