Policy Why(s): Policy rationalities and the changing logic of educational reform in postcommunist Ukraine

Abstract

This chapter offers an alternative to mainstream policy studies analysis of educational policy in postcommunist Ukraine. Taking its many insights from Foucault-inspired studies of education policy (Besley and Peters, 2007; Doherty, 2006, 2007; Fejes and Nicoll, 2007; Fimyar, 2008a, 2008b; Lindblad and Popkewitz, 2004; Marshall, 1998; Masschelein, Simons, Bröckling, and Pongratz, 2007; Peters, 2001, 2004, 2006; Peters and Besley, 2007; Popkewitz, 2007; Tikly, 2003), this chapter identifies and examines a new domain of analysis, termed in this chapter policy rationalities or policy why(s). Policy rationalities are conceptualized in this chapter as structures distinct from policy discourses that enable the emergence of some discourses and constrain the emergence or reception of others. “Conditions of possibility,” “background practices,” or “epistemes” are some other ways of thinking about the abstract – yet important for the study of policy – term of “policy rationalities.” Fourteen policy documents and 17 years of policy-making (1991–2008) represent textual and temporal borders of analysis. The official authorship of the documents is limited to the three state actors, namely, the President, Parliament, and the Cabinet of Ministers. The rationale for not including the ministerial documents in the analysis is explained in the chapter. The main methods employed by the study are deconstruction and discourse analysis. The chapter discusses three sets of policy rationalities: the rationalities of nation- and state-building, the rationalities of comparison and critique, and, what I will call, the rationalities of “catching-up” Europeanization. The study also traces the textual constructions of the models of individual, society, and the state as well as the definitions of education, upbringing, and educational governance in the documents under analysis. The chapter makes an important contribution to the current debates in policy sociology and governmentality studies by mapping out a new terrain of inquiry, i.e., policy rationalities, as an important starting point for the analysis of educational reform and change.

Citation

Fimyar, O. (2010), "Policy Why(s): Policy rationalities and the changing logic of educational reform in postcommunist Ukraine", Silova, I. (Ed.) Post-Socialism is not Dead: (Re)Reading the Global in Comparative Education (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 14), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 61-91. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3679(2010)0000014006