The transnational grip on Scandinavian education reforms - The open method of coordination challenging national policy-making

Krejsler, John Benedicto; Olsson, Ulf; Petersson, Kenneth

doi:10.18261/issn1891-5949-2014-03-03

Cited by 26 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…As Magalhães et al (2012) explain, part of this process of European consolidation has been the ability of the European Commission to bring together, or to articulate (Veiga, 2019), multiple agendas and discourses in ways that expand the legitimacy of European-level action in the EHEA and in higher education more broadly. Of particular importance was the drawing together of the development of the EHEA with the economic agenda of the Lisbon Strategy, which sought to 'to make the Union the most competitive and dynamic knowledge economy in the world' (Krejsler et al, 2012), and the Modernisation Agenda for universities, inspired by the New Public Management school of thinking (Enders and Westerheijden, 2014). Crucial here also is the ability of the Commission to allocate funding to support activities that align with its conception of what the EHEA should be, especially given the lack of overall EHEA funding.…”

Section: Quality Assurance In Higher Education In Europe: Bologna And...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Bologna? Infrastructuring quality in European higher education

Grek

Russell

2023

European Educational Research Journal

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Applying qualitative methods, this paper examines the burgeoning of quality assurance databases, processes and networks of actors in the field of higher education in Europe. Our main argument is that there has been a move from the Bologna Process being the near singular focus for European-level coordination and harmonisation of higher education, towards the making of a much more diverse and complex quality assurance and evaluation infrastructure. This infrastructure involves a range of distinct but interdependent actors and processes and contains explicit and implicit interlinkages with the production of wider policy agendas, such as the rise of the European Education Area. The aim of this paper is to analyse the growth and complexity of Quality Assurance (QA) in higher education (HE) in Europe, as a way of understanding the multifaceted and continuously developing process of Europeanisation.

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Section: Quality Assurance In Higher Education In Europe: Bologna And...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Bologna? Infrastructuring quality in European higher education

Grek

Russell

2023

European Educational Research Journal

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“…Through strategic management and expanding governance networks linked both outwards to transnational actors such as the OECD, IEA and EU and inwards down from the national policy level to municipalities, schools, teachers, and students, the grand simulation proliferates (Addey, Sellar, Steiner-Khamsi, Lingard, & Verger, 2017;Hultqvist et al, 2018;H.-D. Meyer & Benavot, 2013). A comprehensive system of interconnected social technologies produces an increasingly fine-grained simulation of truths reckoned in terms of competences, knowledge, and skills, measured, assessed, and made comparable across all levels (Krejsler, Olsson, & Petersson, 2014. Local municipalities take on commitments to implementing the continuous production of truths and optimization technologies in local schools.…”

Section: When the Grand Simulation Becomes The Performance Operator O...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In 2000, the EU member states' political leaders vowed in the Lisbon Declaration and the ensuing Lisbon Agenda to make the EU 'the world's most dynamic and competitive region among global knowledge economies' (European Commission, 2000). And by the turn of the millennium, sufficient momentum had been gained for the launch of PISA (the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment) along with its transnational companion dream, the Bologna Process, envisioned as creating a European Higher Education Area, both of which become highly agenda-setting assessment regimes that de-contextualize education by numbers (Brøgger, 2018;Krejsler et al, 2014;H.-D. Meyer & Benavot, 2013). After the launch of the PISA process in 2000, the narrative of Danish school students who supposedly read only at mediocre levels intensified, as PISA reveals that they apparently did equally badly in mathematics and science, and thus were collectively failing in what is in Denmark designated as 'the world's most expensive school.'…”

Section: Towards Learning Goals and A National Curriculum: The Simula...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The ‘grand simulation’ and dreams of success by assessment: Baudrillardian reflections on (trans-)national school policy

Krejsler

2019

Journal of Education Policy

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Since the 1990s, European school policy has been steered by management dreams that systematic monitoring and assessment would guide schools and society toward a future of greater quality, efficiency, and growth. This article, drawing on Jean Baudrillard, explores whether it makes sense to rearticulate this dream of optimization by assessment in terms of a 'grand simulation' that brings into circulation a play of signs in terms of global quantifiable comparability supported by the aura of objectivity, statistics and big data. Does this dream of optimization suck us into a virtual world of 'ingrowing obesity,' where an uninterrupted supply of statistics and digital platforms loosens our grip on the real by the alchemical use of numbers, algorithms, and signs? The article argues that by observing school policy as seductive effects of a larger crisis-producing and competition-motivating (self-)assessment simulation, it becomes possible to rearticulate a persistent trend in (trans)national school policies in a language different from this trend's own self-referencing logic-and thus to question the trend itself. Danish school policy demonstrates as a European national case how the simulation changed local educational traditions by building up a national curriculum that made schools and students comparable and hereby amenable to increased assessment. Word count: 9 972 (incl references)2 Observing School Policy and the Dream of Optimization as a SimulationDrawing on Baudrillard's conceptual framework, this article explores the dominant trend of governance by assessment in current school and education policy as a 'grand simulation'. This 'grand simulation' expands both internationally and domestically through integration of national policies into loosely coupled governance networks that extend both outward to transnational actors such as the OECD, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), and the European Union, and inward via national ministries of education to municipalities, schools and 'learning subjects' (Krejsler, 2018;Lawn & Grek, 2012;Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Baudrillard's concept of simulations is furthermore employed to frame the larger context of assessment in school policy in relation to neoliberal reforms and profound changes in

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“…The article builds on two concepts of globalization (Jacobsen, 2022): First, we understand globalization as a process, whereby transnational organizations like the OECD, The World Bank, and the EU turn early childhood education into a policy area. Learning and education become matters of social investment regulated by new forms of governance, where early childhood education carries a promise to contribute to human capital in a global knowledge economy (Krejsler et al, 2014). This new discourse is dominated by especially Anglo-Saxon curriculum traditions (in contrast to continental Bildung traditions (Popesco and Lennerstad, 2010), regarding ECE as part of the education system (in contrast to being a relatively autonomous field).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sorting shapes or connecting dots? Local enactments of globalization in early childhood education in Denmark

Thingstrup

Aabro

Prins

et al. 2023

Global Studies of Childhood

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This article explores how complex globalization processes play out in early childhood education (ECE) in Denmark. The article builds on two concepts of globalization: First, we understand globalization as the ways in which transnational educational policy discourses characterized by neoliberal pedagogical values affect national and local policies. Second, we understand globalization as ways in which cultural diversity as a product of global migration processes is discursively constructed as constituting specific “problems” for early childhood education. Drawing on the first concept of globalization, the article explores how a key policy document, The Strengthened Learning Plan (the SLP), is recontextualized and “put into action” in practice, and whether it leads to practices characterized by globalized neoliberal values at the cost of Nordic pedagogical ideals. We show that the SLP is enacted in very different ways in different centers, giving very different emphasis to globalized and Nordic ideals, respectively, and thus that the globalization of Danish ECE is by no means unambiguous. Looking more closely into the different enactments of the SLP, it becomes clear that they are closely connected to discursive constructions of the demography of the center: Constructions of ethnic minority children draw on culturalized categorizations where children are seen as vulnerable and as lacking, whereas constructions of ethnic majority children draw on non-culturalized categorizations where children are seen as natural and resourceful. Drawing on the second concept of globalization, we argue that the different enactments of early childhood policy build on connections between constructions of cultural diversity (or the lack thereof) and the construction of pedagogical “problems.” As such, the different enactments of the SLP—including those that prioritize Nordic ideals—represent globalization in the sense of constructions of cultural diversity that pose specific problems for early childhood education. Building on these findings, the article argues that the two globalization processes intersect, mutually shaping each other, and affecting how policies are enacted in pedagogical practice.

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The transnational grip on Scandinavian education reforms - The open method of coordination challenging national policy-making

Cited by 26 publications

References 16 publications

Beyond Bologna? Infrastructuring quality in European higher education

Beyond Bologna? Infrastructuring quality in European higher education

The ‘grand simulation’ and dreams of success by assessment: Baudrillardian reflections on (trans-)national school policy

Sorting shapes or connecting dots? Local enactments of globalization in early childhood education in Denmark

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