Ambivalent systems: Tick box frameworks and holistic education

This paper explores the ambivalent relationship between tick box frameworks and holistic education. Tick box frameworks ensure minimal compliance and foreground measurement. At their best, they may highlight issues that could otherwise be missed. However, they can also operate against ways of thinking holistically and systemically. The paper explores potential ways to both trouble and cautiously use such frameworks.   Tick box frameworks are implemented around the world with the stated aim of transforming educational institutions. The paper uses discourse analysis to problematise two particular frameworks (one UK based and one international) to illustrate issues with wider relevance. The paper discusses the disconnection between the growing recognition of the need for education that responds to our planetary predicament and the particular logics and rationalities of neoliberal frameworks in neoliberal education institutions.   Firstly, it critiques the underpinning assumptions of the frameworks and their wider ‘business as usual’ contexts. In this, it discusses (im)possibilities of values and unlearning in performativity driven settings. It considers how schools and universities are implicated in our planetary predicament and how, within them, it is almost unintelligible to look beyond market systems of measurement and a focus on economic growth.   Secondly, it provides generative provocations to those using such frameworks for their own professional development or to support the development of their institutions. It invites educators to find new ways of using the edges of these narrow development practices as prefigurative for less disconnected institutions where transformative possibilities can be imagined for social and environmental justice.