Educational reforms and marketization in Norway – A challenge to the tradition of the social democratic, inclusive school?

Helgøy, Ingrid; Homme, Anne

doi:10.1177/1745499916631063

Cited by 30 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(48 reference statements)

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“…From the 1980s and onwards, Norwegian education policy has been introduced to globalization and neo-liberalism, emphasizing technical and instrumental objectives at the expense of traditional social democratic values (Telhaug, Mediås, & Aasen, 2006). Crucially, all the latest governments of Norway have aimed to base knowledge policy on international trends to enable the country to compete in the global knowledge economy (Helgøy & Homme, 2016). Nevertheless, it may still be justified to speak of a Nordic education model-both when it comes to viewing education as an element of welfare policies as well as the significance attributed to social-inclusive aspects of education (Arnesen & Lundahl, 2006: Blossing et al, 2014.…”

Section: The Norwegian Educational Policy Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrow identity resources for future students: the 21st century skills movement encounters the Norwegian education policy context

Hilt

Riese

Søreide

2018

Journal of Curriculum Studies

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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.

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Section: The Norwegian Educational Policy Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrow identity resources for future students: the 21st century skills movement encounters the Norwegian education policy context

Hilt

Riese

Søreide

2018

Journal of Curriculum Studies

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“…Norway is an interesting country in which to study values and value dilemmas in education, as assessment policies with accountability elements have recently been introduced in education where the teaching profession has enjoyed a relatively high degree of trust and autonomy in their work, and where egalitarian relations between teachers and leaders have a strong tradition (Helgøy & Homme, 2016;Møller, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redefining public values: data use and value dilemmas in education

2020

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In this article, we explore how values in education are negotiated and partly redefined by teachers, school leaders and local administrators with data use and accountability. Two dilemmas are prominent for the teachers: 1) Testing and data use are perceived as important to meet the needs of the students and to create transparency and initiating innovation in schools, yet they lead to performance pressure on the students and narrow the societal mandate in education, and 2) Although it is important to identify students at the lowest proficiency levels, the established accountability chains acknowledge the progress of these students and the teachers' efforts only to a limited extent. However, values such as meeting the needs of individual students, transparency and innovation/renewal are partly redefined and narrowed on other institutional levels. The dilemmas represent real normative conflicts in public services that are ultimately unsolvable yet not necessarily at odds with professional values.

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“…Similar to Sweden, in the 1990s, the education system became more decentralised system, with local autonomy of education and freedom for municipalities and schools to choose how to organise education within the frame of the national curriculum. Unlike Sweden, free choice of a school has only been introduced to a limited extent (Helgøy & Homme, 2016). According to Møller and Skedsmo (2013), the education system, despite neoliberal reforms, still emphasises values as equity, equal access to education and democracy.…”

Section: Study Context and Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

The enactment of social justice in HPE practice: how context(s) comes to matter

Linnér

Larsson

Gerdin

et al. 2020

Sport, Education and Society

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For more than 40 years, health and physical education (HPE) academics in universities and teacher education colleges have drawn attention to issues of social justice specific to the context of PE and advocated for teachers in fields, gymnasiums and other physical activity spaces to do a better job of promoting more equitable outcomes for all students. Building on this advocacy, in the late 1990s, countries such as Sweden, Norway and New Zealand designed HPE curricula that address social justice. However, limited research has focused specifically on the enactment of social justice in HPE practice. Drawing on a larger international project involving Sweden, Norway and New Zealand the aim of this article is therefore to explore the constitution of social justice pedagogies across these three different HPE contexts and more specifically how HPE teaching practice may be understood from regulative, normative and cultural perspectives on social justice. The data reported on in this paper were generated from educational acts, curriculum documents, observations of HPE lessons in each of the three countries and follow-up teacher interviews. In order to analyse the data, we employed Scott's (2008. Institutions and organizations: Ideas and interests (3rd ed). Sage) institutional theory to further understand and discuss the enactment of social justice across the three different countries in HPE practice. In our representation and analysis of the findings we draw attention to how social justice pedagogies are informed differently by institutionalised governing systems and therefore they may be enacted differently by teachers in different societies. In particular, we highlight the influence of (i) regulative; (ii) normative; (iii) cultural-cognitive elements on practice. We conclude by pointing out the complex interplay between regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive elements that both enable and constrain HPE teachers' enactments of social justice in HPE practice.

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Educational reforms and marketization in Norway – A challenge to the tradition of the social democratic, inclusive school?

Cited by 30 publications

References 16 publications

Narrow identity resources for future students: the 21st century skills movement encounters the Norwegian education policy context

Narrow identity resources for future students: the 21st century skills movement encounters the Norwegian education policy context

Redefining public values: data use and value dilemmas in education

The enactment of social justice in HPE practice: how context(s) comes to matter

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