Kunskapssamhällets excellenssatsningar – Försök och tystnader i tysk och svensk utbildningsvetenskap

Abstract

Although different forms of excellence initiatives have become a part of the Swedish educational landscape, educational research on this trend is rare in Sweden. The present article examines this silence by contrasting it against educational elite research from Germany. Departing from Michel Foucault's concept of critique I examine the knowledge and unspoken truths that these research fields are based on and identify some of their omissions. While excellence initiatives are conceptualized as forms of segregation in the Swedish example, the German example examines excellence as the result of selection processes. In both cases excellence initiatives are problematized as an effect of the so-called knowledge society, but in two different ways. The Swedish example criticizes a social climate in which knowledge has become a competitive factor, displacing the idea of A School for All. The German example questions whether knowledge really determines success in the ”knowledgebased” society and emphasizes meritocracy as a goal that remains to be fulfilled. The purpose of this article is not to highlight one of these examples as more appropriate as every presentation of a superior position would entail new categorical boundaries. The critique presented here is limited to revealing two ways of researching excellence initiatives.