| 1. |
- Arneback, Emma, 1974-, et al.
(författare)
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Locations of racism in education : a speech act analysis of a policy chain
- 2016
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Ingår i: JEP. - : Routledge. - 2158-9232. ; 31:6, s. 773-788
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article explores how racism is located in an educational policy chain and identifies how its interpretation changes throughout the chain. A basic assumption is that the policy formation process can be seen as a chain in which international, national and local policies are ‘links’ – separate entities yet joined. With Sweden as the national example, the article analyses how racism in education is framed at different policy levels and which anti-racist actions are proposed. The article thereby clarifies who or what is, at different policy levels, perceived to be the location of racism. A first finding concerns terminology: throughout the policy chain the problem of racism is discussed in terms of ‘discrimination’. At European, national and local level, discrimination is mostly associated with ‘ethnicity’, thereby removing from policy a possibly stronger language for combating racism. A second finding is that the location of racism in education moves gradually through the chain from an institutional to an individual location of racism, with an increasing focus on the significance of the student rather than the importance of societal structures. The importance of circumstances for policy formation is a third main finding in the article.
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| 2. |
- Bergh, Andreas
(författare)
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Local quality work in an age of accountability - between autonomy and control
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of education policy. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0268-0939 .- 1464-5106. ; 30:4, s. 590-607
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article analyses a specific part of the actions taken to improve the quality of Swedish education, namely the expectations formulated in national policy documents for the quality work that local authorities, schools and teachers are supposed to undertake. For the empirical analysis of how these expectations have changed over the last two decades, two sets of theoretical concepts have been combined: management of placement and management of expectation and autonomy and control. The specific research question is: How can local systematic quality work be understood in an age of accountability and what are the implications for teachers' practices? The results show that expectations for local quality work have changed radically during the studied period. There has been a significant change in the language used, the content of education has been recontextualised and there are obvious changes in the relation between local autonomy and national control. It is argued that these changes are a consequence of the changed design of the education system, rather than an answer to a content-related question of what is educationally desirable. As a consequence, paradoxical expectations land at the local level and have to be resolved by teachers.
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| 3. |
- Fitzgerald, Scott, et al.
(författare)
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Devolution, market dynamics and the Independent Public School initiative in Western Australia : 'winning back' what has been lost?
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of education policy. - : Taylor & Francis. - 0268-0939 .- 1464-5106. ; 33:5, s. 662-681
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The devolution of public sector schooling systems has been a feature of education reform since the 1980s. In Western Australia, the Independent Public School (IPS) initiative has recently been installed, announced by the state government in 2009. Now over 80% of the state’s public school students attend IP schools. Drawing on interview data from a broader study of devolution and the conditions of teachers’ work, this article explores the cases of two schools – one IPS and one non-IPS. While both schools were ostensibly disadvantaged, they proved to be highly contrasting schooling sites, responding to the school marketplace in markedly different ways. We consider the ways in which the IPS initiative is contributing to the operation of market dynamics within the public school sector in WA, and argue that it has created new mechanisms for the residualisation of particular, and specifically non-IP, schools. Furthermore, while one school was apparently more of a ‘winner’ within the school marketplace, as it was attracting increasing student enrolments, we query what it might actually mean to ‘win’ in such a policy settlement, with staff at both schools reporting significant dissatisfaction in their work.
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| 4. |
- Hallsén, Stina, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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Teacher or friend? : consumer narratives on private supplementary tutoring in Sweden as policy enactment
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of education policy. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0268-0939 .- 1464-5106. ; 34:5, s. 631-646
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Private supplementary tutoring (PST) is a worldwide enterprise that comes in a variety of forms and with a growing number of students. Sweden, together with the other Nordic countries, has a relatively short history of large-scale organised supplementary education, which can be explained by its confidence in regular mainstream education. In recent years though, this picture has partly changed, and today families in Sweden are offered different kinds of education services outside the ordinary school system. This paper targets how PST is legitimized and justified through marketing as a solution to problems related to the education of children. Through a positioning analysis of three consumer narratives published online by a PST company, this paper aims to further our understanding of which functions PST fills within the Swedish education system. Results show that private tutors appear in the consumer narratives as compensating for shortcomings in schools and families as well as complementing the support that parents and teachers can offer children. These findings signal that PST marketing creates demands for different kinds of support which may, in the long run, rewrite the map of the Swedish education landscape.
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| 5. |
- Novak, Judit, et al.
(författare)
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Juridification of examination systems : extending state level authority over teacher assessments through regrading of national tests
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of education policy. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0268-0939 .- 1464-5106. ; 32:5, s. 673-693
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Since 2009, the Swedish Government uses an ‘audit’ agency – the Swedish Schools Inspectorate – to monitor and assess the accuracy with which teachers grade student responses on national tests. This study explores the introduction and subsequent establishment of the Inspectorate’s regrading programme as an example of political management of the tensions between competition and equity inherent in neoliberal regulatory regimes. The programme is considered a case for examining contemporary policies and discourses on fairness and government actions undertaken to resolve issues of unfair assessment and safeguard students’ rights. Work of Carol Bacchi forms part of the theoretical background for the investigation of problem representations around and within the programme. The article demonstrates how discursive practices in the fields of government, audit and media have worked to frame teachers’ assessments as incorrect, unfair and as jeopardizing the credibility of the grading system, thus justifying increased central control and authority over teacher assessments. As such, the regrading programme contributed to increased mistrust in teacher professionalism. A legal discourse is identified, and we argue the examination system is being juridified where the abundance of control over knowledge risks turning into a deficit of that same knowledge.
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| 6. |
- Nylund, Mattias, 1980, et al.
(författare)
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The vocational-academic divide in neoliberal uppersecondary curricula: the Swedish case
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Education Policy. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0268-0939 .- 1464-5106. ; 32:6, s. 788-808
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A historical tension between a more general and a more specific focus in post-compulsory education is made visible in some educational systems by the division into more academic and more vocational programmes. Embedded in this tension are questions of social justice and the purposes of education. In addition, division into academic and vocational programmes has class dimensions since youth with working class backgrounds are often over-represented in vocational programmes. This study investigates how this tension is handled in the Swedish upper secondary curriculum, which reflects an international neoliberal policy trend in promoting competition, employability and employer influence over the curriculum. By analysing how the educational content of vocational educational and training (VET) programmes and higher educational preparatory (HEP) programmes is contextualised, we found that the two programme types were based on very different logics. In VET programmes, knowledge is strongly context-bound and often related to regulating behaviours. This contrasts sharply with the way knowledge is contextualised in HEP programmes in which less context-bound knowledge and skills such as using concepts, models and critical thinking are dominant. Students in VET programmes are trained to do' and to adapt', while the students in HEP programmes are trained to think' and to imagine possibilities'. Thus, students from different social classes are prepared for very different roles in society.
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| 7. |
- Pettersson, Daniel, et al.
(författare)
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From role models to nations in need of advice : Norway and Sweden under the OECDs magnifying glass
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of education policy. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0268-0939 .- 1464-5106. ; 32:6, s. 721-744
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- By analysing five separate OECD reviews of evaluation and assessment practices with Norway and Sweden as cases, our study illustrates different ways in which a specific international educational reasoning is blended into more context-based national education policies and, as such, works in parallel with internal reforms and agendas. It is evident that an overarching narrative promotes the importance of coherent and integrated systems of evaluation and assessment in order to strengthen social and political endeavours for equity, quality and achievements. The parallel mix of OECD discourses and national discourses creates a combined narrative in which evaluations and assessments appear natural, self-evident and rational as well as highly adaptable to national settings. The study shows that national vertical and/or horizontal developments are intertwined with the OECD policy recommendations, which are quite general in character. In a continuing process of uploading and downloading, within different contexts, policies are elaborated and recontextualised. Evaluations and assessments are part of a contemporary rational paradigm for mapping and promoting performance in national educational systems – what we identify as a comparative curriculum code.
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| 8. |
- Player-Koro, Catarina, Professor, 1962-, et al.
(författare)
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Selling tech to teachers : Education trade shows as policy events.
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Education Policy. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0268-0939 .- 1464-5106. ; 33:5, s. 682-703
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Digital technology is an expanding area of education policy. There is growing interest, therefore, in how networks of corporate and state policy actors implicit in the formation of (inter)national education technology agendas intersect with local school systems and teachers. In particular, this paper explores the significant policy work that takes place outside schools and classrooms through education trade shows. Based on an in-depth ‘event ethnography’ of one large Scandinavian educational technology show, the paper details how these events function as sites of policy interpretation – ‘sharing’ (or more accurately ‘selling’) global ideas and imperatives to local schools and teachers. These findings highlight the role of trade shows in consolidating policy networks, subsuming public education interests into corporate concerns, and differentiating teacher subjectivities and encouraging teacher entrepreneurship. The paper problematizes the ways in which teacher agency is shaped and controlled by the discursive, material and affective dimensions of such events.
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| 9. |
- Rönnberg, Linda, 1977-
(författare)
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From national policy-making to global edu-business : Swedish edu-preneurs on the move
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of education policy. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0268-0939 .- 1464-5106. ; 32:2, s. 234-249
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study explores the movements of some Swedish former education policy-makers that are currently active as commercial edu-business actors with the ambition to expand in the Global Education Industry (GEI). The aim is to map and analyze how a selection of Swedish edu-preneurs affiliated with a particular Swedish school chain enter the GEI and thereby market both their commercialized services and the policy ideas about so-called free schools, in its Swedish version. The study shows how these edu-preneurs move from the domestic to global arenas and how their business and policy advocacy activities are framed and represented. Mobilization and public exposure of previous and present policy advocacy networks are important assets for these edu-preneurs as they navigate the GEI. The study illustrates how these actors make use of particular forms of knowledge, from department ministerial work and party politics, which blends with work in public relations and various edu-businesses, pointing to the interrelatedness of politics, policy, business, power, and ideology. The paper concludes by raising issues in need of further exploration and debate, pertaining to our understanding of education policy-making and, ultimately, democracy.
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| 10. |
- Wahlström, Ninni, 1953-, et al.
(författare)
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Discursive institutionalism : towards a framework for analysing the relation between policy and curriculum
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of education policy. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 0268-0939 .- 1464-5106. ; 33:1, s. 163-183
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Discourse approaches in education policy analysis have gained prominence in the last decade. However, though the literature on policy discourses is growing, different conceptions of the ‘discursive’ dimension and its potential for empirical analysis related to the field of curriculum policy have not yet been fully researched. To address this gap in education policy research, this article explores the framework of discursive institutionalism. Using background and foreground ideas and coordinative and communicative discourses on three analytically distinct levels, this article proposes and discusses a framework for empirically analysing, explaining and understanding education reforms on the transnational and local levels. The introduced conceptual framework represents an integration of discursive institutionalism (DI) and curriculum theory (CT) to provide a more multifaceted set of concepts to explore the lending and borrowing of transnational education policies and their application at both national and local levels. These concepts have been applied as analytical tools in a research study on the most recent curriculum reform in Sweden, and they may serve as an example of how different ideas, discourses and levels can be distinguished in research studies to maintain the complexity of education reforms.
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