北京师范大学
教育研究方法讲座系列(2):
教育政策研究
第四讲
教育政策研究的规范基础：政策價值争议的综述
A.The Value Dimension of Policy Studies in Education
a.Stephen Ball indicates that “Policy is clearly a matter of the ‘authoritative allocation of values’; policies are the operational statements of values, ‘statements of prescriptive intent’ (Kogan 1975 p.55). But values do not float free of their social context. We need to ask whose values are validated in policy, and whose are not. Thus, The authoritative allocation of values draws our attention to the centrality of power and control in the concept of policy’ (Prunty 1985 p.135). Policies project images of an ideal society (education policies project definitions of what counts as education).”(Ball, 1990, p. 3; my emphases)
b.Emile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of sociology, asserted in the first decade of the twentieth century, “Each society sets up a certain idea of man, of what he should be, as much from the intellectual point of view as the physical and moral; that this ideal is, to a degree, the same for all the citizens; that beyond a certain point it becomes differentiated according to the particular milieux that every society contains in its structure. It is this ideal, at the same time one and various, that is the focus of education. Its function, then, is to arouse in the child: (1) a certain number of physical and mental states that the society to which he belongs considers should not be lacking in any of its members; (2) certain physical and mental states that the particular social group (caste, class, family, profession) considers, equally, ought to be found among all those who make it up. (Durkheim, 2006/1911, p. 79-80; my emphasis)
b.“The purpose of education, according to Aristotle, is to reproduce in each generation the ‘type of character’ that will sustain the constitution: a particular character for a particular constitution. But there are difficulties here. The members of society are unlikely to agree about what the constitution , in Aristotle’s broad sense, actually is, or what it is becoming, or what it should be. Nor are they likely to agreeabout what character type will best sustain it or how that type might best be produced.” (Walzer, 1983, P. 197)
d.What are the values and ideals that education policy strives to attained?
B.Value Inquiry: An Integral Part of Policy Studies of Education
1.What is value? and How to enquiry it?
a.D.N. Aspin’s formal definition of value: “Conduct, performances, situations, occurrence, states of affairs, production, all these is associated with the ways in which we perceive them, appraise them, judge them, and the way we are inclined towards or away from, attract to or repelled by. We choose them. We prefer them over other things in the same class of comparison. We want to follow their model or to replicate them. We want to emulate them.” (Aspin, 1999, p.125) Simply put, value is the attributes endowed in an object which we find attractive, appreciative, desirable, adorable, pleasurable, etc.
However, these desirable attributes may entail different understanding by different perspective in value inquiry.
b.Hedonistic emotivist’s understanding: Value can be construed simply as physical and/or psychological pleasures and enjoyments which a person experiences from the encounter of a state of affair, an object, a situation, or other persons. (MacIntyre, 2007, 11-12)
c.Pragmatic and instrumental understanding: From the perspective of pragmatism, any state of affairs or objects will be taken as valuable as long as they can bring about desirable outcomes. In short, they are any effective and efficient means, which fit with the practical calculation of instrumental rationality. (Taylor, 1985, Pp.21-23) This kind of value has been commonly called extrinsic value. “An extrinsic value is valuable not for its own sake, but because it facilitates getting or accomplishing something that is valuable for its own sake.” (Ellis, 1998, p.12)
d.Reflective and critical understanding: It refers to the evaluation which goes beyond the criteria of quantitative calculations of outcome.Instead, the state of affair under evaluation is critically assessedto see whether they possess some qualitative distinctions of good or worth of its own. Furthermore, the criteria of evaluation in use may also reflectively relateto the well-beings, mode of life or kind of person that the persons concerned ought to lead. (Taylor, 1985; Dworkin, 1995) This kind of value has commonly called intrinsic value
2.Constituents of critical and “strong” evaluation: Charles Taylor has coined the term “strong evaluation” to kind of value inquiry which aims to substantiate an attribution of an intrinsic value to a state of affair, an object and even a person. He has outlined the numbers of constituents for such a strong-evaluation inquiry. (Taylor, 1985; see also Dworki, 1995)
a.Justificatory with articulacy and depth: The first constituent of a strong evaluation is that the evaluation must be supported with explicitly articulated justifications. Furthermore, these justifications must be grounded on ethical, moral and/or political validities and “depth”.
b.Supported with sense of responsibility and agency: A strong evaluative assertion must also be supported with human practices and actions, i.e. human agencies. Furthermore, those who are in support of the strong evaluative positions are not just paying lip services but are ready to bear the cost or even lost for its fulfillment
c.Embodied with notion of identity: A person who are in support of a strong evaluative stance are most probably hold that value orientation continuously over time, consistently in various circumstances and coherently with the other aspects of his life. In other word, the value orientation becomes part of his own identity.
d.Embedded in community: The last constituents of strong-evaluation inquiry is to look beyond human agency or identity but into human community, which may be defined as a group of human agents who share and identify with a particular value stance. In other words, the strong and intrinsic value in question has been embedded into the lifeworld of a community.
3.Levels of value inquiry: Ronal Dworkin has made a distinction between three levels of value. He suggests that “ethnics studies how people best manage their responsibility to live well, and personal morality what each as an individual owes other people. Political morality, in contrast, studies what we all together owe others as individuals when we act in and on behalf of that artificial collective person.” (Dworkin, 2011, Pp. 327-8) Accordingly, value can be categorized into
a.Ethical value: It refers to desirable traits and features we attributed to human behaviors, actions, and conducts.
b.Moral value: It refers to desirable traits and features attributed to human interactions and relationships among fellows humans.
c.Political values: It refers to the ethical and moral values taken by a given society as of prominent importance that they should be imposed onto all members of that society coercively.
4.Accordingly, value inquiry in public policy studies may be defined as part of the inquiry of political value which focuses on the legitimacy of a public authority (the modern state) in substantiating those prominent values, which are to be imposed coercively onto the civil society which falls under its sovereignty. This line of inquiry falls mainly within the purview of political philosophy and jurisprudence.
C.Policy Discourse of “Quality Education”:In Search of the Intrinsic Value
1.Techno-efficient conception of quality education
a.Quality education outcome: Acquisition of
i.Skills and competences, which can be standardized, quantified, calculable, predictable and controllable
ii.Skills and competences, which are employable, marketable and convertible in money terms
iii.Skills and competences, which are governable
b.Quality learning and teaching processes
i.Students are materials, which can be value-added
ii.Teachers are workers, who can be benchmarked
iii.Teaching and learning are processes, which can be audited in “time-motion” terms
c.Quality school organizations
i.School organizations are structures, which can be standardized and benchmarked
ii.School organizations are processes, which can be audited with standardized indicators
iii.School organizations are cultures, which can be measures with school ethos checklists
d.Assumption of prefect causality in education enterprises in techno-scientific conception of quality in education
2.Empathetic-practical conception of quality in education
a.Quality in education outcome: Attainment of
i.Practical efficacy in interaction with fellow beings
ii.Empathetic understanding in social interactions
iii.Social identification and integration in particular human communities
b.Quality in learning and teaching processes
i.Teachers as professionals working in communal bonds of intellectuality, practicality and trust
ii.Teachers and students are in professional-client relationships, which are bonded by empathetic understanding and trust
iii.Teaching and learning are practical interactions of uncertainty, which can not be lock-stepped into calculable and controllable processes
c.Quality in school organizations
i.Schools as communities of empathetic understanding and caring between the elderly and offspring
ii.Schools as professional communities of intellectuality, practicality and trust
d.Assumption of education as an uncertain practice of Reflective Practitioners (Schon, 1983)
3.Emancipatory conception of quality in education
a.Quality in education outcome: Capacities to
i.To excel beyond the current state of being
ii.To speculate
iii.To better the status quo
b.Quality in learning and teaching processes
i.Teachers are transformative intellectuals working for the betterment of the status quo and the coming generation
ii.Students are potentials to be excel
iii.Teaching and learning are experimental, surprising and risk-taking processes of liberating speculative spirits
c.Quality in school organizations
i.Schools as liberating communities of human potentials
ii.Schools as communities of praxis
d.Assumption of education as risk-taking praxis of speculative or even revolutionary spirits
D.Equality as Prima Facie Value in Education Policy Argumentation
1.Policy search for equality of education: The US experiences
a.Horace Mann, one of the founders of US public school system, advocated three century ago, “Surely nothing but universal education can counterwork this tendency to the domination of capital and servility of labour. If one class possesses all the wealth and the education, while the residue of society is ignorant and poor, it matters not by what name the relation between them may be called: the latter, in fact and in truth, will be the servile dependents and subjects of the former. But, if education be equally diffused, it will draw property after it by the strongest of all attractions. ... Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.” (Horace Mann, 1848)
b.James Coleman’s conceptualization of equality of educational opportunity
i.Equality of access to education
ii.Equality of educational process
iii.Equality of educational result
iv.Equality of educational outcome
2.Douglas Rae’s structural grammar of equality
a.Subject of equality: Equality for whom
i.Individual-regarding equality
-Simple subject
-Segmental subject
ii.Bloc-regarding equality: Bloc-equal subject
b.Domain of equality - Equalizing what?
Do X's domain of allocation (supply) cover Y's domain of account (demand)
i.Straightforward equality
ii.Marginal equality
iii.Global equality
c.Objective of equality
i.Direct equality (of result)
ii.Equality of opportunity
-Means-regarding equal opportunity
-Prospect-regarding equal opportunity
d.Value of equality
i.Lot-regarding equality
ii.Person-regarding equality
-Utility-based equality
-End-based equality
-Need-based equality
e.Relativity of equality
i.Absolute equality
ii.Relative equality
2.Application of Rae’s structural grammar equality on education
a.Classification of students
i.Simple individual equality: Universal, free and compulsory education
ii.Block-regarding equality: Special education
iii.Segment-regarding equality: Positive-discrimination education for racial minorities, the socioeconomic disadvantaged and female
b.Distribution of educational resources
i.Marginal equality: 9-year compulsory education
ii.Global equality: Positive discrimination education
c.Equality of educational opportunity rather result
i.Means-regarding equality of educational opportunity
-Equality of educational access
-Equality of education process
ii.Prospect-regarding equality of educational opportunity
-Equality of education output
-Equality of education outcome
d.Equality of educational value
i.Lot-regarding equality of education: Principle of respect, compulsory education common-school and common-curriculum policies
ii.Personal-regarding equality of education:
-Utility-based personal-regarding equality of education
-End-based personal-regarding equality of education
-Need-based personal-regarding equality of education
-Principle of praise and fair educational sifting and selection
e.Relativity of equality
-Absolute educational equality
-Relative educational equality
E.Justice as Intrinsic Value in Policy of Distribution in Education
1.Aristotle's formal definition of justice (Benn and Peters, 1959, Pp.108-114)
Treating equal equally or treating unequal unequally is just.
Treating unequal equally or treating unequal equally is unjust.
Equal Treatment / Unequal treatmentEqual Attribute / Just / Unjust
Unequal Attribute / Unjust / Just
2.John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice
a.Justice as fairness:The meaning of fairness that Rawls reckons is as follows:
“Fundamental to justice is the concept of fairness which relates to right dealing between persons who are cooperating with or competing against one another, as when one speak of fair games, fair competition, and fair bargains. The question of fairness arises when free persons, who have no authority over one another, are engaging in a joint activity and among themselves settling or acknowledging the rules which define it and which determine the respective shares in its benefits and burdens. A practice will strike the parties as fair if none feels that, by participating in it, they or any of the others are taken advantage of, or forced to give in to claims which they do not regard as legitimate. This implies that each has a conception of legitimate claims which he thinks it reasonable for others as well as himself to acknowledge. …A practice is just or fair, then, when it satisfies the principles which those who participate in it could propose to one another for mutual acceptance under aforementioned circumstances.” (Rawls, 1999[1958], p. 59)
b.Two principles of justice: Rawls stipulates that “justice is the first virtue of social institution” (P.3) and “the primacy of justice” over other social values. Hence, the basic structure of a just society is to be constituted in accordance with “the two principles of justice”.
i.“First Principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with similar system of liberty for all.
ii.“Second Principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both
-to the greatest benefits of the least advantaged, …and
-attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunities.” (Rawls, 1971, p. 302)
c.Applications of the principles: “These principles primarily apply …to the basic structure of society. They are to govern the assignment of rights and duties and to regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages….These principles presuppose that the social structure can be divided into two more or less distinct parts.” (Rawls, 1871, p. 61),
i.The First Principle applies to those distinct “aspects of the social system that define and secure the equal liberties of citizenship. …The basic liberties of citizens are, roughly speaking, political liberty (rihght to vote and to be eligible for public office) together with freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of person along with right to hold (personal) property; freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law. These liberties are all required to be equal…, since citizens of just society are to have the same basic rights.” (p.61)
ii.The Second Principle applies to those aspects of social system “that specify and establish social and economic inequalities.” More specifically, it “applies…to the distribution of income and wealth and to the design of organizations that make use of differences in authority and responsibility, or chains of command.” (p. 61)
d.Interpretation of the second principle
i.Rawls qualifies that the two constituent phrases in the Second Principle, namely to “everyone’s advantage” and “equally open to all” need further interpretation.
ii.Rawls interprets the two phrases as follows (Rawls, 1971, p. 65)
“Equally open” / “Everyone’s advantage”Principle of efficiency / Difference principle
Equality as careers open to talent / System of Natural Liberty / Natural Aristocracy
Equality as equality of fair opportunity / Liberty Equality / Democratic Equality
e.Priority and lexical orders between principles of justice
i.The priority of liberty: The First Principle, namely the principle of liberty) has lexical priority over the Second Principle: This ordering means that a departure from the institutions of equal liberty required by the first principle cannot be justified by, or compensated for, by greater social and economic advantages.” (p. 61)
ii.The priority of democratic equality over the other three systems, in other words, the priority of difference principle and equality as equality of fair opportunity over principle of efficiency and equality as careers open to talent.
3.Ronald Dworkin’s theory of equality of resource:
Dworkin, a prominent figure in the field of jurisprudence and political philosophy, has criticizes that Rawls has based his theory of justice solely on the distributive result of primary goods (i.e. the welfare) among people. This is especially true in the Second Principle of Justice, which stipulates that inequality of primary goods should only be distributed unequally to the benefits of the least advantaged. Dworkin points out that Rawls has failed to address the causes contributing to the state of least advantaged and least well-off in which people found themselves.
a.Types of the least well-off: Dworkin has made three distinctive causes of the least well-off.
i. People are least well-off because of unequal share of natural endowments, such as talent, heath, physical ability, etc. Dworkin characterizes them as personal resources.
ii.People are least well-off because of unequal share of socioeconomic endowments, such as socioeconomic backgrounds, cultural-linguistic background, or even racial and/or ethnical backgrounds, which are disadvantageous in a given society. Dworkin called them impersonal resources.
iii.Given equal shares in resources, people may end up being least well-off because of costly or even unwise choice, such as gambling or wasteful life-styles; or voluntary choice, such as religious belief.
b.Injustice in the Second Principle: Accordingly, Dworkin underlines that Rawls’ Second Principle may have unfairly provided compensation to people even though they appear to belong to the least well-off.