| 1. |
- Alexiadou, Nafsika, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Learning, unlearning and redefining teachers’ agency in international private education : a Swedish education company operating in India
- 2023
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Ingår i: Educational review (Birmingham). - : Routledge. - 0013-1911 .- 1465-3397.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Private international education is on the rise, but we still have limited knowledge on how different commercial actors operate in this field and how it affects local teachers and their work in the schools abroad. Swedish school companies have been active in exporting schooling in the international arena, including “Swedish” education models. In this article, we examine one company and their operations in India. We explore the interpretations of the company education model by teachers in the Indian schools, and how this affects their professional capacity. Mixed qualitative methods of interviews, on-site school visits and documentary reviews, were used to examine the possibilities for teachers to exercise professional agency within their working environment. Our findings show that teachers operate within a highly structured pedagogical environment characterised by a given curriculum, a centralised learning platform and training programme, and a set of dominant discourses around values and teaching practices. Teachers are expected to embrace a new professional identity in a process of discarding past experiences and adopting the new professional language given by the company's particular education model. In willingly embracing the company discourses and expectations, teachers’ agency tends to be constrained.
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| 2. |
- Alexiadou, Nafsika, et al.
(författare)
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Managing inclusion in competitive school systems : The cases of Sweden and England
- 2016
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Ingår i: Research in Comparative and International Education. - London : Sage Publications. - 1745-4999. ; 11:1, s. 13-33
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The last 40 years have seen great political attention paid to issues of inclusion in education, both from international organisations and also individual nations. This flexible concept has been adopted enthusiastically in education reforms concerned with increased standardisation of teaching and learning, decentralisation of education management, reduced teacher autonomy and marketisation of school systems. This paper draws from a research project that explores inclusion as part of the education transformations in England and Sweden. These two countries have been very different in their state governance and welfare regimes, but have been following similar directions of reform in their education systems. The paper evaluates the changing policy assumptions and values in relation to inclusion in the schooling changes of the last few decades, through an analysis of policy contexts and processes, and a presentation of selected empirical material from research in the two countries. We argue that, despite the similar dominant discourses of competition and marketisation, the two education systems draw on significantly different paradigms of operationalising inclusion, with distinct outcomes regarding equality.
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| 3. |
- Alexiadou, Nafsika, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Preparing Education Students for an International Future? : Connecting Students' Experience to Institutional Contexts
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Studies in International Education. - : Sage Publications. - 1028-3153 .- 1552-7808. ; 25:4, s. 443-460
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article focuses on "internationalization at home" (IaH) for education students in Swedish Universities and its significance for their professional formation and future practice. We draw on research in two large institutions and explore the perceptions and experiences of internationalization of home students in education. We find that while the "intercultural" understanding of students is well developed, the international and intercultural dimensions of experiencing IaH are limited, due to several institutional and learning environment contexts. This has consequences for the social dimensions of future teaching practice. In addition, the perception of the discipline as "national" is significant in shaping the outlook of students toward international questions and their own future personal and professional mobility. We contextualize these findings using documentary analysis and staff interviews, and argue that to achieve intercultural and international learning environments of quality, social relevance, and long-term social benefit, we need to rethink how internationalization perspectives are integrated in teacher education courses.
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| 4. |
- Rönnberg, Linda, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Swedish free school companies going global : Spatial imaginaries and movable pedagogical ideas
- 2022
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Ingår i: Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy. - : Taylor & Francis. - 2002-0317. ; 8:1, s. 9-19
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Enabled by market-oriented policies implemented in the early 1990s, a nation-wide for-profit education industry has emerged and flourished in Sweden. As a more recent expansion strategy, Swedish school companies have begun exporting their school and early childhood education and care services internationally. In this article, three such companies and a selection of the foreign operations they have set up are studied to analyse how they describe the education services they are establishing in the new national settings. The findings show that the companies have developed and followed different edu-business models, using and transforming particular pedagogical ideas and connecting them to different spatial imaginaries. These include the Swedish/Scandinavian as both places and idealized spaces, infused with borderless global transformative spatial imaginaries on the creation of autonomous learners and futuristic education visions for global futures. Educational profiles and concepts from the Swedish context are both adjusted and marketed to the foreign settings, and entail stories on spaces and mobilities, encompassing pedagogy, teachers and students.
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| 5. |
- Alexiadou, Nafsika, 1968-
(författare)
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Researching policy implementation : interview data analysis in institutional contexts
- 2001
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Ingår i: International Journal of Social Research Methodology. - : Taylor & Francis. - 1364-5579 .- 1464-5300. ; 4:1, s. 51-69
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper I am concerned with the analysis of semi-structured interview data that emerge from an inquiry rooted in institutional environments. The examples of data used to illustrate the procedures of analysis come from research carried out in Further Education Colleges in England. The focus is on individual actors (managers and teachers), mediating change within organizations. This focus provides scope for the exploration of social manifestations of political action. A number of epistemological questions arise with respect to the data and the nature of knowledge that is accessible through their analysis. The paper is practically oriented in that it presents an example of data analysis as part of researching the implementation of policy at the level of institutions, and the enactment of such a policy by individuals. The consideration of different traditions underpinning research and specific methodological techniques for data analysis has resulted in identification of a set of theoretically informed procedures that provide a framework for de-constructing, interpreting, and synthesizing interview data into accounts of policy implementation in the field. These procedures are presented and exemplified, while the theoretical assumptions underlying them and their implications for further research are discussed.
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| 6. |
- Alexiadou, Nafsika, et al.
(författare)
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Developing the educated citizen : changing frameworks for the roles of Universities in Europe and England
- 2014
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Ingår i: Annales, Series Historia et Sociologia. - Slovenia. - 1408-5348. ; 24:3, s. 371-382
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper explores questions of citizenship and the role of universities in the context of the policy changes in the UK and in Europe over the last two decades. Twenty five years after the political transitions in Eastern Europe, and 70 years since the end of the Second World War, Europe is more united than ever before. New political, social and economic configurations across the continent are bringing expectations and pressures to its citizens and institutions, with universities at the front of many economic and social projects. What do these new conditions mean for citizenship in the context of European universities, and how do member states respond to this changing context? The article will use England as a national case study within the EU to illustrate the tensions between the humanistic visions still carried out by many universities, although interpreted differently across the sector, and the pressures for the creation of the ‘knowledge economy’ that are shared at the national and transnational levels.
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| 7. |
- Alexiadou, Nafsika, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Early childhood education and care policy change : Comparing goals, governance and ideas in Nordic contexts
- 2024
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Ingår i: Compare. - : Routledge. - 0305-7925 .- 1469-3623. ; 54:2, s. 185-202
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is changing across Europe, reflecting multiple policy intentions and assumptions about education in early years, and the role of the state in supporting, funding and regulating its institutions. In this article, we examine the evolution of ECEC comparatively in Finland and Sweden, and we explore the shifts in goals, governance mechanisms and policy ideas that have characterised reforms in the sector. We draw on an analysis of policy documents, and argue that the incremental changes achieved over the last 50 years have been in response to changing goals assigned to ECEC and ideas about its roles and functions as part of the welfare and education sectors. The power of ideas in effecting policy change is tempered by established institutional framings, yet is visible in the early dominance of child-centred ideas, and the later controversies over the emergent labour-market and education-driven rationales of the post-2010s.
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| 8. |
- Alexiadou, Nafsika, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Early childhood education research in Europe : Contexts, policies, and ideas
- 2020
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Ingår i: Education Inquiry. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 2000-4508. ; 11:2, s. 89-93
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- From the very north to the south of Europe, the national examples of early childhood education research reported here address remarkably similar issues around the definition of core values in early childhood education, and their impact on pedagogical work in preschools. Policy histories and frameworks matter, since they define the parameters within which these definitions take place and they determine resources given to preschool provision. Our collection demonstrates the significance of ideas and cultural frames as factors that often act independently to develop professional practice in different directions (see also, Löfdahl Hultman & Margrain, 2019; White, 2002). Education policy and policy reforms are formed often without the participation of professional educators, but they are mediated by practitioners who exercise significant discretion in how they implement them in their everyday work. Since education policy reforms are the result of a social negotiation process, the reforms reflect ideal, but also traditional and normative views on ECE. In this respect, the approaches in the European countries presented here do not show great divergence. Where we do observe stronger differences, is in the ideas of educators around professional autonomy, practice, as well as certain social values. We find that, the success or failure of reforms in early childhood education depends on the extent to which the policy process accounts for not just administrative new requirements, but also the features of the institutional contexts of ECE, their historical evolution in different national contexts, and the role of ideas around the goals and purposes of the sector. Second, no new policy can be effectively applied, with positive transformative effects for young children’s lives, without the active participation of preschool educators in the process. As all the cases in this special issue illustrate, education change aimed to achieve any preschool policy goal (new assessment, inclusive classrooms, gender equality, children’s agency) is a social process that requires professional engagement and learning, and in some cases a transformation of the attitudes of the educators themselves.
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| 9. |
- Alexiadou, Nafsika, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Education policy governance and the power of ideas in constructing the new European Education Area
- 2023
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Ingår i: European Educational Research Journal. - : Sage Publications. - 1474-9041. ; 22:6, s. 852-869
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Twenty years after the Lisbon strategy, education policy in the European Union (EU) is at a critical juncture, with a new set of strategic goals endorsed for the 2021–2030 decade. This article examines the complex interplay of ideas, institutions and actors, in articulating education policy priorities in the new European Education Area (EEA). Drawing on documentary reviews and interviews with policy actors in the European Commission and the Council of the European Union, we trace the rise and fall of policy ideas in the new framework. The negotiations over the definition of EEA reveal new tensions between and within European institutions over specific policy ideas, with “lifelong learning” and “gender” as the most controversial ones. Continuing, longstanding tensions between the education and employment fields remain, and present adifficulty for the construction of a comprehensive and cohesive education policy program.
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| 10. |
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