Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (IF): International influences in the processes of educational policy-making

The work of the established Research Group on Supranational Education Policy [UAM / PR020] (known by the acronym GIPES in Spanish), is focused on an emergent field of educational research of great relevance within the current international context: supranational education policies and their relationship with national processes of policy development. In this context, specific contents of policies related to several topics are addressed: external evaluations of learning, professional teaching development, higher education, student mobility, among others. The supranational policies and processes for producing them constitute the central area of study, along with the mechanisms by which these policies impact the educational policies that national states design and develop.

GIPES is interests to progress in research about international influences in the processes of educational policy-making: the role of international-supranational actors, and the devices-tools and procedures within the new post-bureaucratic forms of education governance and their effects. In this sense, pressure coming from New Public Management (NPM) trends raises questions and challenges for local education policies and for contextualisation and recontextualisation processes of NPM international trends. The standardizing pressure made by various international and local actors, most notably by international organizations, poses a variety of ethical, epistemological and technical dilemmas that overlook four decades of research about this standardizing rationality and about the convergence theories and its impact. In this respect, the limits of this rationality for education policies, which have already been revealed by a wide range of works some decades ago, are still being confirmed by contemporary works, some of them linked to GIPES academic production.

International influences in policymaking processes have been largely tackled by the academia, establishing how the so-called Globally Structured Educational Agenda takes shape, the mechanisms by which it affects or influences national policymaking processes, especially in the field of education through mechanisms such as PISA. Research in this area has also shown the way by which international organisations and other actors influence over national policies.

It is particularly relevant to generate renovated empirical inquiries related to the new forms of governance. This line of research aims to be a socially relevant contribution to contemporary debates on the subject and to policy-making processes.

The host group (GIPES), led by Dr. Javier Valle and Dr. Héctor Monarca at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid: http://www.gipes-uam.com/

Candidates should have a PhD related to Social Sciences, with training and research experience in educational policy (essential), good English level (spoken and written) and being keen on collaborating within an interdisciplinary team.

Documents to be Submitted to Héctor Monarca (hector.monarca@uam.es): CV of the last 5 years [only: 1- academic training, 2-publications and 3-research]