In this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Minahil Asim shares her work regarding educational reform in low and middle income countries. Asim currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Education Leadership and Program Evaluation at the University of Ottawa. She previously completed her Ph.D. in Educational Policy at the University of California, Davis, and an M.A. in International Comparative Education at Stanford University. The LtC series is produced by Alex Lamb and colleagues from the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. A pdf of the fully formatted interview is available on the LtC website.
Lead the Change (LTC): The 2024 AERA theme is “Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities: A Call to Action.” This theme charges researchers and practitioners with confronting racial injustice directly while imagining new possibilities for liberation. The call urges scholars to look critically at our global past and look with hope and radicalism towards the future of education. What specific responsibility do educational change scholars have in this space? What steps are you taking to heed this call?
Minahil Asim: I am a scholar based in North America, and my scholarship is primarily in low- and middle- income country (LMIC) contexts. I have projects in Pakistan and Ghana, both post-colonial states, that have strongly emphasized education reforms to address a wide range of educational challenges related to disparities in access to, and quality of, basic education. In my view, racial injustice is inextricably linked to imperialism – whether that manifests in global politics, through international aid organizations, or through scholarship originating from academia in the Global North.
Minahil Asim
Piper (2016) describes scholars based in Western academic institutions and working in the Global South as those who “…place too much faith in their own knowledge rather than that of local education experts, and where development practitioners rarely appreciate the privilege of working in countries which are not their own” (p.1). In light of this, I believe that educational change scholars based in the Global North have two responsibilities. First, they must understand what injustice looks like in the contexts they study without imposing their ideals of what injustice is in the contexts in which they live. This includes critically looking at their own scholarship and questioning what is being produced and for whom. Second, they are responsible to actively build partnerships in the contexts being studied that are not extractive. These may include collaborations with academics in the Global South (with the caveat that local academic institutions can be elite spaces with power hierarchies and removed from local realities), or practitioners working in the space of educational change in communities.
As a former development practitioner with training in quantitative social sciences, my work has mostly drawn on theoretical frameworks focused on individual behavior change to improve outcomes in education, for example, principal-agent models (Eisenhardt,1989), Pygmalion effects (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968), accountability and incentives (The World Bank, 2003). I have used tools such as randomized control trials and quasi-experimental research methods to understand the effectiveness of policies aimed at improving student outcomes. This scholarship can be dangerous as it presumes models of behavior that may be detached from local realities, overlook complexity in the way organizations and systems function, and think of “outcomes” in narrow, and quantifiable ways. I have taken a few steps to change this in my scholarship. I have developed and continue to foster relationships with academics, policymakers, and organizations in Pakistan and Ghana, where our collaborations serve as a steppingstone to understand the complexities in the context, the priorities that drive reform and change, and the ways local expertise can be leveraged to drive change. I have also expanded my theoretical and methodological repertoire to take an interdisciplinary approach towards addressing policy questions. This includes collaborating with researchers across disciplines and actively using mixed methods in my research. I still have a long way to go.
LTC: In your work, you examine the effects of different education policies on under-served students’ access and engagement both in local and international contexts. What are some of the major lessons the field of Educational Change can learn from your work and experience?
MA: The questions I grapple with as I work in policy and program evaluation in Pakistan to improve educational outcomes for students are 1) What is it that we are trying to change, and where are the priorities for change/reform coming from? 2) How can our scholarship facilitate that change, such that it sticks? In other words, how do we ensure sustainability of programs and policies that are truly transformational?
“How do we ensure sustainability of programs and policies that are truly transformational?”
Both these questions are complex and context dependent. In my work with school councils or school management committees (SMCs) in Pakistan, I draw on the idea of isomorphic mimicry. Prichett (2013) explains that in the context of India, reforms can serve to provide the organizations with legitimacy, support, and resources from key stakeholders, but may not align with the goals of the organization. Reforms may end up becoming tools of compliance for the bureaucracy. In the program I studied, SMCs in Pakistan’s largest province were given funds to spend on school improvement (including improvements in enrollment, infrastructural changes, hiring of contract teachers) and were reminded through an information campaign of the process of spending the money and fulfilling their roles and responsibilities.
We found improvements in enrollment and attendance of students in the pilot project (Asim & Dee, 2022); however, there were no changes to any outcomes, including learning, once the program was scaled up (Asim, 2023). I concluded that the program led the SMC to perform their job well for a short period of time and comply with the bureaucratic processes (as seen in other contexts too (e.g., Aiyar, 2015)), but the changes did not stick. This is because the priorities were top-down i.e., the SMCs or school teachers were not consulted on what they wanted to change; priorities were measurement centric (i.e., focused on reporting of enrollment and attendance numbers; and priorities were not aligned for learning within the system (Prichett, 2015)).
For any kind of change to be transformational, it is important to understand what communities are looking to change and what change looks like in particular contexts. From my research, I understand that transformation cannot solely rely on process-focused mechanisms. It may require, for example, questioning the power structure within the SMC membership to understand how decisions are being made, democratizing the process to choose outcomes that they would like to change (e.g., female attendance in schools, as opposed to, or in conjunction with, improved overall enrollment), and then establishing routines beyond measurement systems that help achieve those priorities.
For any kind of change to be transformational, it is important to understand what communities are looking to change and what change looks like in particular contexts.
LTC: In some of your recent work, you explore how scholars understand and study district-level leadership and its role in student outcomes. How might your findings inform the future of district-level research both in North America and abroad?
MA: In LMIC contexts, we know very little about middle-tier leadership and management, and even less about how that influences school improvement and student outcomes. My colleagues and I systematically review the role of subnational actors and organizations in LMICs and highlight the disciplinary divide in how the middle-tier is conceptualized (Asim et al., 2023). In economics and development studies, subnational actors are discussed as agents, with capacity to deliver change (Beg et al., 2020; Cilliers et al., 2022). While in public/education administration or organizational sociology, actors are discussed in the context of their agency within organizational units (Bantwini & Moroosi, 2018). While the former studies the role of subnational actors in monitoring and ensuring school-based accountability using quantitative methods, the latter discusses networks and feedback loops that exist between middle-tier organizations and schools to improve teaching and learning using qualitative research methodologies. I advocate for more conversations across these disciplinary and methodological divides to better understand how the middle-tier actors and organizations can be leveraged to improve educational outcomes for students.
In our current work in Ghana, and future projects in development, we use this two-pronged approach to examine both the bureaucratic structure and the work of bureaucrats at the district-level. Our interdisciplinary team of economists, sociologists and scholars of education administration has employed a variety of research methods to understand management practices of district staff, along with the role of the subnational level in improving teaching and learning at the school level. My colleagues conducted a large survey, adapted from the Development-World Management Survey (D-WMS) (Scur et al., 2021) to describe actors’ management practices and their interactions with schools (Boakye-Yiadom et al., 2023). Coupled with a qualitative process tracing methodology, we describe that policy and regulation, authority for decision making, and organizational routines as well as the skills, actions, capacities, and constraints of a range of professional managers shape districts’ ability to set and reach goals (Asim et al., 2023). While preliminary, our work has theoretical and methodological implications for future work on district level research in LMICs. First, we highlight ways the middle-tier of education hierarchy can be conceptualized – in a technical or accountability-focused way that focuses on performance management of the actors, or a problem-solving approach that relies on relational trust, feedback loops and networks within the education administration hierarchy (Williams et el., 2021). How effective this dichotomy is in understanding district-level leadership, is an empirical question. Second, we have attempted to use mixed methods that combine quantitative and qualitative data and methodologies. We are inspired by Darling-Hammond’s work in California (Podolsky et al., 2021) that effectively uses an explanatory mixed methods design to study “positive outliers.” I anticipate future district-level research bridging disciplinary and methodological divides in creative ways.
LTC: Educational Change expects those engaged in and with schools, schooling, and school systems to spearhead deep and often difficult transformation. How might those in the field of Educational Change best support these individuals and groups through these processes?
MA: In LMIC contexts, one paradigm for improving public bureaucracies or changing schooling systems is described as a form of “control” or “accounting” based accountability in which actors are held accountable by their supervisors for meeting quantifiable targets through regulation, monitoring, and evaluation systems (Anderson & Cohen, 2015; Gruening, 2001). Described as Route X (Honig, 2022) or Pathway A (Williams et al., 2021), this type of accountability-based management reform manifests in a set of management practices focused on performance review, managerialism, and standardization, which recent research suggests may lead to a culture of compliance and performativity within the bureaucracy (Aiyar, 2015; Anderson & Herr, 2015; Honig & Prichett, 2019).
A second paradigm posits that instead of “accounting” or “control” based accountability, public sector bureaucracies can leverage a “Route Y” (Honig, 2022) or “Pathway B” approach (Williams et al., 2021). In this paradigm, accountability is characterized by partnerships, professionalism, shared responsibility, collegiality, and feedback loops within educational organizations (Schultz & Ravitch, 2013). It fosters relationships characterized by guidance, support, and trust between different actors (Ehren & Baxter, 2020; Bryk, 2010). It provides opportunities for bottom up, horizontal, as well as top-down accountability (Leithwood, 2013; Williams et al., 2021).
As a field committed to deep and transformative change, it would be a shame if we let schools and schooling systems in LMICs focus on one of these approaches, or worse let one approach be applied at the expense of the other. As discussed previously, I would also fear that we let these scholarly conversations continue in silos and widen the theoretical divide in conceptualizing change in schools.
“I fear that we let these scholarly conversations continue in silos and widen the theoretical divide in conceptualizing change in schools.”
LTC: Where do you perceive the field of Educational Change is going? What excites you about Educational Change now and in the future?
MA: I am always inspired and humbled by the brilliant scholarship being produced in this field and beyond which truly cares about improving the lives of students around the world. I am very excited by the methodological and theoretical diversity with which educational change is being pursued – in terms of the scholarship on technical/rational and relational paradigms to understand change within educational organizations, the emphasis on the importance of bridging the divide between these paradigms and research traditions, and pursuit of more “emergent” approaches in the study of districts and schools in North America (e.g., Costanza-Chock, 2020; maree brown, 2017; Podolsky et al., 2021; Yurkofsky & Peurach, 2023).
However, in my understanding of this literature, scholars have not always engaged with questions of equity and social justice in the field. I do see conversations opening up towards a more critical perspective, such as the role of districts in sustaining racial inequities, or obstacles managers face as they navigate racism in districts (Farrell et al., 2022; Shah et al., 2023; Shah & Grimaldos, 2022). However, there is a lot more work that needs to be done to understand structures of power in LMICs, challenging those structures, and pursuing questions of equity and social justice that are relevant to the reality of the contexts. In the future, I hope to see scholarship that is more generative than prescriptive, and I hope to find my own place within it.
References:
Aiyar, Y., Dongre, A., & Davis, V. (2015). Education Reforms, Bureaucracy and the Puzzles of Implementation: A Case Study from Bihar [Report]. International Growth Centre.
Anderson, G., & Herr, K. (2015). New public management and the new professionalism in education: Framing the issue. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23, 84–84. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v23.2222
Anderson, G., & Cohen, M. I. (2015). Redesigning the identities of teachers and leaders: A framework for studying new professionalism and educator resistance. Education policy analysis archives, 23(85), n85.
Asim, M., & Dee, T. S. (2022). Mobile phones, civic engagement, and school performance in Pakistan. Economics of Education Review, 89, 102254.
Asim, M. (2023). Local governance of schools, a double-edged sword.
Asim, M., Mundy, K., Manion, C., & Tahir, I. (2023). The “Missing Middle” of education service delivery in low-and, middle-income countries. Comparative Education Review, 67(2), 353-378.
Asim, M., Bell, S., Nudzor, H., Boakye-Yiadom, M., Mundy, K., (2023). Management Practices and Implementation Challenges in District Education Directorates in Ghana
Bantwini, B. D., & Moorosi, P. (2018). The circuit managers as the weakest link in the school district leadership chain! Perspectives from a province in South Africa. South African Journal of Education, 38(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.4314/saje.v38i3
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Boakye-Yiadom, M., Leaver, C., Mansoor, Z., & Iocco, M.P., (2023). Management and performance in mid-level bureaucracies: Evidence from Ghanaian education districts.
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Cilliers, J., Dunford, E., & Habyarimana, J. (2022). What do local government education managers do to boost learning outcomes?. The World Bank Economic Review, 36(3), 629-645.
Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design justice: Community-led practices to build the worlds we need. The MIT Press.
Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Agency theory: An assessment and review. Academy of Management Review, 14(1), 57–74. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1989.4279003
Ehren, M., & Baxter, J. (Eds.). (2020). Trust, accountability and capacity in education system reform: Global perspectives in comparative education. Routledge.
Farrell, C. C., Singleton, C., Stamatis, K., Riedy, R., Arce-Trigatti, P., & Penuel, W. R. (2022). Conceptions and practices of equity in research- practice partnerships. Educational Policy, 37(1), 200-224. https://doi/10.1177/ 08959048221131566
Gruening, G. (2001). Origin and theoretical basis of New Public Management. International public management journal, 4(1), 1-25.
Honig, D. (2022). Managing for motivation as public performance improvement strategy in education & far beyond. CID Faculty Working Paper Series.
Honig, D., & Pritchett, L. (2019). The limits of accounting-based accountability in education (and far beyond): Why more accounting will rarely solve accountability problems. Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE). https://doi.org/10.35489/BSG-RISE-WP_2019/030
Leithwood, K. (2013). Strong districts and their leadership. Toronto, Ontario: Ontario Institute of Education Leadership.
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