ABSTRACT

Since 2000, girls’ education has been an increasingly high-profile concern in international development policy. At the same time, there has been a trend towards the greater production and reliance on quantitative data, indicators and targets in national and international education policy. Scholars have raised concerns about the rise of ‘performance-based’ approaches to accountability in education, and potential counterproductive effects of this for social justice and equality. However, few studies have explored how this trend plays out in practice within international organisations, particularly in relation to the heightened focus on girls’ education. This paper explores the implications of the increasing reliance on quantitative measures for policy actors and draws on a set of interviews with key stakeholders working in organisations concerned with gender and education to explore their divergent understandings of accountability processes. The paper concludes by reflecting on the prospects for a transformative approach to measuring gender equality and girls’ education.

摘要

自2000年以来，女童教育日益成为国际发展政策中备受关注的问题。与此同时，国家和国际教育政策出现了更多地生产和依赖定量数据、指标和目标的趋势。学者们对教育中“基于绩效”的问责方法的兴起以及这种方法对社会正义和平等可能产生的反作用表示担忧。然而，很少有研究探讨这一趋势在国际组织的实践中如何发挥作用，特别是与对女童教育的高度关注有关。本文探讨了政策行为者日益依赖定量措施的影响，并利用对在性别和教育相关组织中工作的主要利益相关者的一系列访谈，探讨他们对问责流程的不同理解。本文最后反思了衡量性别平等和女童教育的变革性方法的前景。