What is it about?
The article is a critical sociological analysis of current transnational practices on creating comparable measurements of dropout and completion in higher education and the consequences for the conditions of scientific knowledge production on the topic. The results suggest that available data on student completion offers only a very limited basis for research driven comparative analysis. It offers also a problematisation of the notions of researchers seen as users or producers of data and different position takings in statistical reasoning in using statistics as for example different types of evidence for policymaking.
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Why is it important?
It is important to think about the conditions of quantitative data production, who is allowed to do it? What is the role of the researcher in this process? What about the single indicators and multidimensional reality? Is it always good to reuse data? Are all kinds of quantitative data suitable for advanced multivariate analysis? Is there a mix up between policy evaluation and critical research that is policy relevant?
Perspectives
This article grew from the frustration in finding comparable quantitative data across countries and adhere to good validity standards. While writing it forced me think about dominant data production practices and powerful agents producing data within EU and about Education as a academic discipline and how the critical basic research is pushed aside in favor of policy evaluative practices.
Dr Carina Carlhed
Stockholm University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Resistances to scientific knowledge production of comparative measurements of dropout and completion in European higher education, European Educational Research Journal, September 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1474904116667363.
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