- Title
- Emergence, representation, and reception of education policy in Nepal
- Creator
- Poudyal, Basanta
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2020
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- While Nepal lacks clarity among its leadership, policymakers, and stakeholders over how its education and education policies are currently interlinked to globalisation and aid dealings. Adopting a Foucault-inspired poststructuralist framework, this study explores issues relating to the emergence, representation, and reception of education policies in Nepal. It aims to generate understanding of the processes of governing and thus the governed and, consequently, the ways in which such controls are possible by means of specific problematisation of educational discourses. Furthermore, it delineates the idea of producing possibilities, subjects, and objects of education, as well as concepts and categories of education, in the context of power. Such constructions are sustained by proposals represented by power or conceptualised by experts governing Nepali education—the matrix of signified provisional truths in Nepali education that has far and unforeseen repercussions to both educational development and people’s lived experiences. This study thus establishes that such truths can be altered, substituted, redefined, and scrutinised using an unconventional perspective, analytically arguing it as necessary for reimagining educational practices and processes. Meanwhile, analysing educational politics that have shaped and is shaping Nepali education, it examines the ways in which Nepali educational boundaries can be changed to ensure more egalitarian processes in the development of educational policies. The participants in this study were policy stakeholders who come from different backgrounds, such as cabinet members, senior -level bureaucrats, and academicians, and have been engaged in Nepal’s education policymaking, implementation, and research. In this study, we outlined the features of Nepali education and its policies by discussing the mode of educational practices and processes in Nepal. The core idea of education described in national policy and the discursive environment have influenced the policymaking and implementation process. Likewise, the study elaborates on Nepali education, especially from the perspective of policymakers, cabinet members, and academicians, who as professionals in the field are accountable for the planning, implementation, and assessment of education and educational policies in Nepal. Because of the discursive role of these stakeholders, education has experienced various transformations that represent the issue of power while also silencing the issues of marginalised and vulnerable groups and communities in Nepal, exacerbating their exclusion from the education system, education policies, and the policymaking process. The concerns of Nepali people who reside in the periphery of power regarding education contemporarily have become politically polarised. Additionally, global and local authorities are rejecting any scientific evidence that does not align with their political preferences. As such, actions of policy reforms based on coercion, subjugation, and pejoratives exercised in Nepal requires critical scrutiny. Subverting such binaries, this study was conducted to engage in the reflection and reimagining of these systems and to provide the spaces for analysing how such exclusions were made possible. Educational realisation in this regard—that is, in the context of political attainment and marketisation—was critically analysed in order to redefine the processes that will produce deferential and accountable educational policies for all in Nepal. Against the backdrop of policy influences, as operated by policy networks and aid politics and their vested suggestions, presumptions, and mechanisms, part of the strategy in addressing these concerns was to problematise whether or not the discourse of power and actions aligned with marginalised voices. Also, perspectives of the governing were examined in relation to how such powers demarcate politics and possibilities and shape subjectivities and vice versa. Analysing Nepal’s education policymaking process and practices unconventionally, this study provides insight into both the limitations of and the requisites for continuous reappraisal of education and policies from the perspectives of the marginalised, enabling possibilities and inclusion for all. Who makes decisions about Nepali education (its concepts, categories, preferences, and so), and why? Do politicians and policymakers assume the underlying values and principles of education? Whose and what discussions and recommendations do education policies cloth, and how do national and international networks influence them? Is there a process for collaborating with global networks and aid providers for national educational development? Are such alliances, practices, and processes or other efforts to support Nepali education legitimate? These were the initial assumptions and questions. Therefore, this study proposed to respond to the adverse context of educational and schooling in Nepal and the experiences of the nation in the last seven decades by diagnosing policy as politics and discourse (see Bacchi, 2009; Ball, 1993). This study thus analysed the influence of all this in the emergence, representation, and reception of education policies in Nepal. In this study, I investigated the (re-)discourse of Nepali education policy. Drawing on the firsthand experiences of Nepali policymakers, I firstly argue that donors’ discourse drives the contemporary Nepali education policy, leaving Nepali education stakeholders with limited choices to assess and prioritise the educational needs of its citizens. Then, I empirically delineate how the donor-led education policy framework has attributed to persistent inequities and exclusionary practices in education policy, especially alienating the economically deprived, rural poor, and those in the Indigenous and ethnic marginalised category. Given this backdrop, finally, this study highlights that there is a need to (re)discourse education policy. Using Carol Bacchi’s (2009) poststructuralist framework “Analysing Policy – What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” it is identified that homegrown policies would contribute to the emancipation and liberation of the underrepresented population categories of Nepal. To redefine Nepali education is to re-examine it with a rationale to bring about change. This study, therefore, explores the practice and processes of (re-)defining Nepali education, its policies, and its implications for the Nepali people in contemporary times. It is vital that such policies reflect community values, its wants, and its needs.
- Subject
- Nepali education policy; educational discourse analysis; poststructural theory; donor agencies; Nepali education
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1418418
- Identifier
- uon:37346
- Rights
- Copyright 2020 Basanta Poudyal
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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