Sverker Lindblad

An Inevitable Progress? Educational restructuring in Finland, Iceland and Sweden at the turn of the millennium

The article discusses how current changes in the system of reasoning about education in Finland, Iceland and Sweden are characterised by culturally woven patterns where marketisation strategies, for instance budget reform, are introduced as technically effective devices both for educating the best and to increase inclusion. This system of reason presupposes that the neo-liberalist restructuring changes are inevitable global phenomena and that they are a progress compared with the old arrangements, but is silent about socio-economic issues and the equity goals of the 1960s-1980s. The article also argues that school-based self-evaluation as a practice and as a language is a normalising technique that ensures that school actors will identify the obstacles encountered in the restructuring transition so that neither state nor other authorities intervene.

Education Governance in Transition: An introduction

The purpose of this article is to present concepts and research problems dealing with education governance and social inclusion and exclusion. Education restructuring, as a recent international movement, is regarded as a combination of transitions in governing and new managerialism. Social inclusion and exclusion is conceived of as a duplet concept, mutually defining each other. The relation between new governance - deregulation, decentralisation, privatisation and steering by goals and results - and social inclusion/exclusion is conceptualised as an equity problematic and a knowledge problematic. It is argued that there is a need to understand the system of reason in order to capture the implications of education governing in transition.

Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe

European welfare institutions such as education and health care are restructuring their organisations in terms of decentralisation, deregulation, privatisation and so forth. As a consequence professional positions and demands on professional competencies in these institutions are in transition. At the same time European societies are changing in different ways, e.g. in terms of a “knowledge society” as well as in demographic and cultural changes. Professionals such as teachers and nurses are meeting such changes in their work with students and clients.

Welfare State Restructuring in Education and its National Refractions Finnish, Irish and Swedish Teachers’ Perceptions of Current Changes

The governance of the welfare state is going through profound transformations in many western countries. Similarly, reforms, influenced by neoliberal ideology, are being applied particularly in the field of education all over Europe. However, it is likely that there are divergent outcomes as these widely shared models are adapted in historical and local particularities. The aim of this article is to examine how Finnish, Irish and Swedish teachers perceive change in professional control and autonomy, and the influence of documentation and evaluation on daily work. Correspondence analysis on survey data (N = 2304) shows that whereas the Finnish teachers regard that the new regulatory measures do not influence their daily work much, the Irish teachers, and also the Swedish teachers, tend to feel the increasing influence of control and accountability. Obviously, despite the similarities in formal policy and education acts, there are different kinds of restructuring operating in Finland, Ireland and Sweden.

School Experiences and Teacher Socialization: A Longitudinal Study of Pupils Who Grew Up to Be Teachers.

Abstract In this paper it is argued that experiences as a pupil are of importance for socialization into the teaching profession. Schooling experiences of pupils that turned to the teaching professions are compared with their school fellows who turned to other careers. Our data are based on a longitudinal study carried out in a Swedish medium-sized community where pupils were followed from the school start (at age 7) into adulthood (to age 23). Out of 671 pupils 34 later turned to teacher careers. During primary school the group of pupils who later became teachers were more well-adjusted and stimulated students compared to the other pupils. And as adults they have specific perspectives of schooling close to those predominant in middle-class positions and distant from those frequent in working-class positions, according to our data. Based on these findings it is argued that teachers and student teachers have to reflect upon and to analyze their own school experiences in order to understand differences in experiences and rationalities among their own students.

Navigating in the Field of University Positioning: on international ranking lists, quality indicators and higher education governing

The construction of transnational and national systems for comparing qualities of universities are presented and discussed. In focus are two important university ranking lists — those produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University and by the Times Higher Education Supplement. A Swedish example concerning the making of a resource distribution system based on performance indicators is presented. The Swedish performance indicator system and the international university ranking lists contain similar technologies for comparing universities and are to a large extent based on services of the same multinational corporations. From this point of view ranking lists and systems of performance based governance can be conceived of as globalisation at work.

Researching The Teaching Profession Under Restructuring

Over the last few decades ‘educational restructuring’ has become a world-wide movement. This can be seen in the transformation in patterns of governance, deregulation, marketization, consumerism and the introduction of management principles derived from the world of business. Restructuring issues are controversial and are questioned substantially in educational policy discourses and research. In this book we present studies that deal with the intersection of restructuring as a change in the organisation and governing of educational systems with the work life of the teaching profession. Vital questions are posed: how are teachers experiencing and implementing restructuring? What implications does restructuring have for the teachers’ work, for education and schooling?

In the grey zone: large-scale assessment-based activities betwixt and between policy, research and practice

ABSTRACT This paper elaborates on a systematic research review containing 11,000 articles on international large-scale assessment (ILSA) research. Several activities operating under the ‘formal radar’ of science and governmental policy are observed, which we analytically name ‘grey zone’ activities. These activities are historicised, presented and discussed. An analytical division into three different reasons for performing the activities is made: an entrepreneurial policy reason, an entrepreneurial profitable reason and an appurtenance reason. This division highlights some of the actors in the educational grey zone. The paper is theoretical and elaborative, and contains examples of the activities that can be found in a grey zone.

Observations on European Education and Educational Research: The European Educational Research Journal at work, 2002–2014

This is a review of the European Educational Research Journal (EERJ) since the start in 2002 and up to 2014. Three questions were put forward: what are the ambitions with the journal, how has the journal developed over time, and what are its possible futures? The review is based on minutes and emails from the late 1990s up to 2014, as well as editorial materials. Downloads and citations of EERJ articles were analysed in order to capture the impact of the journal. The themes of each issue were analysed concerning their main research objects. The results presented a picture of a successful journal with greatly increasing numbers of subscriptions and downloads of articles. They also showed a journal that was increasingly more European concerning editorial matters and authorship. Considering journal contents and research objects that are in focus, EERJ is presenting productive and significant research on European education. However, articles analysing European educational research as a specific focus are less frequent. On the basis of these results it was concluded that there is a need for EERJ to further develop its focus on research on the Europeanisation of educational research, as well as to consider the opportunities for the European Educational Research Association (EERA) networks to produce handbooks concerning their areas of specialism, and for EERA to develop a European educational research observatory to improve research communication and reflexivity, and by that, further advance European educational research.

Towards a Social Understanding of Teachers: Swedish Positions and Experiences

In this chapter I deal with teachers from a societal point of view. In order to know about teachers, we must examine their experiences of and positions in society, as these are regarded as a means of getting an improved understanding of teaching and schooling. I present and discuss some approaches to obtaining such knowledge about teachers. The examples that are used are to a large extent from Sweden.