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.

Modernising education in global times?

As part of the wider restructuring of the public sectors in different societies, policy makers, professional bodies, consultants and circles of experts have worked during the last few decades to ‘modernise’ their education systems and to legitimise new ideas, policies and practices. In this context, the term modernisation has come to refer to attempts at transforming the nation-building education projects that have been pursued during the second part of the twentieth century in many parts of the world and especially intensely in the western world (Seddon and Levin, 2013). Such modernisation efforts are linked to the emergence and contours of globally shared ideas and designs for education, most often based on the logics of human capital formation and the assumption of learning as a key resource for economic growth and social cohesion. Justification for these modernisation projects and calls for change have been offered at different levels: as investment by individuals in their future earning capacity and employability; as a means to achieving national competitive advantage in a global knowledge economy; and as a way to manage residual and resistant populations through social inclusion. However, while ideas and designs voiced by policy makers have often been strikingly similar across the world, different ‘re-regulatory trajectories’ are found in national education spaces, as nation states develop their education reform agendas (Seddon and Levin, 2013: 3).

A point that is worth making about current educational policy and its transformative agendas and claims by policy makers is that modernisation is often conceptualised in too narrow and even ahistorical ways. The many national and transnational education policy documents that include ‘modernisation’ in their titles seldom define educational modernity explicitly (see, for instance, High Level Group on Modernising Higher Education, 2013). Instead, modernisation is associated with a mix of values usually including progress, reform, rational action, efficiency and quality, but sometimes also equality, autonomy and social inclusion. Historically, however, modernisation was linked to enlightenment and was a project for freeing individuals from intellectual and practical domination by churches and crowns. Societal modernisation, an unfinished project in Habermas’ (1985) understanding, can be seen as a process encompassing all parts of life, and it is full of ambiguities and tensions (Giddens, 1990), for instance when it promises citizens freedom, but often undermines it. Contemporary policy discourses draw on the hopes associated with modernisation, but exclude the components of emancipation as well as critical reflexivity that this notion also involves. Furthermore, it ignores long-standing debates about the nature of late capitalist and globalised societies and researchers’ arguments about the need for problematising the categories used to define them (e.g. Thomson, 2006). One of the implications of living in such societies is a heightened awareness that processes of societal modernisation are much more significant, but also much less controllable or predictable than is assumed by global networks, which at the moment design and monitor public policies in education and other fields. As Chris Shilling (1993, in Whitty, 2002: 4), who favoured the concept of ‘high modernity’ to describe changes in the nature of social order, has written:

Modernity brought with it a period of rapid change and the promise of control. In contrast, high modernity is a ‘runaway world’ which is apparently out of control … The consequences of high modernity … have the effect of introducing a radical doubt as to what precise goals education should achieve. These consequences also throw into question whether education systems have the capacity either to be fully controlled, or to accomplish planned social change with any degree of accuracy.

Framing the special issue: Tasks of critical policy analysis

Critical educational policy scholarship has used a variety of approaches and concepts to illuminate what is perceived to be a radical transformation of education, including the landscape of policy making itself. It has highlighted the importance of globalisation including the action of global agencies and the global flows of ideas, people, policies and reforms in the field of education (e.g. Dale and Robertson, 2009; Martens et al., 2007; Rizvi and Lingard, 2010). Such work has discussed, documented and analysed evidence of the effects of globalisation on the new directions of education policies and practices and in the production of globalised agendas for the redesign of state provision and the governance of education (e.g. Lingard and Ozga, 2007). Key themes in critical policy analysis have been the attempts by states to devolve responsibilities and to ‘empower’ local educational agencies and actors (often called ‘new managerialism’); educational reforms introducing ‘quasi-markets’ and more ‘free’ choice in education; the rise of network and ‘heterarchical’ governance (Ball and Junemann, 2012: 137), linking public education with other actors and interests; the introduction of test- and standards-based modes of accountability; and the emergence of a new culture of performativity. All these developments have been seen as linked with new multi-scalar modes of governance (e.g. Ball, 2013; Ball and Junemann, 2012; Lingard, 2011, 2013; Ozga, 2009) and as part of the general attempts to modernise and reshape education and teachers using, and even going beyond, the reform paradigm proposed by NPM.

Critical literature has examined how policies inspired by NPM have subjected the public education sector to radical changes, amounting to a permanent revolution in education reform. Managerial accountability, the use of performance management as a form of steering, leadership discourses and practices for ‘improving’ schools and ‘developing’ teachers and the new ways of controlling education and educational professionals have been researched and discussed. But more research is needed, especially comparative or historical, on how processes of modernisation, inspired by NPM, have been inscribed, interpreted, translated and enacted in nation states across Europe according to their different traditions of state models and welfare regimes. Examples of such work can of course already be found, some in this journal – see, for instance, Neumann et al., 2012; Papanastasiou, 2013; Sundberg and Wahlström, 2012).

The focus of this special issue is on policies and practices of modernisation in European education systems. These systems are increasingly influenced, directly and indirectly, by the development of the European Union (EU). It is well known that for most of its history the EU did not formally interfere too much with educational policies, especially at the school level. However, from the mid-1990s it increasingly attempted to develop common educational policies, arguably a logical development of the movement towards a more politically defined union. Undoubtedly, EU bodies gradually secured a more valid legal basis for policy initiatives in education, and the Lisbon agreements gave education an important role in a general strategy for growth and competitiveness. In this context, the role of EU, especially the Commission and its professional staff, has been widely acknowledged, for instance in the dissemination of NPM practices (e.g. Lawn and Grek, 2012). However, the attempts to generate common European educational policies operate in a complex social, economic and cultural environment characterised by inequalities and tensions (Dale and Robertson, 2009). The member states of the EU as well as other countries of Europe differ from each other on many levels. The ongoing and enormous difficulties of collaboration and coordination of differing national economies in the framework of the Eurozone testifies to this. Such difficulties may also suggest that although the EU project has secured political support, especially from the national elites, its future and consequences remain uncertain. 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.

In order to further understand globalised and Europeanised education policy discourses and practices it is important to study their historical origins and contemporary contexts: How have processes of modernisation been inscribed, interpreted, translated and enacted in nation states across Europe, according to their structures, cultures, traditions and histories of welfare provision? How has the NPM discourse underpinning modernisation projects in different societies of the European nation states been mediated? How are perceptions, values, languages and sensibilities changing through modernisation attempts – the process that critical education policy literature calls ‘vernacular globalisation’ – to account for both global educational policy convergence and divergence (Appadurai, 1996; Lingard, 2000: 103)? Finally, and importantly, to what extent are principles of democracy and equality compatible with the modernising moves of the last few decades?

Articles and key themes

The articles in this special issue confront such questions and contribute to answering them through empirically and theoretically informed accounts from different national contexts in Europe. The articles contribute to shedding light on processes of modernisation through NPM by covering three key topics: (1) the impact of NPM in different European contexts and the analytical tools necessary to study this; (2) the role of the media in interpreting, shaping and disseminating education policy; and (3) the relationship between democratic values and private school education.

The modernising approaches to educational governance grouped under the umbrella of NPM are strongly present in European education policy, both at transnational levels and in individual countries. The first two articles in this issue represent two different approaches to moving beyond the general diagnoses often found in the literature. The article ‘Educational reform and modernisation in Europe: The role of national contexts in mediating the new public management’, by David Hall, Emiliano Grimaldi, Helen M Gunter, Jorunn Møller, Roberto Serpieri and Guri Skedsmo, adopts a comparative approach in order to examine the spread of NPM across the European education systems. Focusing on three European countries, namely England, Italy and Norway, the authors offer new insights into the importance of national contexts and local conditions in mediating the reading, interpretations and shaping of ideas associated with NPM. Their analysis is underpinned by a theoretical framework that seeks to capture the relationship between education and the state and to reveal tensions produced by NPM both as a shaping force and as an entity shaped by local conditions. Their research provides evidence that ideas connected to NPM reforms have been introduced and interpreted quite differently across the three national case studies, and of how these ideas have been translated to align with existing norms and values. The article concludes by focusing on the complexities and specificities of NPM recontextualisation in the three countries as a basis for a reflection upon possible trajectories and effects of global ‘travelling’ policies (Alexiadou and Jones, 2001). Furthermore, the article seeks to encourage discussion, in particular about the capacity of current policy trajectories to address marked and widening social and economic divisions within the European society, contributing to a deeper understanding of the implications of public sector reforms within the field of education.

The second article, ‘Transformations in the field of symbolic control and their implications for the Greek educational administration’, by Anna Tsatsaroni, Polychronis Sifakakis and Antigone Sarakinioti, confines its focus to a single country, Greece, but supports its empirical study with a strong theoretical framework and a historical perspective. The authors advance the argument that theoretical perspectives on governance can be developed considerably through their exposure to Bernstein’s sociological theory of symbolic control and totally pedagogised society. At the empirical level, their research explores transformations in the field of educational administration resulting from the implementation of ideas and practices of NPM, evident in the processes of selection, training and professional practice of mid-level administrative staff. Their analysis functions as an illustration of the view that the ongoing modernising project in Greece is essentially a process of ‘pedagogisation’. The authors argue that the shifts identified in discourse and practice, especially through policies of evaluation and evidence-based performance, have the dynamic to transform this field of action. They conclude that the changes attempted, evident also in the proliferation of pedagogising discourses, raise fundamental questions about the deep implications of global modernising policies for education, its specialised professionals and the entire society.

Critical analyses of transnational education policy have often focused on policy making ‘from above’ and the role of international organisations like the EU, OECD and the World Bank. The more recent interest in network governance has added important insights into such analyses. Studies of the role of the media in transnational education policy stability and change also contribute knowledge and understanding. Education, and especially education outside the national context, previously seldom made headlines. But in today’s expanding and diversified printed and electronic media, education does receive considerable coverage, and this contributes to shaping the public images of schools, teachers and pupils as well as public opinion on priorities in education. An example is the media reports on rankings in the OECD PISA surveys, which have clearly contributed to the shaping of educational agendas in different countries (e.g. Martens and Niemann, 2010; Pons, 2012; Takayama et al., 2013; Waldow et al., 2014). But media coverage can take different forms, and its impact can of course vary depending on the national and political context in which it is embedded. The third article in this special issue looks at media reports on another transnational survey. Pia Cort and Anne Larson analyse the coverage in the Danish media of the first survey results from the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), published in October 2013, in their article ‘The non-shock of PIAAC: Tracing the discursive effects of PIAAC in Denmark’. The authors analyse how the PIAAC survey results were covered by the media and how different stakeholders within the field of adult literacy took PIAAC as an opportunity to try to influence how the problem of adult literacy in Denmark should be represented. The authors conclude that PIAAC did not provoke the same kind of national ‘shock’ as PISA and that adult literacy is low on the political agenda compared to basic schooling.

The media also contributes to shaping the images that citizens in different European countries have of each other’s education systems and practices and are involved in constructing what is perceived as politically valid and legitimate ‘reference societies’ (cf. Schriewer and Martinez, 2004; Sellar and Lingard, 2013) when launching NPM inspired reforms. A case of this is investigated in the fourth article, ‘Marketisation on export. Representations of the Swedish free school model in English media’, by Linda Rönnberg. She explores how a market-orientated policy idea, the Swedish system of free schools, is framed and portrayed by the English media. The study illustrates the importance of acknowledging the media as a format of communication in processes of policy transfer by providing certain communicative frames of reference during such processes. In this instance, the media simultaneously reinforced and challenged national stereotypes via the representation of ‘social democratic’ Sweden in combination with treating international assessments (i.e. PISA) as incontrovertible ‘evidence’. The study also shows how Swedish policy ‘retailers’, such as school chain representatives, effectively use the media for further display and reach. As such, they are not only selling policy ideas but also expanding their share in the global ‘edu-business’. The author concludes that media–policy interactions, which (re)interpret national stereotypes in ways linked to political legitimation, are important sources for understanding international flows and interpretations of NPM inspired reform ideas.

Issues of whether and how to balance the ‘public’ and ‘private’ in education systems have often been surrounded by political controversy. Even so, the countries of Europe adhere – more or less convincingly – to democratic procedures and values and maintain that their school systems should reflect and help develop such values. Private schools, on the other hand, are generally not seen as integral parts of public democratic systems, and it is often argued that the growth of private education undermines both the principles of public welfare and democracy. The situation is more complex of course, and in a country like Denmark, for instance, access to private schooling has traditionally been regarded as a democratic right for citizens who wanted their children to be taught on a different religious or ideological basis than the one instituted by the state (Powell, 2012). In the fifth and final article, ‘The public good in English private school governance’, Ruth Boyask points out that, though it is a rare phenomenon, there are nevertheless some private schools which attempt to mitigate the anti-democratic qualities of the private schooling sector in England. The article reports on a study of private schools that aim to promote equality and participation, exploring the extent to which the governance structures within the schools support their aspirations. The author provides evidence that some private schools have a commitment to the public good that extends beyond the limited accountabilities set by the legislation for the operation of private schools. Boyask argues that such evidence demonstrates the weaknesses of the public good as it is presently defined by the state and also helps to increase understanding of the extent to which these schools can be regarded as counter-publics.

Looking ahead: Critical policy research in European education

The five papers included in this special issue were originally presented at the ECER conference in Porto in 2014 as contributions to Network 23: Policy Studies and Politics of Education. A pivotal interest of this network concerns the question of how we can make sense of trends in European education policy and practice in the wider context of contemporary globalism. Modernising projects, a favourable term of global network actors, has been discussed in critical policy research and in the articles of this special issue as globally emanating political projects to restructure and reform educational systems, schooling institutions and educational professionals and pupils, according to criteria and standards compatible with global competitive worlds. Our critical note earlier about societal modernisation suggests that much more can be done towards unearthing older but still valuable intellectual ideas and debates in order to strengthen the bases for critical reflection and discussion on such political projects.

An important dimension of modernising moves and the NPM approach to reforms in education has been the promotion of private/public partnerships and privatisations, both globally and at the level of European education policy formation. Though the papers in this special issue could not, obviously, cover the whole spectrum of issues related to this dimension, the focus on the role of the media in such processes, and on influencing policy more generally, is illuminating. These papers stand as reminders to the education research community about the importance of media coverage when researching education policy formation, stability and change, a point which is advanced, managed and strategically used by, for instance, those who organise, plan and disseminate results from international surveys, or advocate policy ‘solutions’ to ‘given’ problems (Wiseman, 2013). For critical education researchers this poses questions about how to create and employ analytical tools to study the role of the media in the articulation of prevailing discourses and in the shaping of ‘legitimate’ practices. Finally, even if the papers of this special issue only marginally touched upon the question of the extent to which democratic principles and principles of equality are compatible with the modernising moves in education, Boyask’s paper is refreshing in the way it attempts to open rather than close the debate on what ‘public’ education might mean in today’s world.

Boyask’s paper can also serve as a useful reminder of an important task for critical policy analysis: making the value basis of criticism explicit (Gewirtz and Cribb, 2009). All too often, critical assessments of contemporary education policies and reforms draw on non-explicit assumptions about the qualities of alternative or previous systems. For instance, ‘quasi-markets’ and more ‘free’ school choice in education undoubtedly have serious flaws, not the least being increased inequality, but acknowledging that should not necessarily lead to inferences that previous systems, where parents and students were tied to one school district with no chance of influencing practices of their local school, were better. NPM undermines traditional forms of teacher professionalism, but, historically, teacher professionalism has often taken narrow and authoritarian forms. Critical policy research does not have an obligation to specify realistic alternatives to the policies or institutions under criticism, but it does have an obligation to be aware of its own values and to be able to state them as explicitly as possible, thereby contributing to and opening up future important debate and dialogue on education policy issues in Europe and beyond.