Abstract
The results of the first PIAAC survey were published in October 2013. In the case of Denmark, the survey showed that Denmark is below the OECD average when it comes to reading skills, above average with regards to numeracy and on average with regards to IT skills. In this paper we analyse how the PIAAC 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 analysis is based on Bacchi’s
Keywords
Introduction
While education used to be mainly a matter for national policy, inter- and transnational organisations such as the OECD and the EU have gained increasing influence, not least in terms of framing debates on the purpose of education. In a German study, Jakobi and Martens (2007) show how the number of references to the OECD in the German educational debate has increased from 54 articles in 1996 to 403 articles in 2004. At the European level, joint declarations and processes set the agenda for vocational education (the Copenhagen Declaration), higher education (the Bologna Declaration) and adult education (the Lisbon process).
At the same time, education has become entwined with human capital theory stressing the need for competences in the labour market and downplaying the role education can play in other aspects of human life. Competences have become a commodity and are perceived as an important contributory factor for ensuring national competitiveness in a global economy. In this process, international comparisons and rankings have come to play a central part in positioning nation states and their human capital reserves vis-à-vis each other (Grek, 2012; Hamilton, 2012, 2014; Tsatsaroni and Evans, 2014).
The OECD takes a prominent role in the production of international ranking formats with effects on national education policy: Education at a Glance, Thematic Reporting and, not least, the comparative skills surveys. The most influential of the OECD’s surveys is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assessing the literacy of 15-year-old school pupils within the fields of reading, mathematics and science. Since the first PISA results were published in October 2001, the survey has changed the policy making landscape within basic schooling. The survey has proved to be a: ‘powerful policy instrument that is able to penetrate different kinds of policy making regimes establishing itself as a “gold standard” of performance assessment’ (Ozga, 2012: 169).
The publishing of PISA results draws headlines and has led countries into a state of ‘PISA shock’ (Grek, 2009), the media playing a central role in setting the agenda. As Carvalho (2012) phrases it: ‘During the last decade, the Programme for International Student Assessment … has been present in newspapers and other media formats, at least triennially, in accordance with the periodicity of the survey’. In Germany, in 2001, the media talked about educational disaster (Klemm, 2014). The German news magazine
In relation to adult education policy, in 1994 the OECD initiated a survey, the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), in cooperation with Statistics Canada (OECD and Statistics Canada, 2000, 2005, 2011). This survey involved nine countries in the first round and was later expanded to more countries. In Canada IALS has had a major influence on adult education policy and: ‘shifted adult literacy education toward a restrictive discourse that privileges skills for economic competition, not literacy for life-wide and life-long learning’ (Gardner, 2014). Hamilton (2014) argues that, though not directly translated into national policy in England, the underlying features of IALS also influenced English national policy objectives.
As such, international comparisons like PISA and the IALS have had an impact on the modernisation of the European education systems in the 21st century, and it could be expected that the same would be the case for the new OECD survey, PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies). Taking the influence of PISA on national policymaking into consideration, and also the role played by the media in provoking a state of national ‘shock’, the results of PIAAC were anticipated and to some degree dreaded by adult education researchers: what would PIAAC bring about once the results were published? At the School of Education at Aarhus University, the online broadcast of the first PIAAC results was viewed by researchers anticipating heated media coverage as Denmark fell below the OECD average with regards to reading skills. However, it turned out to be an anti-climax: the media and political interest in PIAAC was virtually non-existent. According to Klemm (2014), the results of PIAAC were also awaited with anticipation in Germany – at least among those working in the field of adult education. However, as in Denmark, the publication of the first PIAAC report did not lead to anything like the strong reactions that followed the first PISA report, and the media’s interest in the PIAAC results only lasted for a couple of days. This was in spite of the fact that Germany did not do well in this ‘international comparative competition’.
The aim of this article is to examine the media coverage following the launch of the first PIAAC results and look into how, by whom and with what discursive effects the PIAAC results were represented within the field of adult literacy in Denmark. The paper falls into five sections: a background description of adult literacy and its provision in the Danish context; a brief introduction to Bacchi’s ‘what’s the problem represented to be?’ approach to policy analysis; an introduction to Kingdon and Zahariadis’ multiple streams theory; our analysis of the PIAAC media coverage in Denmark; and the problem representations offered by different stakeholders within adult literacy as well as the discursive effects of these problem representations for policy related to adult literacy. With reference to multiple streams theory, we will offer a possible explanation of why the PIAAC results were not taken up in the immediate aftermath of their publication.
Adult literacy in Denmark
In the following section we provide a brief introduction to adult education in Denmark with a specific focus on the provision offered to people with low reading, writing or numeracy (the 3Rs) skills. The aim is to set the context of adult education in Denmark.
According to OECD’s Education at a Glance from 2014, 66% of Danes aged 25 to 64 participated in formal and/or non-formal education in 2012 with a higher participation rate among employed people. Together with Finland and Sweden, Denmark is among the top ranking countries when it comes to participation in adult education and training (OECD, 2014).
It might, therefore, not come as a surprise that adult education in Denmark comprises a variety of public provisions covering all levels of the education system. The adult education system is, broadly speaking, divided into three subsystems, although the boundaries between these subsystems have increasingly become less clear cut: general adult education, vocationally orientated adult education and liberal adult education. As the development of these subsystems has happened separately, there are differences in organisation and financial conditions, as well as different governmental affiliations (Milana and Larson, 2009: 15). Most of the institutions offering adult education are self-governing state institutions financed partly by the state and partly by tuition fees paid either by a local public authority, commissioning enterprises or by the participants themselves. Dependent on the fulfilment of certain conditions, participants may receive a national adult education grant (SVU).
In terms of adult literacy, the Danish adult education system offers a broad range of possibilities to adults with low literacy levels. These provisions are offered both at adult education centres and as in-company courses.
Methodology
The ‘what’s the problem represented to be?’ approach to policy studies
The paper draws on the policy research methodology developed by Professor Carol Bacchi over the course of a decade:
Consequently, the starting point for a WPR policy analysis is what is taken for granted: the representations of the problems. The aim is to understand how specific problem representations close off alternative representations and thus legitimise policies and create the impression that a particular policy is indeed the
The WPR approach offers a framework for analysing how problems are represented in a specific policy or within a specific policy area through six analytical questions. 2 For the purpose of this article, we will look into the questions relating to problem representations and their underlying assumptions, silences and, not least, how the problem representations are produced, disseminated and defended in the media. Our point of departure is the reactions to the publication of the PIAAC results, and we analyse the media coverage and how different actors represented the problem of the PIAAC results.
Method
The paper is based on a document analysis of articles and press releases following in the wake of the publication of the PIAAC results. The database
Setting the agenda – influencing the discourse
Alongside Bacchi’s WPR approach, we use Kingdon’s and Zahariadis’ multiple streams theory to understand how PIAAC opens up a window of opportunity for policymakers and policy entrepreneurs to represent the problem of literacy differently.
Though WPR and the multiple streams theory originate from two different traditions, Kingdon’s and Zahariadis’ multiple streams theory, which evolved from a neo-institutionalist approach (Kingdon, 1984; Zahariadis, 2003, 2014), is in line with Bacchi’s discourse analytic approach, stressing that problems are social constructions and not objective facts independent of agents, time and space. ‘Problems’, according to multiple streams theory, are what we define as problems, and this is one of three streams or processes influencing political agendas and decisions. The two remaining streams are politics (ideologies and national moods) and policy (potential solutions). 4
One of the points in the theory is that political decisions are not necessarily the result of problems searching for solutions, but might as well be the result of solutions looking for problems to hook up to (see Cohen et al., 1972). Decisions are made when the three streams are coupled or, as Zahariadis puts it: ‘The main argument is that policies are the result of problems, solutions, and politics, coupled or joined together by policy entrepreneurs during open windows of opportunity’ (Zahariadis, 2003: 1–2).
The release of the first PIAAC results could be a potential window of opportunity opening up for new policy solutions in relation to adult education, just as the release of PISA results has repeatedly been for schools. The windows of opportunity can open either in the problem stream or in the political stream, and which stream they open in will have an influence on what kind of policy is likely to be adopted. According to Zahariadis: ‘windows that open in the problem stream encourage the adoption of problem-solving policies, whereas windows in the politics stream foster a process whereby policies are in search of a rationale’ (Zahariadis, 2003: 66). In the process of setting the political agenda, the actors involved become important. Taking policy making, as characterised by ambiguity, as its starting point, the theory also assumes that participation in the process is fluid. That is, those who are involved in the process vary over time dependent, among other things, on potential foci: ‘Participants vary in the amount of time and effort they devote to different domains; involvement varies from one time to another’ (Cohen et al., 1972: 1). In addition, preferences are seen as unclear in that people and organisations involved in the process are not always aware of what they want – or, if they are, how to prioritise the different aims. Furthermore, these aims can be contradictory. A ‘problem’ might therefore be taken off the agenda, not because it was solved but because other ‘problems’ caught the attention of the participants (Kingdon, 1984; Zahariadis, 2003, 2014).
Zahariadis, in particular, stresses the influence of ‘policy entrepreneurs’; i.e. those who are able to manage ambiguity and spend the resources needed to influence the coupling of the three streams when an opportunity arises (or to actively create an opportunity), and thereby to define the public and political agendas, for instance by using framing, ‘salami tactics’ (minor changes that go more or less unnoticed, but ultimately result in huge changes) or symbols. Policy entrepreneurs can be members of the government, interest groups or researchers/research institutions (Kingdon, 1984; Zahariadis, 2014). How successful policy entrepreneurs are in their efforts to couple the three streams advocating their ideas and ‘pet proposals’ depends on their connections as well as the resources they are willing to spend (Kingdon, 1984; Zahariadis, 2003).
Steiner-Khamsi (2010) criticises multiple streams theory for ignoring the international dimension and further stresses that the three streams might not be as independent as the theory suggests when it comes to education policy: ‘In educational policy, for example, the “problem stream” and “policy stream” are often inextricably linked, especially when it comes to evidence-based policy planning or … to “managing for results”’ (Steiner-Khamsi, 2010: 338). However, she also indicates that the theory can be used to understand: ‘why some problem streams transform into raging rivers’ (Steiner-Khamsi, 2010: 338) or, as in our study, why they do not.
In the present study, by combining Zahariadis and Bacchi, we are interested in looking into both how the actors on the one hand are framed by discourse and, on the other hand, are actively contributing to the change of discourse (Ball, 1993). 5 In doing so, our intention is to achieve a dynamic relationship between discourse and agency and between different approaches to policy analysis. PIAAC opens up a window of opportunity for actors to establish new conjunctures of problems, solutions and politics and thereby contribute to the change of discourse. We would like to emphasise that discourse is not only that which ‘speaks us’ (Ball, 1993:14). Discourse reflects power relations and is not just ‘out there’ as some kind of determining structure; social actors actively influence discourse.
The role of the media and interest groups
Among the many actors involved in defining the agenda are the media and interest groups and professional organisations, and it is these two sectors that are the focus of our study. Although other platforms, not least social media such as Facebook and Twitter, may have become more influential than traditional media, like newspapers and television, it is our view that Cohen’s statement from 1963, that: ‘the press … may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about’ (cited from Lund and Black-Ørsten, 2013), is likely to still be true today. The media may not themselves be policy entrepreneurs trying to couple the three streams to promote a specific policy; however, they can certainly be used by policy entrepreneurs to influence the public, as well as the political agenda. To quote Schrøder and Phillips: [t]he media are no longer merely social institutions alongside, or subservient to, political institutions, but may themselves be becoming the main political institution, i.e. a forum where the decisive discursive processes that engender consent about the public interest occur, crystallising a public opinion or public will, merely to be affirmed by the parliamentary assembly. (Schrøder and Phillips, 1999: 59)
To use Bacchi’s concept, the media play a role in: ‘what the problem is represented to be’. The other kind of actors in our study – interest groups and professional organisations – might fit better into Zahariadis’ concept of ‘policy entrepreneurs’, manipulating the agenda to promote specific solutions/policies. Kingdon describes the role of interest groups in relation to setting the agenda as follows: ‘a central interest group activity is attaching one’s own alternative to agenda items that others may have made prominent’ (Kingdon, 1984: 53). In doing so, the interest group might be using the media. However, media attention is a scarce resource, and some issues are more successful than others in gaining access to the media (Binderkrantz, 2012).
PIAAC in the Danish media
The same day as the EU and the OECD presented the results of PIAAC, the agency responsible for the Danish part of the study, the Danish National Centre for Social Research, published a press release (SFI, 2013). The headline of the press release stated that one out of six Danes were poor readers, a statement that was to be reproduced in most of the newspaper articles referring to the study. It further highlighted that, compared to other OECD countries, Denmark was below average when it came to reading skills. Referring to multiple streams, the release of the PIAAC report was a policy window that opened for a potential coupling of the three streams of problems, politics and policy in relation to adult education policy.
However, this did not happen – at least not at the time. Between the publication of the press release on 8 October 2013 and the end of the year, the search on
Ritzau (2013) pointed out that adult Danes have insufficient reading skills, referencing 3F in their headline. In the article the agency stated that Denmark, only placing 14th among the countries studied, was below countries including Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia; apparently these were countries 3F would expect Denmark to be rated above. The article also mentioned that Denmark is slightly above average when it comes to numeracy, while performing averagely in relation to IT competences. However, in the original press release from SFI (2013), the three countries referenced by Ritzau were not mentioned. Instead SFI compared Denmark to Japan, Norway and Sweden, all of which achieved above average results, and to the UK, Germany, USA and Austria, all of which performed on a similar level to Denmark.
Despite the fact that the PIAAC study includes not only reading skills but also numeracy, English and IT skills, most of the articles only refer to the literacy results. The problem as represented in most of the articles is a lack of sufficient reading skills among the Danish adult population with headlines like ‘Half a million are poor readers’ (Arbejderen, 2013, own translation), or ‘Adult readers have insufficient reading skills’ (Børsen, 2013; Dramshøj, 2013; Sjællandske, 2013, own translations). In the main body of the articles, the problem is described in greater detail, sometimes with reference to PIAAC, including information about the number or percentage of Danes who are defined as having insufficient reading skills (half a million; 1 in 6; 16%; or approx. 583,000 people). The judgement of how serious the ‘problem’ is varies. In some articles it is represented as being very serious, for instance: ‘16% – over half a million adult Danes – have
That reading skills are important and that Denmark ought to do better in the rankings is also something that is not discussed. In light of that, and in light of how the problem is represented, it is striking that the role of adult education and training is almost absent both in the articles and in the opinion pieces. The ‘problem’ of adult Danes not placing highly on the PIAAC ranking is not coupled to adult education as a potential solution or policy, because it does not receive attention on the public agenda. Besides an opinion piece from three representatives from general adult education institutions (Hansen et al., 2013) and another from February 2014 (Meldgaard, 2014), as well as the unions (see section on social partners), adult education and training tends to be a ‘silence’ in the representation of the problem. The same applies to adult competences in relation to active citizenship except for the press release from the researchers behind the study and an opinion piece from February 2014 (Meldgaard, 2014; SFI, 2013).
The silence regarding adult education and training becomes even more interesting when we look at what could be called the second round of articles and opinion pieces referring to PIAAC. In order to be able to see how well those participating in PISA in 2000 did now that they had become adults, they had been included in the Danish dataset as a national adaptation to PIAAC. In June 2014, SFI published the results of this analysis, which reopened the debate (Rosdahl, 2014). This time, however, the focus in the media was on the need to do something in relation to primary schooling. The representation of the problem, as such, was that if you do well in primary school, you are more likely to receive an education and score well in PIAAC when you become an adult (Andersen, 2014a, 2014b; Berlingske Tidende, 2014; denkorteavis.dk, 2014). At the time the PIAAC report was released, the focus in Danish education policy was on a large reform of the municipal primary schools. This reform, coupled with a political intervention forcibly legislating a new collective agreement affecting working conditions for teachers in public schools, met widespread protest among teachers. This might have led to potential stakeholders in adult literacy being ‘occupied’ with other problems and policies.
Instead of launching a debate about how to design adult education and training in Denmark to ensure everybody has the competences they need, as happened with PISA in relation to primary and lower secondary schooling, the attention PIAAC received in the media from October 2013 to the present day was ultimately used to repeat the conclusions from PISA, i.e. that the Danish primary school needs to be remodelled to ensure that all Danes have the necessary competences. In this sense, PIAAC was used to legitimise the current reform of the primary school.
Problem representations and silences among stakeholders
Besides the media, various potential policy entrepreneurs within the field of adult education reacted to the PIAAC results, and most of them reproduced the overall problem representation from the media of: ‘Danish adults are poor at reading’ (Olesen, 2013, own translation); ‘One out of six adult Danes reads poorly’ (Kommunalbladet, 2013, own translation); ‘Half a million poor adult readers’ (DFS, 2013); and ‘The Danes’ loss of competences is deeply disturbing’ (Opinion, 2013, own translation). Overall, nobody questioned the PIAAC results or the way that the results had come about. Likewise no actor questioned the overall narrative in which the PIAAC results are embedded: the correlation between national competitiveness and human capital. However, when analysing the articles and press releases, the representation of the problems reflects the interests of the different stakeholders and potential policy entrepreneurs within the field.
Broadly, the stakeholders reacting to the publication of the PIAAC results can be divided into four categories:
social partners, i.e. unions and employers’ organisations;
Ministry of Education;
interest group(s);
researcher(s).
The social partners
The stakeholder that has taken up PIAAC and covered it the most in articles and press releases is the United Federation of Danish Workers (3F), which organises both unskilled and skilled workers in the private and public sectors. 3F uses the PIAAC results to call for ‘adult education to be prioritised’ (Eriksen, 2013, own translation). In an article, the PIAAC results are inter-discursively linked to the work of the Productivity Commission
6
and 3F points to the fact that adult education is not covered in the Commission’s report on
3F also focuses on the problems of dyslexia and low IT skills. Again, they advocate for better adult education policies supporting unskilled and low skilled workers, i.e. their members. In regard to IT skills, the PIAAC results are linked to the national policy: digital path to future welfare (Digitaliseringsstyrelsen, 2011). The 3F representation of the problem is that the digitalisation strategy will fail if people with low IT skills are not upskilled.
3F pushes for different ways to connect PIAAC with existing policies and thus coupling the problem and policy streams: adult education policy, digitalisation of the public sector and the report of the Productivity Commission. As policy entrepreneurs, they push for addressing the needs of unskilled workers and promoting policies revolving around this target group, but appear to be unsuccessful in getting their policy on the public agenda.
Another stakeholder that engaged with the PIAAC results is the Confederation of Professionals in Denmark (FTF), which organises 450,000 public and private employees, e.g. nurses, teachers, midwives and educators. FTF represents the problem as a: ‘need for more continuous education and training’ (Frank, 2013, own translation; FTF, 2013). The articles by FTF are interesting as they draw on discourses of lifelong learning, citizenship and, not least, inequality in terms of access to continuous education and training. FTF is one of the few stakeholders to pick up on the recommendations issued by SFI in the research report, for example that adult education should be closely linked to the development of jobs and organisations and that employers play an important role in ensuring adult literacy through competence development (Rosdahl et al., 2013: 12). FTF also stresses the issue of ‘quality’ in adult education and states that: ‘it should be easier for adult educators to strengthen their pedagogical skills’ (Frank, 2013, own translation). Not surprisingly, adult educators are a group organised under FTF. However, like 3F, FTF struggled to get their policy on the public agenda.
The Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) issued a press release, which also focused on the poor reading skills in the adult Danish population compared to other OECD countries. A solution to the problem from an LO perspective would be to introduce adult literacy programmes in work places and make both management and shop stewards more aware of the necessity of ensuring basic skills among employees. In the press release, LO refers to the tripartite negotiations on adult education in 2014 involving the employers’ organisations, the employees’ organisations and the government, and mentions that the PIAAC results will be part of their negotiation (Holst, 2013). This indicates that although PIAAC is not high on the public agenda, it may still play a role in policymaking on adult education. The upcoming collective agreements will show whether PIAAC is used as a lever for promoting workers’ rights to education and training.
HK, a trade union for administrative staff and people in the retail sector, mentions the PIAAC results in its magazine for public employees (
Not surprisingly, PROSA, the union for people working with IT, has published an article on the PIAAC results regarding IT skills. In the article, the digital strategy is represented as a necessity and consequently people should be upskilled in order to meet the demands of the new systems. If not, the government’s digital strategy will fail according to PROSA (PROSA, 2013).
Overall, the unions represent the poor PIAAC results as a problem of strengthening adult competences, especially among unskilled and low skilled workers, and try to couple it to policy streams on adult education and training as well as digitalisation of the Danish society. Indirectly, the problem is represented to be one of ‘access’ to education and training and insufficient public funding.
Whereas the unions focus on the ‘poor readers’ and what kind of policies this problem calls for, the Confederation of Danish Employers (DA) represents the problem as: ‘decades of [political] failure in basic schooling and vocational education and training have left their mark on the competences of the Danish people’ (Opinion, 2013, own translation). The employer discourse is one of human capital where the: ‘weak competences … are a threat to the competitiveness of the companies and the welfare of Denmark’ (Opinion, 2013). In an article from June 2014 (Sletting, 2014) where the results of a Danish PISA-PIAAC report are discussed, focus is on the link between reading skills and the risk of ending up as a social security recipient. DA represents the problem of low adult literacy as a problem of ‘inactive citizens’ who will become a burden to the welfare society. 7 DA thus couples the problem stream with a politics stream founded in human capital theory and individualisation of the problem. The issue of adult education and the need for adult literacy courses is absent from the DA problem representation.
The Danish Government
The Danish Ministry of Education also issued a press release on 8 October 2013 (Danish Ministry of Education, 2013). The PIAAC results are summarised in the press release. The Minister of Education, Christine Antorini, and the Minister of Employment, Mette Frederiksen, are both quoted in the press release. The Minister of Education emphasises that there are: ‘good opportunities for adults to participate in both general and vocational adult education where there are no fees or low fees’ (Danish Ministry of Education, 2013, own translation). She continues to stress the government’s initiatives and ends by referring to the current reform of basic schooling, aimed at ensuring the future skills of the Danish population. The Minister of Employment stresses the link between skills and employment and mentions the reform of social benefits, which aims to increase opportunities for participation in adult education. However, whereas the unions stress the role and responsibilities of employers, the Minister aligns herself with DA by individualising the problem and emphasising that: ‘the individual also has a duty to do what he or she can to acquire more skills and competences’ (Danish Ministry of Education, 2013, own translation).
Interest group(s)
One of the interest groups that has produced several articles on the PIAAC results is the Danish Adult Education Association (Dansk Folkeoplysnings Samråd (DFS)). DFS is a central stakeholder in the launch of PIAAC as they were responsible for organising a conference on PIAAC in association with the Ministry of Education and SFI. In a press release dated 8 October 2013, DFS states that approximately half a million adult Danes have poor reading skills. In the press release the PIAAC findings are related to participation in voluntary work as: ‘more people who do voluntary work have good competences’. In an article from 2014 (DFS, 2014), DFS links the PIAAC results to an initiative called ‘Learning Days 2014’, which aims to increase awareness of preparatory adult education (FVU) among the Danish population. The problem of PIAAC for DFS is represented by a lack of information and consequently a lack of adult participation in the many adult literacy programmes in Denmark.
Researcher(s)
Apart from the researchers involved in the PIAAC survey, not many researchers commented on the PIAAC results in the immediate wake of their publication. We have only been able to locate one interview with Associate Professor, Rie Thomsen (Interviewed in Weirsøe, 2013), who is an expert on career guidance. Thomsen connects the PIAAC results to a Cedefop study on working life narratives where adults who wanted to change career in mid-life had problems gaining access to adult education and experienced financial and structural barriers in the labour market hindering career change (Cort et al., 2013). Thomsen represents the problem to be one of access, lack of mobility and not least a patchy adult career guidance system in which information is difficult to obtain.
Discursive effects
The way a problem is represented and how the three streams are coupled has effects for policy formulation including what we (can) discuss and how.
In the analysis above, the problem representations of the unions, as well as the contributions to the debate in the media from representatives from adult education institutions, point towards strengthening adult education in Denmark. The problem is represented as being one of insufficient provision of and access to adult education and training. The unions as policy entrepreneurs call for investment in adult education by the public sector and enterprises, and PIAAC provides ammunition for upcoming tripartite negotiations: the government needs to prioritise adult education and enterprises need to take responsibility for developing the skills of the unskilled and low skilled workers.
The government’s reaction to the PIAAC results, however, is more in line with that of another policy entrepreneur, the employers’ organisation (DA). Neither the Minister of Education nor the Minister of Employment link the results of PIAAC to adult education and training as a significant policy. Instead, they represent the problem as being one of a failed basic school system. The OECD itself advocates caution when interpreting the results since they reflect a long period with huge changes in education systems: ‘Interpreting differences in results among countries is nonetheless a challenging task, particularly as the survey of adult skills covers adults born between 1947 and 1996 who started their schooling from the early 1950s to the early 2000s’ (OECD, 2013: 56–57). The OECD further stresses that: ‘the results of the Survey of Adult Skills should not be interpreted only, or even primarily in light of current policy settings or those of the recent past, important as these might be’ (OECD, 2013: 57). In spite of this, in the press release from the Ministry of Education, the Minister of Education stresses that: [t]he survey shows that participation in adult and continuous education and training in Denmark is high compared to other countries – so altogether I think that Denmark has a good framework for participation in adult and continuous education and training. However, the survey shows that it is imperative that we ensure higher yields from our initiatives in years to come. (Danish Ministry of Education, 2013, own translation)
The solution to the problem of low reading skills among a section of the Danish adult population is not to change the institutional provision of adult education, but to make it more efficient. In this respect, the Minister has recourse to a well-known solution to problems in the education system: new public management (see e.g. Lund, 2009). 8 PIAAC itself does not open up a new discourse, but rather leads to a consolidation of existing discourses. The same is true for the Minister of Employment who, in line with DA, presents the PIAAC results as an individual problem rather than a societal responsibility by focusing on the duty of the individual to be active and to ensure his or her employability, i.e. a workfare discourse.
From the perspective of the government, it is a question of making the system more efficient and of informing people about adult education opportunities as: ‘there are no fees or low fees’ (Danish Ministry of Education, 2013). However, from the literature on participation in adult education, many other barriers for participation are stressed as important, e.g. family situation, motivation, financial situation, perception of formal education, etc. (see, for instance, Chisholm et al., 2004; Cross, 1981; Desjardins et al., 2006).
Whereas it is clear that the PISA survey has had immense discursive effects on national debates on basic schooling, PIAAC remains in PISA’s shadow. In many of the articles references are made to PISA and how to reform basic schooling in order to enhance basic skills in the future. However, when it comes to the present situation and those with low skills now, it is unclear whether PIAAC is going to influence adult education policy.
According to multiple streams theory, the success of policy entrepreneurs in pushing forward their ‘pet policy’ depends, among other things, on their access to decision makers. Despite the fact that both the Minister of Education and the Minister of Employment at the time of the publication of the PIAAC results belonged to the Social Democratic party, the labour unions do not appear to have been successful in getting adult education and training on the agenda. Although PIAAC opens up a window of opportunity for representing the problem of adult literacy differently in Denmark, the main policy actors do not couple this ‘problem stream’ with the streams of politics or policy. A possible explanation is that the politics stream worked counter to such an association.
In terms of politics, PIAAC reinforces the hegemonic discourse of new public management, as the literacy problem is connected to the policy of making the public sector more efficient. The problem of adult education provision is represented as a lack of efficiency, not a lack of provision or possibilities for the individual to engage in literacy courses. Furthermore, PIAAC is coupled to the solution of reforming primary schooling, thus following a political focus on primary education that, among other things, was reflected in a major reform of primary education from 2014.
The problem of adult literacy based on the PIAAC study is represented as one which needs to be avoided rather than remedied. This resonates with recent theories on the yield of investment in human capital: investing in children yields greater returns than investing in adults (Nielsen, 2012).
Conclusions
Whereas the PISA survey provokes national debate every time it is published, the PIAAC survey did not get the same degree of extensive media coverage. The media interest in the results was low and what coverage there was focused primarily on the results concerning the Danish population’s reading skills whereas the results concerning numeracy and IT skills did not make the headlines. What is striking in the media coverage is that the role of adult education and training is almost absent. Although it is represented as a problem that approximately 500,000 adult Danes are poor readers, focus is more on the role of basic schooling and how basic schooling has failed to produce competent adult readers. The policy affected by the PIAAC results is thus, again, the policy on basic schooling and how to introduce reforms which in the future will provide skilled adults. The problem of poor adult readers here and now is not addressed. Referring to multiple streams theory, it seems that, although PIAAC opened a window of opportunity in the problem stream, adult education and training as policy/solution were not coupled with the ‘problem’ of Denmark not scoring highly enough in PIAAC and did not receive attention in the public agenda. Instead, policies more in line with the politics stream at the time, reflecting human capital thinking such as investment in primary education and individualisation, take the lead.
From a multiple streams perspective an explanation as to why PIAAC so far does not seem to have had the same influence on adult education policy as PISA has had on education policy related to primary education, seems to lie in the lack of cohesion between the three streams: problems, policy and politics:
Although the Danish results in PIAAC by all in the media were defined as a problem, it was not given high priority compared to other education policy issues. At the same time as the PIAAC results were launched, the government introduced a new primary school reform. The reform was met with massive protests from teachers and widely discussed in the media. What happened to the PIAAC results was that they were linked to the ‘stream’ of primary schooling as a threatening image of what might happen if action was not taken and therefore used by the government in particular to legitimise the reforms. The reforms also took the attention of some of those who might have been able to act as policy entrepreneurs pushing forward adult education policy by linking the three streams. The potential participants, therefore, were occupied with other streams.
Furthermore, the preferences between the different participants were unclear, also adding to difficulties in linking the streams. While some represented the problem as a lack of basic competences in relation to reading in particular, others stressed the need for IT skills. In addition, some participants defined the low competences as a problem with reference to the needs of the labour market and the global economic competition, while others stressed the threat to active citizenship and democratic representation.
When analysing the problems of the various stakeholders within the field of adult education, it is obvious that some of the stakeholders actively use the results to try to influence adult education policy in a specific direction and thereby act as policy entrepreneurs trying to couple the streams to push forward their ‘pet policy’.
The unions try to promote their own ‘pet policy’ by linking it to the problem of a lack of competences in the Danish adult population. But none of them succeed in seriously influencing the public agenda as it is reflected in the media coverage. PIAAC does not provide the impetus for new conjunctures of problems, solutions and policies, but seems to strengthen existing discourses on the lack of efficiency in the public sector and the need to strengthen the demands placed upon educational institutions to provide the required output.
Underlying the various representations of the problems is a hegemonic discourse of growth, competitiveness and human capital. Recurrent key concepts in the press releases and articles are productivity, welfare, competitiveness of both companies and Denmark, innovation and the financial returns on human capital investment. Politics in the form of national mood are in favour of solutions that are cost efficient and where investment in early childhood is considered more cost effective than investment later in life. A major silence is what it means to the individual to have poor reading skills: how does it affect everyday life? Does it affect everyday life? The survey shows that 50% of those labelled as ‘poor readers’ have a job (Rosdahl et al., 2013: 12) and may in a sense not experience a ‘literacy problem’. However, PIAAC creates its own representation of ‘literacy’ tied up in a narrow understanding of literacy where the voices and lived lives of those being tested are silenced (see e.g. Maddox, 2014). This representation is not questioned by any actor in the Danish context.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interest
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.