Conference Agenda

22 years since the ambition to build a “European space of education” was first stated (Hingel, 2001), there is now a new programme on the creation of a European Education Area. This includes a new set of strategic goals for the 2021-2030 period (Council of the European Union, 2021), underpinned by the EU’s multiannual financial framework for 2021-27. A step change in the scope of EU education governance, these developments have implications for policy and practice in member states.

The entry point of this ECER symposium is that education governance in the EU context has entered a new phase, characterised by an unprecedented capacity to bring about Europeanisation in education sectors across Europe. Europeanisation refers to policy definitions at the EU level, the EU as a distinctive system of governance, and the different ways policies are diffused and incorporated within policy making in member states, changing domestic policy priorities and discourses (Lange & Alexiadou, 2010; Radaelli, 2008).

While education sectors across Europe continue to be very diverse, the evolution of EU governance over the recent decades has gradually brought education and lifelong learning policy into the centre of the EU integration project. In the process, education has increasingly been opened up for influences from other policy domains, especially economic and social policy, and vice versa (Pépin, 2011).

In this respect, one major development has been the introduction of the European Semester as a main mechanism of socio-economic governance in 2011. The Semester has substantially strengthened the monitoring role of the European Commission and the Country-specific Recommendations issued as part of the Semester process have had consequences for policies on education and training in many member states. In addition, EU governance is increasingly characterised by cross-sectoral coordination linking technical work with strategic priorities, for instance evident in the ways that the European Semester has been linked with new targeted investments through the European Social Fund and other funding schemes. Still, EU governance of education and training is of a ‘soft’ (non-legal) nature. It is consensus-driven and relies primarily on policy learning, cooperation, and knowledge exchange, with funding still a relatively minor incentive for policy change in most member states (Graf & Marques, 2022; Milana et al. 2020; Sorensen et al. 2021).

These developments raise several questions of interest to education policy analysts. For instance, how do the European Commission and the Council of the EU – the most important EU institutions in education governance – shape the direction of education and training policy at multiple scales? How does the increasing array of EU policy instruments seek to influence the (very diverse) national and local approaches to education policies in member states? Are some member states more affected by EU education governance than others? Vice versa, how do different member states attempt to shape the EU agenda on education? What are the most prominent areas of policy learning, and how are knowledge(s) exchanged and used as a tool of governance in different areas of education and training? How does EU education governance in the post-pandemic environment differ from that of earlier decades?

This symposium provides comparative research insights into these pertinent questions. It examines processes of Europeanisation of education policy within a broader public policy perspective, drawing on research that considers the multilevel nature of EU governance as well as a variety of member state contexts.

Along with major developments in European socio-economic governance, adult learning has acquired higher EU political authority (Milana & Klatt, 2019). Since 2011, gaining a new specialization in this substantial policy area (Sabatier & Weible, 2007), the Council of the EU has been able to set Communitarian agendas on adult learning (CEU, 2011; CEU, 2021). Over time, the core belief about adult learning of the Council of the EU has changed, adapting to broader socio-political circumstances and new EU strategic priorities. If a decade ago the Council believed that (targeted) adult learning could potentially support economic and social progress, by 2021 it trusts the learning of adults as a lifelong endeavour for the whole population in support of resilient and sustainable communities, and digital and green transitions. Accordingly, the mechanisms foreseen to implement a communitarian agenda on adult learning have developed to include a whole-of-government approach and higher emphasis on data, monitoring, and evidence-based policy. Thus, new actors are brought into this policy sub-system (e.g., EUROSTAT, the EU agency EUROFOUND, the Standing Group on Indicators and Benchmarks) (Milana & Mikulec, 2022). Previous research has shown that the visibility of adult learning rose under COVID-19, an ‘exogenous shock’ to both European and national systems (Bussi & Milana, forthcoming), which crisis narrative has the potential to prompt change in education policy (e.g., Morris, Park & Auld, 2022). But it is social dialogue and advocacy coalitions that helped to strengthen the alignment among different actors in the setting of a new European agenda for adult learning (2021-2030) under the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the EU (Milana & Mikulec, 2023). Drawing on a triangulation of data (documents, expert interviews, and participant observations), this contribution furthers this line of research by exploring how members of one specific coalition at EU level work together and learn from each other in their advocacy and lobbying for adult learning.

Bussi, M., & Milana, M. (forthcoming). The ideational policy trajectory of EU adult learning and skills policies up to COVID-19. In M. Milana, P. Rasmussen, & M. Bussi (Eds.), Research Handbook on Adult Education Policy. Edward Elgar. CEU (2011). Council resolution on a renewed European agenda for adult learning. OJ No. C 372/1, 20.12.2011. CEU (2021). Council Resolution on a new European agenda for adult learning 2021-2030. OJ No. C 504/9, 12.12.2021. Milana, M., & Klatt, G.(2019). Governing Adult Education Policy Development in Europe. In S. McGrath, M. Mulder, J. Papier, & R. Suart (Eds.), Handbook of Vocational Education and Training. Springer. Milana, M., & Mikulec, B.(2022). EU policy work under external shocks: Re-orienting the European agenda on adult learning under the COVID-19 pandemic. Paper presented at ECER 2022, 23-25 August, Yerevan. Milana, M., & Mikulec, B.(2023). Setting the new European agenda for adult learning 2021-2030: Between political mobilization and advocacy coalitions (unpublished, under review). Morris, P., Park, C., & Auld, E. (2022) Covid and the future of education: global agencies ‘building back better’. Compare 52(5): 691–711. Sabatier, P.A., & Weible, C.M. (2007). The Advocacy Coalition Framework. In P. A. Sabatier (Ed.), Theories of the Policy Process. Westview Press.

This paper discusses the European Semester as a particular form of policy instrumentation that has achieved a shift in both the intensity and nature of EU involvement in education policy. The literature on the Europeanisation of education explores the regulatory power of the EU most often through an analysis of policy discourses, the use of numbers as policy instruments, and the construction of framework programs (Alexiadou, 2016; Gornitzka, 2018; Grek, 2013), as well as through economic allocations (Souto-Otero, 2016). The main focus so far has been on the European Education Area and its predecessors, ET2010 and ET2020, and on the policy ideas and institutions that operationalize them (Alexiadou & Rambla 2022; Papanastasiou, 2020). Comparatively less attention is paid to policies organized through economic and employment governance that have direct effects on education (for exceptions see Eeva, 2021; Stevenson et al. 2017). Our presentation uses the concept of a ‘policy instrument’ as a device that has distinct technical as well as political and social properties that “organize specific social relations between the state and those it is addressed to” (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2007:4). We view the Semester as a policy instrument that intends to shape the direction of policy and reform in member states and constitutes a particular ‘technology of governance’ employed in parallel to the more conventional policy making in the EU (Le Galès, 2016:510). This approach can shed light on EU decision making in the field of education policy, including the interactions between the different policy actors involved (ibid.). Following these ideas, our research has two key objectives. First, we examine the evolution of the Semester process as one of the instruments employed to steer education policy change, through (a) an analysis of interviews with European Commission and Council of the EU policy actors; and (b) an analysis of documentary material. Second, we analyse and compare the Country Specific Recommendations, issued as part of the Semester process, for the countries of Spain and Sweden over the period 2011-2021. Our research describes the logics of instrumentation embedded in the Semester, as well as the tensions and struggles that characterize the process of education policy making. In addition, our research sheds light into the conditions under which EU policy has consequences for education policy in Spain and Sweden.

Alexiadou, N. (2016). Responding to ‘crisis’: Education policy research in Europe. Research in Education 96(1): 23–30. Eeva, K. (2021). Governing through consensus? The European Semester, soft power and education governance in the EU. European Educational Research Journal, https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041211055601 Gornitzka, Å. (2018). Organising Soft governance in hard times–The unlikely survival of the OMC in EU education policy. European Papers 3(1): 235-255. Grek S. (2013). Expert moves: International comparative testing and the rise of expertocracy. Journal of Education Policy 28(5): 695-709. Lascoumes P., & Le Galès, P. (2007). Understanding public policy through its instruments – from the nature of instruments to the sociology of public policy instrumentation. Governance 20: 1-21. Le Galès, P. (2016). Performance measurement as a policy instrument. Policy Studies 37(6): 508-520. Papanastasiou, N. (2020). The politics of generating best practice knowledge. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654420962108 Souto-Otero, M. (2016). Policies that speak discourses? Neo-liberalism, discursive change and European education policy trajectories. In Lendvai, N., & Kenneth-Bainton, P. (Eds.) Handbook of European Social Policy. Edward Elgar. Stevenson H., Hagger-Vaughan, L., Milner, A.L., & Winchip, E. (2017). Education and Training Policy in the European Semester. Public Investment, public policy, social dialogue and privatisation patterns across Europe. ETUCE.

Over recent decades a distinctive European Union (EU) agenda has developed related to the complex issues of improving the attractiveness of the teaching profession and the quality of teacher education and professional development (Sorensen et al. 2021; Symeonidis, 2021). Since the EU’s jurisdiction is limited in education, EU governance relies on soft modes of enhancing cooperation that seeks to mobilise and encourage national and sub-national actors to experiment when addressing education policy issues (Graf & Marques, 2022; Héritier & Rhodes, 2011). In this respect, the recent policy initiative of the Erasmus+ Teacher Academies provides an intriguing case for policy analysis. A flagship initiative forming part of the current EU strategy to create a European Education Area, these teacher academies are associated with the Europeanisation of teacher education and training, an area of education which remains particularly embedded in the governance logics of member states (Menter, 2022). This paper has the objective to analyse and discuss the extent to which the Erasmus+ Teacher Academies represent a case of experimentalist governance (Eckert & Börzel, 2012; Sabel & Zeitlin, 2012), and the ways in which the policy initiative potentially contributes to Europeanisation (Lange & Alexiadou, 2007; Radaelli, 2008). Our entry point is based on the observations that the teacher academies involve the creation and financial support of networks of teacher education and training providers in order to modernise teacher training with a view to green and digital skills, inclusion, and expanding international mobility. Network partners are meant to work together in innovative ways, whereas the European Commission appears to represent a hub monitoring and distributing knowledge and experiences gained in the projects. Our analysis involves tracing the key ideas, actors and mechanisms driving the policy initiative, the roles of project partners, and the workings and outcomes of their interaction, including the roles and influence of the European Commission as a hub orchestrating the academy networks. We draw on comprehensive desk research, review of the academic literature on experimentalist governance, and an empirical inquiry of key policy documents and interviews with professionals with first-hand knowledge about the development of the policy initiative so far. The paper contributes to the empirical study of this recent EU policy initiative as well as the theoretical discussion around modes of experimentalist governance in a particular area of higher education and skills development that is deemed central for the well-being of education systems and societies overall.

Eckert, S., & Börzel, T.A. (2012). Experimentalist governance. An introduction. Regulation & Governance 6(3): 371–377. Graf, L., & Marques, M. (2022). Towards a European model of collective skill formation? Analysing the European Alliance for Apprenticeships. Journal of Education Policy, DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2022.2097317 Héritier, A., & Rhodes, M. (2011). New Modes of Governance. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Lange, B., & Alexiadou, N. (2007). New Forms of European Union Governance in the Education Sector? A Preliminary Analysis of the Open Method of Coordination. European Educational Research Journal 6(4): 321–335. Menter, I. (2022). Teacher education research in the twenty-first century. In I. Menter(Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of teacher education research. Palgrave Macmillan. Radaelli, C.M. (2008). Europeanization, Policy Learning, and New Modes of Governance. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 10(3): 239–254. Sabel, C.F., & Zeitlin, J. (2012). Experimentalist Governance. In D. Levi-Faur(Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Governance. New York: Oxford University Press. Sorensen, T.B., Grimaldi, E., & Gajderowicz, T. (Eds. 2021). Rhetoric or game changer: Social dialogue and industrial relations in education midst EU governance and privatisation in Europe. Brussels: ETUCE. Symeonidis, V. (2021). Europeanisation in Teacher Education: A Comparative Case Study of Teacher Education Policies and Practices. Routledge.