| 1. |
- Foss Lindblad, Rita, 1953, et al.
(författare)
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Co-production of comparative education research and welfare state education policy. : A contribution to the panel session "How Educational Sciences Became Reasonable: Their International Emergence in the Post War Years" at the CIES 2018 Conference in Mexico City
- 2018
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Ingår i: The program for the Comparative and International Education Society Conference 2018 in Mexico City..
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The focus of this study is the intimate relations between educational research and its social and political embeddings, seen through the lenses of international large-scale assessments (ILSA) such as the IEA TIMSS- and the OECD PISA-programs. While increasing influence of these assessments on educational policies is widely recognized (e.g. Ozga & Lingard, 2007) and the meta-theoretical rationality on which they are operating (Grek, 2009), the constitutive elements and dynamics involved in producing their success stand out as a more open question (e.g. Wagner, 1987, on national variations). Our case is the transition of Swedish Welfare State (SWS) after WW2 and the development of international comparative research in education. With the specific ambition of not letting us fall into the pitfalls of science/politics dichotomies, we are addressing the dynamics of science/society coproduction (Nowotny et al, 2003; Jasanoff et al, 2001). This case is of significant interest: Firstly, the SWS had a recognized centralistic organization with high reliance on science (Fridjonsdottir, 1987). This organization restructured thoroughly in the 1990s with an increasing emphasis of ILSA (Lindblad, Pettersson & Popkewitz, 2015). Secondly, in the emergence of international assessments Swedish researchers played an important role (Husén & Postlethwaite, 1996). The specific time-space reveals uneven patterns in science/society coproduction where IEA is manifesting success as well as a breaking-point in a today highly weakened regime of how the relevance of international comparative education is to be secured, and what this means. Our study is based on a combination of policy documents from state commissions and parliamentary bills, research reports and evaluations of ongoing changes in policy and research as. We identified characteristic phases in the welfare state governance from expansion and centralistic governance over deregulation and decentralization and later into the introduction of a voucher system and governing by results. The analyses resulted in three major conclusions: − At the start comparative education research was rare and had a humanistic base in comprehending education in other contexts. The emerging ILSA was based in the social sciences where comparisons centered on differences in efficiency over national contexts. − During the first decades of ILSA there was little evidence of societal relevance, e.g. in use for policy decisions and reform initiatives. However, the societal relevance increased drastically, given the restructuring of the educational system and the increasing importance given to supranational organizations. − ILSA was from the beginning strongly contextualized and dependent on external resources. The making of the IIE opened up new possibilities for ILSA in Academia, but it is the more recent changes in governance and changes in methodology as well as technology that has allowed the success and dominance of ILSA in research and policy discourses Given these conclusions ILSA turned out to be a successful but contested approach to educational research. For the coproduction of science/society the combination of a strong emphasis on ILSA in social and political discourses on education plus the closing down of the International Institute of Education and the transfer of PISA studies to Pearson is congenial to this development.
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| 2. |
- Foss Lindblad, Rita, 1953, et al.
(författare)
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Higher Education and Research in a Steady State – On changing premises and practices for educational research in Sweden.
- 2016
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Ingår i: Elmgren, M.; Folke-Fichtelius, M.; Hallsén, S.; Román, H. & Wemke, W. (Red): Att ta utbildningens komplexitet på allvar. - Uppsala : Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. - 9789155494759 ; , s. 209-225
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Considering current discourses on educational research at universities, research councils and government the preconditions for educational research are in transition. Catchwords like “World class,” “excellence,” “strategic,” “visionary,” “multi-disciplinary,” and “internationally competitive” are repeatedly used among financiers and higher education institutions (HEI) and reflect what is at stake and what has come into focus. This is combined with an increasing emphasis on competition for research funds, publication impact, international networking and research cooperation in research projects. In sum, what is communicated to the research community with such an emphasis today is competition, positioning in research hierarchies and demands for strategic action in order to obtain funds and to produce what is regarded as high-quality research of social and political accountability.
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| 3. |
- Foss Lindblad, Rita, 1953, et al.
(författare)
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On relevance and norms of science in times of restructuring
- 2016
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Ingår i: Trimmer, K. (Ed): Political Pressures on Educational and Social Research International perspectives. - New York : Routledge. - 9781138947122 ; , s. 66-76
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter addresses the nature and consequences of changes in public research policy towards increased competitiveness and strategic funding for educational research in Sweden. Motivated by the basic fact that state interference within the realms of educational research always relates to political interests in its social value, our focus will be on the transition of arrangements and conceptions of such ideas and their implications for critical and autonomous research, long considered to guarantee the production of high-quality research of societal importance. The case we are analysing is Sweden – a Nordic welfare state in the process of rapid restructuring of higher education and research. We consider this a fruitful case with processes and practices that are common to other national and international settings, but with some specif ic characteristics in the ways in which research and higher education policy has operated in the social and intellectual organization of educational research. More precisely we put forwards three characteristics: Firstly, educational research was organized as a specif ic discipline (Pedagogik) as in continental Europe (e.g. the Nordic countries and Germany and Switzerland) and is now transformed into a f ield of educational sciences (pedagogik, psychology, political science, humanities, etc.) competing for recognition and resources. Secondly, educational research was previously to a large extent carried out outside teacher education colleges in specif ic university departments, but is now getting a more prominent position in teacher education, where, thirdly, the previous organization of teacher colleges are being dissolved and instead organized into multi-disciplinary university departments. Thus, by means of these specif ic characteristics the Swedish case has the potential to further clarify the complex and intriguing political nature of research organization more generally.
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| 4. |
- Foss Lindblad, Rita, 1953, et al.
(författare)
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Post-political governing of welfare state education in Sweden
- 2016
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Ingår i: Reimers, E. and Martinsson, L. (Eds) (2016): Education and Political Subjectivities in Neoliberal Times and Places Emergences of norms and possibilities. - New York : Routledge. - 9781138962880 ; , s. 86-100
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Seen solely in terms of educational governance the “odd” and extraordinary way of educational governance demonstrated in our introduction by the interaction between OECD expertise and the Swedish government may not appear odd at all. It may, just, be seen as different, being just another regime of governance with differences as well as similarities with other such regimes. Even though this conclusion makes sense, it makes sense only if we deny ourselves the opportunity of reflecting about what is “not so evident” when it comes to education and educational policy (and it is for example evident that both education and educational policy change over time, and that the changes themselves has something to do with changes in society as well as politics). In this text this “not so evident” has turned into a concern about the educated, understood at once as the target and outcome of education as well as of educational policy, understood as an abstraction referring to a wide range of possibilities of educational organizations, offers and subjectivities allowed for within the realms of “the educated”. It is, we will claim, also with regard to the educated that the present regime of governance seems grave in its consequences. When education and the educated as social phenomenon are normatively turned into statistical universals, we are not only confronted with reductionism of a sort that make us wish for more robust understandings and explanations. Even more seriously, these seemingly neutral and unmarked figures are highly policical as well as performative and very effective in hiding the political character of education as well as the educated as emergent phenomena (Bellmann, 2013) – therefore also effective in hindering the making of alternative educational and political subjectivities. The curriculum code of a self-regulative performer acting within the frames of soft governance and international assessment is a signifier of an instrumental and technified education system of governmental subjectivation (Simons & Masschelein, 2010) much in need to be analyzed and compared to other ways of curriculum designs and education governance with other kinds of political subjectivation.
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| 5. |
- Foss Lindblad, Rita, 1953, et al.
(författare)
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Society speaks back: On the history of comparative education research at a welfare state agora : The program for the Comparative and International Education Society Conference 2018 in Mexico City
- 2018
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Ingår i: Publicerad i: The program for the Comparative and International Education Society Conference 2018 in Mexico City.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this paper we address and explore the intimate relations between educational research and its social and political embedding’s. Our case is communication on international comparisons at the education agora. More broadly, and now referring to changes in science systems and scientific knowledge production, such intimate relations have been recognized as being radically transformed and new kinds of regulations and forms of knowledge production has arisen (Funtowitcz and Ravetz, 1993; Gibbons et al, 1994; Etzokowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000; Nowotny et. all 2005; Rip, 2004). Generally speaking, despite differences in perspective and focus among scholars that has awakened our attention to the new situation, and also despite known and debated doubts about the scope and generality of these re-arrangements, there is in general a strong support for the idea that we find ourselves in situations of “re-thinking” Science-Society relations. Additionally, there are equally strong support for the idea that this re-thinking has been put into action in science systems around the globe, making us believe that what we have observed also have been performed.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Foss Lindblad, Rita, 1953, et al.
(författare)
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THE STATE WE NOW ARE IN? On transitions of educational research in a restructuring system of higher education and research : Contribution to the symposium International Perspectives on Educational Research at the SWERA conference in UppsalaOctober 2018
- 2016
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Ingår i: SWERA 2016 Annual Conference.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Educational research entered the academy in 1900 as a discipline – Pedagogik – in its own right. This discipline emanated from philosophy and expanded during large parts of the 20th century into the behavioral and social sciences and was given important functions in relation to major welfare state reforms. This disciplinary progress came to an end in the 1990s and educational research was turned into a field of study where Pedagogik and Didaktik were assumed to cooperate and compete with other social sciences under the heading of the new construct “Education Sciences”. This multi- or pluri-disciplinary or de-disciplinary turn at the end of millennium changed the preconditions for educational research in terms of the number of agents competing for funds and recognition, as well as in increased expectations of networking, publishing and reviewing research. It also meant an intensification in strategic educational research policies. So, what is the current condition for educational research in Sweden? From the point of view of researchers in Pedagogik there is a shift towards increased competition f external research resources but also in terms of expected research collaboration in the current pluri-disciplinary field of study, where researchers with other disciplinary allegiances are increasing their interest in research on education issues. We also note an intensification in some specific research activities – in networking, in peer reviews, in publishing. In many ways this is a development that brings new opportunities, but also increasing risks for internal fragmentation as well as strategic over-adjustment in educational research relative to governing practices. What, then, are the main strategies to choose from and to cultivate? Strategy one is playing the game in accordance with current rules, for instance for individual research programs to intensify work and adding research practices in relation to that. Strategy two is working to change the rules of the game, for instance to develop an increased focus on knowledge production, that is, for collegial research collaboration in a changing educational landscape and to produce substantial research in dealing with such issues.
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| 8. |
- Lindblad, Sverker, 1946, et al.
(författare)
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A World Wide Panopticon: on Large Scale International Assessments and Progress in Education : Contribution to the EERA symposium: Diversity as a System of Exclusion: Historical Notes on Contemporary Thought
- 2015
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Ingår i: EERA 2015 Online Program: http://www.eera-ecer.de/ecer-programmes/search-programmes.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper is to examine to describe and analyze the comparative style of reason in research on international comparisons of school results through large-scale studies (International Large Scale Assessments, ILSA) . Our focus is on the epistemic principles that order the categories and distinctions through which national school systems and school pupulations are compared in the OECD's research programme, PISA (Programme for Individual Study Assessment), and IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) two program TIMSS ( Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) and CIVED/ICCS (Civic Education Study). We examine how equivalences are established to create universal distinctions by which difference is defined; the organization of “context” that are used to talk about difference, and how the ranking of systems are translated into strategies for improvement of these systems. In exploring this research field, we seek to identify and understand the theory of change embodied in the ILSAs, the machinery through which comparison is produced, and the boundaries created about what is possible and not possible for thinking and acting of educational systems. References Hacking, Ian (1992) “Style” for historians and philosophers. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science. 23(1): pp.1-20.
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| 9. |
- Lindblad, Sverker, 1946, et al.
(författare)
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Educational careers and public trust in research: Comparative analyses with a focus on educational research.
- 2016
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Ingår i: Nordic Educational Research Association Book of Abstracts 2016. ; , s. 128-129
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The current study is analysing the public opinion in Sweden in relation to education careers and trust in science. We ask if trust in science is different over different fields of knowledge and over different careers into society. Of special interest is here the perception of educational research among persons in education careers compared to the perception of e.g. Engineering and Technology as fields of research for persons working in engineer positions. The analyses are based on research on the professions and research. Data for the analyses are acheived from the SOM-institute survey of the Swedish population to which 55 percent of 3 400 individuals were responding. This data was conceived of having high quality. Results showed that there was in general a public trust in research, but less so for the humanities and social sciences, including educational research. This was also present when comparing relations between educational routes and research related to this research. These findings concerning the Swedish opinion are of importance for a principal understanding of the perception of educational research in public discourses and policy-making as well as the tasks for teaching on educational research in teacher education.
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| 10. |
- Lindblad, Sverker, 1946, et al.
(författare)
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THE PUBLIC OPINION: ON THE MAKINGS ON MODERN EDUCATION. Paper presented at the 2017 NERA Conference in March 2017
- 2017
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Ingår i: Paper presenterat vid NFPFs kongress i Köpenhamn, Mars 2017.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Research topic/Aim: Our case is Sweden with its comprehensive welfare state education. This case have been in rapid change in education during the last decades, including worldwide restructuring measures such as deregulation, privatization and governing by school performances. Our aim is to analyze education as part of a modernization project based on the development of science as well as on democracy. Our approach to this is analyses of the public opinion in the Swedish welfare state in relation to the current context of Sweden and what its educational system offers. In order to realize these ambitions, we put forwards the following research questions: •What confidence and discontent in education is presented by the public opinion? How is this related to educational levels and political preferences among individuals? •To what extent is there confidence or mistrust in research in different fields – including educational research – and to what extent is this connected with educational levels and social positions among the individuals? Given our interest in modernization of education we have a special interest in how individuals in in teaching professions assess educational research. In order to sharpen the analysis of current trends in education modernization and educational research we made special analyses of the public opinion on the uses of large scale assessments of educational performances. Theoretical frameworks: Trust has become an important factor for understanding operations of governance and educational reforms and variances of success over countries. Given the present context of rapid social and political transformations and ongoing restructuring of higher education and research, the level and objects of trust thus becomes an important indicator of possibilities and readiness of change. Methodology/research design: We have chosen to analyze the views of the public opinion considering trust in science as such and for the eventual betterment of society, with a special focus on educational science. Data are obtained from the SOM-Institute survey 2014 sent to a national sample of 3 400 individuals, out of which 54 percent answered the questions – in sum 1 634 persons. Findings: In the public opinion the confidence in the school is not very high, and most individuals take very critical stances to current developments in schooling. Regarded as indicators of perceptions of education in a modernizing welfare state, the results present somewhat of a crisis in trust of schooling. This is further underlined by the finding that individuals with lower levels of education are more discontent with recent developments in education. Of special interest is the finding that the right wing populists – often in low paid jobs – are most dissatisfied with what education can offer them. Trust in educational research – especially among those in teaching professions – is also indicating that the modernization processes in education is at work. Stated otherwise, modernization of education and schooling seems to correspond to predominant distribution of resources in society, and universalistic claims about modernization seem to be contradicted by its premises and practices. Relevance for Nordic Educational Research: There is a large need for analyzing the current political situation and its politics of knowledge and educational policies in the Swedish welfare state and in similar welfare state contexts, such as the Nordic countries.
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