Conference Agenda

The five-day school week with Saturdays off was introduced in Swedish schools in 1968. The decision was preceded by a debate in which the student voice was unusually present, not least through a nationwide vote among pupils in 1959. The vote was given a lot of space in the mass media, with several newspaper articles, radio and TV programs. The debate about the five-day week is thus a case that sheds light on two neglected themes in the history of education: school democracy as well as how it was represented in the media. The aim of the presentation is to discuss the conditions and features of this national campaign for/against a five-day school week. Why was it introduced at this very point in time? What does the character of the campaign say about the space for pupil voice in the late 1950s? What can the campaign reveal when it comes to understandings on temporal rhythms at this moment of time?

Theoretically, the presentation draws on the history and sociology of time (Zerubavel, 1981). Of particular relevance is the temporal rhythm that is called the week (Henkin, 2021), and how we can understand attempts to change the temporal order of societies as well as how we can understand temporal conservatism. Drawing on the history of the cultural meaning of the week as well its individual days, the study will shed light on how school weeks are given meaning, and how attempts to change the temporal order of schools have been framed.

Recently, there has been an attempt by Bob Lingard to introduce a temporal dimension into policy sociology. Lingard challenges top-down policy analyses, arguing for an appreciation of multiple temporalities and effects between global and local, much as Simon Marginson does with his use of the concept of glonacal. This builds on an earlier piece written with Greg Thomson that sought to reclaim temporality in the sociology of education in the context where the spatial had become a dominant theoretical perspective. This presentation responds positively to the interventions made by Bob Lingard and responds to this challenge by offering a different conceptualisation of temporarily, that of Reinhart Koselleck’s notion of multiple temporalities.

The presentation begins by summarising Lingard’s argument specifically that policy sociology is seen as working with the implicit future oriented character of the field of the sociology of education, particularly in its more redemptive forms where concerns for social justice direct attention to some future correction of past inequalities; as well as a certain fetishization of the present where the past is referred to in order to account for change and continuity in policy options for instance, but where the present is the privileged moment of enactment. Lingard claims that policy sociology, in its original articulation, was historically informed but that temporality had become largely absent from policy sociological work.

Next the presentation discusses some absences in Lingard’s argument, specifically the lack of engagement with discussions in historical scholarship relating to multiple temporalities. This question is particularly pertinent since Lingard and Thomson’s 2017 paper was an introduction to a special issue of the British Journal of Sociology of Education focusing on time/temporality. Within that special issue Julie McLeod (2017) dealt with the collision of temporalities and debates within historical scholarship, specifically the contribution of Koselleck, whereas the other papers all adopt sociological or social theoretical discussions of time/temporality. McLeod ends their contribution by calling for greater engagement by the sociology of education, and by implication policy sociology, with historical approaches and historical scholarship.

The last part of the presentation outlines Koselleck’s theory of multiple temporalities and proposes how both Koselleck’s conceptualisation and a specifically historical approach to policy sociology may be useful. It suggests that Koselleck’s conception of conceptual history has affinities with the tradition of policy sociology and therefore a relevant theoretical approach to foregrounding temporality. It introduces Koselleck’s ideas of the synchronicity of the non-synchronous - the interweaving of diachronic and synchronic elements in any given historical (policy) process; and layered time – processes which move at different speeds, have different durations and different rhythms, therefore critiquing modernist understandings of time. The policy sociology concept of policy trajectories is re-articulated by showing how this concept can work with the synchronicity of the non-synchronous and layered time.

Futurity is central to social life (Adam, 2010). We live in a time where the powerful story of progress is breaking down (Nowotny, 2015) and the future is perceived as a threat rather than as something positive. At the same time, OECD and other organisations make it an obligation for young people to be ‘enterprising’ and ‘aspirational’ in the context of multiple crises (Goring et al., 2023). Aspiration for the future can be seen as an unequally distributed future-oriented cultural capacity (Appadurai, 2004). In complex neoliberal socio-ecologies, young people’s aspirations should be reimagined as complex and ambiguous, according to recent research on education and aspiration (Goring et al., 2023: Froerer et al., 2022).

This paper investigates how the future is anticipated and enacted at a newly established upper secondary school in Sweden. The school’s vision and slogans, clearly inspired by neoliberal ideas (entrepreneurship, challenge-based pedagogy, etc.) short-circuit the future by claiming that “we solve the problems of the future now”. The future is clearly used as a commodity/resource in the school’s marketing, positioning the students as “predecessors” and the school as the “school of the future”. The school’s entrepreneurial approach and “challenge-driven” pedagogy resonate well with ideas of transnational organisations, such as OECD (21st Century Skills and Competencies, Ananiadou & Claro, 2009) and the EU, whose eight key competences include entrepreneurship competence (Halász & Michael, 2011). This also attests to how globalisation influences national and local policies (Lingard & Rawolle, 2011).

Inspired by sociology of the future, we strive to capture aspects of time as fluid, rather than divided into stable entities as past-present-future. To do this, we use a multidirectional time perspective through the concepts future present and present future (Adam & Groves, 2007; Adam, 2010).

The two concepts signal different standpoints in relation to the future:

Present future means that the future is approached from the standpoint of the present. The future is projected as empty and open to colonisation: it is predicted, controlled and transformed in and for the present. Thus, the future is enacted in the present.

In the perspective of future present, people are responsible for the effects of their actions and failure to act. This standpoint makes it possible to follow actions to their potential impacts on future generations. This standpoint acknowledges that there is a future present that is affected by our actions and decisions.

Importantly, our present situation is our ancestors’ present future. Expectations of the future could be individual, but also collective. The collective expectations of the future may turn into taken-for-granted ideas, and importantly, they are performative, and thus guide actions (cf., Borup et al., 2006; Konrad, 2006).

The school aspires to solve future societal challenges now, which creates a complex relation between present future and future present. In relation to the school’s aspiration, the students are beings, with responsibility and power to change. But it is also the schools’ mission on a more general level to educate the workforce/citizens that are needed in the future. In relation to that task, the students are becomings, not-yets.

Research has highlighted the correlation between participation in extracurricular activities (EA) and school performance (Eccles, 2003; Linver, 2009; Meier, 2018), its contribution to the development of transversal skills improving academic paths and students’ social mobility (Covay & Carbonaro, 2010; Lowe & al, 2020) in the capacity to generate social capital and reduce segregation (Schaefer, D. Simpkins, S. & Ettekal, A, 2015).

Alongside impact, previous research have sought to understand whether participation in EA has a social structure related to child’s intersectional positions of gender, class, origin,... There is a consensus in considering family socioeconomic situation as the main driver of participation in EA, also related to a certain class culture of the concerned cultivation pattern (Lareau, 2011). Although variability has been identified in low-income neighborhoods where participation in religious instruction is higher (Palou, 2021), as well as racial stratification, in the development of transnational educational practices, such as the herigatge culture and Language learning.

In recent years, EA and extended school policies have become increasingly relevant to local political agendas. Certain municipalities seek to develop universal access to afternoon educational activities using different instruments (grands, public offer, social prescription,…). International experiences (coming form Boston, Pittsburg, Chicago) have become benchmarks in this field, inspiring local governements in adopting innovating practices. In Catalonia, the 360ª Education movement promotes the design of "the city curricula", generating and connecting a particular extracurricular offer open to all students.

Taking the case of two Barcelona neighbourhoods, this study aims to understand the adjustment between the new afternoon-time educational policies, and the multicultural and low-income context where they are set up. We are interested in understanding the concept of inequality and inclusion that lays below the normative model, and its potential in the governance of migrant children, that may foster the acculturation pressure towards particular parental models.

One of the features of the Nordic welfare model has been the prioritization of a comprehensive public school model (Blossing, Imsen et al. 2014, Imsen and Volckmar 2014). However, for the last thirty years there has been increased support for private alternatives in several of the Nordic countries. This is also the case in Norway where the number of private schools and pupils attending them has more than doubled the last ten years (SSB, 2020). While private schools constituted 3,5 % of the comprehensive schools in 2003, it had increased to over 9 % in 2019 and from 2010 – 2020 the percentage of private schools had increased by 63%. In the same periode the percentage of pupils attending private schools have increased from 2,3% to 4,3% (SSB, 2020).

Within a nordic context Norway has been one of the countries that have been restrictive when it comes to privatsation and market-led policies (Wiborg 2013, Dovemark, Kosunen et al. 2018). Compared to Sweden and Denmark, Norway have had a restrictive legislation clearifying that private schools can only be established on the terms that it offer an alternative to and does not come in competition with the public school. In order to avoid segregation and commersialisation, school fees are kept low by public funding and it is prohibited to make profit on education (Sivesind 2016). However, even though Norway traditionally have stood out as restrictive when it comes to privatisation policies, the status and the balance between private and public schools are changing. Whereas this is related to how conservative governments over the last twenty years have fought to liberalise the private school legislation (and renamed it to ”the free school act”), it is also linked to other policies not directly regulating private education. In this context descentralisation policies, devolving economic responsibility from state to municipality level, have been central when private schools have replaced public schools in financially poor municipalities. While decentralisation and market-led reforms have been introduced simoultanously as privatisation policies (Bjordal & Haugen, 2021), we know little about how they interact and if and how the increased support for private alternatives are related to the development of the public school.

Inspired by a critical approach emphasising the need to investigate privatisation policies in a broader perspective and in relation to other policies, this paper examines how parents support for private schools are related to the development of the public school. Informed by research illuminating how neoliberal reforms in education can stimulate support for private alternatives (Ball & Youdell, 2008), our aim has been to study the ”process of privatisation” as related to a broader restructuring of the educational landcsape The aim is to illuminate processes and mechanisms that stimulate privatisation within education.

Who decides where a child should go to school? The answer to this question has changed over the past 30 years in Sweden, a country who has faced extensive neoliberal educational reforms during the past decades (Arreman och Holm 2011; Lundahl m.fl. 2013). Based on arguments about increasing individual freedom, free school choice was introduced in Sweden in the 1990s. Ever since, local authorities in Sweden have been commissioned to organize local school choice markets (Dahlstedt m.fl. 2019).

Education in democratic societies has always had to deal with the tension between individual freedom and a need for public good (Labaree 1997; Börjesson 2016; Levin 1987). The organization of school choice systems varies around Sweden, and there is not yet a single model in place for how to design school choice systems. This paper contributes with knowledge about how civil servants work to organize school choice in dialogue with local politicians, as well as how they balance between different goals in practice (e.g. goal conflicts can arise between freedom of choice and integration, since a high degree of freedom in relation to school choice generally leads to increased segregation (Trumberg och Urban 2020)).

Knowledge about what happens in the organization and design of local school choice systems is necessary to understand which values that ​​are prioritized in practice. This paper focuses on what municipalities' organization of school choice means for the Swedish school and the students within these schools.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and problematize the dilemmas and goal conflicts that emerge as civil servants work with the organization on school choice in Swedish municipalities.

The paper suggests that the tension between individual freedom and the school as a collective good tends to end up with the officials. This means that questions about conflicting goals concerning school's role in relation to freedom, justice, and equality – questions, that may be considered political by nature – often are handed over to civil servants within the municipal bureaucracy. How civil servants interpret their role and function within municipal democracy, as well as the values ​​they express, is important for the link between education and the public's trust in representative democracy.

I use the theoretical notion of ‘discretion’ (Brodkin 2020), which pinpoints the extent to which micro-practices of street-level organizations take part in shaping meta-politics. The interest in discretion highlights the importance of zooming in on the practices of civil servants and their level of discretion in enabling educational policies.

All European states are influenced by transnational agencies like the OECD and the European Commission, transnational networks, alliances and global digital enterprises like Microsoft, to transfer and implement different versions of neoliberal recommendations and scripts in relation to market solutions and privatizing incentives (Ball & Junemann, 2012, do Amaral, Christie, 2019). At the same time, European education systems and societies are also striving to cope with new challenges in migration, health, demography, climate, environment, and welfare. These political shocks due to the neo-liberal globalization and increasing social inequalities undermine education as a common, comprehensive and emancipating project while nationalist discourses are emerging against Europe (Blossing et al).

These changing concepts and practices impact also on welfare regimes and their links with education in implementing student at-risk programs, promoting equity-based and social inclusion programs, involving private stakeholders so sustain evidence-based and what works interventions (Krejsler & Moos, 2021). These new policies challenge the state, its long-standing social redistribution and institutions while strengthening marketplace, business and privatization-thinking in policy reforms as well as new actors: social entrepreneurship, foundations, Think Tanks, charity business, venture capitalism (Verger & all. 2016, Krejsler & Moos, 2023 Forthcoming).

The pressure and inspiration from neoliberal and conservative thinkers, policy makers, and experts change the role of national/local authorities, public schools as New Public Management, accountability, and school choice mechanisms are implemented (Gunter, 2017). The encounter of marketplace logics, post-bureaucratic regulations and digital technologies promotes a new professionalism around discourses and practices that changes the relationship of professions with the State, as well daily practices and discourses in European schools (Normand & oth, 2018, Verger, Skedsmo, 2021). How do they deal at national or local levels to maintain a sense of social justice? Is it possible to maintain social cohesion and shared understandings of common goods in education? Does this hybridization between the State and the Market contributes to reduce the social inequality gap? What is changing in the relationship between Education and the Welfare in Europe? What are the consequences for teachers and school leaders?

References

do Amaral, P., & Christie. (2019). Researching the global education industry. Springer International Publishing.

Ball, S. J., & Junemann, C. (2012). Networks, new governance and education. Policy Press.

Blossing, U., Imsen, G., & Moos, L. (2014). Nordic schools in a time of change. In The Nordic Education Model (pp. 1-14). Springer, Dordrecht.

(Blossing, Imsen, & Moos, 2014)Gunter, H. M., & Mills, C. (2017). Consultants and consultancy: The case of education. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.

Krejsler, J. B., & Moos, L. (2021). What Works in Nordic School Policies? Springer International Publishing.

Krejsler, J. B., & Moos, L. (2023 Forthcoming). School policy Reform in Europe. Cham: Springer.

Moos, L., & Krejsler, J. B. (2021). Nordic school policy approaches to evidence, social technologies and transnational collaboration. In What Works in Nordic School Policies? (pp. 3-26). Springer, Cham.

Normand, R., Liu, M., Carvalho, L. M., Oliveira, D. A., & LeVasseur, L. (Eds.). (2018). Education policies and the restructuring of the educational profession: Global and comparative perspectives. Springer.

Normand, R., Moos, L., Liu, M., & Tulowitzki, P. (2021). An international comparison of cultural and social foundations of educational leadership. In The Cultural and Social Foundations of Educational Leadership (pp. 3-21). Springer, Cham.

Verger, A., & Skedsmo, G. (2021). Enacting accountabilities in education: exploring new policy contexts and theoretical elaborations. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 33(3), 391-401.

The privatisation of the provision of school places and access to those school places is based on an Education Reform Claimocracy (ERC) that is both contextually sited in national systems and is globally on tour through the crossing of borders. The ERC is rule by assertion. What is known and is worth knowing is proclaimed through what is said and done in offices and classrooms based on: first, that public service education is failing because it is public (owned, funded and based on open access by, for and about the public), where the involvement of the state gives unaccountable power to local politicians, professionals and bureaucrats who conspire to use public processes and funds for their own gain; second, that education is a private good and so the provision of school places in a diverse market and the exercise of consumer choice will efficiently and effectively meet parental requirements for their children; and third, the shift from parents dependent on the state to active traders and deal-makers in the market will revitalise educational services to improve and be more effective, and so those who are employed to provide educational services will be incentivised to supply what is demanded rather than teaching children what parents do not want them to know and what employers and the economy do not require. The talk may be about ‘standards’ and ‘good school places’ for children, but in reality the focus is on the protection, enhancement and legitimacy of hierarchy through organisational and systemic arrangements. Using the case of UK government reform of education in England from the 1980s onwards this paper will examine the unfolding and development of the ERC, whereby right wing ideologues have created a form of social justice that is based on the sovereign individual, whereby forms of taxation are regarded as theft, and consumerism can be deployed to purchase nationality and hence educational products within and external to citizenship. The paper will draw on a range of research evidence in order to focus on counter challenges to this reworking of the conceptualization of social justice, and show how the ERC is subject to question and push back based on forms of intellectual activism.

Gunter, H. M. (2023). A political sociology of education policy. In A Political Sociology of Education Policy (pp. 17-18). Policy Press. Van Den Berg, C., Howlett, M., Migone, A., Pemer, F., & Gunter, H. M. (2019). Policy consultancy in comparative perspective: Patterns, nuances and implications of the contractor state. Cambridge University Press. Veck, W., & Gunter, H. M. (Eds.). (2020). Hannah Arendt on educational thinking and practice in dark times: Education for a world in crisis. Bloomsbury Publishing.

In Europe and elsewhere, education systems live in a state of asymmetry. The decline of the traditional welfare state and the dominance of the neoliberal agenda are paving the way to soft privatisation and, in some cases, to the privatisation of educational offers (S. Ball, 2009; Cone & Brøgger, 2020; Lingard & Sellar, 2013). These processes concern not only the governance of the systems but are deeply entrenched with a re-culturing of education that appears more and more enclosed in the coordinates of neoliberal thought with increased effects on educational inequalities. This imbalance redefines the boundaries between the public and the private, problematising the differences and making even some of the current critical frames inadequate to grasp the current transformations. The same recurrent accuses of ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘New Public Management’ as the main causes of the complex changes in education look out of tune as if the solution could be simply the reversal of the state of asymmetry. Frequently, they are conveyed with a nostalgia that underestimates how the same configuration of the state in education is partly responsible for the reproduction of educational inequalities and the shift to the neoliberal agenda, as was underlined by past educational research. Also, it does not sufficiently consider how a conservative and nationalistic agenda supports the state's return to education. To move beyond neoliberal imagery without slipping back into a conservative nation-state agenda, a possibility is to abandon the logic of ‘either/or’ of these reasonings and unfold assemblage thinking in education governance (Gorur, 2011; Landri & Gorur, 2022; Youdell, 2015) . While theoretically promising, this shift is not without risk. By drawing on a long research program on changing the governance of education in Italy ( Landri, 2018), and notably on the current post-pandemic transformations, I will contrast 1) parasitic assemblages, like in the digital governance of education, where the big multimedia companies dominate education systems with their platforms and 2) generative assemblages, as in the recent policy of ‘community pacts’ that are orientated towards equity and inclusion. While parasitic assemblage is again enclosed in a state of asymmetry, generative assemblages enact symmetrical exchanges, and education is seen as common.

Ball, S. (2009). Privatising education, privatising education policy, privatising educational research: network governance and the “competition state.” Journal of Education Policy, 24(1), 83–99. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680930802419474 Cone, L., & Brøgger, K. (2020). Soft privatisation: mapping an emerging field of European education governance. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 18(4), 374–390. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2020.1732194 Gorur, R. (2011). Policy as Assemblage. European Educational Research Journal, 10(4), 611–622. https://doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2011.10.4.611 Landri, P. (2018). Digital Governance of Education. Technology, Standards and Europeanization. Bloomsbury and Continuum books. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/digital-governance-of-education-9781350006416/ Landri, P., & Gorur, R. (2022). An Actor-Network Theory Approach to Comparative and International Education: The Politics of a Flat Ontology. In F. D. Salajan & Tavis d. jules (Anthology Editor) (Eds.), Comparative and International Education (Re)Assembled Examining a Scholarly Field through an Assemblage Theory Lens (Issue 2011, pp. 57–72). Bloomsbury. Lingard, B., & Sellar, S. (2013). Globalization, edu-business and network governance: the policy sociology of Stephen J. Ball and rethinking education policy analysis. London Review of Education, 11(03), 265–280. https://doi.org/10.1080/14748460.2013.840986 Youdell, D. (2015). Assemblage Theory and Education Policy Sociology. In K. N. Gulson, M. Clarke, & E. Petersen (Eds.), Education Policy and Contemporary Theory. Implications for Research (pp. 177–194). Routledge.

Educational innovation occupies a central place in contemporary pedagogical discourse. Over the last decades, pedagogical innovation has generated a power of attraction and consensus among multiple actors inside and outside the field of education who see it as an end in itself, actionable through public policies—i.e., top-down. Among the most prominent actors in this regard are international organisations such as the European Commission, the OECD, or UNESCO. While these organisations have shown special interest in educational governance and management as the main drivers of change, more recently they have turned their attention to pedagogical aspects that had been hitherto ignored. In this context, guided—and legitimised—by the rhetoric of these transnational actors and by a conception of innovation focused on pedagogical aspects, several countries have been recently promoting policies that seek to make pedagogical innovation the guiding principle of teaching and learning and organisational practices in schools in order to 'modernise' or 'transform' their education systems. This has been the case of the autonomous region of Catalonia (Spain), where the school innovation imperative has become the backbone of recent administrative-pedagogical policy initiatives aiming at 'transforming' the education system. Considering this case, in this paper we combine different theories of the public policy process to understand how the discourse of innovation has moved from the pedagogical arena to the educational policy field, and with what outcomes. Policy process theories allow us to analyse the articulation of educational problems and their solutions, and the conditions under which certain solutions are more likely to penetrate the public agenda. The results of the study show how in Catalonia educational innovation initiatives have been strongly advocated by policy entrepreneurs operating at the intersection of the philanthropic and the public sectors. These entrepreneurs define innovation as opposed to the so-called 'traditional education' and it is framed as a solution around the ideas of 'personalisation of learning', 'competence-based education' and 'school networking'. Thanks to its apparent simplicity, but also its ambiguity and inherent desirability, the idea of innovation has operated as a 'coalition magnet' able to attract previously distant educational stakeholders—both public and private—and to organise them around an influential agenda of 'educational transformation'. The plausibility of the innovation initiatives arises in a singular political and economic context, thus allowing innovation to become the flagship and one of the priorities of recent Catalan education policy.

Kingdon, J. W. (1984). Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. Little, Brown. Winkel, G., & Leipold, S. (2016). Demolishing Dikes: Multiple Streams and Policy Discourse Analysis. Policy Studies Journal, 44(1), 108–129. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12136

Different forms of knowledge are in play in teacher education and there is a debate which form that should set premises for education (Apple, 2016). Ball (2017) claims that there has been a change in the perspective of knowledge, where knowledge now is more related to the economy and to concepts as skills and learning outcome. At the same time, more focus has been placed on research-based knowledge to improve the quality and effectivity of teacher education (Hammersley, 2007). However, the relation between research-based and experience-based knowledge in education is complex (cf. Hammersley, 2007).

Basil Bernstein (2000) has described the different forms of knowledge through horizontal and vertical knowledge discourses. In the context of teacher education, this could be described as the research-based knowledge the students meet in campus-based activities and the experience-based knowledge the students face in practice (see Haugen & Hestbek, 2017). However, Bernstein (2000) makes a distinction in the vertical discourses, one with a hierarchical knowledge structure and an another with a horizontal knowledge structure. In this way, Bernstein makes a distinction in between how the research-based knowledge could be related to experience-based knowledge. Contextualized in teacher education, there is a question whether the university should play a role as provider of evidence-based knowledge ‘that works’ in practice or if the university should play a more autonomous role in relation to practice (see Hestbek, 2014).

Through the Bologna Declaration, Norway committed to a global network to improve the quality in higher education (European Higher Education Area [EHEA], 2021). As a result, in 2003, Norway implemented the Quality Reform in higher education where more focus was set on research-based knowledge to improve the quality (NOU 2003:25). On that account, Norwegian policy documents called for an integrated teacher education [ITE] program to create a more research-based teacher education close to practice in order to improve the quality (cf. Ministry of Education and Research [MER], 2017). Consequently, in 2013 the ITE program 8-13 was implemented in Norway and later in 2018, the ITE program 1-7 and the ITE program 5-10.

Therefore, this paper aims to explore the ITE programs in Norway; ITE 1-7, ITE 5-10 and ITE 8-13 and the different forms of knowledge described in the national guidelines for these programs (Universities Norway, 2017; Universities Norway, 2018a; Universities Norway 2018b). To do this, this paper explores different forms of knowledge that is formed in practice in the national guidelines for the ITE programs and who is setting the premises for the forms of knowledge identified. However, to capture the change in these programs, there has been looked at both the former and new national guidelines for these ITE programs.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)—in collaboration with the European Commission and the World Health Organization—has deemed investment in quality physical education (PE) a low-cost/high-impact action as it enables students to develop the essential physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional skills needed to become healthy, active, and engaged citizens who form the basis of sustainable development (UNESCO, 2021). Despite the recognized power of quality PE, its potential has not been fully realized in schools and universities around the world (MacPhail & Lawson, 2020). Several causal factors are implicated. Sub-optimal policies and policy configurations have been identified in a recent world-wide survey as critical factors given that policies influence virtually all aspects of PE realities (e.g., curriculum content, teacher standards, instructional practices, student outcomes; UNESCO, 2014). In response, a suite of international policy documents developed by UNESCO (and in partnership with the European Commission, the International Bureau of Education, the International Council of Sport Science and PE, the International Olympic Committee, Nike, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and the World Health Organization) have outlined the critical need to prioritize attention to, and action on, PE policy to improve quality provision (UNESCO, 2021). These documents specify that such policy efforts are the responsibility of all the professional stakeholders involved in PE (e.g., teachers, teacher educators, policymakers, professional development providers, professional association directors). This multi-stakeholder approach is argued to increase the likelihood of policy processes and products that are inclusive, relevant, more likely to be well-implemented, and empowering for professionals. Yet, despite some positive developments in the last few years, policy neglect remains largely normative in PE (van der Mars et al., 2021). A key reason for this policy neglect is that preparation for policy engagement is rarely offered in PE initial teacher education, continuing professional development, or postgraduate programmes (Lorusso et al., 2020). Furthermore, research on what such preparation should entail has not been conducted. These deficits are despite PE stakeholders reporting their desire for policy preparation (Scanlon et al., 2022b). The consequences of this lack of policy preparation, and ultimately policy neglect, are serious. PE experts have warned that, given threats to the status of PE in many countries, continued failure to engage adequately with policy may put the future of PE, and its contributions to students’ wellbeing, at risk (Lorusso & Richards, 2018). This project aims to address the significant and urgent need to build PE stakeholders’ capacity to engage strategically in policy efforts such that the quality of PE provision may be enhanced, and important student outcomes achieved. To do so, the question investigated in this research is: what are key facilitators, barriers, and content in the development of PE stakeholders’ policy capacity? The intention is that this information can then be used to inform the development of evidence-based policy preparation initiatives in initial teacher education, continuing professional development, and graduate education within PE, education, and other public sector arenas in Europe in beyond.

Public opinion, empirical research and personal experience all suggest that teacher unions have a strong tendency for reactivity to demands for educational change expressed by governments and teachers' employers. because they are the legal organizations responsible for representing teachers' professional concerns, teacher unions are thus out in a less optimal position vis a vis promoting high quality teaching conditions. This working paper considers the perspectives of organizational leaders with lengthy tenures in teacher unions, in five different jurisdictions around the world (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and the United States), in order to consider the extent to which and under what conditions their organizations have been able to take proactive, agentic stances, in support of teachers, teaching, and the quality of public education, in relation to educational reforms.

The paper draws on two typologies developed by other researchers to characterize the different stances teacher unions may take with respect to educational reform. The first one, developed by Carter and Stevenson (2009) characterizes three distinct stances taken by teacher organizations. One is "resistance", reacting to plans or proposals established without their participation. Another is "rapprochement", that is going along with the plans of others for strategic reasons. The third is "renewal", a proactive stance where the union takes its cues from the realities of its own members and develops distinct ideas, proposals and plans of its own.

The second typology was articulated by Thompson and Sellar (2018) based on the writing of Deleuse and Guatari in A Thousand Plateaus. This typology identifies three distinct responses when encountering changes in circumstances. The first they call "breaks", a state of making sense of new realities in terms of previous understandings, leading to incremental shifts in sense making. The second, "cracks," reflects situations where an individual , group or organization's encounter with a new reality is not readily understandable in terms of pervious understandings, resulting in stasis: the entity is unable to make sense and thus to consider a way forward. Finally, the third type is "ruptures," where new information or unusual events trigger whole new understandings of what is possible and what appropriate actions ought to be taken.

These two typologies, taken together, enable the researchers to distinguish how, and under what conditions, teacher unions attempt to improve upon, or at least shore up, the quality of teachers' conditions of work, their professional capacities, and the quality of public education more broadly.

Policy-related discussions increasingly view universities as so-called “engines of economic growth” (Hayter, 2018). The unique process of academic capitalism, which integrates the search for truth and the pursuit of economic revenue, has turned public research universities into enterprises competing for external funding and knowledge producers looking for profitable patents (Münch, 2014). In China, ‘the 13th five-year plan of developing science and technology in higher education’ announced in 2016 has encouraged the partnership between universities and enterprises to develop applied research and obtain external funds (Lai&Li, 2020). Since then, Chinese universities have been adjusting their measures from different aspects to respond to new national policies and encourage university teachers to participate in entrepreneurial research activities. Adopting a university capability perspective, we seek to understand the challenges faced by Chinese academics when conducting applied research, and hence identify the drawbacks of current measures and figure out how Chinese universities can better promote applied research in the context of academic capitalism.

To facilitate a more fine-grained discussion about how different measures may contribute to encouraging teachers to participate in applied research, the ‘university capabilities’ framework will be adopted (Rasmussen, 2015). This framework was developed from studying the process of university spin-off venture formation and offers a theoretical basis to understand the strategic measures on promoting university teachers’ participation in applied research. Simply stated, Universities can develop measures to better promote applied research around the following three capabilities, namely, capabilities that open new paths of action, capabilities that integrate internal and external resources, and capabilities that balance academic and commercial interest. Using these three capabilities provides an analytical framework that identifies the drawbacks of current university measures and helps unpick how the university can improve current measures in order to better promote applied research. Existing research has mainly focused on the implementation process of the measures related to these capabilities, their effectiveness, and how they affect individual academics needs further illustration. Therefore, university teachers’ perceptions of these three aspects will be investigated in this research. Specifically, the research questions are as follows:

1. How do university teachers perceive and interpret current measures that are aimed at opening new paths of action?

2. How do university teachers perceive and react to the measures related to integrating internal and external resources?

3. How do university teachers perceive measures on balancing academic and commercial interests?

The aim of the study is to analyse the first teacher arrangement between principals and first teachers in Sweden. The theoretical perspective used is the distinction responsibility between accountability.

Public administration is a complex phenomenon characterized by a diverse interaction between different actors and institutions. This is the case within the educational system and schools, where, amongst others, politicians and public officials on different levels (international, national, and subnational), private companies, principals, teachers, and students act in order to gain and maintain influence. The political steering of the educational system and schools is best described as somewhere between traditional government (top-down or vertical) and regulatory governance (interactive); different actors and institutions exercise political power over the field. The complexity within the educational system and schools is only partly reduced when considering only official government regulations and the implementation of them by public officials such as teachers, our area of focus on in this study. Thompson (1980) formulates the complexity as ‘the problem with many hands’:

"Because many different officials contribute in many ways to decisions and policies of government, it is difficult even in principle to identify who is morally responsible for political outcomes. This is what we call the problem with many hands". (Thompson, 1980, p. 905)

Public officials like teachers, do, of course, always act within the intersection of being governed by formal and informal political regulations, such as laws and norms, and autonomy (Alvehus et. al., 2021; Bengtsson et. al. 2018; Högdin & Urbas, 2021). In the Swedish political framework, this is manifested by the idea of ‘trust-based steering’ (Bringselius, 2017) meaning a focus on, amongst others, trust, citizen-orientation, collaboration, delegation and openness within the political and legal framework (Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, 2022).

The characteristics of the Swedish public administration raises, in accordance with Thompson’s description of the problem with many hands, and, what Bovens (2007) calls the problem with many eyes – i.e., to whom is account rendered to? the question of both responsibility and accountability. Responsibility is moral and future-oriented, meaning that an actor should act in order to achieve positive outcomes or at least avoid negative ones. Accountability is social and backward-looking, implying expectations that someone’s actions will be evaluated by somebody else, and that the evaluation will be followed by sanctions or rewards (Hall & Ferris, 2011). Accordingly, accountability requires that X is appointed a certain task by Y, that Y knows whether the performance of X is satisfactory, which means that some sort of evaluation, follow-up or scrutiny of the performance, and that Y can enforce positive or negative consequences on X (cf. Ahlbäck Öberg, 2018).

The aim of the study is to explore the first teacher arrangement between principals and first teachers in the light of responsibility and accountability. It is based on assignment descriptions for 172 first teachers all working in the same municipality in Sweden. Given that the first teachers individually and explicitly are appointed certain tasks and expected to achieve specific goals in the assignment descriptions, the question to be answered the study: How is evaluation of first teachers’ performance, and the possible consequences of that evaluation, handled in assignment descriptions?

The point of departure in this study is that a governance arrangement needs both some sort of evaluation, and the possibility for consequences based on that evaluation to qualify as an accountability (backward-looking) arrangement (cf. Bovens, 2007). An arrangement that consists of, amongst other things, tasks and goals but lacks the characteristics of accountability is an arrangement that fulfils the criteria of responsibility, i.e., moral, open and forward-looking (without evaluations and possible consequences).

The Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in Iceland introduced a new education policy in 2021 (Parliament Resolution) and the First Action plan 2021–2024 (hereafter the Action Plan) for the new policy was published last year ( Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2021). We see this document as the most significant document on educational policy in Iceland since the publication of the national curriculum guide for pre-, compulsory-, and secondary schools in 2011 and 2013. In this presentation we will explore how this official paper came about and it‘s content.

The background and the preliminaries to the new policy and the Action Plan can be traced to 2016, when the Icelandic educational authorities asked the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education to write a report on the state of inclusive education in Iceland. For several years there has been a growing debate among teachers and principals that the policy of inclusive education has never really been implemented and teachers claim not to have clear ideas of what the policy entails for them as teachers. At the same time Iceland had put itself at the forefront of having very few students at the compulsory school level (age 6–16) in special education schools. For instance, in autumn 2021, there were only three special schools at the compulsory level with 203 students (approximately 0.43%), according to Statistics Iceland (2022).

In 2017, the European Agency published the report: Education for all in Iceland. External audit of the Icelandic system for inclusive education (European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, 2017). The report was followed up by meetings and discussions across the country with stakeholders and the school community resulted in the report: Education for the future. Actions and measures taken in the wake of a series of meetings on inclusive education and the formation of an education policy until 2030 (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2020a).

In the later stages of the process (in spring 2020), the OECD was consulted regarding the formation and implementation of the new education policy and an OECD report on the implementation of an education policy was published (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2020b).

OECD is one of the most influential organisations on national education policies (Iceland included) as they develop framework and indicators that nations are encouraged to follow. Through the years OECD has been criticised for focusing almost solely on systems, economic factors and competition between countries instead of looking at education as a common responsibility and cooperation. Bjarnadóttir (2022) explored the most recent educational policies by OECD and UNESCO; one of her findings “is that the OECD’s future policy does not represent a convincing turn towards a humanitarian emphasis” (p. 10).

Goals of the presentation are to:

• trace international influences on the current Icelandic policy making outlined above.

• analyze the discourse of the first Action Plan 2021–2024 of the new education policy.

Democratic systems depend on active and engaged citizens (Himmelmann, 2016). An important requirement for all types of political participation is the political interest of individuals (Prior, 2010). In contrast to the analysis of voting decisions, there is still too little research regarding political interest. Various studies have shown that adolescence can be seen as a crucial phase for the development of political interest (Russo/Stattin, 2017), in which educational institutions become increasingly relevant, which, is not yet adequately addressed by research.

It has repeatedly been shown that the more one remains in education, the more one’s interest in politics increases (Bömmel/Heineck, 2020). However, less is known about the influence different types of education have on the development of political interest. In many school systems, students are sorted into academic and non-academic/ vocational tracks at the secondary education level (Bol/van de Werfhorst, 2013). The development of political interest under the influence of different types of education with comparable length is the focus of this paper.

Theoretically, different mechanisms of influence of institutional education on political interest can be assumed. First, the curriculum may differ between different types of schools. Second, the division into different tracks is linked to social segregation, e.g. with students from privileged backgrounds and (shaped by family socialization) higher political interest are more likely to be in the academic track. As a result, the development of political interest in the academic track should be more favorable than in the non-academic track. While this assumption is confirmed by some empirical studies (Witschge/van de Werfhorst, 2019), they mostly have the following weaknesses: First, there is a lack of longitudinal studies that allow to separate the influence of selection into different tracks from the influence of the track itself. Second, the effect of changing tracks on political interest have not yet been sufficiently investigated. Third, it has been found that results regarding the relationship between education and political interest are difficult to generalize across countries, because of the complexity of national education systems (Hoskins et al., 2016). Accordingly, it is worthwhile to conduct country studies in order to better address the specifics of national education systems.

In this contribution we use the example of Germany. The German school system is strongly stratified at secondary level I (years 5 – 10, SL1). After primary school, students are sorted into an academic track that lead to the eligibility to study (e.g. Gymnasium) and non-academic tracks (e.g. Realschule) that prepare for vocational education. At secondary level II (years 11-13, SL2), the school system opens up: In addition to the general academic track (a, Gymnasium), there are vocationally oriented tracks that lead to the eligibility to study (b, e.g. Fachgymnasium) and vocational tracks that lead to vocational training qualifications (c, e.g. Berufsschule). Whereas option (c) is non-academic, option (b) can be identified as academic, since nationwide recognition of the eligibility to study obtained via general education (=a) as well as vocationally oriented schools (=b) is ensured by various political agreements on the curricular requirements. Student composition, especially in terms of socioeconomic status, is less favourable in non-academic compared to academic school types (Schuchart/Schimke, 2019). High-performing students who graduate from a non-academic school type at SL1 can move to an academic track, but also to a non-academic (=vocational track) at SL2.

We assume that the type of continuation of the educational biography in upper secondary school has an effect on the development of political interest. In particular, we are interested in the extent to which continuing academic education (a), moving into non-academic education (c), or vice versa (b) has an impact on the development of political interest.

The paper engages with the growing number of discourses and initiatives revolving around higher education (HE) students’ well-being, which we situate in conjunction with a changed conception of the role, purpose, and governance of the university.

We start from the position that ‘problems’ with students’ well-being are not given but social and discursive constructions that carry particular ways of defining problems and solutions, and that we must pay particular attention to problematisation, that is, what the problem is constructed to be (Bacchi, 2009). Based on empirical examples from recent policy and practice developments in Denmark and the United Kingdom, our analysis shows how the well-being agenda entrenches and furthers a psychological language in higher education. So, at a general level student ‘well-being’ is constructed as a psychological rather than, say, sociological or pedagogical problem. In one way, this language appears well-aligned with dominant student-centered learning tropes. However, it can also be seen as a further individualisation of structural challenges because it shifts the educational point of gravity from being about students’ knowledge and learning to a focus on the mindsets, attitudes and emotions with which students approach themselves and their learning.

The analysis builds on a post-structuralist policy analytical framework that invites us to consider how the ‘psy-disciplines’ play out in higher educational institutions and contexts (Foucault, 1977, 2001; Petersen and Millei, 2015; Zembylas, 2021). The psy-disciplines were and are not only about inserting and stabilising a new language, but it was also always and continues to be a form of governmentality, a conduct of conduct (Rose, 1998). When recent responses to the student well-being crisis, at policy level and through recent response initiatives, project student mental health as a significant new responsibility for higher education, it shifts how the role and purpose of higher education is conceived, from engagement in matter and competencies (Biesta, 2021) to developing, quite explicitly, politically desired psychological dispositions, emotions, and attitudes.

Very few countries were prepared for the disruptive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on education. The school closures that happened as a response to the health emergency were unprecedented in length and duration. Policymakers, schools, teachers, parents and pupils, all found themselves having to deal with the uncertainties the situation created, at speed and with no good map to guide them (OECD, 2022; Thorn and Vincent-Lancrin, 2021; Thorn and Vincent-Lancrin, 2022). At this distance from the immediate crisis, this paper asks whether the policy convergence on “learning loss” and “remote education” as the key focus for educational research post-COVID, ignores the more pressing issues facing schools and pupils as the pandemic recedes. Not least, how growing up in poverty affects children’s lives; and the crucial role schools play in sustaining their communities during difficult times.

Drawing on data collected from a series of research projects looking at the immediate responses of English primary schools to school closures between 2020 and 2021 (Bradbury et al, 2022; Harmey and Moss, 2021; Moss, 2022), this paper will set out the very different priorities that steered schools’ and teachers’ responses to the crisis at the time, and their key concerns now. Recognising that their priorities were gaining limited traction with either policymaking or researcher communities at the time, our own research was designed to reframe the nature of the public conversation on COVID, its impacts and recovery strategies (Moss et al, 2020; Moss et al, 2022).

The dilemmas that the English case demonstrates will be used as a prompt for reflection on the contradictions in the logics of "governing at a distance" and the disconnects it creates in the knowledge-ecosystem (Krejsler, 2013). The paper asks whether different modes of critical engagement with a wider range of educational stakeholders might open up new possibilities for bridging the boundaries between research, policy and practice. Not least by building alternative avenues for education itself to knowledge-build on aspects of schooling that currently lie outside the outcomes and accountability frames that so many governments rely on to inform what they do. We argue that such research needs to start from community stakeholder knowledge of the issues that matter most in their context and adopt approaches that enable their perspectives to help set the agenda for future educational research.

The theoretical framework draws on key concepts in policy sociology and uses them to seek meaningful agendas for educational change. These include the concepts of policy trajectories and enactments and the contribution to understanding governane and policy effects that stems from Le Galès' conceptualisation of policy instruments as "the accumulation of devices and their interaction without clear purpose" that lead a life of their own (Le Galès, 2022)

Covid 19 disrupted education provision globally, highlighting and deepening inequalities. It prompted public demands for education recovery planning to go beyond a return to ‘normal’ in thinking about the future shape of provision, including recognition of the impact of poverty and poor mental health on educational attainment. Tensions between policy initiatives to address these challenges and developments that focus on a rapid return to ‘normal’ are evident in the publications of organisations such as the OECD and the European Commission. These global policy tensions are also evident, in contrasting ways, in each of the UK’s four systems. This paper explores these tensions through an analysis of key education recovery planning documents from each national administration and considers the extent to which the different national systems are adopting or adapting global and European templates for recovery.

The paper focuses on the following research questions:
(i) What are the key priorities in recovery planning in each UK administration?
(ii) What knowledge sources do they draw on?
(iii) Are these nationally embedded or transnational sources?

The objectives of the paper are to (a) compare and contrast recovery policy across the UK (b) illuminate the role of party politics in explaining difference (c) analyse the role of knowledge and expertise in recovery planning (d) contribute to analysis of the governing-knowledge relationship in education.

Differences in party political control across the UK are an important factor in explaining policy differences between Westminster and the rest of the UK (rUK). It is against that backdrop that we examine the policies for education recovery put forward by the four administrations: the UK (Conservative-majority) government, the Scottish Government (SNP-Green party in a co-operation agreement) the Welsh Government (Labour minority government) and the Northern Ireland Executive (currently suspended).

Theoretically we build on our previous work on the importance of governing narratives to explain differences in the construction of education as a policy field across the UK. We also draw on recent research on the management of the examinations crisis in the UK in 2020 when long-term school closures disrupted examinations across all four UK nations. That research identified differences between the UK government’s policy rhetoric in England and the policy discourse in the rest of the UK (rUK), showing how in rUK, education was presented to the public as an important societal resource. That research also highlighted the reliance of policy makers in England on consultants, think tanks and government agencies as sources of expertise, and the exclusion of academic expertise. Preliminary analysis of the key policy texts on education recovery across the four nations suggests that these differences are reflected in the current construction of recovery policy.

We pay particular attention to the differences in the sources of knowledge and expertise that are referenced and mobilised in these policy contexts. The emphasis on politics as central to understanding the workings of the knowledge-policy relationship in education recovery indicates our broadly interpretivist theoretical approach, in that we understand policy as enmeshed in politics, as made and (re) made in processes of enactment as contingent and mobile. Knowledge, in this perspective, is characterised by internal struggles that always return to politics and is shaped through the historical contingency of processes at work in its production, so that knowledge is understood as produced, accepted and contested in specific contexts. Expertise is relational, mediating between knowledge production and application, welding scientific and social capabilities.

This paper is part of a recent comparative and qualitative study of IB practices in the Southeast Asian contexts of Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. In Asian societies, such as Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, the number of IB schools has experienced a quick rise since the turn of the millennium. As a distinctive curriculum, the IB is gaining recognition and growing within the global education system. Over 7,500 IB programmes are offered worldwide, spanning 5,500 schools within 159 countries (International Baccalaureate Organisation, 2021). The number of IB programmes offered worldwide has grown by 33.3% between 2016 and 2020. Across the Asian Pacific region, there are 1,663 IB World programmes, constituting 22% of the global programmes.

The state governments have also incorporated international curricula into national education systems. This development in IB schools in the three contexts has been uneven, with some countries more advanced in their practices and others still at their infancy stage of development. Despite the varying conditions, IB’s links to the future of global capital, the internationality of education continue to grow in influence. The IB has also been marketed as a form of qualification recognised by universities worldwide, thus establishing a strong global brand.

The study highlights the reimagination of schooling emerging because of the covid pandemic and the tensions from the economic domains across the three contexts. It examines the nature of the neoliberal shift and propose a reassessment of the engagement and enactment of the neoliberal rule post pandemic. We argue that although the conformance to the neoliberal rule has taken on a new shape and direction within the current pandemic state, as shown in the data collected from three varying contexts, establishing positive shifts towards a more collective and connective stance within the countries’ practices did not fully eradicate the tensions that had to be overcome to ensure that schools were more equitable in their practices.

Within the European context, which have faced mass migration, one of the key challenges is catering to a diversified population and allowing for different groups to co-exist harmoniously with a common sense of identity. The adoption of an internationally minded curriculum is aligned with the practices of international schools and providers, which have faced myriad issues catering to diverse school populations (Hayden & Thompson, 2016). More recently, the IB curricula has also take precedence and is in competition with local curricula, offered to both the international cohort as well as the local students. Given its strong positioning within the European context as well as globally, the IB has built a reputation for “elite academically challenging” standards and this branding has appealed within a global front, competing with other international curricula and international examination systems by Cambridge University (Doherty, 2009).

The study involves 15 international schools across three different contexts: Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. As the study explores the case study schools’ IB curriculum planning, establishment, implementation and adoption, a case-oriented approach allowed for a more interpretive analysis. The focus was thus on answering firstly, the “how” question, examining closely “How is the IB curriculum contextualised in Hongkong, Singapore, and Taiwan?”. The focus was on the following details :

It examined three domains, the planning and establishment, the implementation and adoption as well as the intercultural and international constructs.

Educational inequality has traditionally been one of the main objects of study in research on schooling, whether from sociological, pedagogical, psychological or social intervention approaches. Since the 1960s, there have been intense debates within these disciplines about the most convenient theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding and explaining this inequality, its causes and consequences (Martínez García, 2004; Tarabini and Curran, 2015). In subsequent years, concern about educational inequality has progressively entered the field of public policy, a point on which both sides of the political spectrum will coincide. From progressive perspectives, educational inequalities would hinder effective equality of opportunities regardless of social origin. From conservative views, this inequality means an inefficient use of public resources and a "loss of talents" with negative consequences for economic development, an idea based on the Human Capital perspective (Perrenoud, 2006: 81-83).

Today, the fight against educational inequality is integrated as a fundamental part of school policies at the international level. In the European context, the European Commission's Education and Training Monitor annual report (2021) points out that, although significant progress has been made, characteristics such as social class, ethnic and national origin and gender still retain an important influence on individuals' educational trajectories. This inequality is manifested in terms of access (different possibilities of accessing the different routes and levels within the education system), process (differences in the day-to-day relationship with the institution and in the quality of learning) and outcomes (differences as reflected in the classic performance indicators: qualifications, diplomas), with all three dimensions being interrelated.

However, there are major disagreements on both diagnoses and potential solutions to these inequalities. Indeed, the very meaning of educational equity (what is to be understood by an ‘equal education’) is contested. For some perspectives, equity means 'fair' inequality, i.e. not mediated by social determinants, and resulting solely from individual effort and ability. Other views question whether pure capabilities, which exist independently of social factors, can be rewarded, and emphasise universal access to school knowledge and skills (Bolívar, 2013). Similarly, proposals to alleviate educational inequalities have been very diverse, and have focused on different aspects of the system: didactics, curriculum, interactions in classroom, the distribution of students among the different schools, the structuring of the different levels or stages, the division between itineraries, etc. In addition, there are initiatives that have tried to go beyond the school, acting on other areas related to educational inequality (leisure and free time, family, labour market…).

A review of the various measures and proposals against educational inequality reveals important contradictions. Analyses of these guidelines sometimes lead to very different conclusions about their effect on educational inequality. On occasions, measures that were intended to make education more inclusive have ended up having the opposite effects to those intended or have produced new forms of inequality, pushing vulnerable students to the margins of the school system (Fernández Llera and Muñiz Pérez, 2012; Escudero Muñoz and Martínez Domínguez, 2010).

The aim of this paper is to analyse the different dilemmas and contradictions surrounding the policy against educational inequality in the Spanish context. Based on a qualitative analysis of the discourses of key stakeholders in the field of education, we identify the main conflicting positions, their arguments and the unresolved debates. This paper aims to provide a better understanding of the mechanisms at work in educational inequality and to help to overcome existing dilemmas in the fight against it.

This conceptual contribution focuses on the Italian school system, delving into the role of school autonomy in counteracting non-traditional factors of inequality and acting in the name of equity: therefore, our aim is to map these dynamics and then focus on school autonomy policy as protective tool. The theoretical framework examines the equity construct, defines what is meant by non-traditional factors of inequality and delves into school autonomy policy in the Italian context, grasping its link with equity, to provide the key to understanding the findings of a traditional literature review

Equity in education is an internationally supported urgency, concerning educational practices and models of leadership and governance (Lash & Sanchez, 2022; Withaker, 2022). Only an equity-based education can make it possible to achieve an ever-higher degree of social justice (Bhatti et al., 2007; Bell, 2007; Hackman, 2005): it is a never fully realized ideal which requires a constant effort to include every person in democratic participatory processes and to exercise self-determination despite the interdependence that binds human beings; access to knowledge and acquisition of capabilities to critically analyze what is happening are essential elements for being actors in history, identifying and opposing forms of injustice and oppression.

By positioning ourselves among those strands of equity that value equality of opportunity (Rawls, 1971; Roemer, 2000), capabilities (Nussbaum, 2013; Sen, 2009) and social inclusion (Kanor, 2021; Taket et al, 2013), the risk of a compensatory pedagogy is averted by affirming the need to ensure excellence in education for all in terms of efficiency and effectiveness and the acquisition of the capabilities to exercise citizenship as active participation in political, cultural, social, economic life on the local and global levels. It is a way of institutionalizing pluralism as a daily experience, not reading diversity as a factor of disadvantage and not setting standards and norms to which to adhere.

However, equity is threatened by dynamics that create inequalities between students. To the classical causes (socio-economic and socio-cultural status of families) that generate social reproduction, non-traditional factors of inequality are now added (Ferrer-Esteban, 2011; Granata & Ferrero, 2022). They are caused by the school itself due to its organizational choices and functioning: everyday educational practice, organization of individual institutions and national education policies generate dynamics of inequality.

In the Italian context, despite a legislative framework consistent with the principles outlined above, school equity remains a chimera (OECD, 2022; INVALSI, 2022) due to multiple dynamics that differ from one school to another and for which specific lenses of investigation and actions are needed (Crescenza & Riva, 2021; Gavosto, 2022).

Given the heterogeneity of the forms of inequality (Benadusi & Giancola, 2020; Gentili & Pignataro, 2020) and the need to find specific solutions, in 2000 the organizational framework of the Italian school system was reformed according to the principle of school autonomy: schools make autonomous choices in the organizational, managerial, financial and didactic spheres in coherence with the general aims of the education system to respond specifically to the educational needs of their students (Bianchi, 2020; Morzenti Pellegrini, 2011). The idea is to improve the national education system's equity degree by acting at the local level to counteract individual contexts' inequality dynamics and to make school organization non-generative of inequity, synergistically with the territory (Benadusi et al., 2020; Mulè et al., 2019), with a key role played by school leaders (Gümüs & Beycioglu, 2020; Mincu, 2022).

This conceptual contribution investigates (1) what non-traditional factors of inequality weigh on the Italian school system and what they depend on and (2) whether and how school autonomy can be configured as a protective tool for these dynamics.

Education represents both a right and a need, and occupies a central role in determining individual levels of quality of life (Carnoy, 2005). At the same time, social and educational inequality stands as one of the central aspects that defines the constitution of current European educational systems. Although in recent decades there has been considerable progress in the configuration of policies and programs to fight against socio-educational inequalities, the evidence reveals there is still ample room for improvement. Consequently, inequalities continue to be at the centre of educational action, appealing both to the architecture of the opportunity system (structural factors) and to the frameworks of action, meaning and interpretation of social actors (agency factors) (Ball, et al., 2002). This also highlights that social inequalities have a social, relational and contextual nature (Reay, 2018).

On the one hand, the economic, cultural and social capital of young people and their families plays a central role in determining the chances of both success and failure (Seghers, Boone and Van Avermaet, 2019). In addition, they have a prominent role in shaping educational and employment expectations and aspirations, defining an unequal school experience or mediating decision-making within the framework of educational transitions, among other aspects (Tarabini, Jacovkis and Montes, 2021).

On the other hand, the segmentation of educational systems into different itineraries or tracks is one of the main factors that explain the processes of reproduction of social inequalities through the construction of unequal educational trajectories (Seghers, Boone and Van Avermaet, 2019). More specifically, the division between academic and vocational education helps us to understand specific configurations of class, ethnic or gender inequalities (Nylund, Rosvall and Ledman, 2017), since these itineraries correlate with central aspects as the social and/or educational-pedagogical composition (Tarabini, Jacovkis and Montes, 2021).

So, how can educational policy intervene in this scenario? The purposes of educational policy are varied, including here tasks related to the financing, organization and management of the educational system, but, without a doubt, one of them is to promote equal educational opportunities (Martínez, 2007). In addition, the evidence shows that actions to improve equity are a feasible reality; highly complex, but still possible. Programs to expand access opportunities, such as measures to increase educational participation for vulnerable groups, are good examples.

Currently, in a context of guaranteed educational access, the challenges are different. Reducing school segregation, guaranteeing equal opportunities for transition (academic or professional), reducing early school dropout rates among vulnerable youth, guarantee the offer of enriched extracurricular activities for groups without resources or ensuring opportunities to develop a successful educational trajectory are some of the new ‘master lines’ that articulate the educational agenda. However, the 'how' to comply with these guidelines does not always seem to be clear.

From this approach, the present contribution seeks to carry out an exhaustive conceptualization of educational inequalities based on the context, that is, to analyse the efforts aimed at understanding the dominant theoretical perspectives that determine the nature of the initiatives implemented. In addition, highlights the need for more research to empirically assess the nature of the promising innovative and/or pioneering practices in progress. With this aim, this presentation takes the Spanish setting as an illustrative case to identify both the understandings of educational inequalities and the strategic responses and practices to tackle them. This analytical framework allows for a more accurate conceptualization of the main theoretical and practical dimensions that should articulate the educational political agenda.

This paper speaks to long standing debates in social science research relating to how data are represented and interpreted in educational research. It does this in two ways. Firstly, it is an exploration of the issues faced research teams when attempting to interpret and understand the stories told by interviewees in relation to students’ choice of institution. Secondly, the paper uses the entry to higher education research context to explore the broader methodological dilemmas to provide an account of these students’ choices that goes beyond existing accounts of student choice and navigational capacity (e.g. Gale & Parker 2014).

Student choice of higher education institution has been considered using a variety of research methods and due to the large sets of data available it is as frequent to see quantitative (e.g. Anders 2012) as well as qualitative (Donnelly & Gamsu 2020) work that explores the issues around student choice. However, in qualitative methods there has been a significant reliance on interviews with individuals either pre-entry, during their studies or afterwards, or in some cases all three (e.g. Bathmaker et al. 2016). Investigating intent of interview respondents is a bedevilled activity; however, presenting text without critical analysis is equally problematic.

During a research project that has been detailed extensively elsewhere (Webb et al., 2020; Sinclair & Webb, 2021; Hodge et al., 2022; Gale, 2022) we generated interview data from enrolled students and recent graduates outlining their decision to choose a college-based higher education. A significant number of students in our research articulated that their choice was preferable to university-based alternatives. The explanation of the students’ choices took multiple forms and were based upon perceived benefits of college-based HE, namely a) the perceived distinctive pedagogy and assessment (Gale, 2022), and b) claims to a connection with industry (Sinclair & Webb, 2021) which meant that students would be taught skills more in line with what is needed for employment compared with their university-based peers. In terms of a), students identified the apparent practicality and non-theoretical aspects, as well as small class sizes.

Scholars assert that, worldwide as well as in Europe, doctoral provision is increasingly characterised by accelerated scales of production, competitive research grants, centralised administration, and interdisciplinary, cohort-based training (Bao et al. 2018, Nerad 2020). This is associated with increased state interest and policy interventions that seek to heighten the contribution of doctorates within the knowledge economy, as well as concerns within higher education institutions (HEIs) around efficiency, cost savings, and differential access to funding (Thune et al. 2012). The situation in the UK appears to mirror this picture on the whole (McGloin and Wynn 2015, Harrison et al. 2016), but scholars have long noted that national settings mediate the forms that broader trends take, due in part to the differing degrees of organisational autonomy and status hierarchies that prevail within countries (Hüther and Krücken 2016, Powell et al. 2016). Both of these are relatively pronounced in the UK’s university sector (Evans et al. 2019), and this paper specifically examines the provision of doctorates in the social sciences within that.

Doctorates in this area have – as other fields – experienced significant growth and a range of policy changes (McGloin and Wynn 2015). Some doctoral-related policies are directed towards UK higher education as a whole, but one – the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) Doctoral Training Centres/Partnerships (DTCs/DTPs) implemented from 2010 – targets the social sciences in particular. The most striking feature of a DTC/DTP is the creation of an interdepartmental and often inter-institutional unit to coordinate ESRC-funded doctorates and training. These are based on a model that initially emerged to support equipment sharing in science and engineering disciplines, but it has since been transferred to other areas and now proliferates across UK higher education (Lunt et al. 2014). A secondary impact of the ESRC policy was an instant halving of the number of HEIs receiving state funding for social science PhDs; the group of recipients was expanded in 2016 when the policy was renewed, but not to pre-2010 levels. There is some research which documents the not entirely easy experiences of those who retained ESRC patronage (Lunt et al. 2014, Deem et al. 2015), but there is little work analysing how other kinds of universities fared where doctoral numbers have continued to rise.

To unpick this further, we invoked the notion of institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell 1983), a conceptual framework which asserts how convergence in organisational sectors can be driven by different factors, namely coercion (policy), mimesis (imitation), normativity (taken for granted activity) and rationalisation (calculated optimisation). Isomorphism has been used fruitfully in higher education by a number of scholars interested in convergence and organisational behaviour (McQuarrie and Kondra 2016, Meyer and Powell 2020, Shin and Chung 2020). Applying this to how different universities operated in the social science doctoral space – and, crucially, why – allows us to take a closer look at the extent to which convergence is actually taking place, but also with a view to understanding any potential diversity. Given the manifestly uneven impact of the DTC/DTP policy, and also the markedly hierarchical nature of UK higher education, it might be expected that isomorphism will only be partial. Examining this more closely not only extends the literature in this specific area, but also provides insights into how organisations’ individual positioning and history may have implications for how they are able to behave in policy contexts.

To be precise, our research question here is as follows:

To what extent is convergence occurring in UK social science doctoral provision, and what isomorphic processes promote or hinder it?

Many countries around the world have implemented Performance-Based Accountability (PBA) policies in education through standardised assessments and quality assurance instruments or mechanisms (Verger and Parcerisa 2017). One such instrument or mechanism corresponds to school inspections, which generally consist of visits from external actors (inspectors) to collect and produce information to evaluate schools’ performance and deliver guidelines for improvement based on standardised quality criteria (Ehren et al. 2015). According to Munoz-Chereau and Ehren (2021, 10) inspections “are performance systems conceived as a key accountability mechanism to govern education” and they “occupy the middle ground between policy and practice”.

As a PBA policy instrument, school inspections usually attempt to prompt change and improvement by setting expectations based on norms and standards, providing performance feedback through evaluation, recommended actions and potential consequences, and enabling stakeholders’ pressure by making the information publicly available. However, inspection models have shown mixed results in terms of promoting improvement, in addition to several negative consequences over curriculum, teaching and learning, practitioners’ professionalism and schools’ culture (de Wolf and Janssens 2007; Penninckx et al. 2014).

In Chile, a country well-known for its PBA policies, inspections take a prominent part in the National System of Education Quality Assurance (SAC). This system, implemented in 2011 (Law 20.529), establishes the basis for evaluating schools’ effectiveness and is considered the core of the country’s PBA policies (Falabella 2021; Parcerisa 2021). Depending on the outcomes of a series of standardised academic and non-academic metrics, schools are ranked and ordered from highest to lowest performance in four categories: High, Middle, Middle-Low and Insufficient. Inspection visits are carried out by a panel of Quality Agency inspectors in schools considered low performing (i.e., Insufficient) with the purpose of guiding their improvement (Munoz-Chereau, González, and Meyers 2022).

Evidence about SAC’s effect on schools has mostly concentrated on results measured by schools’ outcomes in standardised evaluations (e.g., SIMCE tests) or the (expected or unexpected) consequences of performance categories in schools’ practices, however, evidence specific about inspection visits in Chile and their consequences is still scarce (Bravo Cuevas 2019). Moreover, international research about PBA policies focuses mostly on their effects on practices and results, but rarely on what scholarly literature identifies as the affective dimension. The affective dimension can help understanding actors’ level of acceptance of the inspection process in general, and their capacity to act on the feedback provided to improve individual and school practices (Quintelier, De Maeyer, and Vanhoof 2020). This dimension follows what Grek, Lindgren, and Clarke (2014, 117) describe as affective governing, which “not only relate to the rise of feelings of anxiety or stress that school inspections are associated with” but also consider the interactive or relational aspect of inspection “where inspectors and inspectees have to meet face to face and negotiate differences of position, authority and interest”.

To understand how school actors make sense of the performance feedback from the inspection visits through the incorporation of the affective dimension, this paper examines this phenomenon from a policy enactment perspective. Policy enactment offers a critical perspective of how policies are recreated and produced (Ball, Maguire, and Braun 2012), by considering local contingencies and the agency of actors (Parcerisa 2021). Thus, this paper explores to what extent both the emotions of and relationship between Agency inspectors and school leaders in the context of inspection visits encourage school actors to make sense of the performance feedback resulting from the inspection visit, as a way of doing policy work.