Conference Agenda

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.

This presentation is framed as a comparative study of Danish/Nordic and Scottish/UK school policy with a view to examining how Danish policies ‘scale up’ regarding the Nordic dimension, and Scottish policies in relation to UK dimensions. By identifying tensions within the regional placement of these two countries, this presentation explores how Scottish ‘tensions’ with England within the UK leads to an anticipated Scottish exceptionalism that often refers to the Nordic region as a trope to emphasize ‘public good’, set against predominant market Discourses (Adams, 2022; Bryce et al. 2018; Gee, 2012) in dominant, English and (probably) Anglo-American conceptions for schooling. Simultaneously, we explore whether and to what extent Danish school Discourse fares between increasingly dominant adaptations of Anglo-American market D/discourses and Nordic ‘common-good’ values that (possibly) still pervade Danish and Nordic self-perception (Blossing, Imsen, & Moos, 2016; Krejsler & Moos, 2021). Such problematizations – we hope – will prove useful to qualify how Scottish-Danish educational collaboration can advance by drawing upon the larger regions they both situate within, both historically, regarding pedagogy, and contemporarily, regarding meaningful balances between ‘market’ and ‘public good’ approaches. This actualizes issues of how the two national cases have dealt with, taken in and transformed education according to major developments in education in terms of balances between markets and public good such as, in particular: (1) the transnational turn in school policy via interlocutors like the OECD, the EU and IEA (Lawn & Grek, 2012); and (2) the framing and adaptation of pedagogy according to their different positioning in relation to continental and Anglo-American educational theory, thinking and traditions (Uljens & Ylimaki, 2017); and, not least, (3) how the two national cases have reacted in the form of more recent contestations to transnational solutions as well as more national(ist) turns, including Brexit (Rizvi, Lingard, & Rinne, 2022; Krejsler & Moos 2023). Furthermore, the two cases serve as an exemplary lens to clarify tensions regarding both the purpose and organization of ‘schooling’ that has relevance at a larger European scale. In terms of theory the presentation draws on scalar and topological perspectives to understanding how ‘the national’ is increasingly framed (and possibly subsumed) between (within) complex regional and inter/trans-national relations, trends and developments (Amin, 2002; Lewis, 2020; Savage, Gregorio, & Lingard, 2021).

Adams, P. (2022). Scotland and Pedagogy: Moving from the Anglophone Towards the Continental? Nordic Studies in Education, 42(1), 105-121. Amin, A. (2002). Spatialities of Globalization. Environment and Planning A, 34(3), 385-399. Blossing, U., Imsen G. & Moos L.(Eds.). (2016). The Nordic Education Model: 'A school for all' encounters neo-liberal policy. Dordrecht: Springer. Bryce, T.G.K. et al.(Eds) (2018). Scottish Education. 5th ed., Edinburgh University Press Gee, J.P. (2012). Social Linguistics and Literacies, Ideology in Discourses. London: Routledge. Krejsler, J. B., Moos, L. (2023 Forthcoming). School policy Reform in Europe. Cham: Springer. Krejsler, J. B., Moos, L. (Eds.). (2021b). What Works in Nordic School Policies? Cham: Springer. Lawn, M., Grek, S. (2012). Europeanizing Education. Oxford: Symposium Books. Lewis, S. (2020). PISA, Policy and the OECD. Cham: Springer Nature. Rizvi, F., Lingard, B., & Rinne, R. (Eds.). (2022). Reimagining Globalization and Education. New York: Routledge. Savage, G. C., Gregorio, E. D., & Lingard, B. (2021). Practices of scalecraft and the reassembling of political boundaries. Policy Studies. doi:10.1080/01442872.2021.1885640 Uljens, M., Ylimaki, R. (Eds.). (2017). Bridging Educational Leadership, Curriculum Theory and Didaktik. Cham: Springer.

Despite having a comprehensive model of education, like all the other Nordic countries, Norway has experienced a high number of students dropping out of secondary education. Almost all 16-year-olds start upper secondary education in Norway, but about one-third of them do not complete within the five years that they have a legal right to access upper secondary education (SSB, 2018). This is seen as a big societal and political problem and is an indicator that the education system is at risk of failing its responsibility to these students. Over the last 25 years, hybrid school governance has developed: national policies and regulations have been introduced to prevent dropout along with regional monitoring systems to follow up on school results that combine performance-based and professional accountabilities, and financial models promoting marketisation and competition. This paper analyses how regional educational authorities (county level) and school leaders in upper secondary schools interpret and translate policy interventions to prevent dropout into practice. The aim is to examine the role of subjective variables and processes of meaning making in the mediation of such interventions. The analysis includes data from interviews with educational authorities in three counties that were selected according to completion rates over time and geographical location, and data from observations of annual steering dialogues between educational authorities and leaders in six upper secondary schools. Enactment and sensemaking approaches are used to analyse the data to provide a nuanced understanding of how the informants react to and apply new policy prerogatives in specific socio-institutional settings (Ball et al., 2011; Falabella, 2014). Even though completion rates represent the main indicator in the quality assurance systems, findings show that educational authorities adapt strategies to follow up the work of the schools, in particular their emphasis on accountabilities and the role of school development. Digital technologies play an important role to monitor school results and seem to promote a new professionalism around discourses and practices to retain students in secondary education and transform interactions between actors at county and school levels.

Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., & Braun, A. (2011). How schools do policy: Policy enactments in secondary schools. Routledge. Statistics Norway (2018). Arbeidskraftsundersøkelsen. https://www.ssb.no/arbeid-og-lonn/statistikker/aku/kvartal

School systems develop in pursuit of three social goals: democratic equality; social efficiency; social mobility (Labaree 2008). Over the last three decades, these ideals coexisted with a tension arising from the institutionalization of performance-based accountability regimes, with different modalities and intensities (Verger & Normand 2015). In Portugal, the appearance of school rankings in 2001 symbolically marks the emergence and consolidation of forms of coordination, ordering and control of educational systems and their actors, characterized by taking results as a central value of a policy that is carried out based on results (Carvalho, Costa & Sant'Ovaia 2020). Since then, this and other evaluation and assessment instruments, such as national examinations or ILSAs, have been shaping public debate on education and raising controversies between the different «principles of justice» (Dubet 2004) that have been affected by school public. This paper focuses on the opinion published in the Portuguese reference press/media on education, aiming to analyse the philosophical principles that have been wielded - and combined - in the public sphere to equate the way in which the State has managed or should seek to ensure the common good and implement a fair school. Therefore, we analyse the editorials and opinion texts published by the newspaper «Público» in three different periods: 2001 (year in which the school rankings appear in Portugal); 2011 (when we discern the intensification of performance-based accountability, with an emphasis towards a quasi-market orientation and a greater relevance given to external rewards/sanctions as a driver of change); and 2021 (twenty years after the first publication of school rankings, and in a socio-political context in which policy texts rhetoric combine the topics of accountability and inclusion, closely following the OECD’s ideational matrix for education). Based on the content analysis of circa three dozen editorials and six dozen opinion texts, the paper discusses the diversity of principles of justice in circulation and in use over these two decades. This paper shows that the three social goals assigned to the systems schools remain – and perpetuate themselves - based on different combinations, and thus configuring different judgments about State intervention in education.

Carvalho, LM, Costa E & Sant’Ovaia C (2020) Depicting the faces of results-oriented regulatory processes in Portugal. European Journal of Educational Research 19 (2). Dubet F (2004) O que é uma escola justa? Cadernos de Pesquisa, 34 (123). Labaree D (2008) The winning ways of a losing strategy. Educational Theory, 58 (4). Verger A & Normand R (2015) New public management and education: theoretical and conceptual elements for the study of a global education reform model. Educação & Sociedade, 36 (132)