Confirmation/Progress review 1 seminar - Siyu Liu
Understanding local-national-global imbrications in education policy: The case of Lifelong Education Credit Bank as a digital educational data infrastructure in China
Abstract:
The advancement of big data and artificial intelligence is changing all aspects of society. For some academics and policymakers, education has entered an era of digital governance, in which the concatenation of data, algorithms, code, and related knowledge is profoundly and rapidly reshaping educational policy and practice. At the same time, the datafication of education brings about the emergence of new policy actors, which complicates the discussion of policy networks, including a strong and dense network of partnerships between global, national, and local actors, research institutions, for-profit institutions, and education technology companies.
This study will explore the rise of digital governance in education as a global/national/local hybrid phenomenon in the production of education policy. It will foreground the nature of policy networks and heterarchies as well as the network topologies and data infrastructures that arise in a different domain and context than much of the literature. Specifically, the project will draw on research regarding datafication, network governance and topology theory to better understand decision-making and policy arrangements across multiple scales in relation to a specific data-driven infrastructure in vocational education in the Chinese context. In particular, the study focuses on a specific global-national-local imbrications within a specific context – Greater Bay Area (Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau) – and analyzes the nature of an emerging data infrastructure, the Lifelong Education Credit Bank (LECB), as it is deployed in this context in the Chinese vocational education field.
The research seeks to understand new spatial relations that have characterized the reconfiguration of state power and its formation in the Chinese context, and to shed light on the complicated topological spaces and policy networks with respect to education governance through datafication in this region. The research also endeavours to explore possible ‘spatial’ methodologies in the educational policy sociology field and provide valuable information and recommendations for policymakers, local government, and researchers by identifying the interaction and impact of LECB at the local, national, and global levels.
When: Thursday, 2nd of March, 2:00-3:30 pm
Where: Room S506, Building 24 (Social Sciences Bldg).
Zoom: https://uqz.zoom.us/j/7929526069
Advisory team: Associate Professor Ian Hardy, Dr Suraiya Hameed
Panel: Associate Professor Obaid Hamid (Chair), Emeritus Professor Bob Lingard (panelist).
All HDR candidates and advisors are welcome to attend the presentation.