ABSTRACT

This paper traces the complexities, contingencies and tensions involved in the creation of a new, ‘scientific’ assessment in what we call Prefecture A in Japan. We start with a thick, granular description of the complicated and ongoing narrative of a new policy emergence. This descriptive account serves as a precursor to our application of an Actor Network Theory (ANT) approach, particularly the concepts of assemblage and assembling, while at the same time eschewing its depoliticising effect of a flat ontology. Our account details that much work and strategising went into achieving the new assessment but also into holding it in place. This included, strategising inside and across the Prefecture, with the National Ministry, with edu-businesses that had psychometric expertise, with politicians and the board of education and with the OECD and the Director of its Education and Skills Directorate. The analysis illustrates the complex, multi-directional and topological cartographies of power that now work in contemporary education policy processes. As such, we suggest a way to transcend the binary of methodological nationalism and methodological globalism evident in much policy sociology in education work.

摘要

本文追溯了在我们称之为日本A州的“科学”评估中创建新评估所涉及的复杂性，突发事件和紧张局势。我们从对新政策出现的复杂且持续的叙述的粗略，细致的描述开始。此描述性帐户是我们应用Actor网络理论（ANT）方法的先驱，尤其是组装和组装的概念，同时避免了平面本体的去政治化作用。我们的账目详细说明了在完成新评估以及将其落实到位方面需要进行大量的工作和制定策略。其中包括与县内政部一起制定战略计划，并与拥有心理测量专业知识的教育企业合作，与政治家和教育委员会，以及经合组织及其教育和技能局局长。该分析说明了目前在当代教育政策流程中起作用的复杂，多方向和拓扑的功率制图。因此，我们提出了一种超越方法论民族主义和方法论全球主义二元性的方法，这种方法在教育工作中的许多政策社会学中都是显而易见的。