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- 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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| 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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- Alexiadou, Nafsika, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Reading the internationalisation imperative in higher education institutions : external contexts and internal positionings
- 2023
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Ingår i: Higher Education Policy. - : Springer. - 0952-8733 .- 1740-3863. ; 36:2, s. 351-369
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sweden has actively pursued internationalisation policies at national level, in parallel to the pursuit of internationalisation strategies of individual universities. Thisarticle focuses on university responses towards internationalisation, and the inter -play between external higher education environments and institutional positioning.We draw on empirical qualitative research in two of Sweden’s largest universities, toexamine institutional responses to internationalisation, expressed through documen-tary material and interviews with 32 senior leaders. Our findings suggest that theglobal research environment acts as a strong discursive driver for internationalisa-tion actions, manifested in the strategic partnerships pursued by the two institutions.An equally powerful driver, is the national higher education sector as a context ofconstant comparisons and competition but also as a source of collaborative learningand exchange. The two universities exhibit strategic autonomy in their reading ofthe internationalisation imperative, and in constructing their actions and responses,although these are significantly framed by size and geography. In the Swedish highereducation landscape, these two dimensions constitute a constraining physical anddiscursive context, underpinning the links between a global, internationalised envi-ronment, and the universities’ self-image and positioning.
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| 5. |
- Alexiadou, Nafsika, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Shifting logics : education and privatisation the Swedish way
- 2019
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Ingår i: Challenges for public education. - Abingdon : Routledge. - 9781138348226 - 9780429791949 - 9781138348202 ; , s. 116-131
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- During the last 40 years, many countries have launched radical reforms of their public education systems in a neoliberal direction that emphasises a mixed economy of schooling. The reforms have been accompanied by discourses of ‘a crisis’ of the public sector, and shared broadly similar elements of varying degrees of decentralisation and new public management (NPM), choice, competition and the introduction of private actors and interests in public education. Much social policy and education research on marketisation reforms has focused on Anglo-Saxon countries, where institutional changes towards more choice and competition have led to a similar dismantling of the welfare state. This has included turning citizens (students, parents) into customers, with all the resulting implications for ethnically and socio-economically based differentiation (Cahill & Hall, 2014; Campbell et al., 2009; Clarke et al., 2007; Roda & Stuart Wells, 2013). However, despite the numerous similarities in the direction of education reforms, the existing literature on marketisation does not capture the peculiarities of the Nordic education policy settings, where choice and competition coexist with a strong sense of education as a public good.
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- Alexiadou, Nafsika, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Through the eyes of the disciplines : Student perspectives and positionings towards internationalisation-at-home
- 2024
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Ingår i: European Journal of Higher Education. - : Routledge. - 2156-8235 .- 2156-8243. ; 14:2, s. 249-266
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Debates around internationalisation-at-home (IaH) focus on the benefits accrued to students from the integration of internationalisation dimensions in their studies, curricular developments and interactions with international students, but, with scant attention to how these vary in different subject areas. In this article, we focus on the disciplinary experiences and framings of internationalisation from the perspectives of students in two Swedish universities. Drawing on 67 interviews with students sampled across different subject areas, we examine how the disciplinary definitions of study objects and pedagogic approaches filter the students’ experiences and shape their views around IaH, and their ambitions for the future. Our findings suggest first, a discipline-specific set of positionings regarding the nature of subject areas as lenses through which internationalisation is understood. Second, the students hold strong views around the contribution of IaH in strengthening the disciplines themselves. In addition, the student voices paint a dynamic picture of internationalisation positions, not always consistent with disciplinary stereotypes.
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| 7. |
- Alexiadou, Nafsika, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Transcending borders in higher education : Internationalisation policies in Sweden
- 2022
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Ingår i: European Educational Research Journal. - : Sage Publications. - 1474-9041. ; 21:3, s. 504-519
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article examines the national and European policy contexts that shaped the Swedish internationalisation agenda in higher education since 2000, the policy ideas that were mobilised to promote it, and the national priorities that steered higher education debates. The analysis highlights how domestic and European policy priorities, as well as discourses around increasing global economic reach and building solidarity across the world, have produced an internationalisation strategy that is distinctly ‘national’. Drawing on the analysis of the most recent internationalisation strategies we argue that the particular Swedish approach to internationalisation has its ideational foundations in viewing higher education as a political instrument to promote social mobility and justice, as well as a means to develop economic competitiveness and employability capacity. In addition, internationalisation has been used to legitimise national reform goals, but also as a policy objective on its own with the ambition to position Sweden as a competitive knowledge nation in a global context.
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| 9. |
- Benerdal, Malin, 1984-
(författare)
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Nationell utvärderingspolicy : utformning och förändring på grundskoleområdet 1988-2014
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Evaluation has grown in both volume and scope across levels and sectors in recent decades, particularly in the school sector. Despite this growth, there is insufficient knowledge about how and in what ways evaluations are formed, institutionalized and used in education governance and education reforms. This thesis addresses some of these issues by studying evaluation policy. The aim of the thesis is to explore and analyse the design and possible changes in national evaluation policy in compulsory education during two periods of extensive education reforms (1988-1994 and 2008-2014).The theoretical framework builds on evaluation research and policy studies, particularly the literature on policy design. These two strands of literature are supplemented with additional analytical tools from historical institutionalism regarding policy change. Drawing on previous research, a definition of evaluation policy that incorporates the policy context and also enables studying an implicit policy is proposed. On the empirical level, the findings are based on official policy documents, material produced by national government agencies as well as evaluations and evaluation systems.The thesis shows that during the first period (1988-1994), the evaluation policy was characterized as a means of helping to implement the extensive reforms. Evaluations were to be conducted on all levels of the school system to promote development on each executive level. The policy design reflected evaluation as a learning and capacity-building tool. Schools and municipalities were positioned as owners and co-creators of evaluation knowledge. During the second period (2008-2014), the evaluation policy was partially revised in order to come to terms with inadequate evaluations and declining school results. The policy included more sanctions and hortatory tools, and more emphasis was placed on comparisons and rankings. The evaluation policy was based on the assumption that local actors should and will act on evaluative knowledge created by the agencies and international actors, and that they could be motivated to do so by the threat of, for example sanctions or issues of ranking and comparisons.The evaluation policy design was largely stable over time. However, three more incremental but significant changes were identified: i) the policy design element “agents and implementation structures” was altered, ii) the evaluation policy expanded and iii) became more directed towards national and external control. These changes also indicated more negative implications for democracy during the second period. In relation to evaluations’ democratic function the analysis showed that the evaluation policy mainly strengthened the legitimizing and controlling function, whereas the enlightenment function was not prominent.This implies a risk that issues that may be relevant from a broader democratic and societal perspective may be overlooked and not subjected to evaluation. The thesis also acknowledges and illustrates the importance of uncovering and reconstructing evaluation policies, policies that are partly veiled, since also implicit policies will have democratic implications.
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| 10. |
- Carlbaum, Sara, 1981-, et al.
(författare)
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Organizing local preschool markets in sweden : municipalities as key actors
- 2022
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Today, one out of five Swedish children attend a privately operated preschool. Even if there are national policies targeting for instance parental choice and right for private actors to provide pre-primary education, municipalities in Sweden have extensive local autonomy in organizing and governing their ‘local preschool markets’ or, rather, quasi markets. As Brunsson and Jutterström (2018 p. 8) put it; “markets are formed by processes of organization. They are the objects of decisions. There are people and organizations that decide not only on their own actions in markets, but also on the actions of others”. Swedish municipalities are such key organizations that create market infrastructures via market shaping activities (c.f. Flaig et al 2021) including for instance to facilitate, support and police the market actors. The aim of this paper is to explore the different ways in which Swedish municipalities create their local preschool markets to analyse how they act as market organizers in the pre-primary education setting. We do this through analysing documents, websites and interviews with municipal officers from 30 municipalities characterized as having either a large (N=10), medium (N=10) or small (N=10) private pre-primary sector. Theoretically, we turn to literature on organizations, governing and public-private relations.Our preliminary findings show that there are large variations on how municipalities act as local preschool market organizers and the paper elaborates three (ideal typical) modes: Endorsers are municipalities that actively promote, support and sponsor market actors. Frontiers denotes municipal territories that are unattractive or not yet fully explored by private preschool actors. Keepers are municipalities that strive to maintain balance or status quo between public and private providers, using various strategies and tools to this end. In sum, this paper seeks to contribute to the discussion on how public actors work to organize, enable or limit, private actor involvement.
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