University of Tampere Best Dissertation Award 2022 - Society

Crónica do Investigador |  Íris Santos is SPOT Nordic's current representative in Finland. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tampere. Her doctoral research, carried out jointly between the University of Tampere and the University of Lisbon, analysed the dynamics emerging from the interactions between global, national and local actors in education policy-making in Portugal. Her thesis entitled Externalisations in the Portuguese Parliament and print media: A complexity approach to education policymaking processes has just been awarded the prize for the best dissertation of the year 2022 at the University of Tampere, in the area of 'Society'. The prize is awarded by the Tampere City Science Fund in conjunction with the University of Tampere.

My research interests concern educational policy-making, policy transfer and the dynamics of the global-local network of actors involved in educational governance. My research starts from an onto-epistemological positionality of the complexity sciences and combines theories of political science and comparative education to analyse the use of international elements for the (de-)legitimization of arguments and proposals in discussions centered on Portuguese education policy. The period considered for analysis was 2001 - 2018.

The dissertation is made up of a set of articles (access at the end of the article) in scientific and international journals in the field of education, as well as an independent work which aggregates and re-analyses the various analyses made in the articles published in a single publication.

The work presents an analysis of the dynamics emerging from the interactions between global, national and local actors in political processes in Portugal. More specifically, the dissertation analyses the way in which references are made (i.e. the phenomenon of externalisation) to international organisations (e.g. the OECD), their assessment and guidance tools (e.g. PISA), and the practices of other countries, in discussions about education in Portugal.

The different layers of analysis developed led to several interdependent conclusions. In Portugal, the selection of international elements used in educational policy discussions is influenced by various factors, mostly related to the local context: externalisations are contingent on national and local history and the interactions and selections of political and social actors. The dynamics developed between political and social actors involved in political processes lead to the need to resort to elements with (or endowed with) authority to strengthen arguments and appeals to the public's reason and emotions, which can eventually alter views and decisions, leading to the political consensus needed to initiate reforms. References to international elements bring this kind of authority to discussions, since they can be used as claims to knowledge and evidence, allowing for the depoliticisation of the issues discussed.

However, to be useful, international elements must be considered authoritative by audiences. Consequently, political and social actors need to make assumptions and carefully observe their audiences in order to identify the problems that need to be solved; the entities or institutions potentially capable of solving the problem in question; and the results expected by the audiences. Externalisations to international elements are therefore important (de)legitimisation tools used by actors involved in political processes. In Portugal, the international elements most referred to in both parliamentary discussions and in print are the OECD, the EU and, used as a whole, "the OECD countries" and "the EU countries".

References to these (and many other) international elements are made by all political and social actors involved in discussions about education, regardless of political affiliation, with the aim of managing the contingency of the education policy-making process and thus reducing the complexity of this very process, in order to form consensus, allowing social change to begin. However, in the Portuguese context it seems that the frequent use of the same international elements by different actors to defend contradictory ideas and proposals has underpinned the complexity of the policy-making process, contributing to the failure of various attempts to advance comprehensive reform plans - as was the case with proposals related to teacher assessment instruments by both the 17th Government (2005-2009) and the 19th Government (2011-2015).

The dissertation offers theoretical and empirical contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of comparative education and political science. The methodological approach applied identifies patterns of externalisation that reveal complexities both in the policy process and in the interactions between the global - national - local levels within these processes. More specifically, the analysis broadens the understanding of the societal characteristics that can lead to the need to use international elements as sources of authority and how the chosen elements become these sources of authority.

The following figure summarizes the conclusions in response to the two main questions:

Award-winning articles:

Santos, Í., & Centeno, V. G. (2021). Inspirations from Abroad: The Impact of PISA on the choice of Reference Societies in Education. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. DOI: 10.1080/03057925.2021.1906206

Santos, Í., & Kauko, J. (2020). Externalisations in the Portuguese parliament: analysing power struggles and (de-)legitimation with multiple streams approach. Journal of Education Policy. DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2020.1784465

Santos, Í. (2021). Epistemic work in Portuguese parliamentary education debates: Externalisation to world situations as a source of epistemic capital. European Educational Research Journal. DOI: 10.1177/1474904121990474

Santos, Í., Carvalho, L. M., & Melo, B. P. (2022). The media’s role in shaping public opinion on education: A thematic and frame analysis of externalisation to world situations in the Portuguese media. Research in Comparative and International and Education. DOI: 10.1177/17454999211057753