This document discusses the author's research on the emerging European policy space in education over their career. It describes how the author's understanding of Europe and the European Union developed through experiences in teacher education networks, research projects, and reading theorists. The author's work has examined how this policy space is constructed through networks, discourses, standards, data, and the work of experts. Currently, there is a tension between the gradual emergence of a standardized commensurable European education policy space, and the need for a collective project that produces new meanings and transformations.

1. M Y L I F E A N D T H E E U R O P E A N P O L I C Y S P A C E
I N E D U C A T I O N
A Political Sociology of the European Policy Space in
Education

2.  How do we think about Europe, about the European Union, about the field of European
education and about ourselves within it?
 What do we imagine when we imagine Europe and the European Union (EU)? To what extent
is our understanding of the EU – of its development, its policies and its working processes –
shaped by unacknowledged assumptions about what Europe really is?
 As Hall argues, acknowledging our ontology means acknowledging the fundamental
assumptions we hold about the world and especially its causal relationships:
 ‘an ontology consists of premises about the deep causal structures of the world from
which analysis begins and without which theories about the social world would not make
sense’ (Hall: 2003: 374).
 Working on ontological questions is a fundamental step in research and especially in our
area of work

3.  In the field of European education research, I think the question of ontology is also
crucial for we are under theorized and weak as an area within social science
 Combine this with the fact that ‘education’ was not viewed as a EU issue – it was
national, a subsidiary area of policy
 The lack of dominant disciplinary frames of explanation in this area and its
‘hidden’ nature was also an opportunity. I have taken from the sociology and
geography of science, cultural history, contemporary anthropology, and so on, the
tools I have needed to understand the problems I wished to study.

4. My assumptions, based on politics and practice, in the English context
 Since the 1970s, my research focus was on teachers, and my interest was on the governing of
education systems.
 For the next twenty years, I researched and wrote about the politics and sociology of work
 the contested control of teaching, organizing teachers, modes of control [including the
colonial governing mode of indirect control], the managed social construction of the teacher,
the politics of work, the labour process of teaching, the use of the discourse of
professionalism, post Fordism
 My interest in power, resistance, governing systems, and control was about politics but my focus
was the sociology and socio-historical study of teaching and the education system

5. By the early 90s, my landscape of study was changing fast –
 the market was beginning to replace the government in controlling the public, and the systems of
education were reshaped. I began writing about
 the End of the Modern in teaching, the disordering effects of the market, the redesign of work and
schools, the puzzle of the public etc
 moved to Scotland in 2000 and realised that much of my work on teachers and governing did not apply
in Scotland – it was a different system of education and a different politics of education;
 In the late 90s, I joined the Council of the new European Educational Research Association and soon
became its Secretary General
 I began to recognise the methodological nationalism in which I existed and researched

6. Arriving at the EERA Council - the key question became ‘what does it mean to be a European
association in education? In other words, how did we imagine Europe, the EU, a cross border
association, education ? What assumptions did we have about Europe and the EU ?
 It was difficult to start – the literature on the EU was concerned with trade, economy and law,
and not at all concerned with the field of education.
 This soon appeared to be an advantage – if the landscape was not defined, then there was an
obligation to begin to visualize it, to connect elements together and begin interpretations.
 what’s out there to know about [this Europe and its Union]?’ (Hay, 2006:85]
 underlying each and every image of Europe are core assumptions about “what exists to be
known” (Hay 2006: 83) about Europe and the EU.

7. Building an approach
experiences – within a Thematic Network for Teacher Education in Europe; inside PERINE
[of European information librarians]; at the European SchoolNet; working the EERA Council
and ECER and Policy Network; in several major EU projects [EGSIE, Knowledge and Policy,
Fabricating Quality in European Education; Governing by Inspection];
reading – Manuel Castells, Zaki Laidi, Allan Pred, Cris Shore, Alain Desrosières etc
incidents –
Cupertino
Rue de la Loi
European Schoolnet
Affinity
Collegial Technicality

8. Areas of Research
in chronological order
 ‘Borderless Education: imagining a European education space in a time of brands and networks’
 ‘Constructing a European Policy Space in Educational Governance: the Role of Transnational Policy
Actors’
 The ‘Usefulness’ of Learning: the struggle over governance, meaning and the European education space
 Soft Governance and the Learning Spaces of Europe
 Governing by Association in Europe? the problems of the unstable policy network
 ‘A Short History of Europeanizing Education: the new political work of calculating the future’,
 Standardizing the European Education Policy Space
 ‘Seeing like a State: the contemporary governing of education in England’
 ‘The Understories of European education: the contemporary life of experts and professionals’
 Governing Education Systems by Shaping Data: from the past to the present, from national to international
perspectives
 ‘Governing by Inspection? European Inspectorates and the creation of a European Education Policy Space.

9. Governing in the European Policy Space in Education
 Networks, Discourses
 Borderless and Spatial
 Seeing like the State – Data
 Standardizing the Policy Space
 Understories – experts, researchers and professionals
 Knowledge – state, EU and private

10. Summary
extract
[We see] Europe/EU not as an object, but as a simultaneously real and imagined
space of action which exists only to the extent that Europeans and others act in
and on it. This Europe is conceptualized as constantly being made in particular
spaces, through specific actor struggles, whose interconnections are often ill-
defined.
We ask how do those concerned with building Europe, with extending and
elaborating the EU, think of where they are and what they are doing?

11. Governing
Currently, there is a tension in the work on the policy space --
 On the one hand, there is gradual emergence of Europe [in education] as a commensurable
policy space, with a range of data sets, research inputs and performance measures. In
addition, there is an accumulation of standards, produced by a range of institutions, which
are ordering this space. In Laidi’s terms, this produces Europe as a form of co-construction
through norms which circumvent sovereignty and manage unpredictability
 On the other hand, soft governance is no substitute for a collective project, the production of
meaning and transformation

12.  Production of alternative outlooks
free of direct state compliance measures, it acts as an invitational space, creating visions of new landscapes in
education
 Production of new discursive constructions of ‘Europe and education’
attracting interest and possibility by the discourse of shared or new communal spaces of useful work
 Open source method of construction
participants are free to use and develop the ideas expressed, to share and exchange them, to construct leading
edge versions, and to effect consolidation. Its meanings must be capable of shifting and contain ambiguity
 Systemless systems
hidden structures exist within the space, easing and shaping the production of European education – they are
networks [of different levels, scale and knowledge capacities]; funded programmes, projects, sponsored tasks;
communication nets and associations
 Flexible constructors
intermittent and virtual mobilities hide contractual relations between constructors, networks and organizations.
Intensity of involvement and temporal relations obscure sequences of engagement
 Data generation
the space is observed and compared by data flow. This allows the space to be envisaged, shaped and steered. New
governable policy areas and subjects come into being and into grasp.
Nevertheless, there is a growing intellectual homeland in education, with a freedom of
attraction and assembly and the generation of meaning - and with a growing sense of an area
of study and the tools that can be used

13.  Ontology:
power, resistance, governing systems, and control
 how did we imagine Europe – what is there to know?
“ I am not sure that I imagined Europe and it took me sometime to find
perspective – first, in association; second, by reading useful texts and
arguments; thirdly, by discussion with good colleagues in projects. I began to
imagine a constant, complex and sophisticated construction”.
 I have only had one research question – what is going in here,
how does it work?
“I seem to be answering – soft governance, and then data/ standards. I need to
answer experts/ knowledge”