Problem solved! How eduprenuers enact a school crisis as business possibilities

Abstract

This article explores how a growing apparatus of edupreneurial actors offers solutions for the current ‘school crisis’ and how these commercial actors become taken for granted in the public school system. The Swedish case is interesting, as it involves a once-strong welfare state that is now associated with both the neoliberal discourse of competition and the outsourcing of policy work. Two examples – research-based education and the digitalization of education – serve to illustrate how a crisis narrative is translated into edupreneurial business ideas and how companies become established in the edupreneurial market through ‘public/private statework’. Bacchi’s notion of problematization is used to analyse processes through which the crisis has become a hegemonic truth and thus an obvious object for (business) intervention. In addition, this study shows how the commodification of school limits what becomes the ‘research base’ for schooling. The results point to the importance of how the problem is constructed and what is represented (or not) in this problematization process, for example, how critical research is left out. Another important conclusion is that the crisis narrative and policy reforms nurture the existence of these private companies.

The marketisation of education and the democratic deficit

“…The hallmark of the debate on the state of the Swedish educational system (mainly targeting the compulsory and upper secondary school) is the fusion of neo-conservative values and neo-liberal market values (Englund, 2011;Hultén, 2019;Ideland et al, 2021;. The Swedish educational system is experiencing the full force and effect of marketisation where multinational companies have become major actors in the field.…”

“…The public view is an expression of a school for all, yet schools have become more individualised and competitive than ever. Following the neo-political driven educational policy the Swedish educational system has witnessed in the last decade (Dahlstedt and Fejes, 2019;Gustavsson et al, 2016;Hultén, 2019;Ideland et al 2021), it is clear that the idea of schooling has replaced the idea of public education since the up growing generation are schooled to being before the other, rather than being for the other (e.g. Månsson, 2014).…”

“…In other words, learning is for 'now', fit for an economic order of society (e.g. Beach, 2012;Dahlstedt and Fejes, 2019;Dahlstedt and Harling, 2017;Ideland et al, 2021). Education is not about social togetherness but is limited to students equipping themselves to compete against everyone else .…”

“…If teacher education follows the structures of the school, the school sets the standard for what the teacher should be and not the other way round (Åstrand, 2020;Sjöberg, 2019). By systematising the entire educational system where societies', and especially the market's, needs are reflected in the school curriculum, and where the demands for future teachers' knowledge base are reflected in the learning outcomes in teacher education, teaching becomes, in this case, a way to transmit the knowledge and the norms demanded by the market (Beach, 2012;Dahlstedt and Fejes, 2019;Dahlstedt and Harling, 2017;Ideland et al, 2021;Lundahl et al, 2013).…”

Teaching militant humility against the aggressions of a neoliberal world

“…The market, in other words is not a strict economical term but a metaphor for the workings of the totality of the socio-psychical sphere of relations (Berardi, 2017). Such relations are dominated by the values of self-interest, individualism, competition, and comparisons; in general, there is a will to be before the other rather than to be for the other (Säfström & Månsson, 2021).…”