Examining Teaching for Mastery as an instance of ‘hyperreal’ cross national policy borrowing

ABSTRACT

To improve education performance at home, countries cross nationally policy-borrow from jurisdictions ranked highly in international league tables. This paper examines a practical example of one such instance of policy borrowing, Teaching for Mastery (TfM). Over a six year period, interviews were conducted with teachers working in primary schools in the East Midlands region of England. The focus of these interviews was to explore informants’ experiences of enacting TfM and their analysis of the UK government’s motives for undertaking this borrowing. Applying Baudrillard’s ideas around hyperreality and image to these data indicated two key themes: 1) TfM discourses masked crucial aspects of the original policy, with the result that 2) TfM became non-relational to the original and thus hyperreal. The paper suggests strategies that might mitigate against policy becoming hyperreal and concludes that government must carefully consider its motives for engaging in the borrowing process from the outset.

KEYWORDS:

• cross national policy borrowing
• Teaching for Mastery
• hyperreality
• image
• masking
• non-relational

Introduction

Rankings provided by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) are high stakes and drive education policy (Gorur & Wu, 2015; Nortvedt, 2018; Steiner-Khamsi, 2014, 2019). Motivated by attempts to improve PISA rankings¹ and to support what Sunak (2023a), the United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister, described as ‘reimagining our approach to numeracy’ and tackling an ‘anti-maths mindset’ (2023b), the UK government has employed strategies including cross national policy borrowing (Phillips & Ochs, 2003). This paper examines one example of such borrowing: Teaching for Mastery (TfM).

I argue that TfM exemplifies the dangers when government borrows policy to improve rankings in league tables such as PISA – and considers it as simply requiring implementation, rather than being a complex, unpredictable and conflicting process of enactment (Ball et al., 2012). Directing Baudrillard’s (1994) ideas around hyperreality and image towards data generated over a six year project, I suggest that such motives can render policy idealised, non-relational to the original and ultimately hyperreal. For Baudrillard, hyperreality exemplifies how society has become transfixed by signs that blur the boundaries between copy and original. I argue that policy borrowing is not immune from this blurring which results in definitional, organisational and pedagogical confusion around what policy aims to achieve and what teachers are required to do to enact it.

The paper develops previous work (Clapham & Vickers, 2018) by drawing on n = 97 semi-structured interviews conducted with n = 40 teachers² working in primary schools in the East Midlands region of England. The research set out to explore informants’ conceptualisation of Mastery, of enacting TfM and their analysis of the UK government’s motives for this policy borrowing. Analysis indicated two key themes: TfM discourses masked crucial aspects of the original East Asian versions of Mastery, with the result that TfM became non-relational and hyperreal. The paper suggests strategies that might mitigate against policy becoming hyperreal and concludes that government must carefully consider its motives for engaging in such borrowing from the outset.

Mapping the field

Much of the debate around TfM and Mastery focuses on defining these terms (see Simpson & Wang, 2023). For this paper, TfM describes the suite of policies which, in response to England’s³ PISA rankings in mathematics, the UK government borrowed from the East Asian jurisdictions of Singapore and Shanghai. Mastery meanwhile describes the conceptual framework, practices and principles associated with this approach towards teaching mathematics.

Mastery as concept

Mastery has been used in education since the 1960s, with Bloom (1968) and Guskey (2010) offering two of the most cited definitions. For Bloom (1968), Mastery indicates students’ competency in completing a task, which was ascertained via assessment. Key to the Bloom model was that students who failed assessments did not move onto new topics until they had successfully completed follow-up assessments. Guskey (2010) meanwhile, suggested that Mastery consisted of seven elements related to assessment, group-based learning, ‘corrective instruction’ and extension activities. Like Bloom, Guskey argued that ‘slower’ students must be afforded additional learning time whilst ‘faster’ students accessed enrichment activities, with the aim that the entire class progressed through the curriculum together.

In the current context of mathematics education in England, the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM, 2022b) – who lead on implementing TfM in England – argue Mastery is underpinned by Five Big Ideas and mediated by pedagogical and organisational practices including: the use of textbooks and mathematically coherent resources, frequent classroom interaction, the whole class working on the same content, professional development and adaptations of school timetables. Askew et al. (2015) meanwhile argue that Mastery can be defined in four ways:

• Mastery Approach: the belief that anyone can succeed in mathematics;

• Mastery Curriculum: connected pathway of resources and curriculum;

• Mastery Teaching: pedagogic practices; and

• Achieving Mastery: students’ ability to use knowledge flexibly.

Despite these definitions, there is ongoing debate as to what describes Mastery in England (Clapham & Vickers, 2018; Simpson & Wang, 2023). Indeed, Simpson and Wang (2023, p. 581) argue that as much as it is a pedagogical and conceptual approach, Mastery has come to stand for a ‘key policy intervention’ associated with ‘territories perceived as high performing, such as Singapore and Shanghai’. As a result, definitional inconsistencies have led to significant challenges for how teachers conceptualise the term (Simpson & Wang, 2023). Also noteworthy is the argument made by authors such as Duckworth et al. (2015, p. 32) that much of what Mastery purports to offer is not new or innovative and that ‘effective mathematics teaching has always promoted a mastery approach’.

TfM as policy

TfM can be traced back to 2014, when a delegation from the UK’s Department of Education (DfE) visited Shanghai to examine how mathematics was taught there (Department for Education [DfE], 2014). The visit concluded that differences in ‘teaching approaches’ (DfE, 2014) were the main reasons for the gap between Shanghai’s performance in PISA and that of England. As a result, Mastery became prominent in government discourses concerning the quality of mathematics teaching in England’s schools, with key milestones in the policy’s trajectory including: the establishment of 32 Maths Hubs (2014); Shanghai teacher exchange visits (2014–2017); and the Primary Mathematics Teaching for Mastery Specialist Programme (2015). Currently, there is a network of 40 Maths Hubs, significant professional development (PD), work groups, Maths Hubs projects and the Leaders of Maths scheme.

The 2014 DfE visit to Shanghai was one example of the UK government’s policy and discourses concerning TfM. Others include speeches by Ministers such as Nick Gibb – currently Minister of State for Schools – who advocated that adopting teaching methods from ‘high performing’ East Asian jurisdictions would lead to a ‘renaissance in mathematics teaching’ in England (Gibb, 2016). The UK government also mobilised commentaries from outside of England, including those of Andreas Schleicher, the Education Director for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), who administers PISA. Talking about the UK’s performance in the 2018 round, Schleicher suggested that despite ‘modest improvements’ it would take a ‘very long time’ for the UK to ‘catch up with the highest achieving jurisdictions’ (Schleicher in Coughlan, 2019).

More recently, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (2023a) stressed the importance of ‘reimagining’ the UK’s approach to numeracy and that the country would be ‘letting our children down’ if its approach towards mathematics teaching did not improve. Sunak went on to argue that all school pupils in England should study mathematics until the age of 18 and that he was personally making ‘numeracy a central objective of the education system’ (Sunak, 2023a).⁴ In April 2023, Sunak stressed that the UK economy was suffering from a failure of numeracy, which started with the way mathematics was taught in schools. In this speech, Mr Sunak criticised the ‘cultural sense that it’s okay to be bad at maths’ and reiterated the importance of the ‘maths to 18’ initiative. Whilst accepting that there was a need for increased numbers of mathematics teachers, he gave some details of a new advisory group for mathematics education, new qualifications for mathematics leads in primary schools and an extension of the 40 Maths Hubs across England (Sunak, 2023b).

The outcome of discourses such as these highlights how students’ attainment in mathematics, and the effect of this on economic performance and PISA rankings, have increasingly become high-profile drivers for mathematics education policy in England. However, although Mastery has featured heavily in government texts since 2014, identifying what constitutes TfM is surprisingly difficult. The government mostly referred to the Shanghai–England teacher exchange and the Singapore text books, although the Department for Education (DfE) has set ‘Mastery’ approaches to teaching as a goal since 2014. What does seem to be the case is that the NCETM’s ‘5 Big Ideas’ (2022b) were heavily influenced by East Asian Mastery, as was the adoption of Bar Modelling, whole class teaching and teacher research groups (again none of which are new; see Duckworth et al., 2015).

Despite the high profile afforded to TfM there have been two aspects consistently absent from the UK government’s discourses around the policy. The first relates to the organisational differences between the English and Shanghai education systems. Boylan et al. (2019, p. 37) describe these ‘clear differences’ (see Table 1), nonetheless these variances – and their implications for how TfM is enacted – have seldom featured in government discourses around the policy (Clapham & Vickers, 2018).

Table 1. Differences in school-level practices (amended from Boylan et al., 2019, p. 40).

	Shanghai	England
Organisation of mathematics teaching	Daily 35 minute lessons with practice as homework. Teach 2 × 35 minute mathematics lessons a day, undertake daily intervention teaching, more time preparing than teaching, lesson design rather than lesson planning	Daily one hour lesson with most practice in the lesson. Prepare and teach almost a full timetable of different subjects, small amount of planning time during the school day
Curricular progression	Coherent progression encapsulated in textbooks that are system wide	National curriculum interpreted as school schemes of work
Pupil access to the curriculum	Pupils taught in all-attainment classes of 40–50 pupils. Daily intervention by class teacher, pupils identified by daily assessment. Daily homework	Mixture of setting, in-class grouping and all-attainment teaching in classes of 30 pupils. Intervention often by teaching assistant to pupils identified for blocks of time – term or year. Weekly homework
Teacher roles and professional development	Primary mathematics specialists with undergraduate study of mathematics and teach only mathematics. Teach the same class for a number of years. Teacher research groups embedded, 340–560 hours of collaborative professional development in first five years of teaching	Generalist primary teachers with some specialist teaching at the end of primary school in some schools. Usually teach the same year group for a number of years. Limited opportunities for specific mathematics professional development

The second aspect relates to research evidence around the impact of TfM in England. Despite receiving over £70 million in funding from the UK government since 2014 (see Blausten et al., 2020), there has been ‘inconclusive evidence’ (Boylan et al., 2019) linking TfM to improvements in pupil outcomes (see also Cambridge Mathematics, 2019). Where such evidence is presented, it is often done so with caveats. For example, whilst the Education Endowment Foundation (The Education Endowment Foundation [EEF], 2021) suggested that ‘Mastery Learning’ had high impact for low implementation cost, they stressed that these findings were based on ‘limited evidence’. Even turning to the NCETM does not provide clear evidence around impact. The 2021/2022 Maths Hub Annual Report (NCETM, 2022c), for example, chose to focus on TfM’s impact upon teachers’ conceptual thinking and pedagogical practices rather than pupils’ attainment. Given that the motive for borrowing Mastery was to improve pupils’ scores in PISA, and with it economic performance, this lack of conclusive evidence is significant.

Factors influencing cross national policy borrowing

Educational borrowing is a core aspect of how education systems can be developed (Ochs & Phillips, 2002; Phillips & Ochs, 2003). Consisting of four stages, such borrowing can sit at different points on an ‘educational transfer’ continuum (Ochs & Phillips, 2004, p. 9). Consequently, policy borrowing research is significantly more complex than analysing how country X has implemented policy borrowed from country Y. Such analysis must also explore the alignment – or misalignment – between cultural, philosophical, social and structural contexts in the lender and borrower jurisdictions (Hodgson & Spours, 2016).

As well as these contextual factors it is also necessary to examine the motives and objectives for government to engage in the borrowing process (Lingard, 2010; Olmedo, 2017; Steiner-Khamsi, 2014, 2019). To undertake such analysis, Ochs (2006, pp. 601–602) developed a typology of motives that can drive governments to borrow policy cross nationally (Table 2). These motives highlight how political necessity and ideology have significant implications not only for why policy is borrowed, but also for those tasked with enacting policy.

Table 2. Motives for cross national borrowing policy texts and discourses (amended from Ochs, 2006).

Policy as discourse	Policy as text
To caution against educational reform	As an exemplar for innovation of new practices at home
To glorify current education at home in comparison to other nations	To inspire policy reform (which might include the termination of existing home policies)
To legitimise the adoption or reform of educational policy at home	To converge or unite educational reform with global initiatives
To scandalise policy and practices at home, substantiating and validating the need for reform	To enhance the country’s ability to compete internationally

Nonetheless, cross national policy borrowing is often regarded as a simple ‘transplant’ (Phillips & Ochs, 2004) process, which can result in the borrower choosing to ignore key aspects of original policy through ‘cherry picking’ (see Auld & Morris, 2014). Analysing policy and deciding which parts to select is a day-to-day activity for policy makers (Wahlström and Nordin, 2022). However, in contrast, policy cherry picking sets out to identify the most convenient aspects of the policy to implement, those which require the least resourcing or which chime with dominant political discourses. Borrowing policy cross nationally, or indeed enacting policy per se (see Ball et al., 2012), is a complex amalgamation of potentially competing motives and contextual factors, which render it anything but an unproblematic transplant and implementation process.

Drawing on Moran and Kendall’s (2009) argument for a Baudrillardian approach to educational research, I now discuss the concepts of hyperreality and image.

Hyperreality

Hyperreality reflects how modern society has become transfixed by sign systems that blur the boundaries between copy and original (Baudrillard, 1993, 1994). For Baudrillard, hyperreality – along with simulacrum (copies with no original) and simulation (copies and re-copies of simulacra) – constitute the ‘three orders of simulacra’. Baudrillard argues that these three orders intersect and interact with one another in a highly complex and nebulous way which leads to an inability, by individuals and society, to distinguish the ‘real’ from a simulation of the real (see Canning, 2019).

The first order, simulacra, is an idealised version of reality that either surpasses the original or had no original to begin with. Through an intersectional process, these copies are themselves supplanted with new simulacra, thus reinventing ‘the real as fiction’ (Baudrillard, 1994, p. 124). The second order simulation occurs when the real is replaced by the simulated, when the simulated becomes real and when the ‘new’ real is itself simulated (Baudrillard, 1988). This ‘chain reaction’ of simulacra and simulation ultimately ‘… threatens the difference between ”true” and ”false”, the ”real” and the ”imaginary” (Baudrillard, 1994, p. 3).

These first two orders result in hyperreality, which exemplifies how modern society has become transfixed by sign systems and thus a ‘… hallucinatory resemblance of the real to itself’ (Baudrillard, 1994, p. 23). To illustrate this, Baudrillard (1994) employed Disneyland and Disneyland castles as examples of hyperreal sign systems. He argued that Disneyland castles are ‘real’ in so far as they are made of real materials and obey real laws of physics. As Canning (2019) points out, the crux of Foucault’s argument is that these castles are so idealised that they become nothing but a ‘perverted’ image which is non-relational to ‘real’ castles outside Disneyland. Baudrillard’s use of Disneyland highlights how the mutation of real and copy – and how the differences between real and fake are masked in signs, discourses and texts – leads to what he calls ‘social euphoria’ (Baudrillard, 1994). For Baudrillard, reality is increasingly augmented and superseded by idealised signs portraying ‘what should be’, media becomes the transmitter of ‘euphoric stupefaction’ and the image and fiction become the same.

The intersections between hyperreality, sign systems and the real are exemplified through the four ‘phases of the image’ (Baudrillard, 1994, p. 6):

Reflection, a faithful representation of the real;

Perversion, false portrayal or misrepresentation of the real;

Masking, images pretend to represent the real, but are copies with no original; and

Non-relational, images are connected to other signs without material referent to the real.

He argues that through a process of misrepresentation, perversion and masking signs become ever more non-relational to the original. Moreover, and drawing on earlier work (Baudrillard, 1970, 1973), Baudrillard argues that the phases of the image highlight the dynamic relationship between the image and its referent and how this relationship operates as a political tool of control.

Like Moran and Kendall (2009) and Canning (2019), I argue that a Baudrillardian approach to educational research can offer an alternative perspective for researchers, politicians and teachers alike. Within the cross national policy borrowing space, Baudrillard’s work on hyperreality and image can do this in several ways. Hyperreality mediates an understanding of the cultural and political ‘zeitgeist’ that motivates government to policy borrow in this way. The phases of the image, meanwhile, offer ‘units of analysis’ with which to examine a sign’s (in this case policy) transition from simulacrum to hyperreality (see also Redhead, 2013). In combination, they mediate an understanding of the factors which can render policy an idealised and non-relational version of the original.

In the following section, I outline the methodology and analysis which resulted in the two themes that are the focus of this paper.

Methodology

The research employed data sources including school, NCETM and UK government policy documents and the Maths - No Problem! textbooks.⁵ Here, the focus is upon n = 97 semi-structured interviews conducted with n = 40 teachers over a six-year period. All these teachers were also participants in a larger project, where they developed and undertook research exploring Mastery in their schools. Consequently, I adopted a naturalistic approach towards interviewing (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009) where the interviews were captured in reflexive field notes, which after ‘writing up’, were shared with the informants.

Braun and Clarke’s (2020) six stages of reflexive thematic analysis were directed towards the data set, ultimately identifying codes which were grouped into themes (Table 3). Reflexivity was facilitated by returning to the data over time and by reviewing and restructuring themes which were identified in relation to their ‘keyness’ (see Braun & Clarke, 2020). These themes were then cross-checked with Table 4, thus mediating analysis to be theoretically informed.

Table 3. Thematic analysis.

Theme	TfM Policy	Analytical unit
TfM as mask	TfM is so different from original version that there is an absence of basic reality, therefore making it a copy with no original	TfM masks the original by pretending to be an accurate representation
TfM as non-relational	TfM is non-relational to original version (in all but name) and therefore merely connects to other signs without a material referent	TfM fails to relate to the original

Table 4. Image as analytical schema.

Image phase	Description	Unit of analysis
Reflection	Reflected image is that of a basic reality. Reflection is a faithful representation of a real object/event	Does borrowed policy reflect the original?
Perversion	Perversion of a basic reality: in the order of ‘evil’ appearance, an object/event is portrayed falsely or misrepresented	Does borrowed policy falsely misrepresent the original?
Mask	Mask of the absence of a basic reality: in the order of ‘sorcery’, the image pretends to represent a real object/event, but it is a copy with no original	Does borrowed policy mask the original by pretending to be an accurate representation?
Non-relational	No relation to any basic reality: in the order of pure simulation, there is no relation to any original reality whatsoever. Signs merely connect to other signs without a material referent. They are pure simulacra	Does borrowed policy fail to relate to the original?

Through this process two main themes, TfM as policy mask and TfM as non-relational, were identified and are now discussed.

TfM as policy mask

When informants analysed the UK government’s motives for borrowing Mastery and instigating the TfM policies, they described performance in PISA and improvement in economic performance as the two most prominent motives. Callum’s comments were typical ‘… it’s about the league tables … PISA … but England isn’t Shanghai’. Like Callum, many informants considered that TfM had failed – for a variety of organisational, procedural and cultural reasons – to represent much of the Shanghai version of Mastery. This was a highly complex and multifaceted point and frequently informants would cite differing political, cultural and social concepts as integral to TfM’s lack of relationship to East Asian Mastery. Where there was consensus was how informants felt UK government discourses around TfM masked these differences.

For many, this masking was central to complicating how they felt Mastery was conceptualised and what was required to enact TfM. Patsy, for example, recognised that borrowing every aspect of a policy was unlikely ‘nor necessarily beneficial’, but went on to argue that this was exactly how TfM was being portrayed:

They [UK government] keep saying that we need to copy from these ‘high performing’ countries. But we’re not actually copying what they do. The government’s not going to start giving us loads more planning time like they’ve got in Shanghai. So, we’re not actually copying are we. (Patsy)

Trish, meanwhile, felt that government discourse painted TfM as a ‘golden bullet’ that would enable teachers to copy the teaching practices of their counterparts in Shanghai. However, in her view, this was ‘simply impossible’ (Trish) given the constraints of the English education system. Rikki made a similar point when he described TfM as failing to be an accurate representation of East Asian Mastery in a host of ‘really crucial ways’. Both Trish and Rikki felt caught between policy discourses describing TfM as ‘English Mastery’, and their own experiences of how fundamentally different TfM was from the East Asian originals.

The masking of these differences only heightened teachers’ concerns about the government’s motives to borrow TfM. Aidan was critical of the government citing PISA and increased economic performance as its motives for borrowing Mastery and instigating TfM. Aidan’s view was that such motives were not only ethically problematic, but had resulted in definitional and conceptual inconsistencies:

… the way Mastery is organised [in English schools] is different … and no one’s doing it like Shanghai … there’s not agreement as to what Mastery is … we’re all making it work as best we can.

These inconsistencies were mentioned frequently by other informants (see also Simpson & Wang, 2023), who outlined how they posed significant challenges for how they enacted TfM. Teachers described how such inconsistencies were, in part, a result of mismatches between government discourses around the TfM policy and those from NCETM around Mastery. Eddy, for example, felt this signalled a ‘lack of a joined up approach’ between government and NCETM, with the outcome that teachers were left trying to ‘second guess’ what the aims and objectives of TfM were at the local level. Similarly, Trevor described how TfM appeared to have unclear aims and objectives, outside of ‘improving how we do in PISA’, whilst Tony felt that TfM was being positioned as a ‘ready formed’ and ‘ideal’ policy solution:

There’s this ideal view of Mastery … that all we’ve to do is copy [how they teach in] Shanghai. But the reality’s different … we’ve made Mastery work well, but it’s not the way they do it in Shanghai. (Tony)

For Bell, rather than TfM being a policy with clear aims, objectives and outcomes, it was a ‘fantasy’ version of East Asian Mastery. Bettina also highlighted how TfM was ‘not the real thing’, as it was being enacted very differently from the originals in her school. For her, TfM had failed to acknowledge the challenges that teachers faced in enacting TfM and therefore she was ‘left in the dark as to how to do it’. Matty meanwhile described that the main reasons TfM was being enacted so differently in England than in Shanghai was because of practical, rather than pedagogical, considerations:

… we haven’t decided against doing Mastery the way they do in Shanghai … we’re not doing it like that because we can’t.

Other informants were similarly frustrated by the way TfM discourses masked how practical considerations – such as curriculum, timetabling, workload and assessment – drove the extent to which they could enact it. Sandy felt that the UK government had ‘glossed over’ the difficulties of enacting TfM within the current structures of schools in England. Andy meanwhile was more sceptical and felt the government was actually being disingenuous:

… one moment they’re [government] saying that Mastery is going to make us one of the best countries in the world for teaching maths … and the next, they're saying that we must cover loads of content and have high paced lessons.

Despite concerns such as Andy’s, informants supported the aim of seeking to improve the way mathematics was taught in England and to learn from teachers from other jurisdictions. However, as Shelly described, the underpinning motive for TfM was highly problematic:

The expectation seems to be that all we’ve got to do is copy the way maths is taught in Shanghai … which we can’t … and then just drop it into Willowfield [Shelly’s school] and suddenly we’ll be ranked highly [in PISA].

Informants regarded TfM as a conglomeration of often competing motives, texts and discourses. For many, the policy ‘push’ for teaching approaches in England to become more like those in Shanghai was in opposition to the curriculum ‘pull’ demanding they cover content and for high paced lessons. All these factors added up to policy discourses that appeared to ignore (at best) or actively mask (at worst) considerations that were crucial to TfM being enacted in England in a way relational to the East Asian versions.

TfM as non-relational

As the masking theme suggests, informants frequently described a lack of relationship between TfM and East Asian Mastery. Petra, for example, indicated that because of practical and organisational reasons TfM ‘doesn’t really relate to Mastery in Shanghai’. Tommy meanwhile described TfM as primarily a ‘sign’ that, whilst enabling the UK government to herald that England had joined the ‘cool gang’ of high performing PISA countries, in practice lacked relationship to the East Asian versions. For both informants, differences between the education systems in England and Shanghai were key to this lack of relationship. Again, both described how these differences were so significant that only ‘national level change’ (Tommy) to curriculum, assessment, teachers work and accountability would enable TfM to ‘relate more closely’ (Petra) to the Shanghai version.

As with Petra and Tommy, other informants also discussed just this point with two key examples frequently cited: teachers’ workload and accountability. Regarding workload, Table 1 gives some indication of the scope of the differences in how teachers’ work is organised in England and Shanghai, with ‘contact time'⁶ a prime example. As Boylan et al. (2019) note, Shanghai teachers have a total contact time of 2 × 35 minute mathematics lessons a day, In contrast, teachers in England teach consecutive one hour lessons of different subjects, with a small amount of planning time allocated to them during the school day. Time and again informants stressed how crucial these differences were, and Bernie’s comments encapsulated those of many of her colleagues:

Come on, if I taught two lessons a day and the rest of my time was spent working with kids one-to-one, or planning lessons and with no pastoral responsibilities … well, this would be a very different job!

For many informants, this contrast between contact and non-contact time was powerfully illustrated by ‘rapid intervention’ (see Boylan et al., 2019). Rapid intervention is where teachers in Shanghai work ‘one-to-one’ with individual pupils or very small groups who have struggled with a particular concept almost immediately after a lesson has finished. Bob’s comments were typical in that he considered rapid intervention as fundamental to the Shanghai version of Mastery, but impossible to replicate in his school:

… there’s no way I have the time to do [rapid intervention] with a single child, or even a small group … I’d love to because it’d make so much difference.

Resonating with Bob’s comments, other informants also considered that rapid intervention was key to the success of Mastery in Shanghai, but that replicating it in England was a ‘dream … a fantasy world’ (Raquel); ‘impossible’ (Cliff); ‘not in the real-world’ (Janet); and ‘a joke’ (Carla). Carla went on to describe why this aspect of Mastery invoked such responses:

If I could work one-to-one with kids that were struggling and I didn’t have to do all the other things … well, that’d have a substantial impact on the kid’s learning … but there’s no chance [of this happening].

The parallels between Carla’s comments and those from Abbie, an informant in Simpson and Wang’s study (2023), are striking:

… with the Mastery in Shanghai, say, if students aren’t on track, they’ll come back after school or you’ll catch up with them during school, or they’ll get a tutor or whatever to help with it, so then you can … be reassured that, OK they might not have got it that lesson, but they’ll have gone away and tried their best to get back on track with everyone else. But that’s not going to happen in England so how can you actually … ? (Simpson & Wang, 2023, p. 594)

Many other informants also cited rapid intervention as typifying the lack of relationship between East Asian Mastery and TfM. When discussing this, informants often ‘zoomed’ in and out from the local, national and international levels. For Mickey it was impossible to consider TfM without also considering the ‘different philosophies’ around education in England and East Asia. Again, many informants also described how these philosophical differences were prevalent in almost every aspect of the English and Shanghai education systems.

Homework, parental pressure, assessment, class sizes, PD and subject specialism were cited as just some examples (again, see Boylan et al., 2019, for similar findings). However, informants most frequently described how accountability was one of these key differences and that this had a significant impact upon the way they enacted TfM in their schools. In England, schools are inspected by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) and many informants described competing discourses between Mastery principles, the TfM policy and those from Ofsted (see also Boylan et al., 2019, p. 130).

Pipa outlined how on one hand ‘Ofsted have really got behind Mastery’, whilst on the other that the inspectorate wanted ‘high paced lessons … that cover lots of content’. Similarly, Rupa described how Ofsted wanted to see ‘variation’ in teaching approaches which contrasted with how in Shanghai:

… it’s all about transmission … the teacher stands at the front and teaches and the kids just listen.

Rupa was sceptical of the benefits of this didactic ‘delivery–reception’ model and felt that Ofsted – rightly in her view – would be highly critical of it. For both Pipa and Rupa, these contrasting messages resulted in a highly confusing picture regarding how their school’s enactment of TfM would be graded in inspections.

Another informant, Josh, also discussed ‘mixed messages’ regarding inspection and cited seating strategies as an example. As Boylan et al. (2019) outline, Shanghai students are seated in rows during lessons, whilst students in England are often seated at tables which are designed for small group work. Josh felt that these different arrangements signalled far more than simply where students sat:

… I believe in group work and group learning. When I see the kids [in rows] in Shanghai, I feel really sad. It’s not how I want children to learn … and I think Ofsted would react really badly to kids sat in rows.

Other informants also reported that despite Ofsted endorsing a ‘mastery approach’,⁷ it had failed to give direction as to how such an approach would be graded in inspections. This lack of clarity meant that – somewhat ironically, considering Ofsted is the UK government’s school inspectorate – teachers considered TfM as ‘a big risk’ (Ashley) in relation to inspections. Phil also discussed this point. His school received a ‘Requires Improvement’ grading⁸ at its last inspection and he was concerned about how TfM might be graded by Ofsted in follow-up inspections. Phil felt that it was a ‘huge step’ for his headteacher to reorganise the school’s curriculum, assessment and work structures to enable TfM to be enacted in a way similar to the East Asian versions, particularly with a re-inspection looming.

For many informants, these points reflected a fundamental lack of relationship between TfM and East Asian Mastery. However, not only did teachers feel that this signalled the UK government’s lack of understanding of Mastery, but also of the cross national borrowing process itself. Informants stressed how considerations such as teachers’ workload and school inspections were not subsidiary to TfM, but fundamental to how the policy could be enacted. Nonetheless, informants were left frustrated and even angry by the way these – and many other aspects of the English education system – were written out of government discourses around TfM.

There were mixed views as to why this was the case. Some informants felt it resulted from the absence of a clear policy strategy, others felt the opposite, and that it was the outcome of a highly strategic decision to ignore aspects of Mastery that were not ‘on-message’ with government discourses. Whatever ‘camp’ informants aligned with, the consensus was that national level education policies frustrated them in their attempts to enact TfM in a way that replicated the East Asian versions.

Discussion

The data presented here outline the informants’ views of Mastery as a concept, of TfM as a policy and their analysis of the UK government’s motives and strategies for engaging in this example of cross national policy borrowing. These data offer a lens upon such borrowing at the micro-level, although the headline message is concerned with the importance of the meso- and macro-scale motives which lead governments to borrow in this way. Informants were clear that when the prime motive for government to undertake such borrowing is to improve rankings in tools such as PISA, and supposedly with it enhance economic performance, there are significant implications for how teachers and schools enact that policy. It is important to stress that, for many informants, TfM mediated many significant and positive outcomes. Nonetheless, teachers in this study repeatedly described the infeasibility of enacting TfM in their schools in a way that maintained key aspects of the Shanghai version. Many felt frustrated by UK government discourses that seemingly positioned TfM – through unproblematic implementation – as policy that would not only address England’s (supposed) underperformance in PISA, but also improve the country’s economic performance.

The cases examined here suggest that the motives for the UK government to borrow Mastery – and as a result the foundations for the TfM policies – were misplaced. Informants stressed that the fundamental ideas around TfM were not inappropriate, nor that the UK government’s focus on improving mathematics teaching was unwise. Nonetheless, informants felt these motives were responsible for the lack of clarity as to how Mastery should be conceptualised and what TfM required them to do. This lack of clarity was compounded by the structure of the English education system, which had a fundamental impact upon teachers’ ability to enact TfM. In combination, this meant that TfM was so essentially different from the East Asian version that, in Baudrillardian terms, there was an absence of basic reality between copy and original.

Mitigating against hyperreal policy borrowing

What this absence suggests is that TfM was only connected to East Asian Mastery as a sign system. As such, TfM lacked material referent to the originals, which in turn rendered it both non-relational and hyperreal. As much as this paper sets out to ‘map’ how cross national policy borrowing plays out in practice, it also offers a means of mitigating against such policy becoming hyperreal. I argue that a combination of Baudrillardian analysis, and aspects of Ochs’s (2006) work identifying best practices for such borrowing, can offer government a means for doing so in three ways: developing clearly articulated objectives; embedding the monitoring of policy outcomes; and ensuring coherent policy narratives.

Regarding the first of these, Ochs argues that effective policy borrowing requires ‘a clear understanding of the original objectives and problems that the new programmes or policies would address’ (Ochs, 2006, p. 614). The borrower must be cognisant of how its macro-scale motives for policy borrowing, which remain embedded within the policy infrastructure, shape how policy is enacted at the micro scale. Failing to do so leads to confusion and lack of clarity around how the policy is defined and what its enactment entails. In Baudrillardian terms, this maintains a clear referent between copy and original.

Next, Ochs stresses the importance of monitoring and evaluating outcomes. Borrower governments must have a clear programme of research which examines the policy’s performance – over the short-, mid- and long-term – against its objectives and goals via clear success criteria. In Baudrillardian terms, this prevents the copied policy misrepresenting the original, therefore preventing the copy becoming a ‘perverted’ version of the original.

Finally, Ochs (2006, p. 615) stresses the need for ‘coherent and consistent messages’ and for government to acknowledge the potential for unexpected outcomes of policy enactment. Such coherence not only acknowledges what policy is achieving, but also gives teachers a steer as to how it can be enacted whilst retaining key aspects of the original. Such messaging also highlights that government accepts that the enactment of borrowed policy has the potential for unexpected outcomes. In Baudrillardian terms, this prevents borrowed policy from becoming non-relational to the original.

Used in conjunction, Baudrillardian analysis and Ochs’s work can mitigate against hyperreal policy borrowing in three ways.

1. Motives for the policy borrowing are clearly articulated, are agreed with by stakeholders and relate to the original policy. Doing so enables the copy to remain a reflection of the original.

2. Research is undertaken mapping the performance of the policy against objectives over time. Doing so prevents the copy from becoming a perversion of the original.

3. Differences between the lender’s and borrower’s contexts are acknowledged. Doing so prevents the copy from masking these differences and from becoming non-relational to the original.

Employing these three ideas as a ‘toolkit’ to support cross national policy borrowing illustrates how potentially competing motives can be addressed, the practicalities of policy enactment acknowledged and differences between lender and borrower unmasked. When embedded within strategy they can support government to undertake considered, mindful and informed policy borrowing. Not only does this lead to the conditions where borrowed policy can become successfully enacted, it also prevents policy that is a simulacrum of the original.

Conclusion: (un)blurring the boundaries

I have argued that the blurred boundaries between real and copy occur just as much in the policy borrowing space as in the rest of society. Regarding TfM, such blurring resulted from a government whose motivation to undertake policy borrowing was as a convenient and ready-formed answer to a perceived policy problem. However, the outcome of such motives can result in key aspects of the original policy becoming masked, thus rendering the borrowed version idealised, non-relational and ultimately hyperreal.

Day-to-day work life for the teachers in this study is one where persistent scrutiny and intense pressure to improve is commonplace. This background is fundamental in understanding the motives for government to identify why a concept such as Mastery is worth borrowing and policies such as TfM worth implementing. I suggest that this intersection between political motives and the practicalities of policy enactment are key in grasping how policy becomes hyperreal. Regarding TfM, many of the elements that rendered it hyperreal could be traced back to the original motives for the UK government to policy borrow from Shanghai. The informants’ data suggest a simple, although arguably unlikely, remedy – the motives for such borrowing should not be decided solely by government. If the teachers in this study had been consulted, they would mostly have supported the borrowing of Mastery and the development of the TfM policies, but for completely different motives, with different objectives and different success criteria from those of the UK government.

Avoiding borrowed policy becoming hyperreal can, in part, be achieved by adopting the ‘best practice’ that Kimberly Ochs (2006) describes. However, it is more complex than simply ‘ticking-off’ a set of instructions. Employing hyperreality to investigate such borrowing illustrates how society’s love-affair with idealised versions of reality plays a powerful part in the entire borrowing process – from identifying which policy is to be borrowed to the way that policy is enacted.

Of course, hyperreal policy might simply be an outcome of ‘careless’ borrowing (see Chung, 2010), however I take a different view. Like Steiner-Khamsi (2014, 2019), I argue that borrower governments seem to actively ignore some of the inconveniences of such borrowing, particularly if addressing them would be at odds with their own policies or require increased funding or resources. Consequently, government must carefully consider its motives and objectives for engaging in the policy borrowing process from the outset. Failing to do so risks confusion around how the policy is defined, what it entails and ultimately how it is enacted.

Like Ochs, I argue that there are best practices that borrower governments can adopt to support the cross national policy borrowing process. As much as these practices are concerned with policy enactment, they also have the capability to prevent policy becoming hyperreal. Nonetheless, when the motives for government to borrow policy are concerned with improved rankings, the process becomes fraught with dangers. What the cases reported here suggest is that such motives can render policy idealised, non-relational and hyperreal – with the result that teachers are tasked with enacting policy that is a copy with no original.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the reviewers and Matt Woodford for his insightful comments around the Mastery conundrum.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available, as they contain information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew Clapham

Andrew Clapham is an Associate Professor of Education Policy and Higher Education Academy Senior Fellow. Andrew examines the sociology of education and focuses upon how education policy plays out in different education settings. He has undertaken numerous research and evaluation projects examining education in its many guises, with an interest in informal learning, education governance, mathematics education and assessment, inspection and teacher education. Andrew works closely with policy-makers and practitioners to develop empirical evidence that informs and critiques educational policy. His research and evaluation expertise has led to him working extensively in regional, national and international settings.

Notes

1. Jermin (2021) outlines significant debate around the methodological efficacy of PISA and how the UK government has interpreted these data.

2. The project was conducted in accordance with the British Educational Research Association (BERA, 2018) guidelines and received favourable ethical review from the author’s university. All names are pseudonyms.

3. The UK and England are not the same policy unit. The UK government does not have power over education policy in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland which are devolved. This paper focuses on England.

4. An expert panel reported to the Education Select Committee (2023) that without fundamental reform of the recruitment, retention and professional development of specialist mathematics teachers and the high stakes focus on assessment, the Maths to 18 plan would face significant challenges.

5. In 2016, a proportion of the overall Department for Education (DfE) funding helped some schools to buy textbooks that met criteria drawn up by the DfE of which Maths - No Problem! was one (see NCETM, 2022a, no page).

6. Contact time is the amount of time teachers are allocated for teaching students during the school day. Non-contact time is the amount of time teachers are allocated for preparation, marking, lesson planning, PD and curriculum design during the school day.

7. In a 2019 report, NCETM highlighted how Ofsted had identified a link between a ‘Mastery approach’ towards mathematics teaching and ‘improved learning in mathematics in schools’ (NCETM, 2019, p. 13).

8. Ofsted inspections currently provide one of four overall judgements: Outstanding; Good; Requires Improvement; and Inadequate, with the last of these potentially resulting in a school being closed. See https://www.gov.uk/guidance/inspecting-schools-guide-for-maintained-and-academy-schools#history.