Constructing a European Policy Space in Educational Governance: The Role of Transnational Policy Actors

Abstract

Educational policy is no longer, if it ever was, the product of the nation state alone. In Europe, significant policy actors in education are working today face to face and virtually in joint governmental projects and networking translating, mediating and constructing educational policies. The existence of this new social sphere of work, in which the construction of Europe is paramount, served by the regular communications and intimate work relations of a new European class of educational system actors, is deserving of further research. They appeared to constitute a form of policy elite in education, which has not surfaced into view in the study of education, either in studies of the national state or of Brussels: in the latter's case, it may be because education does not have the same regulatory or legal framework as key aspects of governance in European law. The power this group wields by acting as shapers of the emerging discourse of educational policy, expressed in reports, key committees, funding streams and programmes has to be examined and recognized within studies of educational policy.

Narrowing Down Education

“…: 290). Importantly, such influential processes has affected the educational system at all scales, from the Continental to the national and regional levels; even individual schools and teachers are required to conform to the EU framework on education (Lawn & Lingard 2002;Ball 2003;Clarke 2012;and Connell 2013).…”

Teaching and Learning: A Journey from the Margins to the Core in European Higher Education Policy

“…Although dwelling mainly on teaching and learning as it evolved within the Bologna Process, the chapter acknowledges that the Process has unfolded in a wider context of policy development bearing the imprint of globalization (Amaral and Neave 2009;Grek 2010;Lawn and Lingard 2002;Lingard et al 2005;Martens and Wolf 2009). Lawn and Lingard (2002) described the emergence of a European policy space in educational governance, while Lingard et al (2005) argued that globalization and its effects on policy processes have led to the emergence of a global field in education policy, one consequence being that policy text production now reflects the diaspora of policy ideas which circulate rapidly across the globe.…”

Approaching the space issue in Nordic curriculum theory: national reflections of globalisation in social studies/citizenship textbook pictures in Sweden, England and Germany

“…It can be said that such information technology (IT)-inspired terms intimate a global space in which various users contribute to a pool of policies that can be downloaded on demand. In recent years, another concept has had considerable influence on curriculum theory: The European Educational Policy Space model (EEPS) (Grek et al, 2009;Lawn & Lingard, 2002). These researchers describe the constitution of a particular transnational space in terms of transnational policy agency.…”