Professional Capital as Political Capital: Science Standards Reform in the United States by Ian Hardy & Todd Campbell

The full-length American Journal of Education article by Hardy and Campbell can be accessed here.

Standards reform in the United States, and in many other countries around the world, has been a staple of educational reform agendas for decades. However, how these standards come about, including insights into the ‘messiness’ of their genesis, and the variety of actors involved in their development and support, has not garnered the attention it deserves. Understanding the development of such standards and the considerable challenges that attend their support, enables much more substantive insights into why they are presented as they are in their final format, the individuals and groups involved in their development, and how they could be developed differently. That is, understanding that such reform is inherently political is crucial for understanding why and how educational standards come to exhibit the characteristics they possess.

We focused on the development of the Next Generation Science Standards – the most recent science standards reform initiative in the United States. These standards were supported by and underpinned by a wide-ranging scientific ‘framework’ (A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas) developed under the auspices of the National Research Council. These standards have not attracted as much attention as English Language Arts standards or mathematics standards. Drawing upon research into standards reform more broadly, and theorizing of professional and political capital, we sought to understand the kinds of resources/capital that key actors brought with them to negotiations associated with the development and advocacy for the Next Generation Science Standards. As well as revealing how professional capital exists in three dimensions (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012) – human, social, and decisional – we argue that professional capital also needs to be understood as inherently ‘political’. 

Much of the politics surrounding the Next Generation Science Standards pertains to their ‘national’ character. Standards based reform has long been a site of contestation in the United States (Rhodes 2012). This is evident in relation to the politics associated with educational standards reform in general and the development of more ‘common’ state standards in particular, as well as the politics associated with science education standards reform and science education more generally. Much of this politics, and research into it, has occurred at more macro (including international, federal and national) levels rather than at more individual-institutional levels. Within these politically charged spaces, professional capital has exerted varied influence. National efforts have involved the push towards cross-state consortia of standards, with mixed results.

In making this argument about the need for greater attention to the political dimension of science standards reform, we drew upon interviews and discussions with key educators involved in developing and supporting the Next Generation Science Standards at state and national levels. This included key educators working to support the development and enactment of the NGSS, at national, state, and local levels in the United States. To highlight the importance of state-based personnel in this work, we targeted key educators from one state (in the New England region) that was particularly active in the development of the NGSS (even though it was not originally an official NGSS state), as well as personnel working in other state contexts, and nationally. A total of 13 participants were interviewed across a range of positions. This included personnel working in senior roles in the philanthropic organization responsible for funding the development of the NGSS, the national administrative body (Achieve) charged with orchestrating its development, the educational arm of the National Academy of Sciences involved in facilitating the development of the Framework and NGSS, the State Council of Science Supervisors, and university-based science teacher educators. We also interviewed state science officers from several states who had worked together on facilitating the take-up of the science standards at the state level. These participants occupied national and/or state-level roles. 

The data reveal the complex interplay between various kinds of professional capital as human, social, decisional, and political capital. The data from this research not only helped to identify the specific ways in which professional capital in the form of human capital, social capital, and decisional capital played important roles in supporting the promotion and carriage of educational standards reform in science education, it also exposed the role of political capital as an important and interrelated form of capital worthy of explicit recognition. Human capital included important knowledge possessed by key individuals. Social capital referred to the relationships and associations necessary to garnering support for the NGSS. Decisional capital involved actively deciding to engage with a variety of educators to help facilitate learning about the NGSS that the states were involved in as a more productive and less contentious way of fostering reform than had been the case with some of the Common Core initiatives. 

However, while analytically insightful, the nature of the human, social, and decisional capital associated with this work did not seem to adequately capture the politics/power relations that infused how these educators engaged with the NGSS and that occurred in conjunction with these other forms of capital.  This politics was evident in the way in which a wide range of different policy actors – from senior policy-makers at the federal level, and philanthropic organizations, to officers working on science reform at the state levels, to teachers in schools – were seen as essential to the success of the reform. These policy actors had access to decision-making processes (endowment), were able to influence what occurred in these circumstances (empowerment) and seemed to have perceptions of themselves as people able to exert influence (identity) (Sørensen and Torfing 2003).

These endowment, empowerment, and identity processes were evident in how many of these policy actors recognized that efforts needed to be made to foster substantive collaboration within and amongst these groups. This included with peak bodies such as, Achieve, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Science Teaching Association and state supervisors. There was not only a sense of the cultivation of social capital but that this needed to be of a particular ilk to ensure inclusion of diverse groups as a necessary corrective to perceptions of the Common Core as not being sufficiently grass roots, including in relation to issues of equity. 

The politics of collaboration were also clearly at play in concerns about pushback against the NGSS. At the state level, in light of resistance to the Common Core (Shober, 2016), there was a need to develop better links between educators and broader political classes in the legislature. That political capital was also at play was evident in the nature of attention given to the NGSS in comparison with the Common Core. The way in which different bodies worked to facilitate the take-up of the NGSS as very different from the Common Core was evidence of a clear politics at play. This politics was exercised at individual and institutional levels. What was evident here was not just the identification of broad social institutions of government and citizens (Whitely & Seyd 1997), but the more “individual” powers to act on the part of these educators, including a belief in their capacity to exert influence (Sørensen & Torfing 2003).

The research shows how senior educators promoted substantive educational reform, and how they worked to craft perceptions of reform in opposition to previous reforms construed as problematic. Forms of professional capital as political capital were evident in how educators knew when to collaborate, who should be involved, and how such connections might be sustained. They also recognised when not to collaborate, and when engagement might inhibit substantive reform. In light of criticism levelled at the Common Core, and given the NGSS development was a deeply collaborative, cross-sector, and cross-state initiative, understanding the power relations – politics – at play, was essential. In short, these educators exercised and possessed a certain endowment that enabled them to contribute to key decision-making processes, were empowered to exert influence in these circumstances, and exhibited individual and institutionalized identities characterized by belief in themselves as people who could make a positive and substantive difference to science reform through this work.

References

Hargreaves, Andrew & Michael Fullan. 2012. Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School. New York: Teachers College Press. 

Rhodes, Jesse H. 2012. An Education in Politics: The Origins and Evolution of No Child Left Behind. New York: Cornell University Press. 

Shober, Arnold F. 2016. In Common No More: The Politics of the Common Core State Standards. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.

Sørensen, Eva & Jacob Torfing. 2003. Network Politics, Political Capital, and Democracy. International Journal of Public Administration, 26(6): 609-634.

Whiteley, Paul F. & Patrick Syed. 1997. Political Capital Formation Among British Party Members. In Private Groups and Public Life: Social Participation, Voluntary Associations and Political Involvement in Representative Democracies, ed Jan W. van Deth, 125-143). London: Routledge.