Tonia Bieber

Bildungspolitik in den USA

Seit Jahrzehnten wird das Bildungssystem der USA von zwei Herausforderungen gekennzeichnet, einerseits als zentraler Wirtschafts- und Wohlstandsfaktor zu fungieren und andererseits die Chancengleichheit, soziale Integration und gleichen Bildungszugang zu gewahrleisten. Die US-Bildungspolitik der letzten Jahrzehnte ist nicht zuletzt deshalb von starkem politischem Aktionismus gepragt, der jedoch – wie von diversen Leistungsvergleichen belegt – nur selten seine Ziele erreichte. Dieser Beitrag gibt einen Uberblick uber die Strukturen, Institutionen und Steuerungsformen des Bildungssystems, seines hohen Dezentralisierungs- und Autonomiegrades und marktorientierten Charakters, sowie die historische Entwicklung von sozialer Segregation zu Integration.

Measuring Transformation of Education Policy—a Mixed-Method Approach

In his famous essay, “The Methodology of the Social Sciences” Max Weber indicated that new social and cultural phenomena bring along new academic problems. These new academic problems, however, call for an adjustment of the paradigmatic and methodological apparatus. In this chapter, we point to the methodological challenges arising from new and complex social phenomena in the realm of internationalizing education policy and how they can be addressed by a systematic combination and pooling of different methods with their particular strengths and limitations. Basically, new analytical problems can be dealt with in three different ways. The first and least desirable way is to downsize the phenomenon in question to make it accessible within a given methodological framework. The second is to refine a given methodological framework to make it cover more aspects of the phenomenon in question, thus to increase the validity of the respective type of data. The third is to deepen the overall validity of analysis by a systematic rearrangement of the methodological framework. Such an arrangement should combine both qualitative and quantitative methodological strategies with descriptive and explanative logics of research. A carefully arranged mixed-method approach can not only account more deeply for more facets of the phenomenon in question, but can also connect the methods involved in an appropriate way in order to counterbalance their limits and to pool their strengths.

Education Policy-Making in Switzerland: Origins and Trends

This chapter provides a concise overview about the provenance of the Swiss education system to allow analyzing recent internationalization processes in Swiss education policy-making. In order to understand current change processes, dynamics, and power relations of the modern Swiss education system, Bieber discusses historical origins and resulting ideational conceptions from the official foundation of Switzerland in 1848 until the mid-1990s. In this light, current political competencies for the education sectors of compulsory, higher, and vocational education are presented. Subsequently, the chapter locates Swiss education in a broader context of internationalization, Europeanization, and liberalization processes. This allows enabling a thorough evaluation of the meaning, causes, and potential consequences of Swiss involvement in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment study, the Bologna process, and the Copenhagen process.

Swiss Reforms in Higher Education: The Poster Child of the Bologna Process

This chapter intends to clarify the ramifications of the Bologna process on convergence in Swiss higher education policies toward European aims. Tonia Bieber focuses on the ensuing adoption of new legal acts in Switzerland, and assesses how far domestic reform trajectories reflect Bologna’s aims. Bieber shows in which policy dimensions convergence took place, and points out the degree of convergence and non-convergence, respectively, of Swiss higher education. The chapter analyzes in which way the political agreement of Bologna as a driving force triggered reform dynamics in the Swiss higher education arena, that is, which causal mechanisms shaped the Swiss convergence patterns. Finally, the main results on education policy change are recapitulated and implications for Swiss politics and polity are drawn.

Swiss Reforms in Vocational Education and Training: Cherry-Picking from the Copenhagen Process

This chapter evaluates the reforms undertaken within the Swiss vocational education and training (VET) system after the start of the Copenhagen process and contrasts them with the reform efforts of the 1990s to find out which reform projects have actually been instigated by the Copenhagen process. It assesses in which dimensions and to what degree these recent reform initiatives in Swiss VET policy exhibit developments that are convergent toward the Copenhagen model to facilitate a better understanding of political developments. Tonia Bieber traces the trajectories that resulted in recent reforms or that hindered policy change, respectively, drawing attention to mechanisms of international regulatory competition and transnational communication as well as veto players.

Soft Governance in Education: Lessons and Prospects

This chapter elucidates how the present book has contributed to the understanding of the relationship between soft governance and domestic policy-making in terms of convergence toward international scripts. Tonia Bieber reveals that even legally non-binding means of international organizations have proven capable of not only impacting federal education policies but even supporting convergent developments. The results are critically assessed in light of both the book’s theoretical assumptions and insights of alternative literature. The chapter concludes with proposing topics of further research and exploring implications of the findings for research and practice.

Measuring Convergence in Education Policy

International organizations (IOs) have become increasingly active in the education field. How can we measure convergence toward their aims? In this chapter, from the reform initiatives of IOs, Tonia Bieber derives catalogues of aims that are intended to function as instruments for measuring convergence processes in particular education sectors. In addition, Bieber justifies the selection of three initiatives, the policy field, and the countries of study. The triangulate method of data collection is discussed, which combines expert interviews with document analysis. The selection of the research period allows for a pre–post comparison of the period of internationalization and the situation before from a comparative perspective.

Education in Transition: An Empirical Puzzle

In this chapter, Tonia Bieber offers an introduction into the topic of policy convergence in the education sector, laying the foundation for the subsequent chapters. How far have international organizations with their soft governance-based initiatives contributed to recent reforms in education, and is convergence the logical consequence? After explaining the relevance of this topic, Bieber introduces the empirical examples of three international initiatives under study: the Programme for International Student Assessment study in secondary education, the European Bologna processes in higher education, and the European Union’s Copenhagen process in vocational education and training. Subsequently, the central literature pertinent to internationalization, Europeanization, convergence processes, and soft governance is made applicable to education policy-making. The chapter concludes by providing an overview of the book’s structure.

Swiss Reforms in Compulsory Education: Drawing Lessons from PISA’s Revelations

In this chapter, Tonia Bieber offers a much-needed analysis of the consequences of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study for political reform trajectories in Switzerland. It is explored how Swiss PISA findings triggered fierce debates on the education system’s future and catapulted the issue to the top of the political agenda. Bieber analyzes resulting political reforms on how to improve the system’s structure that are directed toward playing in the league of PISA ‘winner’ countries, drawing on potential ‘success factors’ highlighted by the OECD. After investigating whether and to what degree Swiss policy output converged toward OECD recommendations, the chapter shows how PISA acted as a catalyst event for overdue far-reaching reforms, and how transnational communication, regulatory competition, and domestic veto players shaped the patterns of Swiss convergence.

Explaining Convergence in Education Policy

In this chapter, Tonia Bieber demonstrates how cross-national differences of policy convergence in education can be explained. It includes the policy lessons learned from the Swiss political reactions to the three international initiatives of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Bologna and Copenhagen processes. Furthermore, it includes a mini case study on the role of the PISA study and the Bologna process in the USA. In doing so, Bieber demonstrates the hindering and furthering role of soft governance instruments of transnational communication and international regulatory competition filtered by the national political institutions for the convergence result of the USA, while placing special focus on international reference points.