A Relational Realist Vision for Education Policy and Practice

Front matter

Pee ePATIONAL REALIST VISION FOR mG TON POLICY AND PRACTICE

BASEM ADI

A RELATIONAL REALIST VISION FOR EDUCATION POLICY AND PRACTICE

Contents

List of Figures vii Introduction 1 1. The Functionalist Symbolic Reference of UK Governance Models 11

2. Relational Realism as an Alternative General Sociological

Approach 43 3. The Morphogenetic Paradigm: Conceptualising the Human

Introduction

This book presents an argument for a new governance model wherein policy-making is underpinned by a relational realist approach. Its central contention is that prevailing governance models produce analytical closure due to starting from a system-based perspective wherein the state regulates the structure of relations that defines the standards reciprocated between citizens. As a result, the regulation and integration of subjective motivation and its value-orientation represent the central problem of governance. Integration into the state-defined collective becomes necessary to enable the responsible citizen to benefit from public goods and occupy roles contributing to economic growth.

Therefore, a re-think is needed to express responsive modes of sociability that valorise the human element as an active contributor to the production of the common good. The position adopted here is that governing bodies benefit from a shift away from providing opportunities in the form of public goods towards the fostering of a relational social state. In the relational social state, individual and collective social actors are Relational Subjects who participate in the making of social policies and practices. The starting point for an alternative to state-defined governance is an appreciation of the way these Relational Subjects relate to one another in the production of the common good. In this book, the idea of a relational social state is applied in the context of education. The student serves as the reference point for identifying the learning criteria that guide the development of agency in potential Relational Subjects.

This book builds on key themes in sociological theory, reusing established terminology. When one such term or concept is introduced here, it will be italicised to indicate its inclusion in a glossary at the end of the book.

Why Relational Realism?

In a relational social state, practices and policies emerge from the interdependence of different elements of social relations that generate social structures. Relational realism names an epistemic approach that starts from the ontological reality of these social relations; its explanatory capacity is more encompassing than the self-justifying mechanisms of system-based governance. The nature and benefit of relational realism is perhaps best understood by contrast with contemporary methods of policy formulation and their effects. In late modern social formations, the functionalist conceptual infrastructure is limiting because it oscillates between the state /market binary, thus bypassing the dynamics of social relations.

The current model, against which relational realism is set, is called lib/lab governance (Donati 2911; 2021). It works through two poles representing the market/state nexus that forms its operation logic. These poles represent different dimensions of governance. ‘Lab’ refers to the holism of state interventions that enable individuals to pursue their set of preferences as consumers and producers within a productive economic order. The ‘lib’ pole, with which it is in continuous tension, encompasses the economic activity of subjects as both producers and consumers and is the referential point of adaptation (Donati 2021). In turn, the state is represented as an organisational dimension that regulates relations to ensure the referential dimension of governance operates to provide opportunities for the individual to occupy roles in the market of goods and services. The referential character of the market (lib) directs the organisational role of the state (lab) and generates modes of observation, diagnosis and intervention that rely on impersonal mechanisms. As will be discussed in Chapter One, the perspective of the subject and the reality of the interactions they stimulate are secondary to the impersonal gaze of the lib pole that represents the finalism of state-defined relations (lab). Hence, the lib/lab mode of governance is first an epistemic approach to seeing the world through the prism of the lib end of governance. It sees freedom in a negative sense (freedom from), and the referential role of marketisation and economic growth generates inherent tensions that the lab pole needs to adapt continuously. The central goal of the state in the provision of public goods is to ensure fairness that provides

Introduction 3 access to the same forces of marketisation. By bypassing the dynamics of social relations, both poles become antagonistic, which requires state management. In the case of policy triangulation, as discussed in Chapter One, the attempt to resolve the relationship between both poles through some form of synergy is firmly located within the needs of a productive economic order.

In this book, the need for relational realism is first justified by its conceptual starting point that transcends the functionalist conceptual infrastructure of modernity’s lib/lab governance. Relational realism is a general knowledge assumption that underpins a mode of observation that explains the relational emergence of the human-in-the-social. This observation is focused not merely on regulating individual preferences but on active mediations that impact the concerns of the observed. The ontological status of mediation between the subject-observer and the object observed in their relationality is the epistemic focus of relational realism and offers insight into the observed object, be that society or a policy of governance.

Rather than impersonal mechanisms steering relations in the lib/ lab model, the dynamic relationship between observer and observed in relational realism is ascribed an ontological status with a mode of reflexivity that is shaped by the socio-cultural context. Three perspectives are considered in these mediations — the personal, interpersonal, and systemic — as part of a stratified understanding of social reality. To meet the needs of the human individual’s constitutive relationality, it becomes necessary to re-draw the epistemic parameters so that social practices organise the structural dynamic that connects freedom and control as part of the dialectic processes of personal and social morphogenesis (covered in Chapters Three, Four, Five, and Six). The necessity of control in relations — the structure that gives purpose and direction — is viewed as emergent from the relationship between observer and observed.

This stratified social ontology, with its concomitant forms of reflexivity, implicates a relational state with a societal governance that encompasses the elements of relations (personal, interpersonal, and systemic). The social includes a relational continuum that comprises personal and collective Relational Subjects that operate within a morphogenetic sociocultural context. In turn, within societal governance, the control of the structures of the socio-cultural context is meant to enable positive freedom in the form of relational reflexivity capable of transforming the same socio-cultural context in future morphogenetic cycles. Freedom is thus understood positively, that is, the capability to act upon the direction of existing mechanisms and their emergent impact on future social relations are recognised. Relational realism understands freedom and control as two interrelated realities that require each other to operate to maintain societal governance and the production of relational goods that sustain this governance.

This acknowledgement of the interrelated realities of freedom and control distinguishes relational realism as a general approach and its explanatory powers. To transcend modernity’s analytical closure, the societal mode of production necessitates a dynamic that ascribes efficacy to the relationality of the mechanisms of freedom and control. Affirming the societal dynamic between freedom and control is grounded in a philosophical ontology that does not dictate the parameters of knowability as it does not establish an a priori judgement on the relation’s symbolic reference. While it starts from the relational constitution of the subject, it does not view this relationality as an end — its realism is identified in its affirmation of the relation and its determinants as co-principles of reality (Donati 2021). Acknowledging determinants in a stratified social ontology means confirming the human and non-human distinction.

The relational reflexivity that steers the interdependence between freedom and control entails relational goods produced in the third space between freedom (lib) and state-regulated constraint (lab) (Donati 2021). Starting from the relationality of relations results in an approach that avoids the closure of system-based governance while not falling into a relationism that negates the distinctions of pre-existing determinants of sociability. In the context of societal governance, the morphogenesis of both realities of freedom and control ensures relational goods generate Relational Subjects (engines of morphogenesis) within an adaptable socio-cultural context (constraint). When the subject’s identity within the social is acknowledged, the latter can be continuously reimagined in reference to the emergent human reality that pre-exists but is also relationally constituted.

Introduction 5

Structure of this Book

Arguing for the necessity of transcending lib/lab governance, the book is structured into seven chapters. Chapter One aims to demonstrate the continuity of policy from New Labour to Conservative governments in recent decades. Policy triangulation or a ‘third way’ is presented as an alternative to the inadequacies of past policy templates in their over-reliance on one pole in governance. The goal is to rectify these limitations by synergising individual freedom (lib) and the state’s collective control (lab) within the conceptual infrastructure of a functionalist mode of governance. In the lib/lab mode, the attempt to balance individual freedoms and state-defined collective initiatives is defined from the perspective of system needs. The aim is to provide enough space for individuals to identify their needs but always within a regulated environment, which provides the basis for agreed-upon reciprocal interchanges. The relational autonomy of the personality system is pre-defined in the context of a system-based structured dialectic of freedom (lib) and control (lab). In functionalist terminology, the lib side represents the capability of the individual to freely choose a status-role, while the lab side represents the extrinsic powers of the state to intervene to ensure fairness through the provision of opportunities that enable individuals to pursue their choices. Nevertheless, as the attempt to reach a synergy is pre-defined, the horizons of possibility are restricted to maintaining what is posited as adaptations necessary for economic productivity. The freedom to choose a role, therefore, is externally controlled by the state’s articulation of the parameters of public goods through which these roles can be accessed.

Chapter Two proposes an alternative epistemic approach capable of opening new horizons that transcend the pre-defined outcomes of system-based governance. First, the chapter argues that an a priori epistemic approach is a reasoned necessity. Second, it presents a general approach based on Donati’s (2011; 2021) relational realism that takes as its fundamental starting point the relation and its contingencies (the contingencies of social reality being the conditions of emergence of personhood). An epistemic quadrangle is introduced as a map to analyse progressive problem-solving between the observer and observed within the context of mediations between both realities. Mediating these realities establishes a morphogenetic dialectic between lib (freedom) and lab (directive control). Within the morphogenetic dialectic, the person is emergent, raising ethical questions about the human element as an outcome of freedom and control. Because interventions are sought within the mediations, horizons are, by implication, always reflexive and open to novel policies and practices responsive to the human element. Chapter Three, following this implication, expounds on the morphogenetic paradigm derived from relational realism.

In the third chapter, the relational realist approach is applied to explain personal morphogenesis. Archer’s morphogenetic paradigm is expounded as a theory that explores the internal dynamics of relational orders to explain the emergence of the human-in-the-social (Archer 2000; 2003). Derived from the relational realist approach, this paradigm views the deliberations of persons in their relationality. When the mediations are understood as part of relational orders that shape personal concerns, they become the place of interventions to ensure relevance to the human element within socio-cultural contexts. The normative emerges from within the relations that generate reflexive deliberations. Further, the chapter argues that reflexivity as a meaning-making mechanism extends to the personal, collective, and broader social networks — the interactive dynamics of these different facets of sociability anchor social morphogenetic processes. In a relational order of reality, these dynamics valorise the human element as the emergent referential reality of morphogenesis.

Considering policy initiatives, Chapter Four addresses the question of morphogenetic sociability and the making of social capital to generate relational goods. The chapter first critiques social capital theories to demonstrate the presence of analytical closure, wherein the dynamics of sociability are viewed as post hoc phenomena. It then presents a contrasting relational view of social capital in which the processes of social capitalisation are disentangled to include the activity of Relational Subjects as sovereign actors within a morphogenetic socio-cultural context. The interaction occurs in a relational order (a civil society) that Relational Subjects mediate between the constitution of sociability and the relational outcomes it produces. In turn, social capital is a crucial relational outcome that enhances the fabric of sociability in future morphogenetic cycles. Therefore, social capital is a relational good; its

Introduction 7 features are a process and its outcome is directed by those actively in relation as sovereign producers of a morphogenetic relational order.

The fifth chapter relationally appropriates Parsons’s AGIL scheme as a compass directed by the morphogenetic developmental points of the learner. The chapter argues that the learner’s potentiality is AGIL’s value-horizon that orients the structural axis’s normative direction. Thus, the integration of the learner into the goals pursued is not regulated from above but is based on the inner dynamics of the relation. While pre-existing learning standards exist as a directive control, they simultaneously enable the development of capabilities. Correspondingly, it will be argued that the dialogical posture of learning is intrinsic to making the structural axis of AGIL responsive to its referential axis, that is, the development of the learner in dialogue with their changing subjective access points.

Chapter Six explores the idea of a relational order of the civil society — covered in chapters four and five— in the continuity between different levels of sociability. Specifically, it looks at learning planning within this order when evaluating the student’s development as a self-reliant learner and a Relational Subject. In teaching and learning, the curriculum is expanded according to the level of sociability to which it refers. Chapter Six thus continues the earlier argument proposed in the book regarding the synergy between sociability’s organisational and interactive dimensions. A three-fold distinction will be presented in the curriculum’s role as both an aspect of the socio-structural axis of AGIL and as an adaptive resource that references the development of the student (the referential axis of AGIL). In this context, the curriculum is an organisational stabilising mechanism that outlines learning standards which monitor and evaluate learning in immediate relations. In turn, assessment evaluates learning based on criteria pre-set in the delivered curriculum, but how assessment strategies are applied first references the developmental point of the learner within the interactive dimension of teaching and learning. The integration of assessment directly into learning re-orients education from a means to sort individuals to take up a status-role to the monitoring and enablement of development as learners and Relational Subjects.

Finally, Chapter Seven summarises the argument presented in the book and provides a conceptual guide toward a relational realist view of education. It gives a point-by-point breakdown of each chapter and its relevance to the argument proposed in chapter six of the developmental mission of education.

Immanent Critique

In this book, I will adopt a position of immanent critique when articulating a relational realist alternative mode of governance. First, a transcendental refutation is utilised to establish the underlying presuppositions of existing governance models.' Based on a transcendental refutation of modernity’s symbolic code — as covered in chapters one and two — the social effects of governance models are traced to starting points that shape their internal conceptual constitution. Because investigation of the internal raison d’etre of a governance approach is pre-supposed by an a priori starting point, transcendental critique leads to an immanent critique. A transcendental critique is necessary to identify the starting point of theory articulation that directs its internal logic (Bhaskar 1998).

Immanent critique seeks to show the internal inconsistencies in preliminary premises. Determining how theoretical inconsistencies are reproduced in explanation, an explanatory critique builds on immanent critique as it returns to theory articulation to identify an explanatory logic (the basis of evaluating relations). Finally, the critique of theory application (methodological critique) refers to evaluative claims and the incapability of applying these claims due to internal conceptual inconsistencies (immanent critique).

The immanent critique is applied in Chapters Two, Four, and Five. Chapter Two uses an immanent critique to identify the inconsistencies

1 Transcendental refutation is dependent on transcendental analysis. In transcendental analysis, the conditions of the possibility of social scientific investigation are analysed. Based on this analysis, the refuted account is critiqued in its capability to sustain its premises in reference to these conditions (Bhaskar 1998). In chapter two, the relation as the ontological starting point is justified as being able to sustain itself in reference to the conditions of social scientific activity without leading to analytical closure due to one element being the prism of investigation.

2 The organic relation between transcendental, immanent, methodological, and explanatory critiques is taken from Bhaskar’s metaphysical preliminaries. In these preliminaries, transcendental problems — the way the conditions of possibility of social scientific investigation are defined — generate theoretical, empirical, and methodological problems (Bhaskar 1998: 142).

Introduction 9 of both mid-range realism and pragmatist methodological realism. The claims of these approaches — with their differences — show inconsistencies when negating the necessity of an a priori starting point and, by implication, the conditions of the possibility of social scientific investigation. Similarly, in Chapter Four, in the case of social capital theory, different starting points identified generate different explanatory outcomes that are incapable of accounting for the process of social capitalisation. Chapter Five, appropriating Parsons’s AGIL scheme as a relational realist compass, critiques Parsons’s functionalist scheme as incapable of acknowledging the perspective of the human element independent of institutionalised value-patterns. Therefore, the relational realist use of the AGIL scheme becomes a compass to re-direct the referential dimension to the human element.

l. The Functionalist Symbolic

Reference of UK Governance Models

In coming chapters, I will argue for a relational approach to governance — with its accompanying mode of knowing — capable of articulating policy initiatives and social practices in ways that acknowledge the human element as a distinct reality. The need for this alternative will be first justified in response to existing approaches to governance in the UK that are conceptually insular. The policies and practices developed in hegemonic governance approaches negate rather than acknowledge relational distinctions; they aim to regulate relations in specific directions to generate outcomes that sustain a pre-given symbolic reference with complementary organisational ties. These ties create shared commitments that direct individual subjectivity.

Each social relation has a symbolic code that defines its identity (symbolic reference) and how its components are integrated. In insular modes of governance, relations are organised to manage differences through pre-existing objectified social formations. Actors are instrumentally encouraged to self-invest, but how they do so depends on the interactions’ socio-cultural context. Any distinction in relations (identified in the human element's plurality) is negated through this system-based perspective. Social integration takes a collective dimension that shapes the parameters of exchange between actors and regulates those involved to produce outcomes ensuring an economically productive social order.

In the regulation of individual subjectivity, there is an attempt to balance individuals’ liberty as self-maximisers — taking up opportunities to better themselves in guided ways — with a collective sense of belonging to a state-defined national project. Consequently, policy initiatives aim to reach a compromise between self-interested individualism (homo economicus) and the need to integrate and regulate this individualism (homo sociologicus). The different pathways seeking to achieve this compromise characterise the lib/lab mode of governance and its functionalist symbolic reference. On the individualist path, the goal is to valorise self-governance as the model of navigating the world. Whereas, on the collectivist path, the state seeks to collectively regulate the environment of interaction to enable individuals to reproduce system needs.

The state-regulated environment means that the state’s opportunities (public goods') become a pathway to scarce goods attached to prescribed roles and defined by a competitive situational logic.” In this competitive situational logic, the design and application of opportunities guide the acquisition of private goods by providing individuals with tools to make sovereign choices. The end goal in this arrangement is not the development of individuals but the acquisition of system-based accredited goods on a meritocratic playing field.

To demonstrate the centrality of lib/lab compromises that shape policy and practice, four UK approaches to governance (derived from New Labour and three Conservative governments) will be discussed:

1. The New Labour approach (1997-2010) sought to regulate social networks through the idea of an enabling state. The state provides

1 Public goods are part of the political system in its setting of collective goals and the allocation of resources (Donati 2011). As a good of the political system, public goods are state-defined (lab) that extrinsically define collective goals. Citizens or collective actors are not sovereign participants in making the relation’s ‘We-ness’ that shapes its direction and value commitments. What differentiates public goods from relational goods is that the latter is produced in reconstitutive morphogenetic cycles through the sovereign actions of Relational Subjects. Relational goods, according to this difference, are part of the referential dimension of the AGIL scheme.

2 State-provided public goods are strongly tied to providing the means and tools to access opportunities. However, as these opportunities are a bridge to taking up pre-defined roles within relations, they describe the acquisition of private goods that enable individuals to activate their talent. As a result, there is a situational logic in which public goods become the means to sort and credential individuals (credentials being private goods). In the coming chapters, the implications of this situational logic will be seen in assessment planning in which the objective is not the development of all learners but a determination of which individuals are legitimated to succeed.

the tools through which actors responsibly integrate into the collective.

2. The ‘Big Society’ agenda (2010-2015) sought to remake social networks in pre-given ways.

3. The ‘Great Meritocracy’ (2016-2019) idea is that the state provides opportunities for individuals to integrate into modes of belonging.

4. ‘Unleashing the potential of post-Brexit Britain’ (2019-ongoing) combines a renewed civic infrastructure that unleashes opportunities through job-based skills training and broader economic infrastructure investment. Levelling up and providing opportunities leads to greater enterprise and productivity growth.

With differences in focus and approach, each of these four examples points to the same lib/lab direction that negates the plurality of the human element by starting from a social integration model that reproduces and sustains system integration in reference to activity within impersonal market mechanisms.

New Labour, Social Networks, and the Enabling State

The New Labour project sought to justify itself by articulating a narrative of change that required specific interventions. These interventions involved the state’s re-invention in meeting the needs of a changing world. The imperative of a competitive logic is extended to a global economic order that needs a consensual national society to adapt and work in partnership. As a result, as Morrison observes, a new policy direction was proposed that moved beyond the failures of the Old Left and New Right:

These are the presupposition, firstly, of a neo-liberal narrative of a changing world that demands adaptation; secondly, of a consensual society that can agree shared values and work in partnership; and, finally, of the failure of both Old Left and the New Right, characterised respectively as the first and second ways, hence the required Third Way (Morrison 2004: 176).

The notion of a consensual society is presented as an alternative mediation to the Old Left’s failures and the holism of top-down state provision. To generate an environment that is not centrally regulated, a third way is required that adopts what can be described as ‘culture governance’ (Donati 2011:206). In this approach, the goal is to empower citizens to be part of the state’s provision. Individual conduct becomes part of state-steered partnerships in which self- and co-governance generate the optimal conditions for an economically productive society that is part of a changing world. Culture governance results in a discourse of self-empowerment that is, in reality, self-disciplining:

Culture governance is about how political authority must increasingly operate through capacities for self- and co-governance and therefore needs to act upon, reform and utilise individual and collective conduct so that it may become amenable to its rule. Culture governance represents a new kind of top-down steering; it is neither hierarchical nor bureaucratic but empowering and self-disciplining (Donati 2011: 206).

New Labour sought to bring about this level of self- and co-governance between state and individual by proposing that norms and values should connect social action — the culture of provision — with a consensual society’s institutions. Behavioural changes generate common expectations between provider and recipient. In turn, responsible individuals take up roles that achieve the desired outcomes of sustaining social integration and working partnerships. Worker-citizens claim their stake in a consensual society as part of a mutual duty to improve themselves through the opportunities provided. In the words of Tony Blair, such a society is based on a notion of mutual rights and responsibilities, on what is actually a modern notion of social justice — ‘something for something’. We accept our duty as a society to give each person a stake in its future. And in return each person accepts responsibility to respond, to work to improve themselves (quoted in Morrison 2004: 114).

The emphasis on co-governance through self-governance — directed via top-down steering — led to subjective and objective formations being part of one process (a theme that recurs in the ‘Big Society’ agenda). The lab dimension of policy enables this process by producing joined-up networks and investment in supply-side weaknesses at the point of provision (that is, the state connects citizens to networks that provide access to vital public goods). Therefore, this pluralistic and synergistic understanding of provision means co-governance generates a virtuous cycle in which state-steered social networks operate to maintain social integration in times of change and upheaval. According to Tony Blair, it is a method for making a new relationship between citizens and community that is suitable for the ‘modern world’ (quoted in Morrison 2004: 171).

New Labour’s focus on claiming responsibility represented a turn to strategic self-governance that invests in employability. In this model, the self-governing citizen is committed to life-long learning and the development of skills that further the collective project promoted by state-regulated partnerships. Life-long learning is promoted as providing benefits to the individual, to businesses, and to the competitiveness of the national economy:

All adults need the opportunity to continue to learn throughout their working life, to bring their qualifications up to date and, where necessary, to train for a different job. Now and in the future employability is and will be the best guarantee of employment. Learning also brings broader benefits. It encourages and supports active citizenship, helps communities help themselves, and opens up new opportunities such as the chance to explore art, music and literature. It helps strengthen families and encourages independence. That means that everyone must have access to high quality, relevant learning at a time and pace, and in places that suit them. Not only do individuals, families and communities benefit, learning throughout life also delivers tangible results for business — improved productivity and competitiveness (DfEE 1999: 56).

Thus, New Labour’s education policy emphasised learning throughout working life and continuing learning to sustain employability. It linked the enhancement of employability with behavioural outcomes believed to affect collective conduct by strengthening communities and families and improving economic productivity and competitiveness. In these shared mediations of state-steered partnerships, individuals are connected to strategic networks that offer pathways (public goods) to enhance life chances in the long term. Consequently, disadvantage is understood by New Labour as being cut off from a consensual society’s norms and values.

In this model of governance, the state’s role was to provide opportunities to citizens in the context of the UK’s position in a global emerging knowledge economy. The idea of a knowledge economy is the defining feature of a globalised economic order that implicates the necessity of supply-side interventions to remedy skills-gap problems in the workforce. This workforce investment is part of adapting to competitive external conditions between national economies. Skills investment attempts generate advantage through institutional arrangements capable of mediating social pressures represented as natural facts. Thus, for example, New Labour’s ‘The Future of Higher Education’ White Paper (2003) viewed higher education as a global business responsive to the skills demand required for a knowledgebased economy and competitive markets:

Our competitors see — as we should — that the developing knowledge economy means the need for more, better trained people in the workforce. And higher education is becoming a global business. Our competitors are looking to sell higher education overseas, into the markets we have traditionally seen as ours (DfES 2003: 13).

In the words of Gordon Brown, it is the skills and ability of the workforce that ‘define the ability of a national economy to compete’ (quoted in Bevir 2005: 113).

The lab’s role is to produce institutional arrangements that integrate citizens into broader governance goals. Therefore, objectified institutional arrangements (Bevir 2005: 31) played an essential mediatory role in managing contingencies to ensure the right outcomes were produced. These arrangements become transmission belts between social pressures and envisaged policy outcomes. As a result, in the narrative of social pressures in ‘today’s world’, the right institutional arrangements and policy outcomes are given as natural facts in which initiatives are validated in relation to these same facts (Bevir 2002: 52). What is handed down becomes the collective project of ‘one nation’. Ina speech to the Confederation of British Industry, Tony Blair stated that all stakeholders contribute to making ‘Britain more competitive’:

The choice is: to let change overwhelm us, to resist it or equip ourselves to survive and prosper in it. The first leads to a fragmented society. The second is pointless and futile, trying to keep the clock from turning. The only way is surely to analyse the challenge of change and to meet it. When I talk of a third way — between the old-style intervention of the old left and the laissez-faire of the new right —I do not mean a soggy compromise in the middle. I mean avowing there is a role for government, for teamwork and partnership. But it must be a role for today’s world.