21st century skills is a global network of corporate and governmental influences that promotes competences suited to fit the future knowledge economy. Through a discourse analysis of an influential Official Norwegian Report, 'The School of the Future. Renewal of Subjects and Competences' (NOU 2015:8), this paper explores how ideas of 21st century skills are translated into the Norwegian education policy context. Firstly, the paper analyses the context-specific reasons for receptiveness by investigating discursive warrants. Secondly, the paper identifies how the policy document constructs a set of preferred subject positions that constitute an image of an ideal student. Thirdly, the paper investigates the discursive framing of these subject positions. We find that the policy document constructs an image of an ideal student who is creative, responsible, cooperative, engaged, self-regulated and in complete control of herself, her learning and her future. This image draws on more pronounced neo-liberal discourses, but also well-established discourses in the Norwegian context, such as social democratic progressivism. This intertwining of discourses shows how traits of homogeneity related to global ideas, as well as heterogeneity related to the Norwegian policy context, are both visible in the Norwegian translation of 21st century skills.

Based upon fieldwork in two upper secondary schools in Norway, this article offers an analysis of inclusion and exclusion processes for newly arrived minority language students. Minority language students are defined by policy as students who have a different mother tongue than the Norwegian and Sami languages, and students who are newly arrived in Norway are considered especially at risk for marginalisation. This article explores processes of inclusion and exclusion in two schools with segregated classes for this group, called introductory classes. The analytical framework is Niklas Luhmann's theory of autopoietic social systems, where inclusion is defined as the requirements for participation set by a system, and exclusion accordingly as being unable to meet these requirements. The article displays different constellations of inclusions and exclusions for newly arrived students in the educational system: in school organisations, organisation-based interactions and informal networks of students. It will be showed that introductory classes erect several barriers towards newly arrived students' inclusion, especially towards those students who are placed at the basic level of the schools' hierarchy of performances. As a consequence of multiple educational exclusions, informal networks emerge as alternative socialities that include and exclude students on the basis of mother tongue. ARTICLE HISTORY

This article offers an analysis of four Norwegian policy documents on inclusion of minority language pupils. The main concepts of this policy will be reconstructed and re-described, applying Niklas Luhmann's systems theory at different levels of the analysis. Luhmann's theory about society as a conglomerate of selfreferential social systems investigates how these systems construct meaning and what consequences these constructions have for inclusion and exclusion processes. This article will focus on the Norwegian educational policy towards minority language pupils, defined by the policy as pupils who have a different mother tongue than Norwegian and Sami language. It is argued that this inclusion policy is excluding in its social form, and that it exhibits an increased emphasis on education when it comes to inclusion in society. Re-descriptions based on logic of forms will show how binary distinctions such as 'inclusion/ exclusion', 'majority language pupil/minority language pupil' and 'early intervention/wait and see' emerge in the timespan of 2004 -2012. Based on this, it is claimed that descriptions of inclusion and exclusion are mutually constituted in the policy, thus giving rise to the question of whether the policy goal -'full' inclusion in society -is realisable. A paradox will be uncovered: minority language pupils are being included as excluded as well as excluded as included in the documents, displaying how inclusion and exclusion are two sides of the same coin. The strategy early intervention is introduced to remedy exclusions, thus converting the problem of inclusion into a problem of time.

This article will show how the global educational policy expectations of being a self-managing learner unfold in the context of two school organisations in Norway, and contribute to the exclusion of so-called newly arrived minority language students. The theoretical framework is Niklas Luhmann's theory of the global educational system, and the article offers a semantic analysis of inclusion and exclusion processes, where inclusion is operationalised as fulfilling educational expectations and exclusion as the failure to meet these expectations. The findings are based on ethnographic fieldwork in two upper secondary schools with introductory classes for newly arrived students in Norway, but will be interpreted in light of recent policy initiatives from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The article will show similarities between expectations in the schools and the ones embodied in the so-called 21st century skills. The article argues that the knowledge-economic ideal of the self-managing learner demonstrates a reductionist notion of the student role and constitutes a risk for newly arrived students' educational careers.

In numerous countries, the widening participation of underrepresented groups in higher education has become an official part of education policies. However, inequalities continue in some areas, including refugees’ participation. Norway hosts many refugees, but little is known about the social inclusion of refugees into higher education in the country. In this paper, three documents representing Norwegian higher education and integration policies are analysed using an integrated analytical framework constructed from social inclusion and its three main dimensions (access, participation and empowerment) and from a critical discourse analysis. The analysis is conducted to address how social inclusion into higher education is conceptualized, which major discourses underpin the conceptualization and what implications these have for the social inclusion of refugees into higher education in Norway. The article argues that social inclusion is conceptualized from an access dimension signifying the dominance of neoliberal principles in the policy documents. On the contrary, social justice discourses are marginalized and human potential principles are absent from the documents signalling the disempowerment of refugees in relation to higher education. Future policies should incorporate conscious and clear strategies informed by social justice and empowerment principles to ensure the social inclusion of refugees into higher education.