Analysis of Educational Policies

Code:

DE203

Acronym:

APE

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Social Studies/Public Policies

Instance: 2014/2015 - 1S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Education Sciences
Course/CS Responsible:	Master Degree in Educational Sciences

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
MCED	8	Official Curricular Structure	1	-	6	-

Teaching language

Portuguese

Objectives

The curricular unit Education Policy Analisys (EPA) aims at providing students with competences to analyse texts, discourses and political processes in education, by identifying the action of the diverse agents in education and their consequences. The Curricular Unit EPA intends to broaden the analysis of the nature of political discourses and practices and to identify their social and educational effects. Having in mind the profile of graduates aimed at, this latter dimension pretends to develop individual, social and professional reflexivity and, by doing so, to create the conditions for the exercise of the ‘sociological imagination’, i.e., the competence to build and to propose alternatives.

Objectives:
- To identify the discursive matrixes of educational discourses
- To know theories and methodologies in policy studies in education.
- To analyse educational policy texts.
- To relate the mandates addressed to education at the global, national and local levels.
- To analyse the reconfiguration of public institutions, mainly education institutions.

Learning outcomes and competences

The curricular unit Education Policy Analisys (EPA) aims at providing students with competences to analyse texts, discourses and political processes in education, by identifying the action of the diverse agents in education and their consequences. The Curricular Unit EPA intends to broaden the analysis of the nature of political discourses and practices and to identify their social and educational effects. Having in mind the profile of graduates aimed at, this latter dimension pretends to develop individual, social and professional reflexivity and, by doing so, to create the conditions for the exercise of the ‘sociological imagination’, i.e., the competence to build and to propose alternatives. 

Competencies: 
- Identification of the theoretical and methodological implications of the approaches for the policy analysis. 
- Identification of the political ‘themes’ in educational policies. 
- Categorization of the arguments driven by schools of political thought. 

Learning outcomes: 
- Performing analyse educational policies. 

Working method

Presencial

Program

I. Policy as discourse and text
i. Structuralist and post-structuralist perspectives: language, text, discourse and social reality.
ii The reconfiguration of social, public and educational policies in an era of transition.

II. Theories and methods for education policies study
i. Systems theory; pluralism; Marxism; neoliberalism. The project of social sciences.
ii. Discourse analysis (E. Laclau and C. Mouffe ; N. Fairclough), education policy analysis (J. Codd) and the ‘policy cycle’ (Ball e Bowe).

III. The ‘themes’ of educational policies
i. Classical liberalism (human nature, individualism, propriety and education)
ii. Social-democratic liberalism (the Keynesian consensus about Welfare state and education).
iii. Neoliberalism (the market regulation) - The ‘New Right’ and neoliberalism.
- The Austrian school and the Chicago School (political and methodological individualism).
- Neoliberalism (the Public Choice Theory and the Theory of Agency) and the reconfiguration of educational institutions.

IV. State and society in Portugal – educational policies and education
i. Portugal semi-peripheral position in the world-system and the specificities of Portuguese state.
ii. Educational policies and the development of Portuguese educational system
iii. The reconfiguration of the educational mandate in the context of the knowledge and economy of knowledge.

Mandatory literature

Ball, Stephen; Global Education Inc. - New policies networks and neo-liberal imaginary, Routledge, 2012
Magalhães António M.; A^escola para todos e a excelência académica
Olsen Mark; Education policy. ISBN: 0-7619-7470-9
Jorgensen Marianne; Discourse analysis. ISBN: 0-7619-7112-2
RIZVI, F., LINGARD, B.; Globalizing Education Policy, Routledge, 2010
Stoer, S. e Magalhães, António M.; A Diferença Somos Nós- A gestão da mudança social e as políticas educativas e sociais, Edições Afrontamento, 2005

Complementary Bibliography

Antunes, Fátima e Sá, Virgínio; Públicos Escolares e Regulação da Educação- lutas concorrenciais na arena educativa, Fundação Manuel Leão, 2010
March, David and Stoker, Gerry; Theory and Methods in Political Science, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Teaching methods and learning activities

Presentations by the teacher, debate, presentations by the sudents. Individual and team work.

keywords

Social sciences > Political sciences > Public policy
Social sciences > Political sciences > Policy studies
Social sciences > Educational sciences

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation with final exam

Assessment Components

designation	Weight (%)
Participação presencial	25,00
Trabalho escrito	75,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

designation	Time (hours)
Elaboração de projeto	20,00
Estudo autónomo	45,00
Frequência das aulas	33,00
Trabalho de campo	8,00
Trabalho de investigação	34,00
Trabalho laboratorial	22,00
Total:	162,00

Eligibility for exams

The students must attend at least 75% of the sessions.

Calculation formula of final grade

The process will develop as follows:

i. Participation in the tasks distributed in each session
ii. Writing a 3000 paper (references included) with the following features:

- Identification of a problematic (theoretical introduction/ literature review)
- Identification and justification of a methodology for policy analysis
- analysis of a policy or a corpus of policy texts
- discussion of the results and conclusion
- references

The final mark of the curricular unit is expressed in a 0-20 scale. The implication of the students in the task i. will be evaluated with a maximum of 25% of the 0-20 scale. The paper referred to in ii. will be evaluated with a maximum of 75% of the 0-20 scale.
The final mark is the result of the sum of the two components of the process. The tasks i. without the final paper will not be evaluated. In this situation, students can use the extra assessment forms.

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

The students legally authorised to not attending the sessions will deliver, besides the paper referred to above, two reports on the bibliography about theme 1 and another on about theme 2.

Classification improvement

Those students whishing to improve their evaluation or those who could not meet the regular procedures can (re)write the paper or be submitted to an oral examination about it.