Conference Agenda

The World Inequality Report 2022 concludes that Europe is the most equal region of the world. However, inequalities are increasing within countries in Europe. Drivers of inequality include gender, age, disability, employment status and citizenship, migration, and linguistic background with implications for pay and income, access to welfare, health, and education.

Awareness of such forms of social inequalities in Europe has led to several region-wide policies. For instance, the European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) - launched since 2003- seeks to identify “at risk” populations by monitoring social inequalities to inform European policies. The European Commission (2017) Pillar of Social Rights principles focus on equal opportunities providing an Action Plan for EU Member States’ policies and practices towards social cohesion by 2030 while also emphasizing equal opportunities in education. (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2020).

While educational policies in EU Member States are formulated within the overarching and harmonizing frame of the regional European policies and in response to other external instruments such as the OECD PISA, they are also revisited and adapted to fit contextual conditions, definitions, and priorities.

The “political production model” (Rappleye, 2012:125) in which policy borrowing takes place with references to elsewhere (regional or other countries reforms) can be attempts towards “legitimation, caution, scandalization, or glorification” and are- sometimes- part of political theatrics at national level through which “particular fractions of political players write their own script based on pre-existing ideological convictions”. Of course, if and when educational inequality is decreased due to such policy intervention or reforms, this becomes an indicator of its success, effectiveness and relevance (Stadelmann-Steffen, 2012) and a winning point for political players.

Educational policies, their definitions of equity, and their enactment take place at multiple level and by multiple actors and are therefore far from having straight forward impact on equity in practice. Primarily, policy change at macro level can be difficult due to path dependency, i.e., public policies and institutions tend to prioritise continuity (Pierson, 2000). At times, however, the change happens due to an internal or an external push factor (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1993). Once adapted, policies are reinterpreted at meso (institutional) and micro (practitioners) levels. Hence, apparently similar policies can well be enacted differently creating different outcomes with regards to equality. This is due to educational inequalities being multi-dimensional and accumulated across an individuals’ life course that policies fail to properly frame. It is also partially due to policy operating within its own world of meaning- sometimes divorced from the “real world” (Payne, 2017)- of schools and neighbourhoods- where students’ backgrounds (gender, disability, age, linguistic and migration backgrounds) intersect with mechanisms of education systems such as early tracking.

The empirical and qualitative studies in this symposium provide an opportunity to map and compare educational policies tackling educational inequalities across several European countries including Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxembourg, and Norway. They delineate evolution of definitions and policy making process in post-socialist societies (paper 1) provide a comparative in-depth analysis of educational policies that are seemingly alike but are enacted differently and bear different impacts in two countries (paper 2), and analyze policy discourses on inclusion that are borrowed and adapted at national level but fall short of ensuring inclusion and equality in practice- even though they are formulated and implemented in an egalitarian context (paper 3).

The overall objective of this symposium is to provide a timely analysis of the evolution of concepts of diversity, equal opportunities, and inclusion in educational polices from a comparative perspective hence facilitating a better understanding of the impact of policies and their enactment at meso and micro levels to tackle educational inequalities.

By analyzing the development of education policy in two post-Socialist countries, Hungary and Lithuania, this paper argues that definitions of educational inequality have evolved over time, strongly reflecting societies’ political, economic and social makeup. Hence, the meaning of policy concepts and definitions, including that of educational inequality, should be seen as embedded concepts that evolve over time. The authors show that an interplay between historical culture (e.g., Wirt, Mitchell & Marshall 1988), ideas (e.g., Saurugger, 2013) and values (Bell & Stevenson 2015) collectively influence policy making and imbue policy concepts with meaning. Therefore, policy-making becomes the “realisation of contested meanings” (Bell & Stevenson 2015: 146). To demonstrate evolution of educational inequality as a policy concept over time, this paper analyses historical legacies of socialism, as well as the evolving of new narratives through the transition to capitalism—embracing global or European values—have impacted education policy in both countries. This is followed by the examination of how the more recent political environment, political ideas and culture have shaped contemporary education policy, delineating new meaning(s) of educational vulnerability and new way(s) of tackling educational inequality. As an example, we trace the development of the category of “special needs students”. In Lithuania, it moved from a narrow, disability-focused model with such students educated in segregated environments (Lietuvos švietimo koncepcija, 1992), to a broader understanding of special needs as arising from specific characteristics of a student and/or external factors (such as social conditions), leading to the introduction of integrated and inclusive education in Lithuania (Lietuvos Respublikos švietimo ir mokslo ministerija, 2012). A similar process took place in Hungary, where despite political slogans of socialism about equal rights to education (Gyuris, 2014), institutionalized segregation of students with special needs was the norm. From the early 2000s, the redefinition of “special needs” and the consideration of social vulnerability (2003. évi LXI. törvény, 2003) gradually improved inclusion in education (Erőss & Kende, 2010). Nevertheless, segregating practices are still widespread in the Central and Eastern Europe (Mladenov & Petri, 2020). In sum, this paper offers an analysis of educational policy documents from a historical and social constructionist perspective. Analyzing the normative content and values endorsed through education policy reveals an interplay between engrained values of historical and cultural significance and the need to adapt (and respond to) contemporary societal transformations.

Adomavičiūtė, L. (2020). Two mother tongues and post-Soviet transition: Lithuania’s ethnic minorities 30 years later. LRT. https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1180735/two-mother-tongues-and-post-soviet-transition-lithuania-s-ethnic-minorities-30-years-later Bell, L., & Stevenson, H. (2015). Towards an analysis of the policies that shape public education: Setting the context for school leadership. Management in Education, 29(4), 146–150. Busygina, I. M., & Onishchenko, A. D. (2019). The Polish minority in the Republic of Lithuania: Internal and external factors. Baltic Region, 11(1), 43–59. Erőss, G., & Kende, A. (2010). Sajátos nevelési igény: közpolitikák, tudományok, gyakorlatok [Special education needs: policies, sciences, practices]. Educatio, 9(4): 625–636. Gyuris, F. (2014). Basic education in communist Hungary. A commons approach. International Journal of the Commons, 8(2), 531–553. Mladenov, T., & Petri, G. (2020). Critique of deinstitutionalisation in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe, Disability & Society, 35:8, 1203–1226. Urbaitytė, K. (2011). Švietimo įstatymas: Kodėl bruzda tautinės mažumos? [Education Law: Why ethnic minorities are concerned?]. https://www.bernardinai.lt/2011-09-19-svietimo-istatymas-kodel-bruzda-tautines-mazumos/ Saurugger, S. (2013) Constructivism and public policy approaches in the EU: from ideas to power games, Journal of European Public Policy, 20:6, 888–906. Wirt, F., Mitchell, D., & Marshall, C. (1988). Culture and Education Policy: Analyzing Values in State Policy Systems. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 10(4), 271–284.

Social investment policies for mitigating inequalities in educational opportunities have reshaped early care and education (ECEC) across Europe over the past two decades. However, the outcomes of related national policies still vary widely (Van Lancker & Ghysels, 2016). In addition, scholars have highlighted how such ECEC policies translate into professional practices against the backdrop of specific welfare state traditions, the design of the education system, and whether social or educational administration is historically responsible for child and youth services (e.g., Leu & Schelle, 2009). Hence, systematic cross-national comparisons related to diverse welfare state arrangements and the specific historical development of ECEC are still rare. Even fewer analyses compare the cross-national restructuring of transitions between family and ECEC (e.g., Bradbury, 2019), a topic highly related to supranational initiatives (OECD, 2017). Luxembourg and Germany are interesting cases for such comparative research, as both countries combine traditionally family-oriented conservative welfare systems (Leitner, 2014) and highly stratified school systems but differ in terms of the integration of ECEC into the education system and the respective interrelation of education and care (split/unified). While in Luxembourg, preschool (“spillschoul”) is compulsory and part of the school system, the German kindergarten is voluntary and part of child and youth welfare with its unique socio-pedagogical approach. In both countries, however, the first PISA studies showed a shockingly high dependence of school success on social background, leading policymakers to improve ECEC, especially regarding the transition to primary school. This presentation will compare extended case studies (Burawoy, 2009) on two similar institutions that have emerged from these political debates in each country and which consist of the local combination of different institutions “under one roof” into a “Bildungshaus” (educational house). The comparison will use the apparent similarities of the two institutions to highlight how the respective societal, institutional, material and professional contexts enable and challenge effective practices to address inequalities. By focusing on changes in curriculum, language education, parent-teacher/educator relations, social space and institutional collaboration, we discuss how both institutions position themselves between the ‘schoolification’ of ECEC (Bradbury, 2019) and the “social-pedagogisation” of schools (Deinet & Icking, 2006) and how this reflects particular contextualised pathways of successfully addressing inequalities at the early stage. The analyses of policy reports, focus groups, and interviews with national stakeholders and professionals were conducted in the EU-funded PIONEERED project.

Bradbury, A. (2019). Datafied at four: The role of data in the ‘schoolification’ of early childhood education in England. Learning, Media and Technology, 44(1), 7–21. Leu, H. R. & Schelle, R. (2009). Between education and care? Critical reflections on early childhood policies in Germany. Early Years, 29(1), 5–18. OECD (2017). Starting strong. Transitions from Early Childhood Education and Care to Primary Education. OECD: Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264276253-en Van Lancker, W., & Ghysels, J. (2016). Explaining patterns of inequality in childcare service use across 31 developed economies: A welfare state perspective. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 57(5), 310–337. Sigrid Leitner. (2014). Varieties of Familialism: Developing Care Policies in Conservative Welfare States. In P. Sandermann (Ed.), The End of Welfare as We Know It?: Continuity and Change in Western Welfare State Settings and Practices (1st ed., pp. 37–52). Barbara Budrich. Deinet, U. & Icking, M. (2006) (Eds.). Jugendhilfe und Schule. Analysen und Konzepte für die kommunale Kooperation. Barbara Budrich. Burawoy, M. (2009) The Extended Case Method. University of California Press.

The aim of this paper is to map, describe, and analyse how educational inequality is conceptualised in the Norwegian policy discourse of the last decade. By this, we shed light on how educational inequality is understood in contemporary policy discourse with a focus on what solutions – based on problem framing – are proposed for tackling them. The policy discourse characterising Norwegian educational policy formulation in the last 10 years is teased out by using several key white papers as data for our qualitative content analysis. To reduce complexity, only milestone documents from the last ten years were used. The focus has been on uncovering the general discourse found to pervade key policy documents in recent years. The white papers used as data are documents provided by Government and presented to Parliament to enable discussions that may form basis for resolutions, bills, or reforms to be implemented at a later stage. Thus, they are ideal for mapping discourse used by Government. In our qualitative content analysis of the selected documents, several methodological frameworks were used as guidelines. The “What’s the Problem Represented to be” approach developed by Bacchi (2009) facilitates analysing public policies by uncovering “problems” represented in policy formulation. Thus, we mapped the main problems and analysed what is not problematized in the selected white papers. Additionally, we have contextualised the identified problems by investigating which presumptions or assumptions underlie them as well as how the problem definitions have come about. As such, the results are discussed in the context of Norwegian educational policy development of the last five decades. As our analysis indicates, several dilemmas and paradoxes are present in the contemporary Norwegian policy discourse on tackling educational inequality. At the core of Norwegian policy for tackling educational inequality is the inclusion-unequal treatment argument. In this regard, our analysis reveals that the Norwegian policy problem framing of educational inequality – mainly defined via unequal outcome – promotes the idea that unequal treatment of pupils for the sake of equal outcome makes the silver bullet for tackling educational inequality. However, educational inequality persists in Norway, and in light of classical reflection about the (re)production of inequality through schooling (Bowles and Gintis 2003; Coleman 1966, 1982; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; Collins 1979) we argue that unequal treatment for equal outcome will – under standardisation, top-down control and neo-liberalisation of formal education – not be sufficient to mitigate educational inequality given the increasing diversity of students.

Bacchi, C. L. (2009). Analysing policy: what's the problem represented to be? Frenchs Forest, N.S.W: Pearson Australia. Bourdieu, P., and J.-C. Passeron. 1977. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London & Beverly Hills: Sage. Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. 2003. "Schooling in Capitalist America Twenty-Five Years Later." Sociological Forum 18 (2):343-348. Coleman, James S. 1966. Equality of Educational Opportunity. Washington, U.S.: Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Coleman, James S. 1982. The Asymmetric Society. New York: Syracuse. Collins, Randall Alfred. 1979. The credential sociology : an historical sociology of education and stratification. New York, N.Y.: Academic Press.