North by northwest: quality assurance and evaluation processes in European education

Grek, Sotiria; Lawn, Martin; Lingard, Bob; Varjo, Janne

doi:10.1080/02680930902733022

Cited by 47 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…The mediation of travelling policies and policy discourses across Europe constitutes a polymorphic policyscape in which quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) has become a major instrument. (Grek et al, 2009) There is a marked paradox here in that these techniques which rest upon the granting of greater autonomy to institutions and processes of deconcentration within education systems also provide the state with new modes of governing society and the economy and shaping and reshaping individuals and individual conduct.…”

Section: Jenny Ozga and Colleagues (See Journal Of Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Voices, New Knowledges and the New Politics of Education Research: The Gathering of a Perfect Storm?

Ball

2010

European Educational Research Journal

118

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This article outlines and discusses a set of related developments in the governance, reform and privatisation of knowledge production in the field of education policy. It argues that knowledge about, performative knowledge, and knowledge for leadership knowledge are key facets of the new governance and ongoing reform of public sector education but increasingly are created and sold to governments by private sector and philanthropic organisations. In all of this public sector higher education institutions are being displaced as knowledge brokers, and at the same time 'enterprised' and 'hybridised', in a new education policy knowledge market. Increasingly the idea of a public/private divide in education is redundant.

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Section: Jenny Ozga and Colleagues (See Journal Of Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Voices, New Knowledges and the New Politics of Education Research: The Gathering of a Perfect Storm?

Ball

2010

European Educational Research Journal

118

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“…In European countries, Grek et al (2009) argue that comparison between schools has become the factor which drives educational assessment. Although the quest for a competitive knowledge-driven community through the use of data can be traced back to the 1970s, in Europe, there was an increased interest in setting standards for education systems that began around the year 2000 (Grek et al, 2009, p. 127).…”

Section: The Fetish With Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Diluting education? An ethnographic study of change in an Australian Ministry of Education

Robinson

2011

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education

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This ethnographic study captures the processes that led to change in an Australian public education system. The changes were driven by strong neo-liberal discourses which resulted in a shift from a shared understanding about leading educational change in schools by knowledge transfer to managing educational change as a process, in other words, allowing the schools to decide how to change. Inside an Australian state education bureaucracy at a time when the organisation was restructured and services decentralised, this study helps show some of the disturbing trends resulting from the further entrenchment of neo-liberal strategies. Although control was re-centralised by legitimising performance mechanisms, in the form of national testing, there are indications that the focus on national tests may have alarming consequences for the content and context of education. I argue that the complexities of learning and fundamental pedagogies are being lost in preference for an over-reliance on data systems that are based on a shallow and narrow set of standardised measures.

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“…Notably, the soft form of governance of the European education policy space has led several researchers to speak of a common European culture of objectives, numbers and comparison, whereby the education systems are redefined as a single, commensurable entity (e.g. Grek et al, 2009;Alexiadou et al, 2010). Along these lines, although there certainly are national differences between European countries concerning how, what and when neo-liberal policies and NPM-strategies have been introduced and treated, there are many common trends in terms of the 'logics of change' introduced in the education systems (Moos & Møller, 2010): In sum, these 'logics of change' imply new and challenging working conditions for European teachers.…”

Section: Neo-liberal Strategies In Education Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Teacher Change in an Era of Neo-Liberal Policies: A Neo-Institutional Analysis of Teachers' Perceptions of Their Professional Change

Ramberg

2014

European Educational Research Journal

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The aim of this article is to explore how neo-institutional theory may be applied as an analytical framework to investigate the relationships between teachers' perceptions on their professional change on the one hand, and the numerous change efforts embedded in recent neo-liberal educational policies in Norway on the other. Based on biographical interviews with Norwegian teachers, it is argued that the dynamics of change can be investigated in light of teachers' institutionalised practices within a certain set of governing mechanisms including regulative rules, norms and cultural-cognitive beliefs. The findings suggest that vital, regulative elements in recent neoliberal policies have managed to penetrate the teachers' perceptions of their classroom practices, in a process that is framed by teachers' pre-existing normative values and the cultural scripts guiding their practices. This article concludes that the neo-institutional analytical framework may serve as a sound approach to investigate and compare how issues of teacher change are unfolding across European education systems and policies.

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North by northwest: quality assurance and evaluation processes in European education

Cited by 47 publications

References 22 publications

New Voices, New Knowledges and the New Politics of Education Research: The Gathering of a Perfect Storm?

New Voices, New Knowledges and the New Politics of Education Research: The Gathering of a Perfect Storm?

Diluting education? An ethnographic study of change in an Australian Ministry of Education

Teacher Change in an Era of Neo-Liberal Policies: A Neo-Institutional Analysis of Teachers' Perceptions of Their Professional Change

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