Sonoda, Tomoya; (2020) The politicisation of evidence: A critical realist approach to data-driven education planning, practice and exclusion in Syria. Doctoral thesis (Ed.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Grounding aid planning in empirical evidence on ‘what works’ has gained currency in the field of education and conflict. However, mainstream debates on the evidence base rarely investigate the politicisation of data, even though it may be more at play than in non-conflict settings. This research aims to examine what forms of discourse play out behind data-driven education planning and practice, and whether and in what ways the politicisation of evidence may enact educational exclusion. I take a critical realist approach to analysing aid professionals’ presuppositions of evidence and the reality it claims. I draw on semi-structured interviews with 31 stakeholders in and outside Syria. The findings reveal that the Government of Syria, Western pro-opposition donors and aid agencies deploy political, emotional and managerial discourses for their advantage. These discourses generate methodological bias in evidence production and use. Stakeholders fabricate, politically reinterpret or selectively deny particular data, justifying their allocation of education resources and services in ways that favour their partisan groups over others. Consequently, vulnerable children in siege, hard-to-reach opposition-held areas and government-retaken areas were kept out of the equation of education assistance. Another emerging finding is that stakeholders position themselves strategically to both use the rhetoric of objectivity implicit in numerical data and recognise its politicisation. Analysing the complexities around how evidence is constructed and used in policies and programming, the research offers critical realist insights into aid professionalism. Measurable data are susceptible to methodological and political contestations in conflict-affected contexts, and therefore cannot objectively represent the whole reality. Aid professionals should reflect on what data tell and do not tell, and what presuppositions are inscribed in evidence. This helps professionals to attend to conflict-affected children’s realities and educational needs that they cannot simply observe and quantify, thereby making education planning and practice fairer and more just.

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