Policies of ‘modernisation’ in European education: Enactments and consequences

Abstract

The five articles in this special issue offer empirically and theoretically informed accounts from education policy research carried out in different national contexts in Europe. This special issue sheds light on how modernising approaches to educational governance and reform, grouped under the umbrella of new public management, are strongly present in European education policy, both at transnational levels and in individual countries, and points to important implications for these developments.

Impact of the Europeanisation of education: Qualifications frameworks in Europe

“…Therefore, in the field of education:Europe is characterised not only by very different levels of institutionalisation and participation but also by different ideas and practices of education, reflecting historical and cultural patterns in individual countries and regions. These different contexts mediate the introduction of transnational policy designs, even those that are given authority and partial funding by the EU (Rasmussen et al, 2015: 481).…”

“…At the turn of the millennium, discussions on Europeanisation focused on education, and most authors identify the Lisbon Strategy as a key turning point in the Europeanisation of education 1 (Alexiadou, 2014; Antunes, 2012; Dale, 2009; Lawn and Grek, 2012; Nóvoa, 2010). Various authors (Fredriksson, 2003; Rasmussen, 2014; Rasmussen et al, 2015) have argued that the key elements envisaged by the Lisbon Strategy for education may be understood as the establishment of a European education policy defined by common goals, implementation tools and financial resources, although, owing to the subsidiarity rule, the Commission has very limited formal competences in the field of education. 2 The mechanism for the implementation of European education policy consists of an open method of coordination (OMC), which introduces a new form of multilevel governance in education that is exercised in the form of ‘soft law’ (recommendations, guidelines, indicators, benchmarks, statistical data, etc.)…”

“…the cultural and historical match between the normative ideas that the EQF represents and the educational traditions in which the NQFs have been developed. For this reason, when analysing the impact of the EQF, special attention will be devoted to NQFs developed in different educational traditions in Europe, since different educational contexts have a crucial role in mediating the European effects (Rasmussen et al, 2015).…”

“…Denmark, Germany, Portugal and Slovenia, we will argue that NQFs in all four countries developed under the influence of the EQF, that they differ considerably from the NQFs in Anglo-Saxon countries and developing countries around the globe, and do not represent neoliberal tools for the deregulation, marketisation and commodification of education and knowledge. It appears that European education policy concepts do not always have a direct causal impact on national/local education policy and practice; instead, they cut across local and regional histories and have intended and unintended impacts on concepts and practices (Hall et al, 2015; Rasmussen et al, 2015).…”

Responding to ‘crisis’: Education policy research in Europe

“…It is one of the policy fields where we observe a degree of ‘Europeanisation’ whereby there is both a process of important education policy definitions that take place at the EU level, and a distinct system of governance that is European in its construction (Alexiadou, 2014; Richardson, 2015). Thus, designing policy research to understand EU education developments needs to involve: (i) an analysis of such policy definitions and a critical examination of their value bases, origins, construction and implications (see, Jones, 2013; Nordin and Sundberg, 2014; Rasmussen et al., 2015); but also, (ii) an examination of the mechanisms developed for education governance (benchmarks, indicators, policy learning and peer review strategies), and what those ‘technical’ governance tools mean for the political nature of education policy making (see Lange and Alexiadou, 2010; Normand, 2010; Nóvoa, 2010).…”