‘Gap talk’ and the global rescaling of educational accountability in Canada

Abstract

In this paper, we undertake a particular policy critique and analysis of the gender achievement gap discourse in Ontario and Canada, and situate it within the context of what has been termed the governance turn in educational policy with its focus on policy as numbers and its multi-scalar manifestations. We show how this 'gap talk' is inextricably tied to a neoliberal system of accountability, marketization, comparative performance measures and competition within the context of a globalized education policy field. The focus initially is on how the gender achievement gap has emerged in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OCED) publication of the 2009 Program For International Student Assessment Results, but attention is drawn to questions and categories of equity that are used to define and measure socioeconomic disadvantage. We illustrate that such measures and categories in use function to eschew important aspects of maldistribution, with important consequences for understanding the significance of the interlocking influences of race, social class, gender and geographical location, where there is evidence of spatial concentrations of poverty and histories of cumulative oppression. In the second part of the paper, we focus on the Canadian data to illustrate the multi-scalar dimensions of global/national/provincial 'policyscapes' through a politics of numbers. Contrary to the ways in which Canada and specifically Ontario have been marketed and celebrated by OECD and other stakeholders for their high performing, high quality education system in terms of achieving equitable outcomes for diverse student populations, we illustrate how the 'failing boys' discourse and achieving 'gap talk' have actually functioned to produce a misrecognition of the gender achievement gap, with boys emerging as a disadvantaged category in the articulation of equity policies.

Pupils’ enactments of a policy for equivalence: Stories about different conditions when preparing for national tests

“…There are plenty of examples of how more strictly imperative policies force experienced teachers and pupils to act with 'little opportunity for sense-making' (Ball et al, 2012: 97) or agency 'within a logic of conformity and the imperatives of performance and competition' (ibid). For example, studies of how policy actors in New York schools are forced to get involved in standardizing academic assessment (Koyoma, 2011) or how schoolboys in Canada become stigmatized as disadvantaged by an equity policy (Martino and Rezai-Rashti, 2013) illustrate how some policies force people to become merely subjects to policy without options to act. Our findings are in line with studies that describe teachers and pupils as both subjects to policy and as policy actors (Ball et al, 2012).…”

“…A growing body of research on policy as text emphasizes who is involved and how policy is translated and enacted in local contexts, stressing the role of actors' creativity (Ball et al, 2011a;Löfgren, 2015a,b;Singh, Heimans and Glasswell, 2014;Meo, 2014;Koyoma, 2011;Martino and Rezai-Rashti, 2013). All of these studies privilege the importance of the actors involved in the processes of translating policies in school, but none of them directs attention directly to the pupils.…”

Fatores influenciadores dos resultados de matemática de estudantes portugueses e brasileiros no PISA: revisão integrativa

“…Uma menor visibilidade ocorreu com os subfatores gênero e idade dos estudantes, o que é corroborado por outros estudos (ANDERSON et al, 2007;DEMIR;KILIÇ;ÜNAL, 2010;FORGASZ;HILL, 2012;MARTINO;REZAI-RASHTI, 2013;MATĚJŮ;SMITH, 2015;REILLY, 2012;STOET;GEARY, 2013).…”

The new articulation of equity education in neoliberal times: the changing conception of social justice in Ontario

“…The use of numbers and data in the form of standardised testing regimes is used to redefine the very conception of equity. This reconstitution of equity is most evident with the emergence of boys as the new disadvantaged in Ontario, the erasure of racialised minority students who are replaced by the category of 'recent immigrant', and the invisibility of social class and redistributive policy mechanisms (Martino and Rezai-Rashti 2013). Equity education today is more concerned about underachievement and closing the achievement gap to maximise productivity of the citizenry and capitalise on Canada's diversity in an international context (Luke 2011;Mehta and Schwartz 2011).…”