Interpreting public policy dilemmas: discourse analytical insights

As of 2015, 264 million children and young people were not in school, with 53% of the lower and upper-secondary school age group not receiving an education (UNESCO, 2017). Despite such statistics, the dominance of liberal doctrine in international education policy remains largely unquestioned by the bodies responsible for change. This indicates a need to unpack the ideas and beliefs behind the liberal model and decode meanings to understand why efforts are off course. The article aims to explain the value of a discourse approach for interpreting the construction and resolution of policy dilemmas in international education. Using official documents from 2000 to 2018, it pursues two motives: empirically, to reveal how a dominant liberal orthodoxy was discursively constructed as a grand narrative about the purpose and ideal outcomes of international education; and methodologically, to argue that, despite criticisms and limitations, an interpretive discourse approach provides a reliable toolkit to understand how ideas inform policy practices in subtle ways. The article uniquely constructs the taken-for-granted liberal model of international education as a grand narrative, uncovering a conflicted reality that differs from the perceived harmony of the liberal deal. It traces continuity and change in ideational factors over time and suggests policy implications. It introduces Interpretive Discourse Analysis (IDA), tailored to the policy puzzle of international education for development, and challenges positivist assumptions by demonstrating the discourse approach as a credible alternative. The approach combines compatible interpretive variants and applies them to policy documents through six analytical steps. It argues the liberal education model was constructed as a narrative in three interlocking themes—vision, process, outcomes—following a quest-like plot. The article is structured with a literature review critiquing positivist policy analysis and surveying discourse research; presentation of the IDA approach and case material; empirical extracts and narrative; results; a discussion on value and limitations of IDA; and a conclusion summarizing value-added factors and implications.

Mainstream public policy analysis is often treated as a technical, economics-driven exercise (e.g., rationalist models and cost–benefit analysis). Applications to education include rates of return calculations used to guide spending priorities, though these have been contested for treating schooling as a typical market input. In contrast, interpretive discourse approaches examine how elite beliefs sediment to shape policy practices, prioritizing meaning-making over causal precision. Discourse analysis has been effectively used across policy domains—environmental politics, institutionalized racism, and liberal politics/New Labour—to reveal how ideas, identities, and narratives drive policy. In the UK–EU context, discourse studies exposed the role of national identity and Eurosceptic narratives beyond economic cost–benefit frames. In education, discourse approaches have illuminated marketization and commodification in higher education, the Knowledge-based Economy as an economic imaginary, and policy processes like the Bologna Process. In international development education, discourse studies have revealed how terms like ‘partnership’ can silence participant voices, how global reports colonize national policy thinking, and how optimistic strategies mask inequalities. Overall, interpretive discourse analysis offers a potent approach for understanding complex education policy dilemmas and underpins the IDA approach developed in this article.

The study develops Interpretive Discourse Analysis (IDA), a hybrid synthesizing Yanow’s Interpretive Policy Analysis (IPA) and Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA). Both view language/social practice as dialectically related and prioritize empathetic, interpretive understanding over emancipation. IDA treats discourse research as abductive and iterative, moving between text, meaning, and context. Six key stages structure the analysis: 1) Locate objects of research (language, ideas, actions) that carry political meaning. 2) Collect a relevant corpus; establish genres, intertextual connections; conduct a pilot to establish coding. 3) Establish wider context and communities of interest; formulate research questions; develop theoretical frameworks. 4) Refine coding; deploy interpretive tools (argumentation, framing, legitimation); interpret meanings. 5) Categorize coded data into themes/topics; identify conflicts/divergences; uncover plots/sub-plots; interpret a grand narrative. 6) Widen the lens to make normative interventions: clarify implications, present diverse perspectives empathetically, and provide reconciliations. Corpus: official documents on international education policy (2000–2018), designed in three levels to surface power relations—core policy (≈100 documents from IOs and governments), intermediary (≈100 from non-profits and academic literature), and periphery (≈100 media and scripts). Reliability measures included an early literature review and a pilot coding study with an experienced analyst to verify the IDA process and coding scheme. Research questions: (1) What vision has driven the global education agenda since 2000? (2) How did agents discursively construct the management system governing education for international development? (3) What ideas underpinned policies implemented and evaluations of outcomes? Coding evolved through phases, refining themes and topics and filtering sub-plots. Themes eventually mapped to a narrative arc—vision (public/private good), process (humanisation/marketisation), outcomes (human right realization/commodification)—with topics grouped around binaries. Thematic presentation is justified for broad, complex dilemmas, revealing evolution of themes, actor positions (neoliberal, humanist, etc.), framings, and related theories (e.g., human capital).

• The dominant liberal model of international education (2000–2018) is discursively constructed as a three-act grand narrative—vision, process, outcomes—marked by continual tensions among neoliberal, liberal, anti‑neoliberal, and humanist positions. - Vision: Human capital frames dominated but were challenged by rights-based and capabilities perspectives. Illustrative data points cited in the discourse included: one SD increase in test scores associated with 12–48% wage increases (UNESCO, 2005, echoing Psacharopoulos & Patrinos); and a 10 percentage point increase in male secondary enrollment associated with a ~4 percentage point reduction in risk of war (Collier & Hoeffler, 2000). Human development and inclusion frames gained ground over time. - Process: New Public Management ideas (value for money, partnerships, evidence-based policy, measurement, accountability) became central sites of contestation. Pro-market framings emphasized ‘smart investments’ and contracting to enhance accountability; critics framed evidence-based policy and metricization as cloaks for market reforms and a ‘tyranny of numbers’. - Outcomes: Lifelong learning was a key outcome but became commodified (learners as customers). Tensions surfaced around teaching/assessment (e.g., minority language instruction supporting rights), low-fee private schools (promoted as innovative/equitable vs. equity and public interest concerns), autonomy/participation (devolution coupled with centralization), and financing (philanthropy’s entrepreneurial logics vs. dependency/public interest). - Continuities: (1) Technology as a persistent sub‑plot across vision, process (data systems), and outcomes (online services); (2) The Knowledge-based Economy as a contextual imaginary linking education as assets (vision) to products/services (outcomes), legitimizing capitalist theories. - Changes: (1) Growing dominance of managerial processes over outcomes, facilitating privatization and decentralization (e.g., enabling low-fee private schools via PPPs); (2) Gradual weakening of human capital’s dominance in the vision as humanist/anti‑neoliberal arguments legitimized education as a social good (e.g., capabilities approach, rights covenants). - Overall, the analysis destabilizes the ‘harmonious’ liberal narrative by exposing ideological cleavages, argumentation strategies, and legitimation practices shaping international education policy.

The findings address the research questions by demonstrating how a liberal model in international education was constructed through interlinked narratives of vision, process, and outcomes, and how competing ideologies shaped these narratives. Using an abductive, iterative approach, the analysis tied empirical extracts to mid‑level theories (education as public vs. private good; marketisation vs. humanisation; commodification vs. rights realization). It decoded legitimation (e.g., authorization by experts/political figures) and argumentation (e.g., topoi of numbers) strategies that sustain or challenge policies, showing how narratives are performative drivers of policy action. Significance: The study provides a credible interpretive alternative to positivist policy analysis, revealing how ideas and beliefs—not only causal metrics—shape global education policy. It highlights how the ascendancy of managerial processes can subordinate educational outcomes, and how the KBE and IT serve as enduring imaginaries structuring policy discourse. These insights offer practical leverage points for policymakers and stakeholders to reconcile tensions, reconsider evidence claims, and re-balance priorities toward human development and rights-based outcomes.

IDA offers a valuable, systematic interpretive approach for understanding the discursive construction of international education policy. Applying its analytical steps to a multi-level corpus revealed a three‑act grand narrative (vision, process, outcomes) marked by deep tensions, conflicting legitimations and argumentations, and binaries within the liberal model. By making analytical procedures transparent and decoding embedded theories and narrative dynamics, the approach generates empirical insights that can inform policy recommendations and reconcile differences among stakeholders. Methodologically, IDA demonstrates a credible alternative to positivist paradigms for analyzing complex public policy dilemmas and can be adapted to other public/foreign policy issues.

• Interpretive discourse analysis can be judged unfairly by positivist criteria (internal/external validity, reliability, objectivity). The study addresses this by adopting trustworthiness standards: credibility (e.g., prolonged engagement), transferability (thick description), dependability (stepwise replication/inter-coder checks), and confirmability (reflexivity, audit trails). - Early waves of critical discourse analysis were criticized as impressionistic or biased; this approach counters by specifying systematic procedures, transparent coding, and empathetic (non‑emancipatory) stance to reduce perceived bias. - As an abductive, interpretive design, generalizability is framed via transferability rather than statistical inference; findings depend on contextualized meanings in the selected corpus and time period.