Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy最新文献

{"title":"Comparing teacher autonomy in different models of educational governance","authors":"Ana Lucia Lennert da Silva","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2021.1965372","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2021.1965372","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article addresses teacher autonomy in different models of educational governance using quantitative data from the OECD TALIS 2018 and qualitative data from a study on teacher autonomy conducted in Norway and Brazil. In this article, teacher autonomy is seen as a multidimensional concept referring to decision-making and control in relation to state governance. Further, the different degrees of implementation of accountability measures across countries determine the models of educational governance. The quantitative data reveals no clear pattern between teacher autonomy and models of educational governance. In general, teachers perceive that they have good control over teaching and planning at the classroom level. However, teachers report that they participate to a lesser degree in professional collaboration in schools, which could allow for collegial teacher autonomy. Teachers also report low perceived social value and policy influence, which may provide insight into professional teacher autonomy at the policy level. This article also shows the relevance of a detailed description of the country cases to gain a better understanding of the multiple dimensions of teacher autonomy.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"8 1","pages":"103 - 118"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44708084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Familiar strangers – managing engagements in public-private partnerships in education","authors":"Mathilde Hjerrild Carlsen","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2021.1950329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2021.1950329","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Various forms of public-private collaborative organizations have been emerging in the education sector, a development that has made managing public-private partnerships an unavoidable imperative for school managers today. Addressing interactions between the partnership manager of and partners in a public-private innovation partnership, this article explores the attachments public and private actors establish in the framework of such partnerships. While formal structures often bind partnerships together, open innovation partnerships have a more fluid organization in which the participants have to establish the ground for their common work. Specifically, the article presents a study of a Danish partnership project aimed at developing a new secondary school. Drawing on the sociology of engagements, the article sketches out the differing forms of mutual engagements at stake between the actors involved and the challenges they face. As the partnership studied lacked formal agreements, the manager’s and partners’ locally performed acts of proximity became a means of binding the partnership together. In these acts, a mutual explorative engagement intertwined with a familiar engagement, thus creating a distinct attachment of familiar strangers between the public and private actors – an attachment through which ideas on education and common educational visions could traverse the public and private sectors.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"8 1","pages":"119 - 132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20020317.2021.1950329","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48321828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The ambivalence of the psychosocial in Norwegian education. A policy document analysis","authors":"Gro Mathias","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2021.1958994","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2021.1958994","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, I explore the central characteristics of the psychosocial as a field of knowledge in Norwegian education policy and the ways in which these characteristics are conditioned by their constituting social structures and historical contexts. This is achieved through a policy document analysis. Even though the psychosocial is habitually employed in educational discourses in Norway, its content often remains unclear. In the analysis, I derive three key dimensions of ambivalence from the documents. First, the psychosocial is ambivalent in its scope, as it oscillates between the entirety of the pupil’s emotional and relational life and the specific phenomenon of bullying. Second, it appears ambivalent in relation to aspects of accountability, as it simultaneously demands responsibility from society as a whole and from specific groups of professionals. Lastly, the psychosocial is ambivalent in the way it asserts its relative and subjective dimension, while also claiming objective and rigid frameworks of control and measurement. Viewed from a broader perspective, I demonstrate that the ambivalences surrounding the psychosocial correspond with the binary concepts of the liquid modernity and the new solidity, as conceived by Per Bjørn Foros and Arne Johan Vetlesen.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"7 1","pages":"65 - 77"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20020317.2021.1958994","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41984055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Legitimizing private school policy within a political divide: the role of international references","authors":"Alessandra Dieudé","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2021.1963593","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2021.1963593","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Researchers are increasingly emphasizing the importance of international actors’ influence on defining education policy in different contexts. The article argues that referencing international organizations is a way of legitimizing changes to private school policy. Using Norway as an example, the article investigates how international references are used by the political divide: first, a centre-right government liberalized private school policy. This was reversed by the successive centre-left government, before the successive centre-right government again liberalized private school policy. The study draws on content analysis of policy documents from 2002 to 2018. The analysis displays the eclectic nature of how international references are used to (de)legitimize private school policies. Different governments have used similar international references either to legitimise the liberalization of private schooling policy, or to delegitimise such policy. However, the analysis also shows that concepts like free choice, diversity and competition are central in legitimising private school policy. The study of international referencing in the education field indicates several consequences for the Norwegian education welfare state ideal, such as emphasising a stronger market-orientation. This study shows that analysing how actors position political arguments is important when understanding how nation states, as proactive entities, negotiate meaning and evidence from international references.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"7 1","pages":"78 - 90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48204949","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Competent uses of competence: on the difference between a value-judgment and empirical assessability","authors":"Birgit Schaffar","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2021.1958993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2021.1958993","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article considers the concept of Competence as applied to educational theory and policy, and illuminates the possibility of significant variations in meaning. Referring to Wittgenstein’s distinctions between transitive and intransitive uses of notions and Holland’s description of mastery, the article argues in favour of two senses in which someone can be described as being competent: i) as expressive of a value judgment; and ii) as pointing to a person’s (formal) qualifications. While the latter opens a path towards different forms of measurements of competence, being competent as a value judgment eludes any such treatment. Making this distinction, it is argued that competence is a less illuminative theoretical term than, for example, the pair of concepts Bildung versus Ausbildung ((self-)subjectivation vs training), that has been used in the Continental tradition in order to describe a similar distinction. With examples from educational contexts, the article demonstrates that the moment educational theory is using one word for two meanings, this central distinction in education is either concealed or forgotten. Focusing on competence purely as an empirically assessable notion risks playing into the hands of instrumentalising education.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"7 1","pages":"55 - 64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42191513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The power of opaque concepts in education politics","authors":"Hannele Pitkänen, M. Paananen","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2021.1979247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2021.1979247","url":null,"abstract":"This issue returns to the question of whether the most powerful concepts in education are both ‘familiar and alien at the same time’ (see Mathias, 2021). In the everyday lives in educational institutions and education policy making, certain concepts are familiar in a sense that they are taken for granted and used in habitual ways, but they are simultaneously alien in the sense that what they do is sometimes left unconsidered. All the papers presented in this issue, despite their varying theoretical frameworks and thematic contexts, discuss in one way or another the role of boundary concepts in education policy. They show how concepts that are fuzzy and opaque enough – concepts that have multiple meanings, and which can be considered everyday concepts or else resemble them – work to bridge separate groups of people and separate discussions. The fuzziness and opaqueness of these concepts allow them to be accepted by various groups of people with differing agendas and preferences. In the earlier literature, this has been conceptualized in multiple ways with a slightly varying focus: for example, as floating signifiers by the post-Marxist philosopher Laclau (2005), as boundary concepts within socio-cultural theory in the educational sciences (Löwy, 1992), and as travelling concepts in literary theory (Bal, 2002). The powerful, opaque concepts presented in this issue are ‘competence’ (Schaffar, 2021), ‘psychosocial’ (Mathias, 2021); ‘free choice’ and ‘diversity’ (Dieudé, 2021), and ‘the best interest of the child’ (Ruutiainen et al., 2021). As the articles in this issue show, the opaqueness has consequences that interrelate: it might hide the value-laden part of the concept and presumptions related to it (Schaffar, 2021; Mathias, 2021); the meaning can change along the way, resulting in unintended consequences (Schaffar, 2021; Ruutiainen et al., 2021); and it can work as a powerful tool in legitimizing policy change (Dieudé, 2021; Ruutiainen et al., 2021). In her article, Birgit Schaffar explores the concept of competence and its use in current educational theory and policy. She raises two distinct uses of the term: ‘as expressive of a value judgment’ and ‘as pointing to a person’s (formal) qualifications’. The latter approaches competence as a calculable, measurable, and empirically assessable qualification, and it seems to overshadow the former use of competence, i.e. competence as ‘the value-laden aims of our endeavours in education’. Schaffar argues that even though both of these discussions are important, the concept itself does not hold analytical power; rather, it ‘enables us to blur one of the central distinctions in educational discussions’. ‘Psychosocial’ is another opaque concept often employed in education policy discussions. In her article, Gro Mathias examines the application of the term in Norwegian education policy by approaching it as a field of knowledge. Mathias argues that the terms ‘psychosocial’ and ‘psychosocial school environme","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"7 1","pages":"53 - 54"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46386880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Selectivity of clientele in finnish private early childhood education and care","authors":"Ville Ruutiainen, Maarit Alasuutari, Kirsti Karila","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2021.1911161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2021.1911161","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In accordance with the Nordic welfare model, the Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC) system has traditionally been based on public provision and the idea of universalism. However, over the last twenty years the ECEC system has undergone market-oriented reforms. As a result, the share of private for-profit ECEC provision has grown significantly. By applying impression management theory, this qualitative research examines how representatives of private ECEC providers describe the selection and selectivity of their clientele and how they aim at managing the impression they convey through their descriptions. The study shows how three different mechanisms of selectivity are produced and legitimized in the interview talk. Furthermore, the study makes visible the cultural assumptions and expectations related to private ECEC provision and the potential selectivity it produces.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"7 1","pages":"91 - 105"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20020317.2021.1911161","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45747661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Tensions as an entry point to politics in education","authors":"M. Paananen, Hannele Pitkänen","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2021.1911040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2021.1911040","url":null,"abstract":"In this issue, tensions in educational policies are the focus. Tension can be seen as a metaphor that borrows from the field of physics, where tension means a pulling force that is transmitted axially by a continuous object, such as a string. We can identify an endless number of pulling forces aiming to direct teachers’ work and children’s and students’ lives at all levels of education. Some of the pulling forces are similar across educational levels and contexts, whereas others vary. The articles in this issue touch upon tensions in teacher professionalism in science-based education policy in Sweden (Larsson & Sjöberg 2021), local adaptation of PISA exclusion criteria in Norway (Aursand & Rutkowski 2021), language policy as expressed in policy documents in early childhood education and care in Finland and Norway (Alstad & Sopanen 2021) and science curriculum enactment in early childhood education and care in Sweden (Liljestrand 2021). Tensions are described in this issue’s articles using the concepts of parallel or competing discourses (Alstad & Sopanen, 2021), contradictions (Alstad & Sopanen 2021; Larsson & Sjöberg 2021; Liljestrand 2021), conflicts (Alstad & Sopanen 2021), messiness and multilayeredness (Liljestrand 2021) and complexity related to interpretations (Aursand & Rutkowski 2012). Metaphors such as describing a phenomenon as ‘Janus-faced’ (Alstad & Sopanen 2021) are used to highlight the paradoxes and ambivalences these tensions produce. Tensions are an inherent aspect of politics. Where there are competing aims or interpretations of phenomena, politics is involved, as conflicting and competing aims open a space for political action. This issue thus examines politics in policy enactment. In their article, Christer Larsson and Lena Sjöberg examine how the idea of ‘education on a scientific foundation’ that was incorporated into the Swedish Education Act in 2010 has been discursively enacted in policy texts by the Swedish National Agency of Education. They show how diverse, overlapping or even contradictory subjectivities for teachers as professionals are mobilized and shaped in these enactments. Paradoxically, instead of constituting teachers as academic, independent and critically thinking professionals, in these enactments of sciencebased policies, teachers become shaped as objects of these policies. Simultaneously, they are constituted as uncritical subjects delivering prescribed educational theories and methodologies. Leah Aursand and David Rutkowski analyse tensions in the local enactment of global policies by examining student exclusion from PISA in the Norwegian context. They examine how Norwegian school leaders interpret PISA exclusion guidelines and rationalize specific students’ exclusion from or inclusion in PISA. Their study shows that school leaders justified student exclusion as exemptions. Thus, instead of straightforwardly stating that they comply with the PISA guidelines on exclusion, they justified the exclusion by ","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"7 1","pages":"1 - 2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20020317.2021.1911040","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43025062","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Academized or deprofessionalized?– policy discourses of teacher professionalism in relation to research-based education","authors":"Christer Larsson, L. Sjöberg","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2021.1877448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2021.1877448","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A key concern in international educational policy during the 21st century has been the impact of teacher professionalism on outcomes of schooling. Sweden makes for an interesting case because of the country’s initiatives to improve the quality of education through an academization of the teachers. The aim of this study is to analyse how Swedish state policy of ‘education on a scientific foundation’ is constructed in a selection of texts and videos presented by the Swedish National Agency of Education, and how these policy texts construct discourses of teacher professionalism. The result shows how the formulation in the Education Act, prescribing that the education shall rest on a scientific foundation, is interpreted into ‘policy-as-text’ and a policy apparatus consisting of four central concepts. Here, the terms ‘research-based way of working’ and ‘evidence’ are added to the terms ‘scientific foundation’ and ‘proven experience’ from the Education Act. Furthermore, the result shows three policy discourses of teacher professionalism that are constructed in the analysed texts: the selectively critical and accountable teacher; the positive, flexible, responsible and effective teacher; and the semi-autonomous teacher.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"7 1","pages":"3 - 15"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20020317.2021.1877448","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43067497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Language orientations in early childhood education policy in Finland and Norway","authors":"Gunhild Tomter Alstad, Pauliina Sopanen","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2020.1862951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2020.1862951","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article investigates the language orientations in education policy documents for early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Finland and Norway. Finland, an officially bilingual country, and Norway, a predominantly monolingual country, share similar views on ECEC. However, the ECEC field in both countries has undergone major changes in recent years: more children are attending ECEC, and the increasing number of children with diverse backgrounds and minority languages. The document analysis includes seven policy documents related to ECEC in Finland and Norway. The analytical approach is based on Ruíz’ framework for language orientations, i.e. language as resource, language as right and language as problem. The analysis shows that the language orientation in ECEC policy is rather vague and open. On the one hand, multilingualism is seen as a resource. On the other hand, multilingualism is considered as challenging in terms of language diversity, facilitating multilingual and first language development. In both countries, there seems to be a a monolingual ideology underlying the policy. We discuss these findings in light of policy implementations and finally underline the importance of critical multilingual awareness in early childhood teacher education.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"7 1","pages":"30 - 43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20020317.2020.1862951","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48305144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}