Mediating education policy: Making up the 'anti-politics' of third sector participation in public education

Citation

Williamson B (2014) Mediating education policy: Making up the 'anti-politics' of third sector participation in public education. British Journal of Educational Studies, 62 (1), pp. 37-55. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2013.857386

Abstract
This article examines the participation of ‘third-sector’ organisations in public education in England. These organisations act as a cross-sectoral policy network made up of new kinds of policy experts: mediators and brokers with entrepreneurial careers in ideas. They have sought to make education reform thinkable, intelligible and practicable in terms of a computational discourse consisting of code, networks, interactivity and feedback, and related ideas of decentralisation, open methods and personalisation. What characterises this style of thinking is an ‘anti-political’ preoccupation with computer-coded systems and the idea of networks as a model for new political and educational forms.

Keywords
mediators; networks; network governance; policy networks; think-tanks; third sector

Journal
British Journal of Educational Studies: Volume 62, Issue 1