Unit 2 - Comparative educational policies (organisation and professions, tools, and evaluation)

Axis 2 of RT Education is designed to encourage French researchers to think about education policy issues in the broadest sense, wherever possible in dialogue with foreign colleagues.

It is particularly characterised by four elements:

1. An open, multidisciplinary approach to the analysis of education policies. This analysis is not limited to certain disciplines or specialities (e.g. policy analysis in political science), or to certain actors (primacy often given to political actors), or to certain scales of analysis (privilege often given to national policies), or even to certain obvious manifestations of these policies (formalised policy programmes). On the contrary, as the rather long title of the theme suggests, the aim is to favour multi-level approaches, to examine the evolution of both organisations and professions, and to take an interest in the dynamics of both instrumentation and evaluation, always from a multi or even interdisciplinary perspective. Nearly 120 researchers have so far expressed an interest in the work being carried out under Axis 2, from some fifteen different disciplines.

2. The importance of a comparative approach to education systems (organisation, results, reforms implemented), and in particular of including the European dimension whenever relevant. This comparative approach gives an important place to reflection on existing or future comparative tools (particularly statistics), but not only: it also remains open to more macro or qualitative approaches to education policies or the specific measures or programmes that make them up, implemented in different countries or education systems. Finally, it should be noted that while international comparisons are very important, they do not exhaust the activities of this theme, which also intends to consider cross-sectoral and/or intertemporal comparisons.

3. A dialectical approach to the relationships between objects and contexts. The work carried out within Axis 2 is indeed sensitive to the constant back-and-forth between an endogenous, and/or substantial and/or micro approach to the research objects studied, and an exogenous, and/or contextual and/or macro approach to them. This dialectic approach more often requires an interdisciplinary approach, or at least a fertile dialogue between several research specialities.

4. Further reflection on the place of research in public debate on education. The politicisation of educational issues (around secularism or citizenship, for example) and their frequent simplification in the public debate not only merit the development and deepening of research work specifically devoted to this point, work which the axis wishes to promote, but also professional reflection within the RT, which the work of axis 2 could both feed into and (help to) equip.

Webinars have already been held with this in mind, each attracting around fifty participants (e.g. on the political and methodological issues of measurement in education or the effects of the ‘inclusive turn’ on teachers’ professional practices in several countries).

Three activities in particular are envisaged within the framework of the new RT, subject to the choices made collectively within the axis:

• An annual seminar is currently being planned for 2025. It will focus on one of the following themes: staff management policies (not just teaching staff), reforms and instruments for implementing reforms, cross-sector partnerships, involvement of associations and governance, or dematerialisation, algorithmisation and distance management.
• Structuring the response to a call for proposals on issues of trust and mistrust in schools.
• Active participation in a summer school on the challenges of comparison in education.