OECD Education Working Papers
This series is designed to make available to a wider readership selected studies drawing on the work of the OECD Directorate for Education. Authorship is usually collective, but principal writers are named. The papers are generally available only in their original language (English or French) with a short summary available in the other.
- ISSN: 19939019 (online)
- https://doi.org/10.1787/19939019
Exploring the Complex Interaction Between Governance and Knowledge in Education
Governments in all OECD countries are facing the challenge of governing increasingly complex
education systems. There is a growing need for governance structures that can handle this complexity and
which can provide actors with the knowledge they need to make decisions. This working paper asks the
question: How do governance and knowledge mutually constitute and impact on each other in complex
education systems? It provides an answer through a state of the art literature review and original theoretical
argumentation. It breaks new ground by combining different schools of academic and policy thinking
which traditionally look at various aspects of the relationship between governance and knowledge
separately. Research in public management, political science and public policy, sociology, institutional
economics, and organisational management (particularly the knowledge transfer literature) is augmented
with work from education and other social sciences, including healthcare, law, and social justice. This
working paper argues that just as knowledge is crucial for governance, governance is indispensible for
knowledge creation and dissemination. It proposes an analytical framework that combines models of
governance with modes of learning and types of knowledge, and provides preliminary empirical examples
to support this framework. In the context of diverse social, economic and political environments of OECD
countries, the interaction between these two focal points – models of governance and types of knowledge –
has become increasingly relevant to researchers, policy makers, and education stakeholders more
generally.
- Click to access:
-
Click to download PDF - 1.05MBPDF
-
Click to Read online and shareREAD