Analyzing the literature on education governance over the last 71 years.
| Autor | Oliveira, Anderson Soares Furtado |
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Introduction
In 2015 the United Nations (UN) established the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG No. 4 (or SDG4) stands out because of its ambitious purpose: to ensure equitable, quality inclusive education and lifelong learning opportunities for all (UN, 2017b). The goals have not been reached yet for nearly any of the indicators within the SDG4 (UN, 2017a), which entails that data remain to be produced or no international standard has been defined for measuring the various constructs of quality education. Part of the challenges ahead includes implementing governance structures in the education system (Maller & Skedsmo, 2015; Vidovich & Currie, 2011; Woelert & Millar, 2013).
In Brazil the main legal frameworks guaranteeing access to education are 1) the Constitution (Constituicao da, 1988), 2) the Guidelines and Frameworks for National Education (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educacao Nacional, 1996--Act No. 9,394, as of 1996) and 3) the National Education Plan (Nacional de Educacao, 2014--Act No. 13,005, as of 2014). Brazil has advanced toward universal access to education, but the high rates of failure, dropout and absenteeism and the students' low performance in cognitive assessments have been clear indicators of quality problems in the Brazilian education system (Soares, 2005).
According to the UNEducational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] (2015) and to Sayed and Ahmed (2015), the quality of education is directly related to a country's development. Incidentally, the World Bank (1992) has stressed the importance of improving social conditions, especially through health and basic education, to achieve long-lasting sustainable, equitable growth.
In fact, guaranteeing access to quality education has gained relevance in the international education agenda (UNESCO, 2015; Sayed & Ahmed, 2015). However, few Brazilian studies have focused on education governance, including Fernandes and Rodrigues (2017), Robertson (2013), Robertson and Verger (2012), Dale (2010) and Amos (2010). In contrast, several studies have been carried out in other countries, including: Norway (Moller & Skedsmo, 2015; Magalhaes, Veiga, Ribeiro, Sousa, & Santiago, 2013), Sweden (Bunar, 2011), Armenia (Dobbins & Khachatryan, 2015), Germany (Schiersmann, 2014; Magalhaes et at., 2013), Switzerland (Schiersmann, 2014; Magalhaes et at., 2013), England, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal (Magalhaes et at., 2013), the United States (Vidovich & Currie, 2011), Hong Kong (Ng, 2013) and Australia (Woelert & Millar, 2013; Vidovich & Currie, 2011). Such studies have shown the relevance of education governance for quality education. As a matter of fact, successful cases of education governance, especially in Australia, Norway and Sweden, have been widely addressed and cited in scientific research.
This article aims to identify the main studies on education governance in Brazilian and international scientific literature, as the first step towards designing a measurement instrument for assessing governance in Brazilian basic education. It builds on the assumption that such an instrument requires a clear definition of the fundamental dimensions of the education governance process (see Pasquali, 2009).
To this end, this study used the Governance Analytical Framework (GAF), which targets governance processes, but lacks application in the field of education (Hufty, 2011). This model comprises five dimensions of analysis, namely: problems, social norms, actors, nodal points and processes (Hufty, 2011) (see section 2.2).
The study used bibliographic research techniques to identify a consistent theoretical framework and characterize education governance. Bibliometric analysis (Pritchett, 2001) was conducted to identify the main topics and scientific output.
This article is organized into five sections, starting with this introduction. Section 2 presents the governance construct and dimensions of GAF. Section 3 describes the methods, which were built on Zupic and Cater (2015) and Pritchard (1969). Section 4 reports on the analysis of keywords, journals and the most relevant authors and articles; it also provides the fundamentals of the GAF-based dimensions of the education governance process (subsection 4.5). Section 5 contains the final remarks.
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Review of the literature
2.1 The governance construct
Levi-Faur (2012) state, that the term "governance" has been approached in at least four different ways in the literature (namely, as a structure, a process, a mechanism or a strategy), with the predominance of its understanding as a structure. Levi-Faur (2012) defines governance as a system of rules or institutionalized modes of social coordination, with this social coordination taking place at different governance levels and through different topologies of governance (Coward, 2010). The expression "education governance" was coined by Amos (2010) to refer to the set of measures aimed to ensure education quality in schools.
Education governance is an incipient field of study (Coward, 2010). Few attempts have been made to define this expression, but several authors point to its similarities with health governance, especially regarding the interdependent relationships between areas such as institutional governance, organizational development and risk management. Most of the literature on the topic is related to education systems or higher education institutions. Most studies originate from the United States and address elementary and middle schools or the management of state and local education systems. Besides, most studies indicate that satisfactory education standards and quality assurance processes stem from good education governance (see Coward, 2010, for further details).
A similar idea is defended by Sarrico, Veiga and Amaral (2013), who sought to describe governance in Portuguese higher education institutions and how governance arrangements impact the mechanisms of quality and quality assurance in higher education. Their major results show that the national and institutional characteristics of governance and management can influence the implementation of quality policies and procedures and, eventually, the improvement of quality.
The expression "multi-level governance" was first used in 1992 to describe the multi-level decision-making approach of the European Union's cohesion policy, which aimed to converge supranational, national, regional and local actors (Sbragia, 1992; Hooghe, 1996; Liesbet & Gary, 2003; Bache, 2012). Multi-level governance addresses the increasingly complex relationships between actors from the public, private and voluntary sectors, organized at different territorial levels (George, 2004). Furthermore, it raises questions about the efficiency and accountability of contemporary decision-making at public level.
Considering the GAF, this article builds on the concept of "governance" as posited by Hufty (2011). It concerns social interactions, formal and informal collective decision-making processes and the elaboration of norms of social control in matters of public interest. It also considers the term "governance" as applicable in both public and private sectors (Rhodes, 2007).
2.2 Governance analytical framework (OAF)
Hufty (2011) proposes five GAF dimensions, namely: problems, social norms, actors, nodal points and processes. The latter (i.e. processes) are applied by researchers from different fields to analyze governance processes, mainly in public health, product chains, post-conflict water supply, biodiversity conservation, discourse analysis and deforestation.
Problems is a dimension related to the issues involved in a given situation. As this is a social construction, problems are characterized by social actors according to their social status and habitus (Bourdieu, 1993). More specifically, each actor seeks to ensure that their standpoint prevail building on 1) the nature of the problem and 2) the rules of the game for the negotiation process (Hufty, 2011). In the present study, the collective problems proposed by Hufty (2011) refer to a community's education demands to be prioritized and solved through the governance process.
Social norms is a dimension based on values or beliefs. It includes the "rules of the game" and the norms that underlie them (meta-governance) to guide and sanction the actions of individuals or groups within a society's spaces of power (Hufty, 2011). Norms involve both prescription (i.e. what should or should not be done) and sanction, which can be either 1) positive, reinforcing behavior, or 2) negative, restricting behavior (Hufty, 2011).
Actors, the focus of GAF, is a dimension related to individuals or groups of individuals whose behaviors are guided by their nature, power, interests, ideas, and history (Hufty, 2011). It is related to the quality of representation of interested parties impacted by the governance-derived decision-making. Cunha, Almeida, Faria and Ribeiro (2011) address a multidimensional strategy for assessing policy councils and suggest an approach involving the analysis of legitimacy, participatory dynamics and exogenous factors. An important aspect of this dimension is the technical and political training of board members for the full exercise of their functions (Tatagiba, 2002). It requires investigating the plurality of representational segments, criteria for choosing representatives, composition of boards and equal status and qualification of members.
Nodal points are the places of interaction (physical or virtual) between actors in the governance process (Hufty, 2011). A board, such as the state and municipal boards of education, is one of the main spaces for different actors to participate and express their opinions (Tatagiba, 2005), thus influencing the decision-making process. It involves, for instance, analyzing individual service channels for citizens, with individual participation mechanisms being those devices that allow citizens to express...
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