| European Educational | ISSN 1474-9041 | ||
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Volume 6 Number 3 2007 | |||
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CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text] | |||
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SPECIAL ISSUE
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Introduction to Special Issue |
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doi:10.2304/eerj.2007.6.3.198 |
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Education reforms dismantling centralised education bureaucracies are emerging all over Europe. A main aim is to enhance autonomy at local government and school levels. As a result new forms of regulation in education are being established. By regulation we mean the public activity which is normatively founded in the law and the legislative procedures aiming to supervise and control what is subject to regulation (Lægreid & Christensen, 2006). Hence, deregulation implies a reduction of centrally directed activity. The introduction of private schools followed by the marketisation of state schooling within decentralised systems of control where responsibilities are devolved to municipalities are examples of deregulation. Re-regulation occurs when central government reclaims control, often in an indirect manner through such means as target setting, performance measurement and the use of quality indicators. This thematic issue is devoted to exploring the deregulation and re-regulation of compulsory education in Britain and Scandinavia. Traditionally education in Scandinavia has been subject to rigorous central regulation. Yet during the last two decades it has undergone processes of decentralisation and deregulation and, more recently – since the beginning of this century – signs of re-regulation have appeared. In Britain education reforms have followed a different direction, moving away from local governance towards a system of stronger central regulation and increased marketisation. In both Britain and the Scandinavian countries these developments are associated with the rise of the New Public Management (NPM). NPM approaches to education and welfare provision involve challenging central government control and emphasising greater autonomy at subordinate levels and entities in order to promote cost containment, efficiency, service quality and consumer empowerment. However, deregulation emphasising increased local autonomy seems to accommodate mechanisms which, paradoxically, tend to increase central control. The concept of autonomy is commonly understood as freedom and capacity to act (Lundquist, 1987). A consequence of this enhanced freedom and capacity to act at a local level is that the central government loses its grip. Accordingly, in both the Scandinavian and British reforms we observe a kind of re-regulation through the introduction of audit and control systems of reporting and evaluation in the public sector. Yet, at the same time, the importance of autonomous municipalities and schools is still being emphasised. Thus, there seems to be an interaction and overlapping of state control and local autonomy which will be explored from different angles throughout this journal issue. The articles problematise and contest some aspects of how local autonomy – i.e. the autonomy of local authorities, schools and professionals – is treated within NPM discourse. The NPM rhetoric around autonomy is ambiguous. On the one hand, the NPM logic favours a considerable degree of independence for local political and professional decision makers. On the other hand, the NPM has involved the use of central political decision making to frame local autonomy, so that in practice, a clear-cut division between both autonomy and control and politics and professionalism is difficult to uphold.. The growing influence of the NPM in the field of education is also transforming the relationship between politics and professionalism in significant ways. Implicitly, a profession is defined by its jurisdiction over a specific occupational field (Abbott, 1988). However, advocates of NPM tend to argue for a reduction of professional influence in politics (Byrkjeflot, 2005) whilst professionals tend to mistrust politicians’ capacity to govern. This means that teacher autonomy might conflict with politicians’ interest in governing education, Moreover, NPM implies new conditions for professionals, emphasising an individualised type of professionalism which relies on situational knowledge, competence and performance (Svensson, 2006) in contrast to the more traditional conditions of formal education, occupation, monopoly and licensing. Linked to this is NPM’s emphasis on openness and a wider public understanding of processes, results and effects in education, sometimes referred to as transparency processes. Accordingly, schools and professionals are becoming more accountable for providing education and achieving results. This trend is reflected in the increased use of performance measurement technologies, such as regularly administered standardised national tests, inspections and evaluations, to monitor the performance of both educational providers and students. However, although different national educational systems are being re-regulated by the introduction of more or less similar reforms, there is still a lack of understanding about the degree of convergence or divergence due to difficulties in making meaningful cross-national comparisons. Discussions of these questions from a comparative perspective have tended to anticipate a convergence of western educational systems. The articles in this issue reject this stance. The degree of convergence and divergence that can be observed depends on the focus or level of analysis and the determination of indicators to be compared. Changes can be identified at different stages and levels; for instance, in political ideas and debates, in reform decisions, in actual practice or in policy results (cf. Pollitt, 2001), or at central, municipal, school or classroom levels. Conclusions about convergence in education at one stage or level do not necessarily correspond with convergence at others; and increased devolution and accountability, as well as demands for audit and control, might have different motivations (e.g. educational quality-related or cost-saving related motivations) and effects in different countries. The contributions to this issue were first presented at the workshop ‘Local autonomy or state control? Exploring the effects of new regulation in education’ at the Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies, University of Bergen, supported by the Norwegian Research Council. The contributions reflect the interdisciplinary character of the workshop and include comparisons between Britain and Scandinavian countries, and between Norway and Sweden and Scotland and England. Two of the three European welfare state models, i.e. the social democratic and the liberal, are included (cf. Esping Andersen, 2002). National comparisons of the consequences of new modes of regulation for local or professional autonomy are relatively limited in educational research. In order to make meaningful comparisons of the consequences of new forms of regulation in compulsory education several clarifications and tasks are needed. In the article ‘Unpacking Autonomy and Control in Education: some conceptual and normative groundwork for a comparative analysis’ Alan Cribb & Sharon Gewirtz make a contribution to this relatively neglected field of educational research. The article begins with a consideration of some of the conceptual complexities involved in making sense of autonomy and control, sketching out a three-dimensional analytical scheme focused on: the loci and modes of autonomy (who are the agents and how is their agency being exercised?), the domains of autonomy and control (what are the spheres over which autonomy/control is being exercised?) and the loci and modes of control (the general forms and specific mechanisms by which autonomy is regulated, the agents of control and how their agency is exercised). Then, by setting out the main arguments around autonomy and control, the article goes on to illustrate the major value conflicts that arise in processes of enacting autonomy/control. A particular purpose of the article is to avoid the seemingly widespread – and usually unspoken – normative presumption that autonomy is good and control is bad. In education the balance between local autonomy and state control is obviously important but what is exactly at stake if we speak about the balance shifting between the two? Teachers do need both autonomy and control; the issue is the balance between the closely linked ideas and the forms they take in combination. There is no doubt that the balance between state control and local autonomy has been challenged in Swedish compulsory education. From being once strongly state centred, compulsory education has from the beginning of the 1990s been affected by far-reaching reforms which have attempted to deregulate the schooling system and increase local autonomy. A new policy initiative on school time which allows school professionals freedom to make decisions on time distribution was implemented as a five-year experiment from 1999. In the article ‘A Recent Swedish Attempt to Weaken State Control and Strengthen School Autonomy: the experiment with local time schedules’ Linda Rönnberg analyses and discusses whether the experiment has affected school autonomy. In order to understand local autonomy two dimensions have to be accounted for: the freedom to act and local actors’ capacity to act. The experiment made discretionary space available for local actors but in some cases local autonomy was limited by the actors’ limited capacity for action. Rönnberg argues that both of these dimensions need to be considered in any analysis of local autonomy. She also suggests that even if the actors have the discretionary space and the capacity to make use of that space they may lack an interest in implementing reforms, or they may see the reforms as irrelevant. The authorities’ lack of effort in building schools’ capacity and interest in making use of local freedom suggests the reform may be essentially symbolic in character and this may also explain why some schools avoided implementing the experiment. In line with Rönnberg’s findings based on the study of the Swedish local time schedule project is the idea that devolution of decision making to school level does not mean that teachers are necessarily capable of making use of the autonomy. Nor does devolution necessarily correspond to a strengthening of teachers’ status and authority. Teachers’ professional autonomy in Sweden and Norway is sensitive to the complexity of changing conditions. In the article ‘Towards a New Professionalism in School? A Comparative Study of Teacher Autonomy in Norway and Sweden’ Ingrid Helgøy & Anne Homme explore changes in education regulation in the two countries and their implications for teacher autonomy. The comparison, which is based on policy analysis and teacher interviews, indicates a striking difference in the conditions for teacher professionalism in the two countries: while Norwegian teachers’ daily work has been regulated by a prescriptive and detailed national curriculum, the autonomy of Swedish teachers has been framed by a goal-oriented national curriculum. The Norwegian teachers are characterised by weakened individual autonomy but also by a relatively strong collective professional identity. Teachers accept national standards and control in education which function to provide a secure body of professional knowledge for teachers and to underline the significance of teachers’ formal education. In contrast, Swedish teachers experience a high degree of individual autonomy but rely on a more personalised type of professionalism emphasising teachers’ knowledge, competence and performance as individual properties. Based on this finding Helgøy & Homme identify a need to redefine the concept of professionalism and suggest a differentiation between old and new professionalism. Using the dimension of individualism/collectivism the authors explore the concept of teacher professionalism and point to the limits of autonomy in relation to devolved responsibilities in the governing of education. Helgøy & Homme’s study of teacher autonomy in Norway and Sweden indicates considerable differences between two countries often described as very similar. Cross-national comparisons in the field of education show that while globalisation may be a convergent force, nationalism can act as a divergent force. A comparison of aspects of NPM at work in Scotland and England highlights some significant differences. Margaret Arnott & Ian Menter explore the relationship between local autonomy and central control. Their article ‘The Same but Different? Post-devolution Regulation and Control in Scotland and England’ analyses changes in secondary education policy. Privatisation, performativity and the policy process are examined in the two national contexts. Arnott & Menter argue that to understand the ways NPM has evolved in post-devolution UK it is essential to analyse pressures for convergence and divergence in education. The welfare state and the public sector were questioned in the 1980s and 1990s in Scotland, but the loss of public confidence was not perceived to be as striking as in England. The premise of much of the NPM agenda was that the public sector was failing. The process of questioning in the Scottish political scene arguably stemmed from financial pressures rather than a questioning of relationships between welfare professionals, the state and individuals, which drove the agenda in England. Although there is evidence that aspects of the Scottish cultural tradition and visions of ‘the new Scotland’ are having effects on both policy processes and outcomes, the signs of convergence in the enactment of NPM are strong when comparing Scotland and England. However, the impact of market forces and competition on schools and local authorities is much more visible in England than has been the case in Scotland. Even though NPM is evident in the regulation of education in both countries, national historical institutional traditions act as modifying influences. Changes in the governance of education are considered to be a common trait shared by the Nordic countries and Britain. Devolution and NPM reforms are shared characteristics implying a shift from government to governance, from strong hierarchical educational systems to decentralisation and local autonomy including an expansion in the numbers of actors influencing education. In the article ‘Governing the Governance of Education – the state strikes back?’ Christine Hudson suggests that the state is able to adapt to changing circumstances and find new ways of governing rather than being forced to step back and allow other interests to play the primary role in governing education. The argument is built upon a comparison of the education systems in the Nordic countries and Britain. The comparison shows that despite cross-national differences all countries have introduced new forms of ‘soft’ regulation and have widened the range of actors involved in education. Because of the importance of education the state will not disappear, Hudson argues; rather, the increased use of output controls indicate that the state is more present than ever but that it is operating in coexistence with other actors. This challenges some of the literature on governance which implies a ‘hollowing out’ of the state. The articles in this thematic issue offer new insights for understanding and evaluating the nature and operation of local autonomy and central control in education. From different perspectives the articles illuminate the dynamic processes of decentralisation and centralisation and the relationships between them. The articles show how processes of regulation can be both congruent and incongruent. In general, increased local autonomy seems to imply strengthened state control. However, this sample of nation-specific studies implies different combinations of state regulation–local autonomy relations and different degrees to which local autonomy is being utilised. The collection of articles represents an initial step which points to three main issues around which there is considerable scope for further research. First, the normative connotations of autonomy as solely beneficial are opposed by findings in the articles. For example, local autonomy can be an efficient tool for producing variation which in turn might increase social inequality in, and unequal access to, education. Further, local autonomy can threaten teachers’ collective professional identity by individualising demands for teacher performance. Second, there is a need for multilevel analysis in education research. The specific patterns of interconnection between the different levels in the governance of education shape education practice; and policy effects have to be explored at school level and be related to subsequent processes of policy making. Third, we hope to have demonstrated the advantage of doing cross-national analysis in education. National education policies are inspired by global trends but modified within national institutional contexts. The difference between England and Scotland, despite a long period under the same education government, shows the significance of national educational traditions. The Scottish national identity has been prominent in both pre- and post-devolution Scotland. In contrast, Norway and Sweden have similar national educational traditions but because of different financial positions reforms have been implemented differently since the 1990s. Accordingly, it would seem that national transformations of global trends may be driven by different forces set into motion by specific incidents. Ingrid Helgøy, Anne Homme & Sharon Gewirtz References |
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Unpacking Autonomy and Control in Education: some conceptual and normative groundwork for a comparative analysis |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2007.6.3.203 |
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To make meaningful comparisons of the consequences of new modes of regulation in education for local autonomy in different national settings we need to a) be clear about what is meant by local autonomy and state control, b) be clear about why the balance between local autonomy and state control matters and c) produce good quality empirical data and analysis. The purpose of this article is to make a contribution to the first two of these tasks which are relatively neglected in the education research literature. The authors begin by unpacking some conceptual complexities involved in debating issues of autonomy and control, distinguishing between three dimensions of autonomy-control: loci and modes of autonomy, domains of autonomy-control and loci and modes of control. They then go on to illustrate some of the normative complexities surrounding issues of autonomy-control, using the case of individual teacher autonomy to explore arguments about the value of autonomy and control. Finally, the authors discuss the implications of these complexities for the task of policy analysis. In doing so, they seek to: ‘trouble’ the presumption that autonomy is necessarily good; challenge the notion that control and autonomy are discrete entities in some simple zero-sum relationship to one another, drawing attention to the ways in which control can be seen as ‘productive’ as well as ‘destructive’ of autonomy; and sketch out the multi-dimensional nature of cross-national comparative evaluation of regulation in education. |
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A Recent Swedish Attempt to Weaken State Control and Strengthen School Autonomy: the experiment with local time schedules |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2007.6.3.214 |
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In 1999, after a series of far-reaching reforms aiming at decentralisation, deregulation and increased local autonomy in Swedish education, the Government decided to introduce a five-year experiment, which would develop these reform efforts even further. Even though Swedish compulsory schools already were the most autonomous in Europe with regard to decision making on school time, an experiment which allowed schools to freely decide time allocation and time management was launched. At least on paper, the experiment indicates a shift from state control to local autonomy, allowing school professionals to be free to make decisions on time distribution previously controlled by the state. The aim is to analyse and discuss whether the experiment has affected school autonomy or not and how this can be understood. The theoretical point of departure is a two-dimensional view of autonomy, where both freedom of action and capacity for action need to be taken into account. The freedom of action (the discretionary space for local actors) provided within the experiment is analysed through three properties of the experimental programme: programme clarity, division of responsibilities and control mechanisms. The schools’ capacity for action concerns the extent participating schools make use of the discretion provided within the experiment. This is analysed in three schools with reference to their ability to organise themselves in a flexible way, as well as to what extent the schools have shown previous capacity for action and readiness for reform. Based on this analysis of the experiment, it is concluded that if reform efforts are made to increase school autonomy, they should not one-sidedly be focused on increasing local actors’ freedom of action (such as abolishing the national time schedule). Such efforts should also be accompanied by measures to reinforce local actors’ capacity for action. Unless local actors can make use of the discretion given to them by a superior (political) body, local autonomy will be far less than was intended, since freedom to act exceeds the actual capacity to act. |
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Towards a New Professionalism in School? A Comparative Study of Teacher Autonomy in Norway and Sweden |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2007.6.3.232 |
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Local autonomy is one of the recent trends in reforms of compulsory education. However, several parallel trends such as individual accountability, performance and visibility challenge professional autonomy. The aim of this article is to explore how accountability and transparency reforms affect teacher autonomy in Norway and Sweden. The authors argue that both individual teacher autonomy at the local workplace and autonomy at the national level embracing teachers as a collective group are important in analysing teachers’ professional autonomy. In comparing teachers’ professional autonomy they differentiate between processes of individualisation and collectivisation. Their analysis indicates, although intra-national differences, that the difference between Norwegian and Swedish teachers is striking. While the Swedish teachers experience a high degree of individual autonomy, their influence on national policy processes seems weakened. This leads to the assumption that professional autonomy as a result of transparency and accountability reforms, even if the teachers report individual professional autonomy, reduces the authority of the profession at the national policy-making level. The analysis indicates that Norwegian teachers are characterized by old professionalism. The strong input regulations in Norway limit individual teacher autonomy. Even with weakened individual autonomy, teachers still manage to supply conditions for national education policy making. This means that teachers still are autonomous at the collective level. Moreover, the findings indicate that national standards and control in education are accepted as tools for securing professional knowledge and status. |
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The Same but Different? Post-devolution Regulation and Control in Education in Scotland and England |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2007.6.3.250 |
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When ‘New Labour’ came to power in the United Kingdom in 1997, one of their first major initiatives was to establish new devolved political institutions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Drawing upon developments in education in Scotland and England, this article explores some aspects of ‘regulation’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘control’ in the post-devolution context. The purpose of the article is to assess the ways in which New Public Management have influenced education policy in the two countries. Aspects of the governance of education are examined in the two national contexts. The ‘modernisation’ of the teaching profession is examined as a particular case, as well as more general aspects of governance. A number of similarities and differences in the two countries are identified. The themes that best demonstrate these similarities and differences are privatisation, performativity and the policy process. The conclusion seeks to identify the extent to which developments in either or both countries can be attributed to the global neo-liberal agenda. |
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Governing the Governance of Education: the state strikes back? |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2007.6.3.266 |
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In many countries, there have been changes in the way in which education is governed, with greater fragmentation of responsibility between the state, local government, schools, individuals and the market often accompanied by a move from detailed regulation to framework legislation. Previously, these developments have been seen as part of the move from government to governance whereby the state is forced to step back and allow other interests to play a role. However, in recent years more subtle theories of governance have been developed which argue that, rather than retreating, the state is adapting to changing circumstances and finding new ways of governing. The importance of education not only in terms of creating and maintaining national identity but also for economic development suggests that this is an area from which the state will not willingly abdicate its role. This article suggests that support for the new governance theories can be found in the field of education. It argues that the growth in the attempts to control educational outputs through, for example, demands for quality controls, standardized testing, evaluations and so on and the introduction of national bodies responsible for carrying out these controls can be interpreted as a sign that the state, far from relinquishing its role, is finding other ways of controlling education. A comparative approach is adopted and these ideas are explored in relation to education systems in the Nordic and British countries. The article draws on a qualitative analysis of official policy documents, legislation and official statements concerning education in the respective countries. |
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Scientometric Approaches to Better Visibility of European Educational Research Publications: a state-of-the-art-report |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2007.6.3.303 |
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This article reports on methodological approaches to evaluate the relevance and quality of educational research publications. In the first section it focuses on the ISI Social Science Citation Index and shows that this standard instrument for bibliometric measurement is insufficient for the representation of European educational research. In the following sections, alternative approaches are delineated in order to constitute the proposal of a multi-attributive setting for a new observation and evaluation instrument for social science academic publications. The final section outlines a project proposal submitted to the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union, supported by the European Educational Research Association (EERA). |
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