Hood Cattaneo, Kelsey (2023) Tied-Evaluation in Global Education Policy: Critical Policy Analysis of the Education Policy Landscape in Eastern Caribbean Small Island Developing States with Voices from the Field. Doctoral thesis, York St John University.

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Abstract

Evaluation and evaluators are crucial to implementing evidence-based policy and practice. However, in global education policy (GEP), the gap between literature and theory is vast. Using critical policy analysis (CPA) with a multiple-lens approach, I employ Deborah Stone's policy paradox and a decolonial lens to interrogate evaluation practices and evidence-based approaches in the GEP
landscape. Grenada and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Eastern Caribbean (EC) Small Island Developing States (SIDS), offer two educational landscapes as sites for analysis. The CPA’s iterative interpretive analysis approach contributes to the budding GEP field, by applying policy paradoxes through a seascape frame. The thesis seeks to answer the questions: (1) what is the role of the evaluator in GEP, (2) how might decolonial methodologies impact evaluation and evidence generation in GEP, and (3) what are the aid workers' perceptions of the role and usefulness of evaluation for better development practice?

I conducted a thematic analysis on thirty-one data sources, including policies, reports, speeches, statements, and interviews. Three paradoxes described as different parts of an ocean seascape, were pulled from the data. The systemic paradox relates to the structure of GEP, which thwarts Education 2030's stated goal of achieving evidence-based reform through a "data revolution." Donors control over the evaluation practices in GEP and Eastern Caribbean SIDS comprise the second paradox. The third paradox highlights
the conceptual disconnect in GEP, whereby deeply entrenched ideas of modernity perpetuating states of coloniality thwart stakeholders' goals of engendering locally led education revolutions. Further research and methods will need to be developed for evaluators in GEP environments to generate meaningful evidence if the international policymaking community continues to support evidence-based approaches.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Status:	Published
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General)
School/Department:	School of Education, Language and Psychology
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/9175

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