Lessons from policy theories for the pursuit of equity in health, education and gender policy

By Paul Cairney, Emily St.Denny, Sean Kippin, Heather Mitchell

This post first appeared on the Policy & Politics blog. It summarizes an article published in Policy & Politics.

Could policy theories help to understand and facilitate the pursuit of equity (or reduction of unfair inequalities)?

We are producing a series of literature reviews to help answer that question, beginning with the study of equity policy and policymaking in health, education, and gender research.

Each field has a broadly similar focus.  Most equity researchers challenge the ‘neoliberal’ approaches to policy that favour low state action in favour of individual responsibility and market forces.   They seek ‘social justice’ approaches, favouring far greater state intervention to address the social and economic causes of unfair inequalities, via redistributive or regulatory measures. They seek policymaking reforms to reflect the fact that most determinants of inequalities are not contained to one policy sector and cannot be solved in policy ‘silos’. Rather, equity policy initiatives should be mainstreamed via collaboration across (and outside of) government. Each field also projects a profound sense of disenchantment with limited progress, including a tendency to describe a too-large gap between their aspirations and actual policy outcomes. They describe high certainty about what needs to happen, but low confidence that equity advocates have the means to achieve it (or to persuade powerful politicians to change course).

Policy theories could offer some practical insights for equity research, but not always offer the lessons that some advocates seek. In particular, health equity researchers seek to translate insights on policy processes into a playbook for action, such as to frame policy problems to generate more attention to inequalities, secure high-level commitment to radical change, and improve the coherence of cross-cutting policy measures. Yet, policy theories are more likely to identify the dominance of unhelpful policy frames, the rarity of radical change, and the strong rationale for uncoordinated policymaking across a large number of venues. Rather than fostering technical fixes with a playbook, they encourage more engagement with the inescapable dilemmas and trade-offs inherent to policy choice. This focus on contestation (such as when defining and addressing policy problems) is more of a feature of education and gender equity research.

While we ask what policy theories have to offer other disciplines, in fact the most useful lessons emerge from cross-disciplinary insights. They highlight two very different approaches to transformational political change. One offers the attractive but misleading option of radical change through non-radical action, by mainstreaming equity initiatives into current arrangements and using a toolbox to make continuous progress. Yet, each review highlights a tendency for radical aims to be co-opted and often used to bolster the rules and practices that protect the status quo. The other offers radical change through overtly political action, fostering continuous contestation to keep the issue high on the policy agenda and challenge co-option. There is no clear step-by-step playbook for this option, since political action in complex policymaking systems is necessarily uncertain and often unrewarding. Still, insights from policy theories and equity research shows that grappling with these challenges is inescapable.

Ultimately, we conclude that advocates of profound social transformation are wasting each other’s time if they seek short-cuts and technical fixes to enduring political problems. Supporters of policy equity should be cautious about any attempt to turn a transformational political project into a technical process containing a ‘toolbox’ or ‘playbook’.

You can read the original research in Policy & Politics:

Paul Cairney, Emily St.Denny, Sean Kippin, and Heather Mitchell (2022) ‘Lessons from policy theories for the pursuit of equity in health, education, and gender policy’, Policy and Politics https://doi.org/10.1332/030557321X16487239616498

This article is an output of the IMAJINE project, which focuses on addressing inequalities across Europe.

The future of education equity policy: ‘neoliberal’ versus ‘social justice’ approaches

This post summarises Cairney and Kippin’s qualitative systematic review of peer-reviewed research on education equity policy. See also: The future of equity policy in education and health: will intersectoral action be the solution? and posts on ‘Heath in All Policies’ and health inequalities.

Governments, international organisations, and researchers all express a high and enduring commitment to ‘education equity’. Yet, this is where the agreement ends.

The definition of the problem of inequity and the feasibility of solutions is highly contested, to the extent that it is common to identify two competing approaches:

1. A ‘neoliberal’ approach, focusing on education’s role in the economy, market-based reforms, and ‘new public management’ reforms to schools.

2. A ‘social justice’ approach, focusing on education’s role in student wellbeing and life opportunities, and state-led action to address the wider social determinants of education outcomes.

Almost all of the research included in our review suggests that the neoliberal approach dominates international and domestic policy agendas at the expense of the wider focus on social justice.

We describe education equity researchers as the narrators of cautionary tales of education inequity. Most employ critical policy analysis to challenge what they call the dominant stories of education that hinder meaningful equity policies.

First, many describe common settings, including a clear sense that unfair inequalities endure despite global and domestic equity rhetoric.

They also describe the multi-level nature of the governance of education, but with less certainty about relationships across levels. A small number of international organisations and countries are key influencers of a global neoliberal agenda and there is discretion to influence policy at local and school levels. In that context, some studies relate the lack of progress to the malign influence of one or more levels, such as global and central government agendas undermining local change, or local actors disrupting central initiatives.

Second, studies describe similar plots. Many describe stymied progress on equity caused by the negative impacts of neoliberalism: undermining equity by (1) equating it with narrow definitions of equal access to well-performing schools and test-based attainment outcomes, and (2) taking attention from social justice to focus on economic competitiveness.

Many describe policymakers using a generic focus on equity as a facade, to ignore and reproduce inequalities in relation to minoritized populations. Or, equity is a ‘wicked’ issue that defies simple solutions. Many plots involve a contrast between agency-focused narratives that emphasise hopefulness (e.g. among ‘change agents’) and systemic or structural narratives that emphasise helplessness.

Third, they present common ideas about characters. In global narratives, researchers challenge the story by international organisations that they are the heroes providing funding backed by crucial instructions to make educations systems and economies competitive. Most education articles portray neoliberal international organisations and central governments as the villains: narrowing equity to simplistic measures of performance at the expense of more meaningful outcomes.

At a national and local level, they criticise the dominant stories of equity within key countries, such as the US, that continue to reproduce highly unequal outcomes while projecting a sense of progress. The most vividly told story is of white parents, who portray their ‘gifted’ children as most deserving of advantage in the school system, and therefore the victims of attempts to widen access or redistribute scarce resources (high quality classes and teachers). Rather, these parents are the villains standing – sometimes unintentionally, but mostly intentionally – in the way of progress.

The only uncertainty regards the role of local and school leaders. In some cases, they are the initially-heroic figures, able to find ways to disrupt a damaging national agenda and become the ‘change agents’ that shift well-established rules and norms before being thwarted by community and parental opposition. In others, they are perhaps-unintentional villains who reproduce racialised, gendered, or class-based norms regarding which students are ‘gifted’ and worthy of investment versus which students need remedial classes or disrupt other learners.

Fourth, the moral of the story is mostly clear. Almost all studies criticise the damaging impact of neoliberal definitions of equity and the performance management and quasi-market techniques that support it. They are sold as equity measures but actually exacerbate inequalities. As such, the moral is to focus our efforts elsewhere: on social justice, the social and economic determinants of education, and the need to address head-on the association between inequalities and minoritized populations (to challenge ‘equity for all’ messages). However, it is difficult to pinpoint the source of much-needed change. In some cases, strong direction from central governments is necessary to overcome obstacles to change. In others, only bottom-up action by local and school leaders will induce change.

Perhaps the starkest difference in approaches relates to expectations for the future. For ‘neoliberal’ advocates, solutions such as market incentives or education system reforms will save schools and the next generation of students. In contrast, ‘social justice’ advocates expect these reforms to fail and cause irreparable damage to the prospect of education equity.

The future of equity policy in education and health: will intersectoral action be the solution?

This post was first published by NORRAG. It summarises key points from two qualitative systematic reviews of peer-reviewed research on health equity policy (Cairney, St Denny, Mitchell) and education equity policy (Cairney, Kippin) for the European Research Council funded IMAJINE project. Our focus on comparing strategies within sectors supplements a wider focus on spatial justice (and cross-sectoral gender equity) strategies. It is published in conjunction with a GHC and NORRAG joint event “The Future of Equity Policy in Education and Health: Will Intersectoral Action be the Solution?” scheduled for 02 November at 17:00-18:30 CET/Geneva, which will discuss the opportunities and challenges to intersectoral research, practice and policy in education and health. Register for the event here. 

Many governments, international organisations, practitioners, and researchers express high rhetorical support for more equitable policy outcomes. However, the meaning of equity is vague, the choice of policy solutions is highly contested, and approaches to equity policy vary markedly in different policy sectors. 

In that context, it is common for policymakers to back up this equity policy rhetoric with a commitment to intersectoral action and collaboration inside and outside of government, described with terms such as holistic, joined-up, collaborative, or systems approaches to governance. At the same time, it is common for research on policymaking to highlight the ever-present and systemic obstacles to the achievement of such admirable but vague aims.

Our reviews of equity policy and policymaking in two different sectors – health and education – highlights these obstacles in different ways.

In health, the global equity strategy Health in All Policies (HiAP) describes a coherent and convincing rationale for intersectoral action and collaboration inside and outside of government:

1. Health is a human right to be fostered and protected by all governments.
2. Most determinants of health inequalities are social – relating to income, wealth, education, housing, social, and physical environments – and we should focus less on individual choices and healthcare.
3. Policies to address social determinants are not in the gift of health sectors, so we need intersectoral action to foster policy changes, such as in relation to tax and spending, education, and housing. 
4. Effective collaborative strategies foster win-win solutions and the co-production of policy, and avoid the perception of ‘health imperialism’ or interference in the work of other professions. 

Yet, our review of HiAP articles suggests that very few projects deliver on these aims. In some cases, authors express frustration that people in other sectors do not take their health aims seriously enough. Or, those actors make sense of HiAP aims in different ways, turning a social determinants approach into projects focusing more on individual lifestyles. These experiences highlight governance dilemmas, in which the need to avoid ‘health imperialism’ leads to minimal challenges to the status quo, or HiAP advocates seek contradictory approaches such as to formalize HiAP strategies from the top-down (to ensure high-level commitment to reform) and encourage collaborative ‘bottom-up’ approaches (to let go of those reforms to foster creative and locally tailored solutions). 

In education, it is more difficult to identify a single coherent rationale for wider intersectoral action. Within ‘social justice’ approaches, there is some focus on the ‘out of school’ factors crucial to learning and attainment processes and outcomes, particularly when describing the marginalization and minoritization of social groups. There are also some studies of systems-based approaches to education. However, there is a more general tendency to focus on sector-specific activities and solutions, including reforms to education systems and school governance. Further, agenda setting organizations such as the OECD foster the sense that investment in early years education, well governed schools and education systems, and reallocations of resources to boost capacity in schools in deprived areas, can address problems of unequal attainment. 

In other words, in both sectors we can often find a convincing rationale for practitioners in one sector to seek cooperation with other sectors. However, no study describes an effective way to do it, or even progress towards new ways of thinking. Indeed, perhaps the most striking proxy indicator of meaningful intersectoral action comes from the bibliographies of these articles. It is clear from the reading lists of each sector that they are not reading each other’s work. The literature on intersectoral action comes with a narrow sectoral lens. 

In sum, intersectoral action and collaboration remains a functional requirement – and a nice idea – rather than a routine activity.

Education equity policy: ‘equity for all’ as a distraction from race, minoritization, and marginalization

By Paul Cairney and Sean Kippin

This post summarizes a key section of our review of education equity policymaking [see the full article for references to the studies summarized here].

One of the main themes is that many governments present a misleading image of their education policies. There are many variations on this theme, in which policymakers:

1. Describe the energetic pursuit of equity, and use the right language, as a way to hide limited progress.
2. Pursue ‘equity for all’ initiatives that ignore or downplay the specific importance of marginalization and minoritization, such as in relation to race and racism, immigration, ethnic minorities, and indigenous populations.
3. Pursue narrow definitions of equity in terms of access to schools, at the expense of definitions that pay attention to ‘out of school’ factors and social justice.

Minoritization is a strong theme in US studies in particular. US experiences help us categorise multiple modes of marginalisation in relation to race and migration, driven by witting and unwitting action and explicit and implicit bias:

• The social construction of students and parents. Examples include: framing white students as ‘gifted’ and more deserving of merit-based education (or victims of equity initiatives); framing non-white students as less intelligent, more in need of special needs or remedial classes, and having cultural or other learning ‘deficits’ that undermine them and disrupt white students; and, describing migrant parents as unable to participate until they learn English.
• Maintaining or failing to challenge inequitable policies. Examples include higher funding for schools and colleges with higher white populations, and tracking (segregating students according to perceived ability), which benefit white students disproportionately.
• Ignoring social determinants or ‘out of school’ factors.
• Creating the illusion of equity with measures that exacerbate inequalities. For example, promoting school choice policies while knowing that the rules restrict access to sought-after schools.
• Promoting initiatives to ignore race, including so-called ‘color blind’ or ‘equity for all’ initiatives.
• Prioritizing initiatives at the expense of racial or socio-economic equity, such as measures to boost overall national performance at the expense of targeted measures.
• Game playing and policy subversion, including school and college selection rules to restrict access and improve metrics.

The wider international – primarily Global North – experience suggests that minoritization and marginalization in relation to race, ethnicity, and migration is a routine impediment to equity strategies, albeit with some uncertainty about which policies would have the most impact.

Other country studies describe the poor treatment of citizens in relation to immigration status or ethnicity, often while presenting the image of a more equitable system. Until recently, Finland’s global reputation for education equity built on universalism and comprehensive schools has contrasted with its historic ‘othering’ of immigrant populations. Japan’s reputation for containing a homogeneous population, allowing its governments to present an image of classless egalitarianism and harmonious society, contrasts with its discrimination against foreign students. Multiple studies of Canadian provinces provide the strongest accounts of the symbolic and cynical use of multiculturalism for political gains and economic ends:

As in the US, many countries use ‘special needs’ categories to segregate immigrant and ethnic minority populations. Mainstreaming versus special needs debates have a clear racial and ethnic dimension when (1) some groups are more likely to be categorised as having learning disabilities or behavioural disorders, and (2) language and cultural barriers are listed as disabilities in many countries. Further, ‘commonwealth’ country studies identify the marginalisation of indigenous populations in ways comparable to the US marginalisation of students of colour.

Overall, these studies generate the sense that the frequently used language of education equity policy can signal a range of possibilities, from (1) high energy and sincere commitment to social justice, to (2) the cynical use of rhetoric and symbolism to protect historic inequalities.

Examples:

• Turner, E.O., and Spain, A.K., (2020) ‘The Multiple Meanings of (In)Equity: Remaking School District Tracking Policy in an Era of Budget Cuts and Accountability’, Urban Education, 55, 5, 783-812 https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0042085916674060
• Thorius, K.A. and Maxcy, B.D. (2015) ‘Critical Practice Analysis of Special Education Policy: An RTI Example’, Remedial and Special Education, 36, 2, 116-124 https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0741932514550812
• Felix, E.R. and Trinidad, A. (2020) ‘The decentralization of race: tracing the dilution of racial equity in educational policy’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 33, 4, 465-490 https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2019.1681538
• Alexiadou, N. (2019) ‘Framing education policies and transitions of Roma students in Europe’, Comparative Education, 55, 3,  https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2019.1619334

See also: https://paulcairney.wordpress.com/2017/09/09/policy-concepts-in-500-words-social-construction-and-policy-design/