Conference Agenda

The increasing presence and influence of international schools is a “well-kept secret” (Hayden & Thompson, 2008) hiding the influence of private organisations on global education policy and outside of national boundaries (Waterson, 2015). The international school sector has increased the non-state actors in global governance of education through privatisation of social service provision with new norms tied to business interests and non-state actors shaping education policy (Gunter & Fitzgerald, 2015). The result of this increasing presence of for-profit education management organisations as authorities on education policy has been significant normalisation of marketisation in education reform around the world. International schools are chronically under-researched, particularly the social processes and influence (Tarc & Mishra Tarc, 2015).

The marketisation of schools occurs in various forms where the lines between public and private provision are blurred (Ball, 2018). With such variety, marketisation may be just one of many interacting influences on schools and teachers’ work. This makes it potentially difficult to research when many confounding factors of governance and operation exist. International schools provide an excellent context in which to research teachers’ work where marketisation is a clear guiding force for school work.

For advocates of creating a market for schools, a competitive market of free enterprise is seen to revolutionise education (Friedman, 1997). The principles of competition, efficiency and accountability structural conditions of markets reinforce principles of rationality, efficiency and accountability. In schools, the market conditions are believed to boost student and school performance as well as the overall quality of education through competition and incentives to satisfy customers while striving to achieve profitable scale (Vander Ark, 2012). While a marketised system of schools is defended as potentially revolutionising education and benefitting teachers, the mechanism for how marketisation affects teachers and their work to obtain this outcome are often unclear. Understanding the work of teachers and schools as workplaces is a necessary step to recognising the process.

Schools are not simply a learning environment housed inside a building, they are workplaces structured by systems, resources, relationships and practises that shape what teachers are able to do and, in turn, what students can learn (Biesta, 2011). An important aspect of research about teachers’ work is the emotional experience of teaching. Teachers’ descriptions of the fulfilment they receive from their work may include pride in their students’ achievement scores or feelings about the events in their teaching career but also key is how teacher’s experience emotions related to the context of their work. In the literature, many different types of emotions are described like hope, passion, emotional labour, burnout and demoralisation among other terms. Within the context of marketisation, it becomes even more important to understand teachers’ work and their workplace. In this research, the marketisation of schools and the implications for teachers’ experiences are the focus.

Previous research has noted the necessity of finding out the relationship between marketisation and teachers’ experiences at work. Specifically for international schools, Bunnell et al (2016) call for research to focus on the “impact and effects not just ideology and existence” (p. 556) of international schools. In the international school sector, the marketisation of schools and its influences on teachers becomes a prominent feature of any discussion. As all kinds of schools are becoming increasingly marketised, it becomes necessary to see teachers as a vital part of the education process and understand how the effects of marketisation impact their work. We must ask: What are teachers’ experiences in marketised contexts? How are the influences on their work related?

The importance of professional autonomy for the well-being of teachers and for the quality of education has often been demonstrated (e.g. Fullan, 2007). Much research is done about the way in which management can influence a healthy and motivating work environment by creating professional space (Kessels, 2012; Kuijpers et al., 2023; Schaufeli & Taris, 2013). Much less is known, however, about the role that teachers themselves (can) play in influencing that environment. Teachers can reproduce or interrupt cultures and structures (Priestley et al., 2015). Currently, increasing attention is being paid to 'teacher agency', in short defined as: the ability of teachers to exert targeted and effective influence on educational practice (Toom et al., 2015).

To add to this body of research, we focus on the agency of teachers in Dutch Early Childhood Education (ECE). In their ecological approach to agency, Priestley et al. (2015) distinguish three dimensions of agency that play a role in the realization of this agency. The iterational aspect (accumulated expertise) is rooted in the past. The projective dimension (aspirations, motivations) is focused on the future. The practical-evaluative dimension (the day-to-day decisions in the complex context of educational practice) is an important connecting element between the former two dimensions.

Agency is important when it comes to being resilient in the face of educational innovations imposed by the environment (Priestley et al., 2015). Key to this resilience is the ability to critically assess requested changes, based on specific professional expertise (Edwards, 2015). If such an evaluation turns out to be negative, agency takes the form of offering 'principled resistance', that, according to Achinstein and Ogawa (2006), is based on professional principles. These principles are rooted in widely shared beliefs about education and professionalism and cannot do without reflective capacity and the willingness to change.

The literature on agency mostly focuses on the importance of professional dialogue for the substantive evaluation of educational practice (Edwards 2015). In addition, however, it is also important to evaluate: to what extent is it possible to act according to that evaluation? And if this is not sufficiently the case: how can we influence this? With these questions, a more political dimension of agency emerges. Kelchtermans and Ballet (2005) define micropolitical literacy as 'strategies and tactics used by individuals and groups in an organization to defend their interests' (p. 90). Insight into political dynamics is a crucial part of the practical-evaluative dimension of agency, especially in restricted work environments.

In this paper, we focus on the practical-evaluative dimension of agency in ECE teachers. We are specifically interested in the strategies and tactics used by teachers to improve their working conditions in situations where they are hindered in carrying out their daily work in line with their professional views. We therefore pose the research question: How do teachers in groups 1 and 2 of Dutch primary schools respond to autonomy-limiting influences from the environment?

Based on interview stories of teachers who feel constrained by the environment to act according to their professional views, we show that teachers can actively use their specific context as a source for strengthening their agency. The results reveal a multitude of very diverse strategies by which teachers respond to autonomy-limiting circumstances. Analysis shows that successful strategies, i.e. strategies that protect professional autonomy, are based on an open dialogue about, critical reflection on, and inquiry into both educational content and political context.

The results are summarized in a model. This model will be presented, clarified and illustrated with empirical data.

The teaching workforce in and beyond Europe is facing unprecedented challenges. Many European school systems face teacher shortages as recruitment targets are missed and rates of attrition rise. Challenging employment conditions saw industrial action by teachers in France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the UK in 2022 and 2023. The European Trade Union Committee for Education (ETUCE) and European Federation of Education Employers joint Framework of Actions in response to the declining attractiveness of the teaching profession signalled a need for adequate pay, and equitable and sustainable workloads (ETUCE-EFEE, 2023). Teachers report reform fatigue, emotional exhaustion, and burnout as they contend with multiple new initiatives, the impact of the pandemic on learner progress and wellbeing, stringent accountability demands, increasing class size, and diverse learner needs (Heffernan et al., 2022; OECD, 2023). Advances in communications technology mean that educators are increasingly deemed available outside traditional school hours.

This paper reports research commissioned by the largest teacher union in Scotland, the Educational Institute of Scotland, in response to workload concerns expressed by teachers in Scotland’s schools. This examination of teachers’ time use attends to both the number of hours and the nature or constitution of hours spent on work inside and out of the classroom and school. Workload is approached here not just in terms of working hours (volume) but also intensity (i.e., job-related demands in relation to available resources) (Stacey et al., 2022). The study considers the relationship between workload, teacher stress and work intensity and manageability (Creagh et al, 2023; Liu et al., 2023).

Workload reduction initiatives have tended to place primary responsibility on educators rather than the institutional and policy context in which they work (Spicksley, 2022). In contrast, this research adopts a social-ecological approach that acknowledges the importance of context in shaping the capacity of teachers to respond well to job-related stressors.

The following research questions are addressed:

• What are the main activities that constitute teacher workload?
• What is the balance of this workload over the working week?
• What extra hours do teachers, on average and by characteristic (education setting, gender, contract type), work beyond their contractual hours?
• Where do workload demands come from outwith class contact time?

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the Swedish state intervention Collaboration for Best School (CBS) governs principals in Swedish compulsary schools. CBS is a government assignment to the Swedish National Agency for Education which has been ongoing since 2015 in about 500 schools and 150 preschools and targets organisations with low results that are not expected to be able to reverse this trend on their own. Several researchers point out that Swedish teachers' and principals' room for action has decreased at the same rate as the central control increases and the state control regime has strengthened (see e.g Ivarsson Westerberg, 2016).

The starting point for the study is an assumption that schools and their leaders today are under enormous pressure to fulfill the educational system's requirements and authorities' policy directives, which are about delivering better results and an equal education (see e.g. Håkansson & Rönnström, 2021). In this regard, the school professions are at a disadvantage with their changing conditions in the form of a lack of qualified teachers and preschool teachers besides a limited professional autonomy. Biesta (2007) emphasizes that education needs a model of professional action that recognizes a non-causal interaction, that professional judgment is central to educational practice and that the nature of judgment is more a matter of morality than of technicalities. In line with Uljens (2021a, 2021b) we also argue that the task of pedagogy and education is to discuss and question political decisions. Politics and pedagogy must be seen as equal entities, even if politics decides on the content of education.

Eight years after CBS’ implementation, research on possible consequences is still limited, which is why this study can contribute through the analysis of collected empirical material within the framework of CBS and what it does with the principal's opportunities to understand and relate to their mission (cf. Lindster Norberg, 2016). Prøitz (2021) points out that questions about collaboration as an ideal and activity in modern governance provide the basis for a series of new questions regarding the development of the school. If a person, in this case the principal, does not adapt to the prevailing norm, that person is seen as disqualified and problematic in the prevailing regime of truth and thus becomes in need of retraining (Popkewitz & Brennan, 1997).

Based on this problematization we are interested in how school leaders participating in CBS are governed and shaped through various technologies of power (Foucault, 2008). The education sector can be seen as a practice where different methods and strategies operate to direct and control the thoughts and actions of individuals/principals/pedagogues in specific directions in order to best adapt to the trends that arise (Dahlstedt & Hertzberg, 2012). Although Foucault has been widely used in educational research in general, it can be stated that there is little research in educational leadership that takes Foucault as its point of departure (Nietche, 2011). Foucault's theories can therefore make a valuable contribution to our understanding of principals' work and principals' subjectivity. By examining the principal's role as a position for power relations and by exploring the principal's subjectivity, it becomes possible to find cracks and room for action where principals have the opportunity to operate within the framework of the normalizing and discursive regimes that make up the leadership's framework and the leadership's self-governance. This study can thus also contribute to exploring how principals can be given the opportunity to find room for action within the framework of a series of disciplinary regimes that assert themselves within the framework of the Collaboration for the Best School (cf Nietche, 2011).

Τhis study sought to investigate educational executives’ views about their roles and responsibilities in the school practice in Greece and in relation to the New Managerialism (NM) trends in education administration. New Managerialism has been the dominant paradigm in public administration and policy, since its appearance in late 1970s and early 1980s. In education, it emerged in 1990s and since then it has joined as a dominant approach to educational management at local, national, supranational and international level. However, although there have been convergences at a theoretical and conceptual level, in practice the countries have diverged in terms of application of principles and methods of the New Managerialism.

Therefore, the Anglo-Saxon countries, with a strong liberal tradition of administrative organization and provision of public sector services, more easily adopted these principles and made use of market techniques in education. In these countries, assessment and accountability are used as mechanisms to promote market principles, such as the introduction of school competition and the possibility for parents to freely choose schools for their children in an open education market directly linked to school rankings. On the contrary, several countries of central Europe have used assessment and accountability procedures to ensure quality in an educational environment characterized by high levels of decentralization.

Finally, in southern European countries, accountability was incorporated into the institutional framework, in line with the international discourse on educational administration. At the same time, teachers’ professionalism and professional identity are redefined in the social and conceptual framework of New Managerialism. In this context, effective teaching and learning as well as complex accountability mechanisms based on students results in national exams or international tests, like PISA, seem to stand out. Thus, at a supranational and international level, New Managerialism has exerted a strong influence on educational policy and administration. In Greece, where traditional bureaucratic educational administration is almost prevalent, these ideas have recently been adopted in the educational policy.

Free schools are new state-funded schools in England. They have been opened by non-state actors who apply to central Government for the right and funding to set up and govern a not-for-profit school. Free schools can disapply the National Curriculum, do not have to adhere to national teachers' pay and conditions and can set the length of their school day. These ‘freedoms’ were reflected in the name ‘free school’. Partly borrowed from the Swedish free schools (Friskolar) policy, the Government in England has associated the term ‘free’ with an argument that free schools “aren’t run by the local council. They have more control over how they do things” (DfE, undated). A central policy argument for opening free schools in England is that they will create new competitive pressures for improvement in neighbouring schools, thereby “forc[ing] existing schools to up their game” (DfE 2010: 57). This argument contains several assumptions about how school choice and competition operate. As Betts (2009) argued in the case of Charter Schools in America – from which free school policy is partly borrowed – the assumptions are that: free schools will compete well in terms of academic quality; parents will express a strong preference for higher quality schools; existing schools losing students or status to free schools will (be able to) respond by improving academic quality. There are numerous ways, however, in which this “chain of causation” can break down (ibid: 197). Free schools may not offer better quality environments. Parents may not prioritise or be able to recognise academic quality. Existing schools may not perceive new competition or, where they do, may not (be able to) respond in ways that improve quality or equity. Little change or even deterioration in student outcomes could result.

As of June 2022 there are over 600 free schools open (which represent the vast majority of new schools opened in England since 2010). Many more schools are neighbouring schools to these new free schools. This paper draws on a qualitative case study of the competitive effects of free schools on their neighbours, from a bigger mixed methods study, the aims of which were to:

1. Test for the presence of free school competitive effects on student outcomes in neighbouring schools.
2. Identify the mechanisms through which potential free school competitive effects are manifested, by analysing whether free schools compete well in terms of quality, whether parental preferences for local schools change with a free school opening and whether existing schools respond by changing their practices.

These aims require attention to the complexities of choice and competition across local markets. As such the main research question this paper is addressing is:

1. How are choice and competition manifested in local markets in which a free school opens? To what extent do local structural conditions, a free school’s aims and the local status of neighbouring schools influence perceived competition and action-taking?

Policy makers assume free schools create efficient competition, yet competition due to a free school’s presence works through a mix of mechanisms including selective competition. This has influenced the actions schools take, the distribution of improvement and deterioration and the patterns of social segregation.

A key lesson from the free school experiment is for policy makers to recognise the potential of selective competition and the outcomes this can create. This paper is relevant for an international audience interested in how the free schools experiment in England has played out in relation to choice and competition and what this might mean for other education systems that operate within the context of quasi-market supply side reforms.

Luxembourg is hyper-diverse in terms of the socio-economic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds of its inhabitants. While this diversity is an asset, it is also a source of inequality in its education system, given the very demanding language requirements of its trilingual nature (Eurydice, 2022; MENJE, 2023). The country is becoming even more multicultural due to the increase in immigration and cross-border workers (Eurydice, 2022). This societal change poses further challenges to the Luxembourgish education system, as the trilingual public education system no longer reflects the multicultural and plurilingual nature of the country (Eurydice, 2022; MENJE, 2023).

After decades without major structural changes, comprehensive school reforms were introduced in 2009 to reduce educational inequalities, which were followed by further reforms since 2013, under the slogan “Different schools suited to different pupils” (MENJE, 2020) to diversify the educational landscape in response to an increasingly heterogeneous student body with more than 60% of students speaking a language other than Luxembourgish at home (Eurydice, 2022). These reform initiatives led to the creation of the Accredited European Schools (AES), or European Public Schools (EPS). Originally created for the children of staff working for the EU institutions, the first European School to offer multilingual education was established in Luxembourg in 1953. In the following years, schools implementing the European Curriculum mushroomed in other European countries, and since 2005, the curriculum has been made available to the national schools in the Member States (Office of the Secretary-General of the European Schools, 2023). Years after its first implementation, the European Curriculum has returned to Luxembourg as an additional public-school offer, thanks to the recent reform initiatives aimed at combating educational inequalities. Like the “original” model, the EPS, which are open to local children, free of charge, offer greater flexibility in the choice of medium of instruction by using the European Curriculum with its pedagogical principles and approaches to student learning (Eurydice, 2022; MENJE, n.d.; Office of the Secretary-General of the European Schools, n.d.).

Global models of education are being transformed and adapted to the national and local contexts in what Robertson (1994) calls the “glocalization of social problems”. In the case of the establishment of the EPS in Luxembourg, the global model of education, the European Curriculum, is transformed in such a way that the schools refer to the language backgrounds of the students and help them to possess the linguistic requirements of the country by offering three language sections (i.e., English, German, and French-speaking sections), second and third language courses, and mandatory Luxembourgish courses as the language of integration.

The European school system is considered to be exportable and replicable (Leaton Gray et al., 2018). However, the establishment of the EPS was a major structural change in Luxembourg’s decades-old, persistent education system, and national traditions remained strong among some groups. Therefore, this parallel school system raised many social, political, and educational questions. This study aims to understand the genesis and outcomes of the implementation of an additional curriculum in Luxembourgish public education system with the following questions:

• What were the reasons for the establishment of EPS in Luxembourg?
• What are the opinions of different stakeholders on the reasons for implementing the European Curriculum and its contribution? What are the problems identified by them?
• What patterns of legitimation accompany the establishment of EPS?

Legitimization patterns and the role of the EPS are explored by using social constructivism (Hacking, 1999). The "case of Luxembourg" is used as an example to discuss educational transformations in response to current challenges and demands, as it observes the effects of changes in population structure, in line with trends observed in other European countries.

There is a global movement of education reform in many countries informed by a neo-liberal agenda (Verger, Fontdevila, and Zancajo 2017). The large changes in education during the past decades are to a large extent linked with a growing connectedness between the state, education and the economy (Lundahl, 2021). The acceleration of the global economy, as well as technological developments and the strengthening of transnational agencies like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the European Union have transformed nation-states into what Ball (2009) has named competition states. Krejsler (2019) has a similar label, the ‘fear of falling behind’ regime which has significant performative effects in producing a state of crisis awareness which motivates and drives education reforms.

This has also led to a shift towards a market-based educational reform agenda characterized by an emphasis on in-school factors, specifically, teacher quality and accountability, to a large extent leaving out of school factors affecting achievements out of the equation (Nolan, 2018). A discourse of continuous improvement follows this neoliberal agenda, and both national and international accountability systems put pressure on teachers and schools, individually and collectively (Watson & Michael, 2016). Schools are steered from a distance by performance measurements, surveillance and monitoring (Lingard, Seller & Lewis, 2017) which puts local school actors under a constant gaze (Holloway & Brass, 2018) and an endless pressure to perform.

In this paper I will examine the dynamic interactions of knowledge and power in the relationship between local school actors and the national agency for education in the context of a Swedish national school improvement programme called Co-operation for the Best School Possible (CBS). Foucault’s theories on power are utilized to understand how power relations and interactions between the national and local level in the Swedish education system can be understood in light of the global governance trends painted above. Power according to Foucault ‘is exercised rather than possessed’ (Foucault, 1995, p. 26) and it works in capillary manners. A framework including sovereign, disciplinary and pastoral power as well as the concept of governmentality will allow for a careful study of visible traces of subtle and intricate ways of steering in a complex multi-layered education system such as Sweden’s.

This article analyses different forms of power visible in a state-initiated school improvement programme using a Foucauldian framework. One important contribution a critical analysis can make is to question the common sensical, but furthermore Foucault gives us words to make the exercises of power recognisable. When we can recognise and assign words to the power being exercised, we also enhance our options for participating in relations of power. Thus, the aim is to is to explore the power relations between the Swedish National Agency of Education (SNAE) and the local school actors and how power operates and is exercised in a large-scale state-initiated school improvement programme. Through documents and citations from stakeholders in one municipality, these different modes of power are exemplified and highlighted in this article. By using Foucault, the formation and mode of subjection as well as techniques used to achieve them are at the foreground of the analysis (Foucault, 1982).

This paper provides research in the connected areas of initial teacher education, teaching and leadership to present an integrated snapshot of how teaching shortages are impacting all three sectors in interconnected ways.

There is currently an international crisis in the education workforce, exacerbated by Covid (Ovenden-Hope, 2022). Unprecedented teaching shortages are impacting all levels of the workforce including Initial Teacher Education (where numbers are declining and the pressure is on to attract and support new teachers); in the teaching workforce itself (where attrition and the difficulty of replacing teachers who leave is at an all-time high); and in school leadership (where principals are pressured to staff their schools in these challenging conditions). In a crisis-oriented context this ‘perfect storm’ creates a policy context of ramped-up panic and competition in teacher recruitment practices. A cross-sectoral approach is needed for government to develop education workforce policy based on research from all three sectors.

Recruiting and retaining enough teachers to meet school needs has been challenging governments for many years. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Sustainable Development Goal 4.c is to ‘substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers’ to support an equitable education system (Ovenden-Hope, 2022). In Victoria, Australia, advertised teaching vacancies peaked at 2,600 in mid-September 2023 and by December some schools in the State were reported as receiving no applications at all for advertised positions. These teaching shortages, reported similarly throughout Europe (Lindqvist, 2022; Worth, 2023) affect some schools much more than others, with poorer, diverse metropolitan schools, regional, rural and remote schools impacted much more. The impact and risk for historically disadvantaged school communities is much greater when there is an inconsistent or transient teacher workforce and the pressure on school leaders to solve a problem beyond their control has increased. Despite a wide range of government initiatives including financial incentives, mentoring, leadership pathways and more to address a ’crippling’ problem (Caudal, 2022; See et. al., 2020), workforce shortages persist.

In combining research on the impact of teaching shortages in teacher education, teaching and leadership we are working towards a more consolidated approach to finding policy solutions to teaching shortages. Our method, bringing together and comparing findings from three large research projects is unusual in aiming to strengthen collaborations between teacher educators, teachers and school leaders to better understand the phenomenon of education workforce shortages and to propose partnership-based solutions.

In Germany, the definition of special educational needs was developed by special education teachers by the end of 19^th century (Garz et al., 2022). Since then, the formal process of detecting and defining special educational needs has not changed significantly since the focus still remains on the characteristics of the pupil rather than on the characteristics of the teaching. In addition, special education has expanded both nationally and internationally, both in terms of professionals and schools: In Germany, the proportion of special needs pubils in each age group has risen from around1 % in 1900 up to now 8 % today (Dietze, 2019; Moser, 2023). This has been characterised as an “extension of the disability zone” (Felkendorff, 2003) as well as an effect of the “SEN industry” (Tomlinson, 2012), which continuously privileges dominant interests of stratification. Being labelled with special educational needs is closely linked to processes of social exclusion in mainstream classrooms as well as in special schools (Tomlinson, 2012, 267ff; Slee, 2019), understood as an ‘uneven distribution of opportunities‘. The empirical research project “FePrax” (funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research 2021-2024) therefore focuses on the justification of this labelling process. The project involves researchers from the Goethe-University Frankfurt, the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education and conducted 50 case studies of special educational appraisals and connected counseling interviews with parents in 2022 und 2023.

This study reflects on the role of education in contemporary society, the understanding of its relationship with democracy concept beneath neoliberal ideals, and its relationship with the teacher role in education. It begins with a reflection on two documents: i) David Hare’s playscript “Straight Line Crazy” (2022), within the character Robert Moses argues that “the cure for democracy is more democracy” (p.11) ii) and António Gedeão´s poem the “Philosopher´s Stone” (1955).

Democracy and public education are two concepts linked to every human being equal right to education. The use of it by political ideologies, imply changing their meaning to legitimate political actions, and the school role in contemporary society (Giroux, 2022; Biesta, 2022; Prange, 2004a).

Changes made by neoliberal ideologies, through the OECD, on education, puts public educational systems at risk: i) with education on the role to satisfy the social and economic needs, transforming the students in consumers; ii) with standardized pedagogical methodologies, and assessment systems to rank education quality and efficiency; iii) with curriculum being reduce to fit on the language of learning; iv) and teachers assuming the role of specialized instructors on learning (Biesta et al., 2015; Säfström & Biesta, 2023, Prange, 2004a).

Education theory and research has been developed to validate constructive theories, evidence, and effectiveness in education, through its technical and culture dimensions (Prange, 2004a), to legitimate the neoliberal ideology to transform education as a resource to anticipate the economic and technological future for society (Giroux, 2020; Biesta, 2006, 2007b; 2022, Säfström & Biesta, 2023).

However, theory and educational research, can be of prior importance if used to help teachers and other education professionals to critically understand the implications of their action and what is asked of them by policy makers. (Biesta, 2007; 2021). To act critically towards agency, teacher must be able to be teacher, not to act as technicians specialized in learning, doing what they are instructed to do (Biesta et. al., 2014; Giroux, 2020). They must put education on the move, not by eliminating the risk, but by bringing the world, and new knowledge to the students (Prange, 2004a; 2004b; Biesta, 2022). Education has the duty to resist the pedagogy of learning (Prange, 2004a), to fulfill its democratic dimension, defended by critical pedagogues as Freire (2021, 2023), Giroux (2022). Theory of Education must contribute to the beginning of a new paradigm education, that may reborn the intrinsic relational exchanges between society and education (Biesta, 2022; Säfström & Biesta, 2023) and develop a culture of critical conscious and emancipation as argued by Freire (2021, 2023).

This study purpose is to contribute to the theory of education with an epistemological and critical perspective of neoliberal versus critical pedagogy: Education servitude to society demands, or a humanist view for democratic and social participation through education of hope and emancipation, by studying the words used to legitimate ideologies: such as autocracy, being autocracy, or as autocracy through democracy.

The UK Government has produced a ‘Resilience Framework’, which aims to ensure the country’s prosperity by having a national infrastructure that is better equipped to tackle adverse events such as, but not limited to, pandemics, weather events and cybersecurity attacks. The qualification system is now being seen as an essential part of government infrastructure. Delivering qualifications is a complex, high-volume, distributed activity involving multiple actors across organisations with a range of relationships. Over 26 million examination scripts and coursework tasks are dealt with in the system in England annually, for qualifications taken by 16- and 18-year-olds. There is a quasi-market of four examination boards who offer academic qualifications and there are hundreds of organisations offering vocational qualifications. In this paper, we report on a project that sought to investigate not only how resilient the qualification system in England is, but what such resilience might mean. Using publicly available documents, input from an expert advisory group (10 people) and elite interviews with 21 assessment insiders, we analysed the resilience of England’s qualification system. The recent exams crisis created by the pandemic was one focus, but we explored resilience more broadly. To define resilience, we drew upon definitions published in the literature for other complex, distributed systems (food, healthcare and utilities). Systematic reviews of the term in other fields pointed out that the term ‘resilience’ is fluid in its meaning. For the purposes of this research project, we defined resilience as, ‘The capacity of the qualification system and its units at multiple levels to actively engage with, manage and learn from periods of change and unforeseen disturbances to deliver timely and sufficiently accurate, trusted, and valid grades to fulfil their purpose(s) now and in the future.’ Interviewees included regulators (3), civil servants (2), academics (2), teacher leaders or union representatives (5), individuals with think tanks, communications or PR perspectives (4), and exam board or awarding organisation insiders (5). We explored how qualification system resilience might be defined, its characteristics, resilience of the qualification system during the pandemic, threats to resilience and what countermeasures might be taken to them. Our interview data showed no consensus on the definition of resilience amongst the industry insider participants. Nor was there agreement on whether the system is currently resilient. Various proposed countermeasures for perceived lack of resilience have been publicly debated (teacher assessment, modular examinations, digitalisation). Our analysis outlines the risks, as well as potential benefits of each of these proposals. We conclude that the term resilience must be defined in relation to specified aims. Many threats to resilience were identified, including political pressure - a key feature of the 2020 exam policies. Fundamentally redesigning the system for resilience to unlikely catastrophic events would be a mistake. The cause of the 2020 crisis is best described as poor policy rather than as system fragility. Prospects for managing policy mistakes through government agencies (‘quangos’) are not encouraging due to the relationship with government. This case demonstrates fundamental weaknesses for the UK in delivering resilience, in the qualifications system and beyond. The role of politics in educational assessment policy differs across nations. This case serves to illustrate how the management of political agendas and policy mistakes is integral to managing education systems. This nebulous concept is useful in political terms, as policymakers can point to a lack of system resilience, rather than identifying issues as policy failures. Pointing to resilience is a useful vehicle for shifting policy evaluation criteria and responsibility for those. Qualification systems may be at particular risk of political pressures because examination grades are symbolic and intangible; their value is socially constructed.

In recent years, Finnish basic education has undergone significant transformations in its policies and practices related to student assessment. For instance, reflecting the international trends (see e.g. Birembaum et al. 2015) the role of student self-assessment has been emphasized. This paper delves into the exploration of the current 'politics of assessment' and its historical evolution since the late 1990s, as perceived and experienced by Finnish basic education teachers and guidance counselors working with students in their final years of basic education.

The study employs the theoretical concept “the politics of assessment”. “The politics of assessment” draws on the poststructural stance on governance, characterized as the 'conduct of conduct' (Foucault, 1982, 1988; Fejes & Dahlstedt 2012; Rose, 1999/2009). The term encompasses the role of assessment policies, embedded in legislative and curricular documents, not only playing part in the governing of the practices of evaluation within educational settings but significantly, the part they play in shaping of subjectivities and future perspectives for students involved in assessment. Deriving from these theoretical starting points, 'the politics of assessment' captures the dynamic interplay of the governance of others, being governed, and self-governance within the realm of student assessment policies and practices (Pitkänen 2022).

Against the backdrop of the contemporary landscape of assessment policies, two parallel and globally impactful trends come into sharp focus. The first trend, referred to as 'the politics of self-evaluation,' emphasizes formative assessment and student self-assessment (Pitkänen 2022). In the transnational and European policy discourse and educational theory it has been widely discussed under theme of assessment-for-learning (e.g. Birenbaum et al 2014, OECD 2008). This trend found its way into the Finnish basic education landscape, particularly with the introduction of the 1994 curriculum. Subsequently, the idea of formative assessment and student self-evaluation has firmly taken root in both the curricula of basic education and educational legislation. More recently, a second trend, termed here as 'the politics of standardization,' has emerged within Finnish assessment policy and practice. This trend is deeply intertwined with the international movement toward educational standardization (e.g. Riese et al 2022) including the emphasis of the standard assessment-of-learning (e.g. Sahlberg 2016). In Finland, the prevailing trend towards standardization is deeply rooted in the increasing policy emphasis on ensuring fair and equitable assessment practices. Studies, for example, have indicated that students with similar proficiency levels could receive significantly different grades in different schools (e.g. Hildén ym. 2017; Ouakrim-Soivio 2013), undermining the fundamental premise of comprehensive education to provide students with equal opportunities for further education. As a solution to this problem the assessment criteria have been introduced. They were first presented in the late 1990’s as recommendation-type guidelines. Since 2004, the criterion-based assessment has become established in the Finnish basic education curricula. Currently, in assessments at the end of sixth and ninth grade, the criteria have been specified for grades 5, 7, 8, and 9.

This paper delves into the dual trajectory of assessment politics and its impact on everyday school life. The research analyses 1) teachers' and guidance counselors’ perspectives on the history and formation of the current assessment policy. The study is interested in how teachers and guidance counselors describe and perceive the change. Secondly, the research analyses 2) how the current assessment policy, as narrated by teachers and guidance counselors, has been enacted in the school, how it has been experienced, and how its role is perceived from the perspective of governing teachers' and guidance counsellors work, students' schoolwork, and the students' understanding of themselves.

In the past thirty years, education systems have experienced a burgeoning of policy initiatives aimed at improving education quality and students’ performance worldwide. This shift is primarily attributable to multiple forces reshaping the educational landscape, including the imperative of aligning educational systems with the demands of economic globalization; the rapid digitalization processes sweeping through societies; the influence of international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) in educational debates; the urge to standardize and measure every educational dimension under the reigning datafication imperative (Grek et al., 2021). In response to these multiple forces, certain policies have been articulated as somewhat coherent narratives capable of addressing these demands. Scholars have termed these policies either the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) (Sahlberg, 2016) or school-autonomy-with-accountability (SAWA) reforms (Verger et al., 2019). On the one hand, autonomy embodies managerial and decentralization policies that transfer decision-making to school-level agents, argued as ‘best practices’ to drive school improvement (Woessmann et al., 2009). On the other hand, assessment and accountability instruments lie at the heart of these reform packages, including large-scale standardized assessments, school inspections, peer evaluations, or self-evaluations, as pivotal policies to monitor schools and enhance quality.

Grouped under a quality assurance paradigm for education, autonomy, assessments, and accountability policies have widely circulated among different countries. In part, their global spread is explained to the multiple purposes, rationales, and uses that these policy instruments can uptake in different settings. However, beyond an apparent global convergence towards the widespread adoption of autonomy, assessments, and accountability policies, there are significant variations among countries depending on the governance structure –i.e., Federal vs. unitary countries–; the political ideology of governing party, administrative traditions of state bureaucracies, or path-dependency dynamics emerging from pre-existing policies (Gerrard and Savage, 2022). Put differently, while several countries might have adopted large-scale assessments, the associated stakes or how governments or schools use them can vary widely.

This panel explores reforms of autonomy, assessments, and accountability from a multi-scalar perspective, addressing crucial questions for understanding their dissemination and effects among different school systems from a policy instrument approach (Lascoumes and Le Galès 2007; Béland et al. 2018; Capano and Howlett 2020). Combining the theoretical contributions of political sociology in education, and theories of enactment, the panelists collectively unpack the dynamic vernacularisation of these reform packages, illustrating (I) how policy instruments are adopted and operate within unique cultural, political, and institutional landscapes, (II) the relevance of the filtering and enactment processes in the reconfiguration and calibration of the newly adopted policy instruments.

Some papers will explore the interactions between newly adopted and existing policy instruments, and the dynamic 'policy mixes' created, with unforeseen combined effects. Others will examine the centrality of specific instruments -i.e., large-scale learning assessments- and their uses and effects at different scales, ranging from policy design to school-level practices. All contributions will address the interplay between the reform goal and the policy instruments to achieve it, and the role played by key stakeholders and constituencies. In doing so, this panel extends beyond conventional analyses by shedding light on the complex dynamics that unfold in the selection and application of policy instruments and their interaction with pre-existing arrangements in diverse settings. Through theoretical contributions from political sociology and enactment theories, this panel enriches the field of policy studies in education by exploring the configuration of quality assurance policy instruments and their effects in increasingly complex and multi-layered policy landscapes.

Over the last decades, school autonomy and accountability policies (SAWA) have been at the forefront of education reforms globally. SAWA constitutes a reform package grounded in managerial and quasi-market principles to transform school systems governance radically (Verger et al., 2019). During the 2000s, SAWA reforms were epicenter in the Global North, particularly in OECD countries (Högberg & Lindgren, 2021). However, SAWA policies have also been disseminated, to different extents, among middle and low-income countries (Hossain, 2022). In particular, SAWA policies have circulated among Latin American countries, taking precedence in school-based management and decentralization reforms during the 1990s (Barrera-Osorio et al., 2009). Literature on policy transfer in education has largely accounted why, how, and where different reforms are diffused. However, most studies focus on single instruments or specific reform aspects, such as standardized testing (Kamens & McNeely, 2010), whereas complex packages are underexplored. This study aims to fill this gap by examining SAWA’s dissemination across Latin America, a region that has served as a laboratory for multiple managerial and neoliberal reforms in the past (Meseguer, 2004). First, the study dissects SAWA into its main elements: (i) autonomy to enable decision-making by school agents –boards, principals, and teachers–; (ii) accountability and standardization to measure and monitor school outcomes; (iii) competition as a driver for improvement; and (iv) performance incentives to nudge agents’ behavior towards targetted outcomes (Verger et al., 2019). Then, it specifies 13 instruments that operationalize SAWA’s theory of change, such as decentralization laws, large-scale standardized testing, curriculum standardization, bonus payment for teachers or school league tables. Thirdly, to explore the extent of SAWA instruments dissemination throughout Latin America, it creates a self-elaborated database on SAWA policies’ adoption, at the regulatory level, for each of the 34 Latin American and Caribbean countries from 1990 until 2020. According to the World Education Reform Database, the period coincides with the peak of neoliberal reforms (Bromley et al., 2021). Following a similar methodology from prior policy diffusion studies (Bromley et al., 2021), data for this paper comes from coding country-level policy documents and international organizations publications (i.e., OECD’s Review of National Education Policies or the World Bank’s SABER publications). This paper contributes to the study of globalization and policy transfer in education by offering a cross-national and historical account of the spread of a complex reform package and its composing policies and analyzing trends in instrument diffusion throughout Latin America.

Barrera-Osorio, F., Fasih, T., Patrinos, H. A., & Santibáñez, L. (2009). Decentralized Decision-making in Schools: The Theory and Evidence on School-based Management. World Bank. Bromley, P., Overbey, L., Furuta, J., & Kijima, R. (2021). Education reform in the twenty-first century: Declining emphases in international organisation reports, 1998–2018. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 19(1), 23–40. Högberg, B., & Lindgren, J. (2021). Outcome-based accountability regimes in OECD countries: A global policy model? Comparative Education, 57(3), 301–321. Hossain, M. (2022). Diffusing “Destandardization” Reforms across Educational Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: The Case of the World Bank, 1965 to 2020. Sociology of Education, 95(4), 320–339. Kamens, D. H., & McNeely, C. L. (2010). Globalization and the growth of international educational testing and national assessment. Comparative Education Review, 54(1), 5–25. Meseguer, C. (2004). What Role for Learning? The Diffusion of Privatisation in OECD and Latin American Countries. Journal of Public Policy, 24(3), 299–325. Verger, A., Fontdevila, C., & Parcerisa, L. (2019). Constructing School Autonomy with Accountability as a Global Policy Model: A Focus on OECD’s Governance Mechanisms. In C. Ydesen (Ed.), The OECD’s Historical Rise in Education: The Formation of a Global Governing Complex (pp. 219–243). Springer International Publishing.

Since the turn of the century, data on student learning has played an increasingly prominent role in global education governance. With the proliferation of global indicators and international comparisons, the measurement agenda and data production demands have grown and spread widely in national education systems worldwide. Despite the global adoption of large-scale learning assessments (LSAs) and the growing influence of evidence-based policymaking discourses, the uses that governments make of LSAs data vary widely, being context-sensitive and contingent on political and institutional settings (Verger et al., 2019). In low-stakes accountability contexts such uses have been less explored. While the literature suggests that LSAs data is influential for agenda setting, and policy monitoring and evaluation, it is less clear the extent to which it is used by governments to inform policy formulation processes (Tobin et al., 2016). Thus, this paper explores whether and how data from LSAs is used by the national government in Argentina and the subnational government in the city of Buenos Aires to inform policy design. The Argentinean case presents a complex political scenario in which the adoption, calibration and retention of learning assessment instruments has been amid federal political interaction (Rodríguez et al., 2018). Through a qualitative vertical case study, the paper explores to what extent, how and why governments at the national and subnational levels use LSAs data to inform policy formulation (2015-2019) (Barlett & Vavrus, 2014). The empirical strategy relies on document analysis (n=55) and in-depth semi-structured interviews with policymakers (n=20). Results show that data from national large-scale assessments (NLSAs) was privileged at the national level, and from local large-scale assessments (LLSAs) at the subnational level. Data from cross-national assessments (ILSAs) was used to a lesser extent during policy formulation. Data use encompassed both instrumental and symbolic purposes, while conceptual use was less prominent and linked to other forms of educational evidence, such as qualitative studies (Coburn et al., 2009). The paper provides theoretical insights into the close relationship between the political rationales for legitimating the NLSA and the logic offered for using (or not) its data in policymaking (Addey & Sellar, 2018).

Addey, C., & Sellar, S. (2019). Rationales for (non) participation in international large-scale learning assessments. Education Research and Foresight: UNESCO Working paper. Bartlett, L., & Vavrus, F. (2014). Transversing the Vertical Case Study: A Methodological Approach to Studies of Educational Policy as Practice: Transversing the Vertical Case Study. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 45(2), 131–147. https://doi.org/10.1111/aeq.12055. Coburn, C. E., Honig, M. I., & Stein, M. K. (2009). What’s the evidence on districts’ use of evidence? In J. D. Bransford, D. J. Stipek, N. J. Vye, L. M. Gomez, & D. Lam (Eds.), The Role of Research in Educational Improvement (pp. 67-86). Harvard Education Press. Rodríguez, L. R., Vior, S. E., & Más Rocha, S. M. (2018). Las Políticas de Evaluación de la Calidad Educativa en Argentina (2016-2018). Educação & Realidade, 43(4), 1405–1428. https://doi.org/10.1590/2175-623684907. Tobin, M., Nugroho, D., & Lietz, P. (2016). Large-scale assessments of students’ learning and education policy: Synthesising evidence across world regions. Research Papers in Education, 31(5), 578–594. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2016.1225353. Verger, A., Parcerisa, L., & Fontdevila, C. (2019). The growth and spread of large-scale assessments and test-based accountabilities: A political sociology of global education reforms education reforms. Educational Review, 00(00), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2019.1522045

School autonomy policies have been cemented as a principal policy direction in state and territory education systems across the Australian federation (Gerrard and Savage 2022). These policies aim to devolve elements of school governance from centralised state bureaucracies to the local school level within publicly funded systems of education. A notable example is the Independent Public Schools (IPS) initiative, introduced in 2009 in the state of Western Australia (WA). Reflective of decentralising school reforms internationally (Keddie 2016), the IPS involved a suite of policy changes designed to increase flexibility and attune school governance to local needs, such as one-line budgets and the introduction of School Boards (Gerrard and Savage 2022). Over a decade since the IPS was first introduced, more than 80% of all students in WA government schools now attend an IPS school. Critical policy scholarship regularly positions autonomy reforms as part of a global shift towards neoliberal governance, with a particular focus on marketisation. For instance, Gobby (2016) interprets IPS as promoting neoliberal public service provision, while Fitzgerald et al. (2018) see it as intensifying market competition among schools, creating disparities. This paper extends critical scholarship, but in a different theoretical register. Rather than engaging in a critique of autonomy as an artefact of neoliberalism or marketisation, we explore the material and discursive underpinnings of the IPS through a conceptual lens centred on scalar politics. Drawing on Papanastasiou's concept of 'scalecraft' (2017), MacKinnon’s (2011) concept of scalar politics, and other critical accounts of scale as a social process (Fraser 2010; Savage, Di Gregorio and Lingard 2022), we frame scale as an epistemological tool in policymaking, used to reshape power and resource distribution. Our primary argument is that the IPS can be understood as a scalar intervention that rearranged relations between local schools, mid-level bureaucracies, and the central state department of education. Based on a synthesis of policy document analysis and interviews with senior WA policymakers, we show that scale was central to the design and implementation of the IPS and was used to legitimise its impacts. Building on existing theories of ‘scalecraft’, we make a novel contribution by introducing two new complementary concepts: ‘scalecreep’, which involved the rapid expansion of the IPS beyond the original scope envisioned by its architects; and ‘scalecrunch’, which resulted in the diminishment of the influence of regional-level bureaucrats as the relationship between principals and bureaucrats in the state’s Department of Education was prioritised.

Fitzgerald, S., et al. (2017). Devolution, market dynamics and the Independent Public School Initiative in Western Australia. Journal of Education Policy, 33(5): 662–681. Fraser, A. 2010. The Craft of Scalar Practices. Environment and Planning A, 42: 332–346. Gerrard, J., & Savage, G. C. (2022). The governing parent-citizen: dividing and valorising parent labour through school governance, Journal of Education Policy, 37(5): 744-761. Gobby, B. 2016. “Putting “the system” into a school autonomy reform: The case of the Independent Public Schools program. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 37(1): 16–29. Keddie, A. (2016). Maintaining the integrity of public education: A comparative analysis of school autonomy in the United States and Australia. Comparative Education Review, 60 (2): 249–270. MacKinnon, D. (2011). Reconstructing scale: Towards a new scalar politics. Progress in Human Geography, 35(1), 21-36. Papanastasiou, N. (2017). The practice of scalecraft: Scale, policy and the politics of the market in England’s Academy Schools. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 49(5): 1060–1079. Savage, G. C., Di Gregorio, E., & Lingard, B. (2022) Practices of scalecraft and the reassembling of political boundaries: the contested nature of national schooling reform in the Australian federation. Policy Studies, 43(5): 962-983.

Expectations for schools to use data from a variety of sources to improve the education they offer have been increasing globally (Verger & Skedsmo, 2021). Over time, what data is and means has expanded from only considering standardised national large-scale assessments. In the Italian school autonomy and accountability system, schools’ own analysis and reflection about data both received from central administration and produced locally are expected to be used for didactic and organizational improvement. In this research, the use by schools of internally and externally produced data of organisational, administrative, assessment, pedagogic nature and beyond is analysed. These include national tests, schools’ self-evaluation reports, grades, teacher observation, demographic data, and more. Research on data use in the Italian context is particularly limited. Specifically, no research has been conducted following the conceptualization of data going beyond national assessment data. Pastori and Pagani (2016) report a growing trust in the validity of data from national assessments results, but difficulty in making use of it because of time, skills necessary to analyse data, and lack of habit in engaging is such processes. This research seeks to understand to what extent and how data use processes and routines happen in Italian schools, what facilitates them, what schools consider as data and their attitudes towards it. The paper specifically analyses how school organizational and political context, individual factors, and the accountability system mediate data use, and whether and how data influences pedagogical and organizational decisions in schools. This study uses data use conceptualisations and frameworks (Coburn and Turner, 2011; Spillane, 2012) to study data use in education in a specific Southern-European low-stakes accountability context. It places emphasis on the use of data for equity purposes (Datnow & Park, 2018), through a conceptual model for critical data-driven decision making (Dodman et al., 2021), and embraces the notion of data-informed decision making rather than data-based decision making (Schildkamp et al., 2019). Methodologically, this qualitative study uses interviews of principals and teachers in 12 primary and lower-secondary schools, selected to guarantee variety of socio-economic context, in the city of Rome. Expected results include limited structured use of data, positive attitudes regarding conceptualization of data beyond national assessment results, organizational and data literacy barriers for data use. It is also anticipated that ideas of data use include data use to increase equity, but that processes for this to happen may not be structured or systematically present.

Coburn, C. E., & Turner, E. O. (2011). Research on data use: A framework and analysis. Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research & Perspective, 9(4), 173-206. Datnow, A., & Park, V. (2018). Opening or closing doors for students? Equity and data use in schools. Journal of Educational Change, 19, 131-152. Dodman, S. L., Swalwell, K., DeMulder, E. K., View, J. L., & Stribling, S. M. (2021). Critical data-driven decision making: A conceptual model of data use for equity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 99, 103272. Pastori, G., & Pagani, V. (2016). Cosa pensate dei test INVALSI? Dirigenti scolastici, insegnanti e studenti provenienti dalla Lombardia descrivono la loro esperienza. Journal of Educational, Cultural and Psychological Studies, 2016(13), 97–117. Schildkamp, K., Poortman, C. L., Ebbeler, J., & Pieters, J. M. (2019). How school leaders can build effective data teams: Five building blocks for a new wave of data-informed decision making. Journal of educational change, 20, 283-325. Spillane, J. P. (2012). Data in practice: Conceptualizing the data-based decision-making phenomena. American Journal of Education, 118(2), 113-141. Verger, A. & Skedsmo, G. (2021). Enacting accountability in education: exploring new policy contexts and theoretical elaborations. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 33(3), 391-402.

The last decade has seen a steady shift towards right-wing, in some cases hard-right, politics across Europe and the EU. From Italy to Finland, from the Netherlands to Greece, this shift is well documented in the media (e.g. Lynch 2023) and has also been the subject of academic analysis (e.g. Petrović et al. 2023). Europe’s lurch to the right is highly complex: on one level, as Petrović et al. (2023) demonstrate, it works through centrist and radical populism, which draw upon a variety of themes such as notions of national sovereignty and values, anti-elitism, and so forth. Another level consists of anti-immigration, “nativist” and racist discourses aimed at vilifying racial, ethnic, and religious minority populations. For example, a survey carried out in 2023 by the EU’s rights agency of 6,752 people of African descent in 13 EU countries found that racism is “pervasive and relentless” – in Austria and Germany, specifically, around three-quarters of those surveyed said they had experienced racism, a rise of around 15% since 2016 (Boffey 2023). A closely related third element is the right-wing movement against so-called “wokeism”, which has used culture wars, moral panics, and a discourse of “counter-extremism” to attack anti-racist, climate change and other civil rights and social justice positions it is ideologically opposed to (see Davies and McRae 2023).

Our paper examines the effects of these interconnected political manoeuvrings and discourses on schooling and young people. Specifically, we focus on the conditions under which political education and free speech around issues of race and faith are produced and engaged with by young people in schools. The paper reports on our 2023 national survey of 3,156 Year 10 pupils from 29 state-funded secondary schools across 8 regions of England focusing on free speech around race and faith.

Overall, while many pupils were positive about their school environment, they also expressed significant concerns about their ability to share their social or political views at school; their school and peer climate; engagement around race and faith equality, as well as anxieties about wider social disadvantages linked to a person's race and/or faith – a view that was surprisingly also shared by a sizable proportion of white pupils about their racial status.

As discussed further below, we use our findings to address several weaknesses in education policy, especially in the areas of school environment, curriculum, and political impartiality. We particularly draw and build upon the seminal work of Michael Apple (2006; 2019) on the role of right-wing ideology in schooling, as well as the broader work of Habermas and Dewey on ‘the public (good)’, to make two arguments: 1) free speech around race and faith in schools is delineated by a social, political and affective “infrastructure of expression” that tightly governs the “speakability” of race and faith issues in top-down ways, even as it is presented through a policy of political impartiality; however, 2) the dominant, though fractured and sometimes inconsistent, right-wing ideology is unable to impose total ideological/hegemonic control in and through schooling partly due to young people’s political engagement in non-school environments. We attend to these dynamics by conceptualising schools as a site for ‘micro-publics’, i.e. multi-layered, multi-modal, and often intermittent forms of ‘public’ engagement. The significance of our findings and arguments are augmented by their relevance and applicability to education in liberal democratic societies across Europe and beyond.

Democracy is a popular construct in use in everyday language today and despite widespread claims that democracy is under threat it is a term widely used by very different groups from across the political spectrum. Democracy has a special place in education, where education is not only understood as an academic discipline and a professional field of practice but pivotal in promoting spaces, content and public interest values for the support of political policies.

Concepts such as democracy as procedure and as a form of life (Dewey, 1916), thin and thick democracy (Armando & Apple, 2002), and shallow and deep democracy (Furman & Shields, 2005) all give the impression that democracy stands between two distinct choices. Rather than either–or alternatives, we maintain that it is rather a question about where the scope of the responsibilities linked to democratic aspirations should be drawn. A thicker democracy stresses the need to work with reflection in which citizens understand themselves as taking part in a public society where they have rights, knowledge, values, obligations to strive for the common good of society and where participation and plurality is cherished. A thinner and more authoritarian democracy is founded on narrower and at times unscrutinised knowledge that emphasizes certain standards as the measure of a good national citizen (Zyngier, 2016).

In the academy of education, democracy is a deeply contested construct that is frequently overused and under-theorised (Arnot & Weiler, 1993: Edling & Mooney Simmie, 2020; Fraser, 2022; Lynch, 2022; Mooney Simmie & Edling, 2019: Young, 1996). In this study, we are interested in a broad, deep and dynamic view of the construct of democracy, for a (re)constructivist worldview of democracy and education that is constantly evolving depending on rapidly changing societal, environmental and planetary needs and needs to be in the direction of justice, equality and care. Dewey (1916) claimed that education is the midwife of democracy and that the needs of democracy change with each new generation. It is not therefore a static construct that can be pinned down and implemented in a linear rational and neutral way.

Our understanding of democracy, found in our theorisation of Teachers’ Democratic Assignment (TDA) encompasses issues of discursive ethics, the presence of uniqueness, is always framed in the direction of equality, justice and care of the marginalised, and always inclusive of the messiness of the human condition, what Hannah Arendt called the plurality of the human condition (Arendt, 1958). Arendt reminds us that there are only a small number of policy changes that need to be made to assure a totalitarian state, one change being the stifling of joy and spontaneity and the second, the stifling of the plurality of the human condition.

These important dimensions of democracy are threatened in contemporary education by the rapid increase of hyper masculinity in education research and policy working to narrow down horizons of thinking, being and acting. This hyper rationality presents education and democracy as a fixed entity that can be (mathematically) modelled, controlled, and predicted as a state-centred system of performance management (Selwyn & Gašević, 2020).

This globalising imperative can be seen across OECD countries, in the constant comparison of PISA and TIMSS standardised test scores, and is paralleled today with an anti-science populist movement advocating violence and hatred of the ‘other’ (Verma & Apple, 2021). Instead, we are interested in a construct of democracy that can value and learn from histories and cultures, and at the same time make way for something new to emerge, with transformative possibility for new mutual care relations for humans, non-humans and the planet (Edling & Mooney Simmie, 2020).

In a time of uncertainty and crisis of democracy, this paper aims to present some findings of research on young people's participation in decision-making processes. It is a crucial issue at the heart of international and European policies (Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2009; UN General Assembly, 1989, 2015; Council of Europe, 2020; European Commission, 2021; European Union, 2018; United Nations, 2018), actions and funds such as the Next Generation EU. To this end, the present research dialogues with the actions of the MUSA project (Multilayered Urban Sustainability Action) funded through the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan, which created an interdisciplinary and intergenerational research laboratory called B-YOUth Forum focusing on youth participation and public space.

Alongside the increasing investment by key European institutions in terms of promoting participation, there has been a steady decline in the levels of political engagement in most EU countries over the past decades (Eurochild et al., 2021), especially with regard to young people. Indeed, in recent years, disengagement from institutional political participation seems to be a significant trend among contemporary European democracies even among younger generations, causing them to lack representation and power in political decision-making (Norris, 2003; Farthing, 2010). At the same time, there is a new wave of youth political engagement outside the institutional sphere, which has become particularly visible through youth activism movements, protests, demonstrations, volunteering and online engagement (Sloam, 2016; Spannring et al., 2008).

Within this framework, the research examines young people's educational experiences of participation in public, formal and structured decision-making processes. The study involved 26 young members of the Advisory Council on Youth of the Council of Europe and the European Youth Forum, which is the biggest platform of youth organisations in Europe. The research will lead to an interpretation of young people's experiences that can support pedagogical practice, which can be politically significant (Biesta, 2012). In fact, although studies have been conducted on youth participation in decision-making processes in Europe (Day et al., 2015; Janta et al., 2021; Van Vooren, 2019), there is a lack of scientific literature on the topic, especially in the pedagogical field (Malone & Hartung, 2010). Participatory processes, although rooted in the political sphere, need to be learnt, as well as the dialogical process between institutions and young people, which underpins democratic life, needs to be implemented. Shedding light on the life trajectories and participation experiences of young people is crucial in order to reflect on how to educate for democracy through democracy itself (Biesta, 2015), overcoming the many oppositions highlighted in the literature, including, for example, traditional forms of participation and innovative forms, physical and virtual participatory spaces (Willems, Heinen & Meyers, 2012; Bacalso et al., 2015; Cornwall, 2008). Through the in-depth exploration of the lived experiences of the participants in relation to participation, salient and recurring educational dimensions will be identified. These elements can be useful for reflecting on and developing pathways to participation, including political participation, at a time when it is in crisis.

This symposium will highlight the role of European policy elites (experts, consultants, advisers, etc.) by showing that they wield significant power and legitimacy in shaping educational reforms during last decades at global level, while at the same time its illustrates the social and political features of these reforming groups and networks in national spaces. By charaterising these European elite groups and networks by their positions within the State and/or International Organizations, the symposium will display the circulation of ideas and knowledge, beliefs and assumptions, between individuals and groups, but also their relations of dependence as well as their technocratic and/or ideological connivance that shape a doctrinal puzzle.

Often referred to as neo-liberalism versus welfarism, these ideas, discourses, and prescriptions are more a complex combination of personal experience, adoption of scientific and expert statements, formulation of values or principles of justice, but also political expediency in front of public opinion and interest group pressures. Far from considering educational reforms and decision-making as linear, sequential, or incremental processes, the symposium will emphasize authoritarian, sometimes nationalistic stances, but also uncertain dimension of power facing the uncertainty and complexity inherent to policy-making at global scale. It will underly the incoherence and cognitive dissonance of decision-making, the tacit and shared knowledge on which justifications are based, or the story-telling that legitimizes changes in political rhetoric

Therefore, the symposium will help to better understand ongoing and endogenous transformations of the educative State, in characterizing interactions within national, European and global elites, but also their resources and capacities for action in framing public action programmes and delivering political discourses, through games of competition and rivalry, according to specific professional, administrative, managerial cultures and ethics.

Beyond mapping national, Europaen and global links, which demonstrate also some affinities and proximities between these elites, the symposium also will intent to characterize the more or less structured, more or less formal policy networks that shape the European reformist agenda in education through recommendations and prescriptions leading to lasting and relatively irreversible changes in policy-making.

Based on the comparison between several European countries, bringing together different authors specialized in education policies, the symposium will seek to answer the following questions

- How do these elites exercise their power, their authority, by mobilising different resources and capacities to influence the decision-making process?

- How are these elites structured in networks or groups, epistemic communities or coalition of causes, in relationships that facilitate the sharing of knowledge, ideas, representations and beliefs on educational policies at national and global level?

- What is the role of cognition, values, beliefs, representations and the strategy in these alliance games and power relationships? What is the impact of public action instruments and their interpretation (laws, indicators, data, etc.)?

- How is it possible to characterize the type of proximity or affinity maintained by these elites within State, in other institutions or networks, or in International Organizations?

From a methodological perspective, policy makers will be chosen for their membership in a ministerial cabinet, as heads of a ministerial directorate or as experts/advisers for the Ministry of Education, or for their relationships with global networks and organisations, etc. Whenever possible, their socio-professional career and their various positions in education or elsewhere will be established. Analyses would developed from the study of different expert groups, national conferences, representative institutions, and parliamentary hearings in which this elite has intervened with important effects on implementing reforms.

The key insight from state-of-the-art literature on global governance in education is that it is necessary to study the interactions and overlaps between international, national, and local contexts and the entanglements of a host of actors to acquire an adequate understanding of education policy (Robertson 2018). From this starting point the paper addresses the following research question: How can we understand the role and significance of the knowledge brokers and infrastructure facilitating movement between global and national policy-making arenas? Using Denmark as an analytical case, it is the purpose of this paper to explore the complex intermeshing and interactions between and among knowledge brokers operating in the infrastructural space between the OECD and the Danish Ministry of Education in the period 2001 when a new right-wing government took office and up until today. More specifically, the paper investigates the formal and informal, institutionalized and not institutionalized connections and channels between the OECD and Denmark in the development of education politics and policy. For instance, since 2017, the OECD has increased its support for strengthening the analytical capacity of National Centres and Ministries of Education more generally, as well as that of municipalities and other education stakeholders at the national level, through its PISA Lead Analysts programme (Auld et al., 2020). A constructive angle to explore in this connection are also the shifting consortia tasked with conducting the PISA surveys which perform the boundary work that goes on between the organizations, the national political arenas, and sometimes even in the public debates and news landscape. Theoretically, the paper conceptualizes knowledge brokers as ‘key intermediaries who facilitate the exchange of knowledge between individuals or organizations (…)’ (Weber & Yanovitzky, 2021, p. 1), but also as motivated agents that are themselves changed by their brokerage activities, at the same time as they seek to change others. Such a framework improves analytical purchase on knowledge brokerage beyond the current research paradigms, revealing the purposeful mobilization by international organizations inside what can best be conceptualized as a multi-level governing complex that changes over time (Ydesen 2019). Empirically, the chapter draws on interviews with knowledge brokers operating in the OECD-Denmark space as well as archival documents harvested in the Danish National Archives and the OECD archive in Paris.

Elfert, M., & Ydesen, C. (2023). Global governance of education: The historical and contemporary entanglements of UNESCO, the OECD and the World Bank. Educational Governance Research Series (Series Eds. S. Carney & L. Moos). Dordrecht: Springer. Reder, T. J., & Ydesen, C. (2022). Policy Borrowing and Evidence in Danish Education Policy Preparation: The Case of the Public School Reform of 2013. In B. Karseth, K. Sivesind, & G. Steiner-Khamsi (eds.), Evidence and Expertise in Nordic Education Policy (pp. 77–114). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91959-7_4 Weber, M. S., & Yanovitzky (2021). Knowledge brokers, networks, and the policymaking process. In M.S. Weber & I. Yanovitzky (Eds.), Networks, knowledge brokers and the public policymaking process (pp. 1-25). Palgrave. Ydesen, C. (2021) Globalization and Localization in the Shaping of the Danish Public Education System – Discursive Struggles in Four Historical Educational Reforms, In: Zhao, W. & Tröhler, D. Globalization and Localization: A Euro-Asia Dialogue on 21st-Century Competency-Based Curriculum Reforms, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 85-109, Ydesen, C., Kauko, J., & Magnúsdóttir, B. R. (2022). The OECD and the Field of Knowledge Brokers in Danish, Finnish, and Icelandic Education Policy. I B. Karseth,

This presentation examines the intervention of political-administrative elites in the conception and implementation of national education policies and programs. The study addresses the involvement of high-ranking officials from the Ministry of Education, policymakers, and experts from national higher education institutions and international organizations; and the focus is on their participation in developing and implementing a national pilot program that has served as the main instrument for a policy aimed at promoting curricular differentiation in Portuguese schools. The significance of this program, known as the "Project for Curricular Autonomy and Flexibility in Primary and Secondary Education," lies in its consistent implementation and generalization during recent years under the current government. The pilot program took place in 2017 and 2018 under the auspices of the Directorate-General for Education (DGE), the central organization responsible for implementing policies related to the pedagogical and didactic components of education, as well as providing technical support for policy formulation. Key actors involved in the program include high-ranking officials of the DGE, members of the cabinet of the Secretary of State for Education, a specialized committee (a body of national consultants from the academy with conception and monitoring roles), two national experts on curriculum studies, OECD officers, and members of the Working Group on Schools, which is part of the EU's European Education Area strategic framework. Therefore, we will present these elites at work, focusing on their interdependencies throughout the creation and implementation of the pilot program. It analyses two dimensions: the social dimension, which captures the actors' social characteristics, status and professional trajectories, their formal roles, and their political strategies, i.e., how they construct their power relations by mobilizing different resources to influence decision-making and implementation processes; and the cognitive dimension, which examines the main categories they use to make sense of the education sector and the role of knowledge and beliefs in shaping educational policies. Main methods include documental analysis and interviews with key actors. Additionally, tacit knowledge from authors generated from involvement in the project or created from experience in central management bodies will be mobilized.

Carvalho, L. M., Costa, E., & Sant’Ovaia, C. (2020). Depicting the faces of results-oriented regulatory processes in Portugal: National testing in policy texts. European Educational Research Journal, 19(2), 125-141. Carvalho, L. M., & Viseu, S. (2023). New philanthropy in education in Portugal: fabricating social inclusion as policy, knowledge and practice. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 1-13. Viseu, S., & Carvalho, L. M. (2021). Policy networks, philanthropy, and education governance in Portugal: the raise of intermediary actors. Foro de Educación, 19(1), 81-104.

Since the mid-2010s, an education policy agenda emerged in curricula across the world projecting the need to teach computer programming in schools. This chapter discusses the insertion of programming into the Swedish compulsory curriculum and argues that this change was shaped and promoted by an assemblage of external actors and their political configurations in municipal, national and international policy spaces. To frame the context of this study, an overview of the Swedish context and the emergence of the programming agenda is going to be presented. Through network ethnography analysis, actors are identified and their interpersonal links are mapped. This allows for a discussion of how the Swedish programming agenda was governed by a politico-administrative elite which features an assemblage of diverse actors. Programming was promoted by governmental and inter-governmental agencies, national and multinational corporations, as well as for-profit and non-profit organizations. These promotions occurred in schools serving their own aspirations and interests by, among other things, forming alliances, sharing their beliefs via public media and mobilizing a variety of resources. The findings demonstrate both the networks and relationships between the members of the political-administrative elite, as well as the discourses that shaped and justified the formulation of the programming agenda within the context of Sweden. These findings highlight the role of private actors in particular, and their influence in education policymaking processes, while illustrating the positions they hold within the policymaking field.

Ball, S. J. (2015). What is policy? 21 years later: reflections on the possibilities of policy research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 36(3), 306–313. Ball, S. J., & Junemann, C. (2012). Networks, new governance and education [Electronic resource]. Policy. Ball, S. J., & Youdell, D. (2008). Hidd Barnett, M., & Finnemore, M. (2004). Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics. Cornell University Press; JSTOR.

Networks hold a meeting during ECER. All interested are welcome.

The two-part symposium presents conceptual, comparative as well as single-country studies that examine the neoliberal reform wave which most governments bought into over the past thirty years. In concert with Verger, Fontdevila and Parcerisa (2019), we refer to this reform package as School-Autonomy-with-Accountability (SAWA). The objective of the studies presented is to move beyond the simple documentation that neoliberalism spread worldwide and instead examine who the political coalitions were that bought into, or resisted, respectively the reform wave, what features of the reform resonated and why they held appeal, what features were repealed and how national policy actors translated key policies into the varied national contexts. These type of research questions are prototypical for research interchangeably labeled policy borrowing, policy transfer, policy mobility, or policy circulation research (Steiner-Khamsi, 2021). The panel attempts to advance both policy transfer research as well as comparative public policy studies by inserting a transnational lens into the analysis of policy processes.

The unit of analysis of all presentations is the SAWA reform. We consider SAWA to be a coherent, pervasive, and controversial reform package that (i) claimed to ensure quality improvement, (ii) advocated for (or at least aligned with) policies to set in motion competition among schools and differentiation in the school offer, such as school-based management and school choice (iii) instated a bundle of policies that strengthened school autonomy under the condition of pervasive accountability, and (iv) advanced a set of preferred policy instruments to trigger and sustain organizational change such as continuous standardized testing and other forms of external supervision. The panelists use this quadruple differentiation of fundamental reforms—their mission, mechanisms of change, bundle of policies, and policy instruments—to reflect the vernacularization or translation of the reform package, that is, what exactly was adopted by which political actors and in which particular political context, and why some features of the reform packaged resonated more than others.

In this panel, the presenters draw on the policy instrument approach which has triggered a lively debate within public policy studies more broadly (Lascoumes and Le Galès 2007; Béland et al. 2018; Capano and Howlett 2020) as well as more narrowly in policy studies related to the education sector (Verger et al. 2019). Several aspects of that approach are appealing for policy transfer research, notably, the insight that the choice of policy instrument is deeply political and has repercussions in who is empowered and who disempowered. Drawing on that approach, we differentiate between the reform goal, reform elements, and the instruments to achieve the goal.

Since the turn of the century, the number of countries conducting large-scale learning assessments (LSAs) has been rising steadily - to the point that today LSAs are perceived as a fixture of modern education systems. This trend has been extensively analyzed with a focus on the uptake of LSAs across countries, and the drivers behind the globalization of such policy instruments (Benavot & Koseleci, 2015; Furuta, 2022). The seemingly unstoppable entrenchment of LSAs within education systems should not lead us to assume that such policies have remained fixed entities or that they unfold predictably. LSAs in many countries are continuously adjusted and recalibrated, and even put at the service of policy agendas different from those that motivated their adoption. On occasion, LSAs have evolved following a ‘bottom-up’ pattern through unexpected uses by local actors, the emergence of instrument constituencies interested in LSAs survival, or the mix of LSAs with other policies (Sewering et al., 2022; Simons & Voß, 2018). It follows from the above that, far from linear, the policy trajectories experimented by LSAs are complex and vary significantly across countries. Yet the evolution of LSAs has not been systematically examined from a cross-country perspective, with much research focusing on the origins of assessment systems but leaving unaddressed their renegotiation over time. The limited empirical engagement with the evolving nature of LSAs may lead to an unproductive reification of this policy instrument. In light of this, this paper aims to map the recent evolution of LSAs - including their design (frequency, scope, coverage, etc) but also their uses (i.e. the purposes and stakes associated with them and their combined use with other policy instruments), as well as to examine the drivers and enablers of such changes. Drawing on the analysis of policy documents, we rely on recent advances in policy feedback theory to make sense of the change and continuity in the instrumentation of LSAs (Sewerin et al., 2020). Specifically, we pay attention both to self-reinforcing mechanisms leading to the perpetuation of LSA policies, and self-undermining mechanisms behind the revision or even termination of some features (Jacobs & Weaver, 2015), and identify those social, political and educational conditions conducive to their activation. In so doing, our paper contributes to a refined understanding of the diverging trajectories of the LSA program, and sheds light on the potential of those analytical perspectives going beyond early logics of instrument choice, and engaging with policy development over time.

Benavot, A, & Koseleci, N. (2015). Seeking quality in education: The growth of national learning assessments, 1990-2013. Background paper prepared for the Education for All Global 2015. Furuta, J. (2022). The Rationalization of “Education for All”: The Worldwide Rise of National Assessments, 1960–2011. Comparative Education Review, 66(2), 228-252. Jacobs, A. M., & Weaver, R. K. (2015). When policies undo themselves: Self‐undermining feedback as a source of policy change. Governance, 28(4), 441-457. Sewerin, S., Béland, D., & Cashore, B. (2020). Designing policy for the long term: agency, policy feedback and policy change. Policy Sciences, 53(2), 243-252. Sewerin, S., Cashore, B., & Howlett, M. (2022). New pathways to paradigm change in public policy: combining insights from policy design, mix and feedback. Policy & Politics, 50(3), 442-459. Simons, A., & Voß, J. P. (2018). The concept of instrument constituencies: Accounting for dynamics and practices of knowing governance. Policy and Society, 37(1), 14-35. Verger, A., Parcerisa, L., & Fontdevila, C. (2019). The growth and spread of large-scale assessments and test-based accountabilities: A political sociology of global education reforms. Educational Review, 71(1), 5-30.

School accountability with autonomy (SAWA) reforms have developed in diverse forms in Northern Europe. Indeed, Denmark and England have both legislated SAWA reforms in various configurations and at different stages over the past thirty years. Following processes of educational decentralization to the municipalities, and the implementation of free school choice and per capita funding, municipal quality assurance reports became key to the test-based accountability agendas of education policymakers in Denmark (Dovemark et al., 2018; Moos 2006). By contrast, in England, as a result of decentralization to the school level (Gewirtz et al., 1992; Rayner et al., 2018), and a significantly reduced role for local authorities, school accountability for educational standards has been increasingly tied to two regulatory instruments: performance league tables and inspection (Ydesen et al., 2022). While changes to the development and enactment of these accountability systems over time mean that SAWA reforms in these two contexts could be described as a moving target, research suggests that social systems often exhibit active resistance to radical transformation (Milner et al., 2021). Assemblage theorists tend to explain this phenomenon through the conceptual lenses of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. However, certain scholars argue that the postmodernist emphasis on fluidity neglects sufficient treatment of the stability of structures and have therefore attempted to combine assemblage theory (Deleuze and Guattari, 1972/1983, 1980/1987) with critical realism (Bhaskar, 1975; Archer, 1995; Collier 1999; Sayer, 2000). Inspired by this theoretical development, we employ a hybrid framework created by Martyn and Galvin (2022) to analyze the ‘production stories’ of quality assurance reports and inspection in Denmark and England. Drawing on data from an international comparative research project, and more recent policy analyses, we examine the arrangement of social entities that led to the development of these specific forms of accountability within these particular educational assemblages. With concern for the stability of structures, we explore the underlying logics to these assemblages and the latitude of teachers and school leaders to challenge them. We argue that pauses to the development enactment of accountability mechanisms are the result of distinct arrangements of social entities at distinct times within the social system. Additionally, the possibility for ‘rupture’ is limited by the resilience of underlying market and managerial logics supported by discourses of quality in education which appeal to key actors – government policymakers and parents.

Archer, M. (1995). Realist social theory. The morphogenetic approach. Cambridge University Press. Collier, A. (1999). Being and worth. Routledge. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1980/1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizo- phrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. University of Minnesota. Dovemark, M., Kosunen, S., Kauko, J., Magnúsdóttir, B., Hansen, P., & Rasmussen, P. (2018). Deregulation, privatisation and marketisation of Nordic comprehensive education: Social changes reflected in schooling. Education Inquiry, 9(1), 122–141. https://doi.org/10.1080/20004508.2018.1429768 Gewirtz, S., Whitty, G., and Edwards, T. (1992). City technology colleges: Schooling for the Thatcher generation? British Journal of Educational Studies, 40(3), 207-217. Milner, A.L, Mattei, P., and Ydesen, C. (2021). Governing education in times of crisis: State interventions and school accountabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. European Educational Research Journal, 20(4), 520-539. Rayner, S.M., Courtney, S.J., and Gunter, H.M. (2018). Theorising systemic change: learning from the academization project in England. Journal of Education Policy, 33(1), 143-62. Ydesen, C., Milner, A.L., Aderet-German, T., Gomez Caride, E., and Ruan, Y. (2022). Educational assessment and inclusive education. Palgrave Macmillan.

In Switzerland, the neoliberal reform package was selectively adopted in two waves: a general New Public Management (NPM) reform and a few years later the SAWA reform. The two reform waves were inextricably linked and in fact advanced by the same politicians (Appius & Nägeli, 2017). The study consists of a multilevel analysis of one canton in Switzerland (Zürich) and investigates two aspects: changes in the governance structure as a result of the reform and the temporal dimension of policy enactment. The authors also reflect on the reform outcomes, which SAWA elements were actually implemented, and which were discarded in the political process. Similar to other countries, (i) school-based management was introduced, (ii) the decision-making authority of the local governance level was strengthened, and the (iii) central level (in Switzerland: the cantonal level) was charged with standard-setting and quality control by means of external school evaluation and standardized testing of students. Strikingly, one of the signposts of Swiss direct democracy - involvement of laypersons into quality assurance of public institutions at the district level - was, abolished to shorten the accountability route between the local and central level. In terms of the temporal dimension, the study shows that focusing on the timing of policy adoption may be misleading because in some cases policy enactment was—due to resistance, lack of financial resources, capacity shortcomings—short-lived or “hollowed out” over time (Zahariadis, 2003 & 2007; Pierson, 2004; Rüb, 2009; Morais de Sá e Silva & Porto de Oliveira, 2023). The study draws on empirical research carried out by Appius and Nägeli in three cantons (Lucerne, St. Gallen, Zürich) in which over 1,200 relevant policy documents were analyzed and interviews were conducted with policy actors and practitioners at different governance level within the three cantons. The empirical study was revisited in 2023 and reframed in terms of the new interpretive framework that draws attention to the complexity of a reform wave, explained in the introductory section of this panel, and takes into the consideration a multi-dimensional definition of time. The main findings of the recent study were published in 2024 (Steiner-Khamsi, Appius, Nägeli, forthcoming).

Appius, S. and Nägeli, A. (2017). Schulreformen im Mehrebenensystem. Eine mehrdimensionale Analyse von Bildungspolitik. Wiesbaden: Springer, 2017. Morais de Sá e Silva, M., and O. Porto de Oliveira. “Incorporating Time into Policy Transfer Studies: A Comparative Analysis of the Transnational Policy Process of Conditional Cash Transfer and Participatory Budgeting.” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 25, no. 4 (2023): 418-438. https://doi.org/10.1080/13876988.2023.2193961. Pierson, P. (2004). Politics in time: History, institutions, and social analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rüb, F. W. (2009). Multiple-Streams-Ansatz: Grundlagen, Probleme und Kritik. In K. Schubert & N. C. Bandelow (Hrsg.), Lehrbuch der Politikfeldanalyse 2.0 (2. Aufl.) (S. 348-376). München: Oldenbourg. Steiner-Khamsi, G., Appius, S., and Nägeli, A. forthcoming). School-autonomy-with-accountability: Comparing two transfer spaces against the global script. Zahariadis, N. (2003). Ambiguity and choice in public policy: Political decision making in modern democracies. Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press. Zahariadis, N. (2007). The Multiple Streams Framework. In P. A. Sabatier (Hrsg.), Theories of the Policy Process (S. 65-92). Boulder: Westview Press.

The study draws inspiration from the World Education Reform Database (WERD) and utilizes the same research questions, notably the investigation reform activity and reform content, over a longer period of time. In addition, it draws on Chinese scholarship that specified reform waves or phases, respectively in the Chinese context. What is more, the presentation presents a typology of the different types of legislative documents at the level of the State Council as well at the level of line ministries, notably the Ministry of Education. A corpus of over 10,000 policy documents were identified, of which the study narrowed the number by focusing on laws, regulations, and normative directives both at the level of the State Council and the Ministry of Education. The findings suggest that there was no School-Autonomy-with-Accountability reform wave in China. Instead, the data compiled suggests that China had its own trajectory of reform phases, informed by themes that were crucial at this stage of China educational development: expansion of compulsory education, national language issues, and private sector involvement in the education; just to name a few topics that emerged over the period 1978-2023. In conclusion, the presentation emphasizes the importance to make a differentiation between policy place and policy space. Different from OECD countries or countries dependent on the Washington Consensus and other donors, China’s reform trajectory reflects economic, political, and social developments in the country itself rather than international developments.

Broomley, et al. 2021. World Education Reform Database (WERD)

This symposium will highlight the role of European policy elites (experts, consultants, advisers, etc.) by showing that they wield significant power and legitimacy in shaping educational reforms during last decades at global level, while at the same time its illustrates the social and political features of these reforming groups and networks in national spaces. By charaterising these European elite groups and networks by their positions within the State and/or International Organizations, the symposium will display the circulation of ideas and knowledge, beliefs and assumptions, between individuals and groups, but also their relations of dependence as well as their technocratic and/or ideological connivance that shape a doctrinal puzzle.

Often referred to as neo-liberalism versus welfarism, these ideas, discourses, and prescriptions are more a complex combination of personal experience, adoption of scientific and expert statements, formulation of values or principles of justice, but also political expediency in front of public opinion and interest group pressures. Far from considering educational reforms and decision-making as linear, sequential, or incremental processes, the symposium will emphasize authoritarian, sometimes nationalistic stances, but also uncertain dimension of power facing the uncertainty and complexity inherent to policy-making at global scale. It will underly the incoherence and cognitive dissonance of decision-making, the tacit and shared knowledge on which justifications are based, or the story-telling that legitimizes changes in political rhetoric

Therefore, the symposium will help to better understand ongoing and endogenous transformations of the educative State, in characterizing interactions within national, European and global elites, but also their resources and capacities for action in framing public action programmes and delivering political discourses, through games of competition and rivalry, according to specific professional, administrative, managerial cultures and ethics.

Beyond mapping national, Europaen and global links, which demonstrate also some affinities and proximities between these elites, the symposium also will intent to characterize the more or less structured, more or less formal policy networks that shape the European reformist agenda in education through recommendations and prescriptions leading to lasting and relatively irreversible changes in policy-making.

Based on the comparison between several European countries, bringing together different authors specialized in education policies, the symposium will seek to answer the following questions

- How do these elites exercise their power, their authority, by mobilising different resources and capacities to influence the decision-making process?

- How are these elites structured in networks or groups, epistemic communities or coalition of causes, in relationships that facilitate the sharing of knowledge, ideas, representations and beliefs on educational policies at national and global level?

- What is the role of cognition, values, beliefs, representations and the strategy in these alliance games and power relationships? What is the impact of public action instruments and their interpretation (laws, indicators, data, etc.)?

- How is it possible to characterize the type of proximity or affinity maintained by these elites within State, in other institutions or networks, or in International Organizations?

From a methodological perspective, policy makers will be chosen for their membership in a ministerial cabinet, as heads of a ministerial directorate or as experts/advisers for the Ministry of Education, or for their relationships with global networks and organisations, etc. Whenever possible, their socio-professional career and their various positions in education or elsewhere will be established. Analyses would developed from the study of different expert groups, national conferences, representative institutions, and parliamentary hearings in which this elite has intervened with important effects on implementing reforms.

This communication will demonstrate how the formal group of responsible officials in the Czech Republic ceased to be decision elite in the normative course of educational reforms and was replaced by a fluid group of elite normative actors who operate on different logic and through different spatial forms (Wirthová, 2021). They publish many normative papers and recommendations and held public debates influencing publicly state officials, politicians, and other decision-makers to change education system. It is argued that the prior horizontal division is accompanied in effect by hierarchisation, that through practices of “co-invitation” (to a debate or an expertise) produce consecration that provides pride and elevation above ordinary matter, and provide the possibility of evading both subordinate relations to formal institution officially responsible for the educational reform (MOE) and responsible relations to the audience (those affected by these reforms as schools, teachers and parents). This new normative elite is a mix of various jurisdictions, some state officials among them, but these loyalties are less important than the spatial practices that enable both to intervene and to construct moral and expert identity to its members by moralising quantitative data as something inherently Good. Therefore, this elite is not based predominantly on economic advantages, although partnership with wealthy actors (banks) is involved, but on the ability to spatially evade limits and secure the channels for intervention. The discourse emerging elite normative infrastructure produce mobilises both the neoliberal vocabulary of effectivity, auditing, measuring quality and moral of “doing good” (Wirthová, 2022). This reproduces the division among those to be measured and improved in quality (the matter) and those who do not come under this measurement (individual-knowledgeable-expert actors who pursue the common good for everyone and therefore are incontestable).

Wirthová, J. (2022). Patterns of actorship in legitimation of educational changes: The role of transnational and local knowledge. European Educational Research Journal, 21(4), 658 –679.Wirthová, J. (2021). Anti-state populism in Czech educational governance: Relations among state, expertise, and civil society. In J. Herkman, E. Palonen, V. Salojärvi, & M. Vulovic (Eds.), The Second Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism, and Polarisation. University of Helsinki.

As regards the actors that govern the education policy and educational reforms in Slovenia during the last three decades, it is evident that the high political elite (ministers) and politico-administrative elite (e.g. heads of a ministerial directorate) have been very rapidly changing. Since already nineteenth minister responsible for education was appointed in 2023, it is hard to identify the stable politico-administrative elite. On the other hand, the relatively small network of experts has been actively involved in all three “big” education reforms as authors of their conceptual backgrounds, members of advisory groups etc. During the periods between the reforms in the last three decades, they act as university professors and members of various national expert committees (the technostructure of the ministry). Taking into consideration both facts (changing politico-administrative elite and stable epistemic elite), the presentation focuses on the following main research question: “Is there an epistemic elite that leads reforms in education in Slovenia”? and tries to address several subsequent sub-questions of how such a network of experts, has been able to survive in changing political environment, what are experts’ characteristics and activities, and whether and how their network can (not) be perceived as epistemic elite. The presentation is based on the following theoretical-conceptual backgrounds: a) The development of post-socialist education systems in which politicization is tainted and the role of expert knowledge is favoured as well as compliance with Western values prioritized (e.g. Chankseliani & Silova, 2018; Halász, 2015); b) The characteristics of epistemic communities/elites, including their personal, relational, organizational, institutional and cultural backgrounds, authority and legitimacy (Haas, 1992); c) The role of epistemic communities/elites in policy-learning (e.g. Dunlop & Radaelli, 2013) and policy-making (e.g. Gaber, 2007; Kodelja, 2007; Radaelli, 1995); d) The critical examination of the role of the epistemic elite in contemporary educational reforms and/or education policy-making (e.g. Cross, 2013; Dunlop, 2016).

Chankseliani, M., & Silova, I. (Eds.). (2018). Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations purposes, policies, and practices in education. Symposium Books. Cross, M. (2013). Rethinking epistemic communities twenty years later. Review of International Studies, 39(1), 137–160. Dunlop, C. (2016). Knowledge, epistemic communities and agenda-setting. In Z. Zahariadis (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Agenda-Setting (pp. 273–294). Routledge.Dunlop, C., & Radaelli, C. M. (2013). Systematising policy learning. From monolith to dimensions. Political Studies, 61(3), 599–619. Gaber, S. (2007). Spoprijem za hegemonijo ali vaje iz praktične teorije? [A struggle for hegemony or a drill in practical theory?]. Sodobna pedagogika, 58(102), 62–80. Haas, M. P. (1992). Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination. International Organisation, 46(1), 1–35.Halász, G. (2015). Education and Social Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. European Journal of Education, 50(3), 350–371. Kodelja, Z. (2007). Reforme, stroka in šolska politika [Reforms, science and school policies]. Sodobna Pedagogika, 58(2), 34–48. Radaelli, M. C. (1995). The role of knowledge in the policy process. Journal of European Public Policy, 2(2), 159–183.

This presentation tries to characterize a set of elite actors structured around a programme of educational reform legitimizing the PISA survey in France. These actors hold positions of power or influence that enable them to participate directly in decision-making within reformist networks. In this way, they define general guidelines based on shared values in order to make public action in education more effective. They formulate problems and draw up diagnoses through studies, reports and statements in the public arena and the media. They develop arguments and reasoning while advocating the adoption of reformist measures, and they participate in various high councils and expert groups. They have sufficient cognitive and symbolic resources to guide and legitimise policy-making or to challenge it. They mobilise situational capital (they occupy high positions in the civil service or in the academia), intellectual capital (they have expert knowledge) and symbolic capital (they enjoy a high level of notoriety and recognition). They are also players engaged in a power struggle in the field of education policy between the Left and the Right. They act as mediators while setting the reform agenda, either as experts, ideologues or intellectuals, brokers or translators, moral entrepreneurs, technocrats or researchers. They are part of a dynamic of social and cognitive learning that leads them to formulate public problems in education but also to produce ignorance of some other problems. Historically involved at the core of the State, these elite actors are increasingly involved in think tanks and circles of reflection outside the State sphere. From a methodological perspective, our study aims to gather sociographic data to characterise these elite actors (social origin, education, status, professional trajectory, positions held in their careers, etc.) and to use network analysis to show their relationships within the state technostructure, demonstrating certain links of dependence and affiliation as well as games of influence and power that determine reformist policy-making. We will also use our tacit knowledge of this field of power and some documentary resources (papers, reports, legislative and regulatory texts, the press, social networks) to study different epistemic and political positions within the state technocracy.

Normand, R. (2022). PISA as epistemic governance within the European political arithmetic of inequalities: A sociological perspective illustrating the French case. In Critical perspectives on PISA as a means of global governance (pp. 48-69). Routledge. Normand, R. (2023). French Education Policies and the PISA Paradigm: The Strong Republican State Absorbing External Influences. In School Policy Reform in Europe: Exploring Transnational Alignments, National Particularities and Contestations (pp. 117-137). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Since the turn of the century, Portugal has been experiencing the emergence of school administration models emphasizing community participation, accompanied by a shift towards granting greater autonomy to schools. This shift is aligned with the principles of the New Public Management's ‘educational toolkit’ (Verger & Curran, 2014, p.256). As a result of this transformation, diverse programs and practices have been introduced, with a strong emphasis on school-based management and pedagogy. Schools are now empowered to make decisions regarding their curriculum and educational initiatives, tailored to their specific social contexts (ibid). This is demonstrated through a series of policies implemented through reflection, negotiation, and collaboration, such as school external evaluation. These policies have resulted in a gradual reduction of hierarchical control by the State and have paved the way for network governance. One example is the 'Pedagogical Innovation Pilot Project' (PIPP) (2016-2019), an initiative based on school-based management that aims to promote student success and address school dropout rates.

PIPP was implemented in six school clusters nationwide, providing participating schools with increased autonomy in organizational, pedagogical, and curricular areas (Costa & Almeida, 2019). It involved approximately 744 teachers and 7,844 students across various grades and locations to enhance the quality of learning and educational outcomes. Additionally, it aimed to tackle the issues of school dropout and failure across all teaching cycles by facilitating the implementation of innovation projects in participating schools (Portugal, 2017).

The outcomes of PPIP of reducing school dropout and improving retention rates have been very positive. These achievements have been realized by modifying the rigid pedagogical structure of schools and reshaping the perceptions of school actors regarding how school, curriculum, and student assessment should be delivered. Additionally, PPIP has instigated a recent policy that grants schools the authority to manage more than 25% of the national curriculum, subject to an innovation plan developed by the schools and approved by the Ministry of Education (ME) (Portugal, 2019).

This paper builds upon a previous study (Carvalho, Costa & Almeida, 2020) that emphasized the importance of knowledge in policy-politics and the underlying logic of PPIP, where the production, legitimization, and dissemination of knowledge facilitate the coordination and control of actions in the educational field. We aim to examine PIPP as a lens to analyze the shifts in the steering of the education system, specifically through the perspective of network governance. This leads to the research question: How does PIPP exemplify the rise of network-based coordination and control within the education system? To address this question, three objectives were established: (i) to identify and analyze the actors involved in the design and implementation of PIPP, (ii) to examine the instruments and forms of control utilized, and (iii) to analyze the interactions among the involved actors.

The study is grounded in the public action approach to public policies (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2007; Hassenteufel, 2008), which emphasizes the involvement of various actors in shaping and interpreting activities within the public sphere of education, extending beyond government intervention (Van Zanten, 2000). To achieve this, we will employ the concept of governance, which considers the relationship between State intervention and societal autonomy, spanning a continuum from public authority to societal self-regulation (Treib, Bähr & Falkner, 2007; Barroso, 2005). Drawing upon Meuleman's (2008) typology of hierarchical, network, and market governance, which can manifest in different combinations, our objective is to comprehend the factors that hinder the shift toward network steering and examine the implications of novel governance approaches, particularly about the coexistence with hierarchical governance.

Educational innovation has become considered the keystone for leading the adaptation of education to 21st century societies and economies (Greany, 2016; Hallgarten & Beresford, 2015; Hargreaves, 2003). It has been proposed as a suitable solution to very different school systems and societies’ needs (Lubienski, 2009), and in many contexts has even been advanced by means of large-scale reforms (Fullan, 2009; Glazer & Peurach, 2013; Sotiriou et al., 2016). Despite the widespread policies that have promoted innovation in education, the scarce evidence points out that (1) innovation is an umbrella term that includes many different approaches and meanings (Pedró, 2023); and therefore (2) is being used to promote―and sustain―different agendas and policies such as diversifying the teaching-learning processes, improving students’ academic performance or promoting inclusion within the schools, to name the most explicit (Serdyukov, 2017). One of the main concerns about this is that it might be subtly extending the use of technologies or enhancing the presence and participation of the private actors within the public education systems (Saura et al., 2023). Another concern refers to a false dichotomy built through educational discourses that faces educational innovation against traditional innovation as if both were homogeneous movements (Brailovsky, 2018). The lack of a comprehensive approach to educational innovation leads us to argue for the need of a deeper analysis of (a) the meanings associated to the concept of innovation in education; and (b) the uses of the concept, to what ends is being used and by who. Meanings and uses of educational innovation are the two key research questions that this research aims to give answer to.

In the field of education, according to the European Commission (2018), key competences and basic skills are those that every person needs for their personal fulfilment and development and for their employability, social inclusion and active citizenship. On the one hand, the OECD has regularly promoted and assessed the level of development of students' competences globally since 2000 and, in view of the results, which have been demonstrating insufficient performance in reading, mathematics and science for more than two decades, reports and strategies of all kinds have been prepared to correct the situation described (OECD, 2023a). On the other hand, and despite the commitment made by most of the States involved in the assessment of the competence development of their students to reduce early school leaving and promote education that allows them to achieve the objectives of competency-based education, the truth is that school dropout rates remain very high and academic performance remains insufficient in many countries (OECD, 2023b) Thus, in the current context, after more than two decades of discouraging results, in Scotland – a pioneering country in Europe of Competency-Based Education (CBE) – this educational model is being abandoned. One of the main reasons for this is the lack of results to show that CBE has achieved the objectives to which it is supposed to contribute: improving the quality of education, reducing early school leaving and social inequalities.

Times of change are coming. Scotland is not the only country in our neighbourhood that has accumulated very poor results for too long in areas as important and of such projection as those already mentioned. Now, the time inverted in getting back on track will harm the most vulnerable: children in pre-school, primary and secondary education. As educators, and in view of these circumstances, it seems imperative to us to carry out a rigorous study and provide a roadmap from a scientific perspective and from a pedagogical and dialogic basis, far from the different ideological biases, which have contributed to shaping the situation in which we find ourselves. In accordance with the objectives pursued by the CBE, it is possible to synthesize the analysis of the results around the three dimensions that constitute the main concerns that motivate dropout with respect to this paradigm: quality, inclusion and early school leaving. Regarding the degree of achievement of the objectives and after the latest publication of PISA results (2023), we have been able to observe in different media how some politicians blame the heterogeneity of the student body for the debacle and, as so many other times, set up commissions of experts who are required to solve - in record time - all the problems. In this regard, beyond the complexity of the problems and the deadlines for work they have, we usually find commissions characterized in their composition, based on trusted profiles, by people known for their ideologies and affiliations. For these reasons, the commissions of experts that are continuously constituted on the basis of political decisions, have been demonstrating for more than two decades a total absence of results, and in no case can they be independent when those who make up these commissions are appointed by those who instrumentalize education.

The two-part symposium presents conceptual, comparative as well as single-country studies that examine the neoliberal reform wave which most governments bought into over the past thirty years. In concert with Verger, Fontdevila and Parcerisa (2019), we refer to this reform package as School-Autonomy-with-Accountability (SAWA). The objective of the studies presented is to move beyond the simple documentation that neoliberalism spread worldwide and instead examine who the political coalitions were that bought into, or resisted, respectively the reform wave, what features of the reform resonated and why they held appeal, what features were repealed and how national policy actors translated key policies into the varied national contexts. These type of research questions are prototypical for research interchangeably labeled policy borrowing, policy transfer, policy mobility, or policy circulation research (Steiner-Khamsi, 2021). The panel attempts to advance both policy transfer research as well as comparative public policy studies by inserting a transnational lens into the analysis of policy processes.

The unit of analysis of all presentations is the SAWA reform. We consider SAWA to be a coherent, pervasive, and controversial reform package that (i) claimed to ensure quality improvement, (ii) advocated for (or at least aligned with) policies to set in motion competition among schools and differentiation in the school offer, such as school-based management and school choice (iii) instated a bundle of policies that strengthened school autonomy under the condition of pervasive accountability, and (iv) advanced a set of preferred policy instruments to trigger and sustain organizational change such as continuous standardized testing and other forms of external supervision. The panelists use this quadruple differentiation of fundamental reforms—their mission, mechanisms of change, bundle of policies, and policy instruments—to reflect the vernacularization or translation of the reform package, that is, what exactly was adopted by which political actors and in which particular political context, and why some features of the reform packaged resonated more than others.

In this panel, the presenters draw on the policy instrument approach which has triggered a lively debate within public policy studies more broadly (Lascoumes and Le Galès 2007; Béland et al. 2018; Capano and Howlett 2020) as well as more narrowly in policy studies related to the education sector (Verger et al. 2019). Several aspects of that approach are appealing for policy transfer research, notably, the insight that the choice of policy instrument is deeply political and has repercussions in who is empowered and who disempowered. Drawing on that approach, we differentiate between the reform goal, reform elements, and the instruments to achieve the goal.

The presentation makes a case for contextual, qualitative comparative analysis that takes into consideration the temporal and space dimensions of policy transfer and disaggregates a reform by its policy goal (theory of change), bundle of policies, and policy instruments. The disentanglement helps to specify what exactly has traveled, and why. In an attempt to illustrate the interpretive framework used for contextual comparison, it draws on two recent co-authored publications on the selective borrowing of the school-autonomy-with accountability (SAWA) reform in Switzerland (Steiner-Khamsi, Appius and Nägeli, forthcoming) and Iceland (Steiner-Khamsi, Jóhannesdóttir, and Magnúsdóttir, forthcoming). The two studies provide an opportunity to reflect on methodological lessons learned for advancing scholarship in qualitative comparative policy studies, in particular research on policy transfer. A special focus will be placed on the temporalities of the SAWA reform in the two countries. In addition, it discusses methodological aspects of how to compare national receptions and translations against a global script, here against SAWA. The study compares the three reform waves, identified by Bromley et al, (2023) based on their analyses of the World Education Reform Database (WERD). The presenter chooses to label the three reform waves as (i) (equal opportunity, (ii) school-autonomy-with-accountability, and (iii) student-wellbeing reforms. She discusses how the three reform waves differ in terms of their policy goal but also their bundle of policies and the choice of preferred policy instruments. The WERD database is the most comprehensive database that exists to date on education reforms globally. It contains over 10,000 policy documents from over 180 countries over the period 1970 - 2020. The database has been developed by Patricia Bromley (Stanford University) and Rie Kijima (University of Toronto) and their associates. It is publicly available here: https://werd.stanford.edu/.

Bromley, P., Furuta, J., Kijima, R., Overbey, L., Choi, M. & Santos, H. (2023). Global determinants of education reform, 1960 - 2017. Sociology of Education, 96 (2), 149 - 167. DOI: 10.1177/00380407221146773 Steiner-Khamsi, G., Appius, S., and Nägeli, A. (forthcoming). School-autonomy-with-accountability: Comparing two transfer spaces against the global script. Steiner-Khamsi, G., Jóhannesdóttir, K., and Magnúsdóttir, B. R. (forthcoming). The school-autonomy-with-accountability reform in Iceland: Looking back and making.

This presentation draws on a forthcoming publication with the same (tentative) title (Steiner-Khamsi, Jóhannesdóttir, Magnúsdóttir, forthcoming). Our study draws on the existing Icelandic scholarship complementing a retrospective analysis of the reform as well as a retroactive interpretation of it. There are three conceptual and methodological features of this study that deserve special mention here: First, we conceive of the NPM reform, also known as the school-autonomy-with-accountability reform as a complex reform with its own (i) theory of change, (ii) a mix of school-autonomy-with-accountability (SAWA) policies, and own (iii) policy instrument to achieve and sustain change. Unbundling the reform package and dissecting its elements affords us to examine why some of the NPM policies resonated at the time with practitioners and policy makers, and others did not. We also show how the selectively borrowed NPM policies were subsequently translated and recontextualized in ways that would address the challenges of upper secondary schools. Second, the study introduces a novel method of inquiry for understanding the fundamental reform in upper secondary schools retroactively: We held several Meaning Making Meetings (MMM) with politicians, policy makers, education experts and policy advisors in Iceland in which we presented our preliminary findings in order to solicit feedback and validation on factual information. Finally, we collectively look back at these MMM to assess which of the NPM/SAWA policies endured, which ones were suspended, and which ones were modified over time, and how and why. In other words, we apply the temporal dimension of policies to examine the lifespan of a policy, that is, we determine when a policy was conceived, when it died, and—not unimportantly—what life it had in between.

Steiner-Khamsi, G., Jóhannesdóttir, K., and Magnúsdóttir, B. R. (forthcoming). The school-autonomy-with-accountability reform in Iceland: Looking back and making sense.

Since at least the 1980s, countries all over the world have prioritized the improvement of educational quality. The amount of education reform globally increased dramatically beginning in this decade and continued through 2010 (Bromley et al. 2023). Quality reform discourse around the world increased both in absolute number and as a proportion of all education reforms during the peak decades of this wave of reform. While countries continued to adopt reforms to expand equitable access to education, a defining characteristic of this recent education reform wave is the dramatic increase in reform discourse focused on improving a narrowly defined conception of quality related to learning outcomes and constrained by what can be quantified and measured (Overbey 2023). What explains the dramatic rise cross-nationally in national education reforms to improve educational quality? To answer this question, this study draws on education reforms from the World Education Reform Database (WERD) adopted in 143 countries between 1960 and 2018. Using negative binomial regression modeling, the study analyzes how factors related to a country’s need or capacity to improve quality, such as the level of economic development, level of democracy, or features of the national education system, may explain variation in the amount of quality reform a country adopts. Alongside country characteristics, the analysis also considers the role of global influences on national quality reform discourse such as a country’s linkages to international civil society and participation in international assessments. The results of the analysis show some positive association between country characteristics and the level of quality reform discourse. Countries with strong democracies with an active domestic civil society are more likely to adopt quality reforms. The results also show that global influences also play an important role. Countries with stronger linkages to world society, as measured by the amount of international non-governmental organization (INGO) memberships and the amount of education related research it produces. Countries that have historically participated in more assessments are also more likely to adopt quality reforms. The results lend support to arguments that the dramatic rise in quality reform discourse is part of the broader global cultural process of rationalization in the approaches to improve education and the scientization of educational problems that underlie the increase in measurement, data, and research observed during the decades of neoliberal education reform (Schofer et al. 2003).

Bromley, Patricia, Jared Furuta, Rie Kijima, Lisa Overbey, Minju Choi, and Heitor Santos. 2023. “Global Determinants of Education Reform, 1960 to 2017.” Sociology of Education 96(2):149–67. doi: 10.1177/00380407221146773. Overbey, Lisa. 2023. What's in a Wave? The Content of Neoliberal Education Reforms, 1970–2018, Wiseman, A.W. (Ed.) Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2022 (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 46A), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 91-105. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-36792023000046A007 Schofer, Evan, John W. Meyer, Francisco O. Ramirez, and Gili S. Drori. 2003. Science in the Modern World Polity: Institutionalization and Globalization. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Since the 2000s, school-autonomy-with-accountability (SAWA) reforms have circulated globally across diverse education systems. As a global reform package, SAWA’s transferability lies in the malleable nature of its instruments and principles, to which multiple rationales and goals can be attached. However, globalization studies often focus on cases of successful transfer of reform ideas and instruments –with their specific contextual adaptations– but overlook instances where, despite adoption efforts, transfer did not occur (Marsh and Sharman, 2009). Put differently, if conditions for transfer existed and attempts were undertaken, what circumstances led to its failure? Or what aspects were selectively borrowed and which were not? This paper explores this puzzle by examining the different degrees of SAWA adoption in Argentina and Colombia. Argentina and Colombia shared neoliberal economic recipes during the 1990s, have decentralized education governance with strong teachers’ unions, and tight links with international organizations, such as the OECD. During the 2000s, while different right-wing coalitions governed Colombia, embracing New Public Management reforms, Argentina was led primarily by left-wing Peronist governments, except for a short period (2015-2019). Two decades later, these countries have diverged on what SAWA instruments were adopted and for what purposes, resulting in quite different governance arrangements. Hence, this study follows a comparative and historical approach to understand under what circumstances, for what reasons, and to what extent the different SAWA instruments have been adopted, recontextualized, and recalibrated in Argentina and Colombia. It focuses on the adaptations, functions, and deployment of two main SAWA components: school autonomy and national scale assessments. Data for this study comes from policy documents’ analysis and interviews (n=68) with decision-makers and key informants in Argentina and Colombia. This presentation concentrates on two government administrations of intense reform activity in each country, the second term of Santos’ presidency in Colombia (2014-2018) and Mauricio Macri’s government in Argentina (2015-2019). Delving on historical institutionalism (Thelen, 1999) and policy borrowing research (Steiner-Khamsi, 2021), the paper unpacks the role of teachers’ unions and political coalitions, the constraints imposed by institutional settings –i.e., federal vs. unitarian government– and the domestic and international political and economic contexts in shaping instruments trajectories. In brief, reform efforts resulted in different policy outcomes in each country, marked by institutional rigidity and political backlash. The study points to the importance of local political and economic contexts behind global reforms and contributes to policy studies research by tracing and comparing cases of successful and failed policy transfers.

Marsh, D., & Sharman, J. C. (2009). Policy diffusion and policy transfer. Policy Studies, 30(3), 269–288. https://doi.org/10.1080/01442870902863851 Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2021). Externalisation and structural coupling: Applications in comparative policy studies in education. European Educational Research Journal, 20(6), 806–820. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904120988394 Thelen, K. (1999). Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics. Annual Review of Political Science, 2(1), 369–404. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.2.1.369

The proposal compares public policies (Hassenteufel, 2005) of three European member States - France, Italy and Slovenia - at the crossroads of social inclusion and education. The study analyzes transformations of categorizations, legislation, actors, and knowledge in this policy area, and how these emerge in the three States, as well as how the European strategy linked to the paradigm of social investment is translated and enacted in national contexts. We give an explanation of the convergences and divergences in the implementation of the European strategy concerning social inclusion in education.

Several research questions are addressed: how have discourses and institutions evolved and impacted these member States throughout Europeanisation? Who are the actors that participate in the enactment of these policies, as well as their transformation? How does the policy transfer of the European strategy impact on ongoing policies in France, Italy and Slovenia?

To address these questions, we are inspired by political sociology, and, more precisely, the French sociology of public action and policy instruments (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2005). We take some concepts from the cognitive analysis of public action, such as the construction of public problems (Gusfield, 1981/2009 ; Cefaï, 1996), as well as from governmentality studies (Foucault, 2004 ; Tremain, 2005 ; Miller & Rose, 2008). We analyze how policy solutions to «public problems» are formulated at European level and then adapted and translated in France, Italy and Slovenia.

Furthermore, we provide a sociology of actors in differentiating programmatic (Genieys & Hassenteufel, 2012), intermediate (Nay & Smith, 2002) and peripheral ones. This approach allows us to elaborate national maps of these distributed actors, as well as their differences and similarities from one country to another.

Using also the theoretical framework of policy transfer developed by Dolowitz and Marsh (1996, 2000), we further discuss the extent of the European strategy in national policy spaces.

This presentation explores the characteristics of the envisioned networks of a Brussels-based NGO involved in shaping European education policy, and it contributes to the literature on interest groups active at the European level.

Interest groups contribute to public policy shaping and decision-making within and across political domains at national and European levels (Bevir & Phillips, 2019). Hence, “the organisation, aggregation, articulation, and intermediation of societal interests that seek to shape public policies” (Beyers, Eising & Maloney, 2008, p. 1103) has received increased attention in European studies.

Depending on normative frameworks and scholarly interests, different terms depict interest groups, especially non-state actors, across studies (Schoenefels, 2021). Interest groups interacting with EU institutions are “generally considered legitimate elements of EU governance” (Schoenefels, 2021, p. 586) and shall be listed in a Transparency Register. These encompass all organisational structures that mediate between public authorities and citizens through a democratic process to serve a general interest, like NGOs. NGOs specialise in a narrow policy domain or issue around which they can network and gather information (Costa & Müller, 2019), act as intermediary organisations (Ainsworth & Sened, 1993), and are perceived as independent “defenders of public interests” (Grant, 2001, p. 338, cited in Beyers et al., 2008).

Since the start of the European integration process (1950s-1960s), interest groups have grown exponentially in Brussels, with a growing number of NGOs (Eising & Kohler-Koch, 2005). Expanding EU governance into new policy areas has stimulated the mobilisation of a more diverse set of interests. Accordingly, the potential for NGOs to influence decision-makers and policy outcomes in the EU has increased since the 2010s and with the establishment of the European Semester (Costa & Müller, 2019).

Compared to other interest groups (e.g. business), NGOs may have more difficulties in mobilising and gaining access to EU policymaking (Dür & Matteo, 2016). However, they are well-represented in closed-access procedures involving the establishment of bodies within EU institutions and agencies gathering a limited number of stakeholders over a relatively long period – like European Commission expert groups and advisory committees (Arras & Beyers, 2020). Particularly, NGOs based in Brussels that are European or international in scope have privileged access to permanent European Commission expert groups (Rasmussen & Gross, 2015).

According to the EU Transparency Register, in April 2023, there were 4,439 registered NGOs, networks and similar entities, of which 1,453 represented interests in education to some extent, and 393 had their headquarters in Belgium – typically in Brussels. Some of these NGOs surfaced in our previous analyses of European education network governance (Milana, Klatt, & Tronca, 2020) and on political mobilisation and agenda-setting in European adult learning (Milana, Mikeluc, 2023). Yet, dedicated attention to NGOs contributing to policy-shaping in European education is still spare.

This study focuses on NGO1, a unique Brussels-based organisation representing a broad interest in education. Established upon the initiative of a few European networks and Brussels-based NGOs, in 2023 it comprised over 40 associate members, not-for-profit legal entities that are either European networks or federations of organisations from more than one country, half of whom have headquarters in Brussels.

We adopted a structural interactionist approach (Tronca & Forsé, 2022) to understand how the actors involved in NGO1’s networks interacted, determining its network governance (Jones, Hesterly & Borgatti 1997).

The paper will introduce the concepts, hypotheses and workplan for the analysis of interviews and documents on the official definition of learning outcomes in eight EU member states. The main goal is exploring in which ways the prevailing understandings of learning consider the life course of students, the intersectional inequalities that constrain their opportunities and the regional disparities within the Union. It is an initial and provisional output of the CLEAR Horizon- Europe research project (Grant Agreement N. 101061155).

The paper will outline the main theoretical arguments that underpin an institutional analysis of learning outcomes and will introduce a few methodological considerations. The bulk of the literature on this theme focuses on the processes and outcomes of individual learning in schools and some other educational settings. However, the growing complexity of education and training strongly recommends considering how learning outcomes are defined in the different educational programmes that individuals undertake during their life. Although school performance is a milestone, other issues are also extremely relevant, not least the transition to higher education and VET, adult learning and qualifications frameworks (Parreira do Amaral et al, 2019; Benasso et al, 2022).

An array of theoretical insights on the life course, policy design and implementation as well as space underpin our decision to focus on learning outcomes beyond the realm of individual schools and similar educational institutions.

Firstly, the rich strand of life course research has convincingly argued that most themes of educational and social research require longitudinal or at least narrative approaches that take both institutional trajectories and subjective changes into account (Furlong, 2009; Mayer, 2009). While other outputs of the project will focus on subjective changes, in this paper we will explore how policymakers and educators construe the trajectories of 18- to- 29-year-olds in Europe. A key insight of this literature is that not only education, but also social protection and active labour market policies significantly contribute to pattern such trajectories (Walther, 2017).

Secondly, we will draw on the growing strand of research that applies historical institutionalism to education policy (Emmenegger, 2021). Political scientists gather under this label a variety of studies that spell out the interests and the ideas whereby policy actors trigger changes amid several routines and normative orderings (i.e., institutions). This approach coincides with sociological approaches to structuration and morphogenesis (Archer, 2000) as well as with the concept of the politics of education in comparative education research (Dale, 2000; Steiner-Khamsi, 2009). Our main research questions will investigate the institutional trajectories that establish educational and employment opportunities through this lens (see below).

Thirdly, our research will be particularly sensitive to space and territory. Several sociologists of education have proposed to include this dimension in the standard theoretical frameworks in the field (Ball, S.J.; Maguire, M.; Braun, A.; Hoskins, K.; Perryman, 2012; Robertson, S. & Dale, R., 2008). Our research will mostly inquire to what extent morphogenesis and similar concepts account for the social construction of regions (Löw, 2016) so much so that education and training influences the location of people in space and enacts process that delimit territories (Rambla and Scandurra, 2021).

In a nutshell, these premises suggest the following research questions for our investigation:

• On which grounds do policymakers and educators articulate the official definition of learning outcomes of different educational programmes? This question is inspired on the literature on the life course and historical institutionalism.
• To what extent do these subjects take regional and local contexts into account when the articulate these variegated concepts of learning outcomes? This question is inspired on the literature on the life course, historical institutionalism and space.

Neoliberal policies worldwide have shaped higher education systems, where regulations dictate the working environment. In the Spanish context, ANECA (Agencia Nacional de Evaluación de la Calidad y Acreditación/National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation) is an external evaluation agency that determines the accreditation of the role of teaching staff working at public universities. This agency has established a system of three professional roles followed by 50 state universities, offering a progressive pathway towards a permanent position, including postdoc positions. Through a qualitative narrative study employing semi-structured interviews, this research explores the perceptions of professional identity and collective learning communities developed among 18 university teachers. This group of purposefully selected staff works in each of the three existing roles as they strive for a permanent position in a Spanish state university. The research results reveal a sense of distress among the participants due to the constant demands for accountability in publishing, which requires significant effort. Due to a long research path on many occasions with years working abroad, scholars are empowered to work in a community together, trying to develop a new working environment in which solidarity, gender rights, and the feeling of fighting for a balance in their mental health are shared goals. In a hostile external working environment, they desire long-term vocational and work-life stability, often at the expense of feeling empowered in their personal career development. The life narratives of early career professionals provide a unique perspective of a highly competitive system on the professional identity development of higher education teachers.

In late-modern societies, haste seems to have become a defining feature of people's lives. We regulate our activities and use of time from waking up to going to bed according to clocks. In economic terms, time is a resource that we allocate to commodities (De Serpa, 1971), and according to the principle of economic optimisation, a rational individual is expected to maximise his utility for a given unit of time.

Closely linked to this phenomenon are two social processes central to the late modern era, namely acceleration processes and colonization of the future. By acceleration, Hartmut Rosa (2013) refers to the increased tempo of social life that emerges from the self-feeding cycle of technological and social acceleration, as well as the acceleration of the pace of life. On the other hand, Barbara Adam and Chris Groves (2007) describe colonisation of the future as the way in which we increasingly seek to control the future from the present by subordinating it to our current needs and wants.

This study explores the problems of time in higher education theory, policy and practice, in particular from the perspective of the aforementioned processes. Acceleration processes have proven to be relevant in the context of education (Gibbs et al., 2014), with universities racing against the clock and each other to produce more research, degrees and other key performance outputs within increasingly tight timeframes. This materializes in increased time pressures as experienced by both higher education employees (Berg & Seeber, 2016) and students (Mahon, 2021). The value and processual uncertainty of academic work and learning seems to be reduced to the fastest possible realisation of the productivity and utility dreams we have invested in the future for the benefit of the present.

These temporal challenges of higher education have many symptomatic consequences for late-modern societies. Firstly, the need to achieve more in less time can endorse corrupted working cultures and damage academic virtues (Kidd, 2023). Moreover, they place higher education students in an unequal position in relation to the completion of their studies, considering their diverse backgrounds and life circumstances (Bennett & Burke, 2018). Solutions to these problems have been proposed through a critical deconstruction and redefinition of the Western linear conception of time (i.e., Bennett & Burke, 2018) and also through temporal resistance movements, like slow scholarship (Berg & Seeber, 2016; Mountz et al., 2015) and slow education (Wear et al., 2015), which emphasise the sufficient allocation of time for academic activities.

In the context of the current presentation, the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) is investigated as an important case example of educational policy instruments with accelerative tendencies. Being the main academic credit system of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), ECTS credits tie the achievement of learning outcomes to a certain amount of study time spent, and thus serve as a key instrument for educational acceleration (Sarauw, 2023). As such, credits represent a time-based learning currency that strictly links the workload of studying and successful learning to the time spent studying. In relation to this setting, the current research project specifically addresses two questions: 1) What is the role of time in education in relation to the contemporary time pressures of higher education, and 2) what the contribution of academic credit systems like the ECTS to these temporal challenges is. The project involves both theoretical research and an empirical phase. The current presentation concerns the matter mainly from the perspectives of educational and time theory.

Over the previous decades, education policy research has built up a narrative of the proliferation of neoliberalism across most parts of the world (Cannella & Koro-Ljungberg, 2017; Krejsler & Moos, 2021; Marginson, 2006; Mintz, 2021). The narrative has gained so much strength that neoliberalism is often referred to as a self-evident phenomenon. However, in the process, neoliberalism as an ideological category sometimes appear to have become more an obstacle than an analytically fruitful category. In some cases, it is unclear how the concept of neoliberalism is defined, and in particular how it is delineated from other categories. In other cases, the strong narrative implies blind spots concerning empirical changes that cannot be sufficiently described with the category of neoliberalism.

In this paper, we ask whether this narrative holds: To what extend is education policy across the Western world distinctively neoliberal? We approach this question by presenting three separate cases of contemporary education policy from Denmark, ranging from primary and lower secondary school to upper secondary school and higher education, thus encompassing the most central educational institutions in the Danish context. We analyze the three policies in terms of the policy ideologies embedded in them by drawing on various conceptualizations of neoliberalism and social democracy. Based on our analysis, we raise a discussion of whether Danish education policy is neoliberal after all.

By asking this question, we open up two alternatives to the narrative of the spread proliferation of neoliberalism. The first alternative is that neoliberalism never spread as widely and deeply as education policy research has indicated, thus implying that education policy research has drawn stronger conclusions of neoliberalism in policy than what the empirical reality warrants. This alternative could be enforced by the conflation of neoliberalism and New Public Management, as empirical signs of the latter are also often interpreted as signs of the spread of neoliberalism, and much more widespread. The second alternative is that neoliberalism has spread, but is currently diminishing, thus implying that neoliberalism has proven itself more fragile than previously assumed. This alternative stresses the need for a renewed policy research that explores whether this trend is more widespread than what can be concluded based on our study. We use these discussions to raise a research agenda of analyzing policy ideologies in contemporary education policy in contextually sensitive ways.

In the paper, we outline the policy ideologies through which we analyze our cases of contemporary education policy, including a conceptualization of social democracy as a theory of justice (Platz, 2022), as well as three conceptualizations of neoliberalism, encompassing a governmentality conceptualization (Ball & Grimaldi, 2021; Foucault, 2009; Rose, 1999), a Marxist conceptualization (Harvey, 2011), and a conceptualization based on intellectual streams (Cahill & Konings, 2017). We juggle these three conceptualizations alongside each other in our analysis in order to accommodate the diversity in understandings of neoliberalism characterizing previous policy analysis. With our inclusion of three policy cases, we aim to study indications of cross-cutting trends rather than analyzing each policy in depth on its own terms. After the analysis, we discuss the shared trends across the three policies and their implications for education policy research.

For many decades the vocational education and training sector has profoundly evolved. Research-based scenarios on its past and further development oscilliate its anchoring between educational system and labour market and requirements(Cedefop 2023; Mottweiler; Le Mouillour, Annen 2022). At the crossroads of both perspectives lie qualifications and skills. Individual learning paths and professional careers are less and less linear, and digital, energy and environmental transformations are calling for greater efforts in terms of training and its flexibility. Those arguments and furthermore are mirrored in the European VET policy. The increase in the number of decisions and agreements reached at European level since the Treaty of Rome and the development of European instruments for vocational education and training (European Qualifications Framework, ESCO classification, recommendation on micro-certifications, to name but three) are all signs of change.

This on-going research work sets out to trace how European decisions, recommendations and declarations have shaped the understanding of qualifications at European level, to the point of making them an almost marginal element in favour of a European discourse moving from competences to skills. The European discourse on qualifications has shifted over the course of European programmes, European agendas (Education and Training 2010, Education and Training 2020, Education and Training 2030) and recommendations from the sphere of governance by the national or regional competent authorities to the individualisation and flexibilisation of pathways, methods of acquiring skills and qualifications. At the level of Member States their initiating power illustrated with the declarations issued during the respective Council Presidency testifies the shif: While lifelong learning in the Copenhagen Declaration (2002) was focusing on the removal of systemic barriers in the vocational education and training systems of the Member States. The Bruges Communiqué (2010) calls for the learners to be able to transfer their learning outcomes (and no longer their qualifications). The 2020 Osnabrück Declaration focuses on individuals and organisations. The European strategic frame set up with the Barcelona European Council, back in 2002, also acknowledges the shift and pushes it further. The 2009 strategic framework for European cooperation in education and Training (council 2009) focuses on qualifications, meanwhile the newest strategic framework for European cooperation in VET « Education and Training 2030 » (council 2021) barely mentions qualifications, employability and personal development are at the forefront of the European agenda. It therefore seems legitimate to open up the debate on the issues associated with qualifications and skills, an aspect that has so far received very little attention.

Using a discursive institutionalism approach (Schmidt 2010) as an analysis frame, the paper traces and identifies the evolution of ideas and discourses at the macro-policy level of the European level. It examines how the discourse has shifted from qualifications to skills and which challenges are arising. The challenges will be further analysed and exemplified in the context of two systems of vocational education and training (Germany, France) and their policy in-take of the European initiative on micro-credentials. Both systems are enshrined in different traditions in terms of governance and understanding of education and training (Rözer/van de Werfhorst 2020; Pilz 2016; Möbius/Verdier 1997).

The purpose is to describe and analyse research publications to capture nodes and nets in conversations that are part in organizing the European Educational Research Area. After a broad mapping of research publications, the focus is on analysing articles in the European Educational Research Journal. EERJ has Europeanization of educational research as – collaboration and sharing thoughts – been a main theme for over 20 years (Lawn, 2002; 2009). Given this, which research fronts and intellectual traditions are at work in the EERJ publications and how are these publications organising themselves in nodes and nets? Answers to such questions are vital in order to understand different tendencies in European Educational research and as a basis for international research cooperation.

This research is based on analyses of the interplay between intellectual traditions and the societal structuring of research (c.f. Whitley, 2000) and actor—network theory (Callon et al, 1991) and an understanding of research referencing as ways of organising research fields (Czarniawska, 2022). A combination of bibliometric (Garfield, 1979) and interpretative analyses are used in empirical analyses of e.g. teacher education (Lindblad et al, 2023) and international comparisons of research organizing (Gross et al, in print) in terms of links between publications in the making of research networks.

First a broad overview: By means of Harzing’s Publish or Perish (Harzing.com) search engine we identified (2024-01-15) almost one thousand EERJ papers published 2002-2023 who in sum were cited more than 38 000 times.

Then, we turned to Web of Science (https://webofscience.help.clarivate.com/en-us) for more specific information about the EERJ publications 2017-2023. Analyses of links between publications are carried out by means of VosViewer (Van Eck & Waltman, 2000) in order to understand how these publications are organised by, and organising, this research field. EERJ is included in WoS since 2017 and so far 350 publications are part of the WoS database. Explorative analyses identified different networks with central nodes in terms of research fronts as well as intellectual traditions.

Cooperation in research over geopolitical contexts was also identified and discussed in relation to matters of Europeanization and research communication. Intellectual traditions were structured in different dimensions – referring to for instance from cultural sociology to actor-network theory, and from curriculum theory to systems theory.