Call for papers for issue 25 of CRES - publication in 2026
Plan
Haut de pageResearch, Consultancy, and Expertise in Education and Training: North and South Perspectives Relations, Observation Fields, Political and Social Uses
Isabelle de Geuser, Doctor in Policy Sociology, Associate Member of the Hannah-Arendt Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Political Studies (LIPHA), Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC)
Eric Lanoue, International Education Consultant, Associate Researcher at CEPED, Université Paris Cité
Oscar Quintero, Professor-Researcher, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia
Issue Overview
This special issue of the Cahiers de la Recherche sur l'Éducation et les Savoirs aims to contribute to an analytical assessment of available knowledge in social sciences regarding the relationships between research, consultancy, and expertise in education and training. What do these relationships tell us about North-South dynamics, the contexts of international cooperation in education and training, or the conception and circulation of educational norms?
- 1 Knowledge derived from expertise and consultancy that produces understanding.
From Raymond Aron's positions (1959) to Michel Callon's work (1999), and the current challenges raised by numerous sociologists and citizens appointed as "consultants" (Olivier de Sardan, 2011) or "experts" (Trépos, 1996), there is extensive literature on the relationships between research and expertise. Nevertheless, the connections between scientific knowledge and cognitive knowledge (Normand, 2011)1, between the scholar and the politician (Weber, 1959; Vink, 1995), remain a source of central questions, specifically in the field of education and training.
Studies on these advisory actors, researchers, experts, and consultants, examine their involvement in the development of public education and training policies since the advent of New Public Management (Gunter, 2012; Normand, 2021), new education reforms (Ball and van Zanten, 1998; Normand and Vincent-Dalud, 2012), the internationalization of educational norms (Carvalho, 2005; Dakowska, 2020), and the privatization of educational systems (Serpieri et al., 2015; McClure, 2017; Gérard, 2023). The world of expertise and consultancy is observed as "blurred" (Henry, 1992; Lacroix, 2019) and sometimes likened to a "consultocracy" (Saint-Martin, 1999, 2000; Berrebi-Hoffman and Lallement, 2009; Gunter et al., 2015).
This call for proposals questions the possibility of analyzing complementary approaches to the aforementioned works. The special issue aims to address New Public Management (Bezes, 2009; 2012; Serpieri et al., 2016), the internationalization of actors (Lange and Henaff, 2015), as well as the professionalization of transnational expertise and consultancy activities (Henry, 2006; Bezes et al, 2011; Serpieri et al., 2015) in the field of education and training, whether in "Northern" or "Southern" countries. The goal is to question the limits and boundaries between research, expertise, and consultancy, and to examine the role of this transnational object of North and South in the circulation of educational norms.
What about the interactions or lack of relationships between forms of scientific knowledge and cognitive knowledge within expertise in education and training? Institutions responsible for steering research through non-scientific expertise and commissioners of consultancy in education and training (policies, systems, strategies, social demands) seek to promote, legitimize, or hierarchize these models of knowledge, despite their hybrid and ambiguous status. In a longitudinal analysis, expertise and international cooperation in education have been analyzed in terms of "neocolonialism" (Lange, 2003), in the sense that expertise would participate in the dissemination of a transnational semantics of pedagogical reform and "best practices" designed for imaginary rather than real societies (Meyer, 1999; Anderson-Levitt et al., 2017).
Today, what are the relationships between the world of research and the logic of operational expertise and consultancy in programs funded by international cooperation and public authorities in education and training: methods, approaches, temporalities, interactions, and representations? What are the interests and objectives pursued by the commissioners of these expertises? Do all commissioning institutions expect the same "products" from the expertise? Do they solicit the same consultants? Do the produced expertise and advice influence public debates on education and training, policies, systems, or even commissions in education and training, or are they, on the contrary, censored by virtue of their critical approaches, or instrumentalized, and in what sense?
Moreover, depending on the contexts, there may be room for maneuver in the face of terms of reference that are supposed to be standardized. These terms of reference have an impact on the expectations and forms of consultancy and expertise produced. However, practices around this method of procurement are diverse; articles may account for this. In this sense, article proposals are invited to critically analyze elements related to expertise to specify their proven or possible links with scientific research, or at least to stimulate reflections on the relationships between social sciences and public problems (Tanguy, 1995; Castel, 2004; Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2018). This special issue thus proposes to vary "points of view" on relationships between research, consultancy, and expertise in education and training, rather than imposing a line of analysis that would close an object with porous borders, still little explored.
Attention will also be paid to the specificities and languages of expertise, consultancy (Lundahl and Waldow, 2009), and research in the field of education, in Francophone, Anglophone, Hispanic, or Lusophone contexts. This approach invites consideration of temporalities, the place and role of financial aspects, practices, and norms imposed or self-imposed due to this hybridization between research and expertise in education and training (Olivier de Sardan, 2011, 2021).
Finally, what about the producers of expertise — whether researchers, consultants, or experts — their trajectories, and their impact, insofar as "small" or "large" providers of expertise and consultants partly determine the forms of expertise requested, consecrated, or censored?
What are the "profiles" and careers of these experts and consultants in education and training in light of the evolving national and international institutions commissioning expertise? What is the relative "weight" of expertise producers compared to commissioning institutions regarding written productions in education at the scale of a region, a country, the Global North and South? Through what channels do international standards of expertise and consultancy impose paradigms in the field of education and training?
Ultimately, this call for contributions aims to gather productions that highlight potential dividing lines or specificities between contexts and situations where research and expertise are related, sometimes in opposition, sometimes complementary.
The proposed axes, which are not exhaustive (an article may address one or several), are as follows:
Axis 1: Profiles, Postures, and Trajectories of Experts and Consultants in National and International Cooperation Fields
Careers are not static (Pons, 2014; Lauwerier, 2019): many researchers carry out consulting missions, and experts practicing consultancy play labeling games with profiles, titles, and qualifications (including those required by clients) dedicated to scientific rankings (doctorate, publications, etc.), for example. This axis also questions the institutional, financial, political, and ethical determinants of these developments.
Axis 2: Research, Consultancy, and Expertise in Decision-Making, Elaboration, and Reconfiguration of Public Action
This axis emphasizes the strategies and interactions of these consultants and experts with their clients and beneficiaries: states, religious institutions, donors, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, among others. Contributions will highlight privileged paradigms, fields, and objects such as "basic education," "quality," "external profitability of education," "governance and steering of educational systems," "key performance indicators," etc. Faced with the rise of entrepreneurship, it is necessary to question the impact of these modes of action, especially when they use methods that compete with or are analogous to those in force in scientific research - which often fuels criticism or stigmatization of this activity by peers.
Axis 3: Institutionalization of Expertise and Consultancy within Research Centers and Universities, and "Research" Departments within Donor Institutions and Consulting Firms
While research centers (universities, laboratories, associations) have less and less choice to do consultancy (financial interest) (Castel, 2004), donors (World Bank, Global Partnership for Education, French Development Agency, etc.) and consulting firms are equipping themselves with research departments or directorates to provide evidence of the quality of their action, what they call "evidence-based policy" (Normand, 2017). This blurred boundary between expertise, consultancy, and research (Poupeau, 2003) raises questions about the reconfigurations of places of production and legitimization of knowledge, and scientific and political fields.
Axis 4: Doctrines, Symbolic Representations, Purposes, and Uses of National and International Expertise and Consultancy
National and international fields of cooperation in education are becoming a ground for connecting research with educational systems through programs, projects, devices, theories, "tools," or methods. This final axis questions the contributions of expertise and consultancy to research and vice versa (Tanguy, 1995). It involves analyzing the representations of education by experts and consultants, the evolution of knowledge models, and the transformations of spaces for their production and dissemination. The profusion and proliferation of written productions (published and unpublished) resulting from expertise and consultancy are the source of shared questions about their purpose and future, both within the worlds of research (if and when researchers contribute to them), the worlds of expertise and consultancy, and as well as the worlds of clients in national and international fields of cooperation in education and training (Lauwerier and Akkari, 2011).
Bibliographic references
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Types of Articles Sought
This call for contributions welcomes both case studies, in the sense defined by Jean-Claude Passeron and Jacques Revel (2005), and empirical cases focusing on diverse objects, fields, and perspectives. Articles may also adopt a comparative approach, examining the relationships between research, consulting, and expertise in education across the Global North and South.
We remind authors, whether they are researchers, experts, or working at the interface of research and expertise, that in accordance with its editorial policy, the journal Les Cahiers de la Recherche sur l'Education et les Savoirs (CRES) only accepts scientific articles. These must demonstrate:
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A strong dimension of critical reflexivity
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Theoretical grounding in the social sciences
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Empirical analyses
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Qualitative and quantitative data serving as evidence
Timeline
Proposals for contributions are expected by April 30, 2025, at the latest. The CRES editorial committee will make decisions on these proposals by May 30, 2025.


