Policy transfer as the growth of dynamics and challenges: The case of school textbooks in Greece

Abstract

The Greek school textbook is at the core of this article and is treated as a matter of policy. In 2003, the Greek Government decided to include the publishing of school textbooks in the current Community support framework and as a result school textbook publishing goes beyond Greek priorities and gains European interest, which means that the whole process, being mainly supported by Community funding, has to respect certain of its rules and procedures. Our aim here is to show how European policies were transferred to the Greek context and how they inter-reacted with the corresponding Greek rules and procedures. The theoretical framework is based on Dolowich and Marsh’s (2008) proposal concerning the transformation of the concept of policy transfer into an analytical schema in the study of the policy transfer process. The methodology includes the content analysis of 29 school textbooks and comparison of the old ones with the new, and 32 interviews with actors involved in writing and publishing them.

Introduction

Policies take on the role of principles which the decision-making centres follow with the aim of achieving particular results, the objective of which being the improvement, in general, of global conditions, and, more specifically, the improvement of life itself. Education, as a sector which is continuously changing, demands appropriate policy futures which will continue to ensure it has the means to develop new policies (Tesar, 2015). Educational policies fulfil, then, special intentions and are carried out by government bodies on a local, national and international level. Attempting change and improvement, the policies come in for criticism and receive interest from various sides. In other words, policies are important to the public institutions, the private sector, and to the individuals (Tesar, 2016).

The national education system aims to disseminate discourses as school knowledge that determine what is right, true and fair in a society and thus affect the formation of the young generation’s citizenship. These discourses are the result of the power of the various institutions and actors who are trying to maintain their status within the social order. Traditionally, these actors were at the national level. However, the emergence of supranational institutions causes changes to the extent that the nation-state is not the only actor in policy-making, but is influenced by policies established beyond national borders. So simultaneously with the emergence of supranational institutions, the focus is on the effects of their respective policies and their implementation in the national educational system (Tesar, 2016).

One of the areas of interest to educational policy is that of the curriculum, combining an interest in ethics policy and the philosophy of education. It focuses, in other words, as much on the content as on the actors that put together the curricula and school books. What values will be passed on to the next generation, what is right and just? Who is the one that speaks, who composes society’s moral discourse? Who has the power to produce the moral narratives that become the foundation for policies and the definition of the rules that govern a society (Tesar, 2016). These are some of the questions that occupy the political scientists and policy designers involved in this particular area.

The authorship of schoolbooks is a sensitive matter since it implements politicians’ choices regarding official knowledge within the framework of a national education system. Of course, in democratic societies the margins for flexibility which the individual and group entities involved in the processes of creating schoolbooks have, appears to be significant although not unlimited. Consequently, the determination of the content of a school book, as well as the process of writing it, including the choice of the team of writers, are quintessential matters of (educational) policy. In other words, in the present paper schoolbooks are seen as a policy matter.

Interest lies in the fact that at the beginning of the twenty-first century the Greek Government decided to include the publishing of new school textbooks in the Community support framework, which Greece received between 2000 and 2008 and so as a result, between 2003 and 2006 many schoolbooks changed. This came about both because of the reduction in public spending for this purpose, and the use of corresponding Community funds. However, the integration of the action into the regulations surrounding Community funding made the Greek school textbooks the subject of European interest, and certain rules and procedures that govern European funding now had to be respected. This means that the school textbooks can be said to comprise an object for the analysis of how European policies – the regulations, procedures and funding – were transferred into the Greek situation and how they inter-reacted with the corresponding Greek rules and procedures.

In the present text, we focus on the manner in which the action was implemented, in other words the process of creating Greek school textbooks using Community funding. That is to say, we are interested in analysing the influences, or more exactly, the changes, that Community funding regulations brought to the institutional and individual factors involved in writing school textbooks in Greece, from the perspective of the school textbook as an object of educational policy. On the other hand, we are also interested in how the policies in question are interpreted and applied in the field (Canary, 2010: 25), and in ‘transfer’ as a mechanism for the influence and modification of long-established rules and processes in the context of (educational) policy. So, where there was once a national decision-making centre there is now an obligation to take supranational rules and procedures into account. Consequently, during the application, the number of decision-making centres involved increased, from the supranational to the national and from there to the regional and the local, and hence the problems in application can be expected to multiply (Sabatier, 2005: 21–22; Ryan, 1995: 67–68; Sabatier, 1986: 30–32).

On the other hand it is interesting for one to chart the interaction of the actors in the field for the promotion of what Sabatier called ‘policy network’ (Sabatier, 2005: 23), although these actors were restricted and depended on the objectives and funding rules of a particular policy – here the writing of school textbooks using Community funding – as well as on organizational restrictions and limits such as the legislative framework, the institution of the school and powerful actors (Rhodes, 1986: 17). Consequently, it is crucial that one sees who the protagonists were in the implementation of the action of the writing of school textbooks and in what way they handled the institutional layout and restrictions.

According to Dolowitz and Marsh, policy transfer refers to a “process in which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions etc. in one time and/or place is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements and institutions in another time and/or place” (Dolowitz and Marsh, 1996: 344). Subsequently, examining a new policy transfer, they defined it as the process during which “knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political system (past or present) is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political system” (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000: 5). In addition, in our case, it is not initially a dilemma between voluntary or compulsory (enforced) policy, but more a question of whether policy transfer is successful or not, since participation in the funded action is voluntary. Here we will turn to the schema on Dolowitz and Marsh’s continuum (2000: 13,16), which helps researchers to understand that policy transfer is not an ‘all or nothing process’, as well as to focus on the motives for policy transfer. Different motives result in different policies, something which makes the recognition of the key actors in the process extremely significant. On the other hand, it is recognized that the ‘transfers’ are not always successful (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000: 17) and it is stated that “the more complex a policy or program is, the harder it will be to transfer” (Dolowitz and Marsh, 1996: 353). They also mention cases that demonstrate which policies or programs are easier to transfer, for example, the transfer of a policy or program is easier when the objectives are few and not multiple, the issue to be resolved is simple, the problem–solution relationship is direct and clear, the side effects of the solution are minimal, the policy producers have all the information they need concerning the policy to be transferred and finally, when the results can be easily predicted (Dolowitz and Marsh, 1996: 353).

Of course, for the subject matter of this paper, given that policy transfer concerns the EU, the policy transfer process takes on special interest, since initially policy transfer was almost exclusively related to transfer from country to country. According to Benson and Jordan (2011: 366) the concept of policy transfer has by now matured and is used for the study and analysis of wider phenomena such as Europeanization, globalization and policy innovations and not only for the analysis of the transfer process from country to country. An example of this is the uploading and downloading of policy from and to the EU, in which the Member States actively participate. These new research routes demonstrate that the activity of policy transfer has now shifted from ‘from nation to nation’ transfer and highlights new fields of research interest and new actors (Benson and Jordan, 2011: 371–372).

For Europeanization, different definitions have been proposed. Ladrech defines Europeanization as “an incremental process of re-orienting the direction and shape of politics to the extent that EC political and economic dynamics become part of the organizational logic of national politics and policy-making” (Ladrech, 1994: 69). Radaelli describes Europeanization as “a process involving, a) construction, b) diffusion and c) institutionalization of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, ‘ways of doing things' and shared beliefs and norms which are first defined and consolidated in the EU policy process and then incorporated in the logic of domestic (national and subnational) discourse, political structures and public choices” (Radaelli, 2003: 30). Moumoutzis modified Radaelli’s definition and proposes that Europeanization should be understood as “a process of incorporation in the logic of domestic (national and subnational) discourse, political structures and public policies of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, ‘ways of doing things’ and shared beliefs and norms that are first defined in the EU policy processes” (Moumoutzis, 2011: 612).

However, we do not understand Europeanization as a simple top-down process. On different levels, actors, such as the state or at the local level, interest groups or individuals, try to use Europeanization for their own benefit. So, it is crucial to investigate and analyse the impact of these actors on the final application of a European policy.

As far as the Union is concerned, on the one hand, the Member States are forced to follow its regulations and guidelines, and on the other, they participate voluntarily in the European construction and participate, or are able to participate, in the shaping of these policies within the EU, such as for example an innovative policy which is approved initially by the Council of Ministers (Benson and Jordan, 2011: 370). Following this line of logic, Dolowitz and Marsh characterize policy transfer within the Union as obligated transfer and to some extent transfer as negotiated transfer, while Bulmer and Padgett (2004) for their part, recognize three distinct types of European governance, which can produce a plethora of types of policy transfer. The third type is described as the dependence that is created in a Member State when the adoption of a policy or administrative arrangements is laid down as a condition for Community funding, although this pressure is applied more for the solution of administrative issues and not so much for policy content (Bulmer and Padgett 2004: 108–109). The latter appears significant for our subject matter, bearing in mind Bomberg and Peterson’s (2000: 11) argument according to which: “policy transfer does not happen by accident, but it often produces results that are not intended”.

Dolowitz and Marsh (2000: 8) propose six questions aimed at the transformation of the concept of ‘policy transfer’ into an analytical schema in the study of the policy transfer process. They are:

Why do actors engage in policy transfer?

Who are the key actors involved in the policy transfer process?

What is transferred?

From where are lessons drawn?

What are the different degrees of transfer?

What restricts or facilitates the policy transfer process?

From the six questions, we will exclude the fourth, concerning lesson drawing, the nature of which goes beyond the scope of this paper. We will use the first three questions and the last as an analytical schema in order then to be able to focus on the penultimate question since this question is directly linked to our research question which is as follows: does policy transfer from a supranational body (here the EU) to a state with the ‘characteristics of Greece’ ¹ lead to the production of new unprecedented conditions and phenomena that one could characterize as hybrid? In other words, while it is by no means certain that policy transfer, at least within the EU and so far as countries with the characteristics of Greece are concerned, achieves its goal, it nevertheless influences and changes the long-held schemata for the formation and implementation of policies on a national level.

The research

The research was conducted between 2011 and 2015 and used three methods.

First of all, the way in which school textbooks were created in the past when their funding came exclusively from state sources was investigated and then the new manner of implementation based on the regulations of Community funding was examined.

Next, content analysis of the new primary school textbooks for history, religious education, environmental studies and social and political studies was carried out. These books were chosen because changes based on the European funding regulations could more easily be observed. These changes were detected by comparing the older school textbooks with the new ones.

Finally, 32 interviews were held with some of those involved with the school textbooks such as authors, evaluators and those responsible for the implementation of Greek educational policy.

The recording of the processes showed us the changes that occurred due to of Community funding regulations.

The content analysis helped us to formulate the changes that have taken place in the new school books in comparison with the older ones especially regarding issues to do with ‘others’ on two levels: religious and political (e.g. Greece–Europe), while the interviews helped us to understand how the internal process of the creation of the new school textbooks was carried out, and the role of the subjects.

Initial description of the production of school textbooks

The Greek education system has traditionally been seen as a very centralized system and in the case of the school textbooks this means that the school timetable as much as the school textbooks were the domain of the Ministry of Education. As a result, the textbooks were written by writers chosen by the Ministry and were published by the school books body, a Ministry service and there was only one school textbook for each school subject ² . The books were distributed to the pupils by the Ministry itself and they were free.

The procedure underwent a first change with Law 1566/1985 (article 60) where the Pedagogical Institute (PI), a state body under the auspices of the Ministry, took on the responsibility of the writing of the official school syllabus, both material and textbooks. More precisely, as far as school textbooks are concerned, the PI selects the authors and the evaluators of the school textbook with a call for tender or with assignment to the collaborators: Τheir approval is the responsibility of the relevant department of the PI. Their publication, distribution, purchase and disposal is handled by the School Books Publishing Organization.

Here it is important to mention the pivotal role of the Church since the official title of the Ministry is the Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs (with variations over the years). Thus, a representative of the Holy Synod took part in the process of writing the school religious studies textbook (primarily institutionally), until the last review of the school textbooks in 2003. This participation implemented the provision of the Charter of the Greek Church, which insisted on the doctrinal control of the religious studies textbooks (Karachontziti, 2015). The Greek education system has always encouraged Greek–Christian discourse not only in the religious studies textbooks, but in other textbooks too, for example in the history book where significant events in history are systematically linked to Christian celebrations (Koulouri, 1988; Kiprianos, 2004). Hence, the Church had become used to expressing its opinion on education issues without however this being institutionally regulated (Molokotos-Lienderman, 2005).

In 2000, the renewal of the school books was integrated into the 3rd Community Support Framework, called the Operational Programme for Education and Initial Vocational Training ΙΙ (from this point forward it will be referred to as ‘OP Education’) by the Ministry of Education. So, from then on, the procedure for the creation of school textbooks ceased to be an exclusively Greek matter since its integration into the OP Education signalled its integration into subsidized priorities of the EU, with its own funding regulations. Consequently, we have here a case of policy transfer which can be examined according to the questions posed by Dolowitz and Marsh (2000: 8).

Who are the key actors involved in the policy transfer process?

The fundamental change is the widening of potential actors involved, since before, the writing team was part of an internal process under the complete control of the PI but with Community funding regulations, there had to be an open public call for expression of interest. However, let us take a more analytical look at this.

Those chiefly involved in the process are to be found on three distinct levels: (a) the Ministry, (b) the PI and (c) the teams of authors.

Firstly, those responsible in the Ministry are primarily interested in the influx of Community funding, which is important on the one hand for the renewal of the school textbooks and on the other for the saving of resources for the funding of other Ministry actions. Consequently, the datasheets are made in a way that means they are in line with Community priorities and follow those processes that would allow their funding from Community funds. More precisely, the production of the new teaching material is integrated into OP Education Statute 2.2.1., Act A, entitled Curriculum reform and writing of school textbooks for compulsory education. In fact, the prospect of Community funding seems to be faced in a maximalist way if we judge from the words of one interviewee: “Books were written for lessons for which there weren’t books before, in physical education, technical lessons, music”.

Secondly, at the intermediary level of those responsible for the implementation of education policy, in other words the responsible parties at the PI, important changes regarding its functioning and the role of its actors, take place. Previously, the writer or writing team was determined through an internal procedure and the incentive to participate was not primarily financial, since the writers were employees of different types and categories in the Ministry, to whom the ‘mission’ of writing the school textbooks was assigned. Now, as a result of Community provisions, the PI is transformed into the body that implements the project, in other words, it is responsible for the public call, the choice of the team, supervision of the work and final assessment. While one could claim that the position of the PI is strengthened, this comes about while provoking serious unrest within the institution’s internal power networks and its institutional routines (see Crozier, 2010). Indeed, it appears that two crucial networks are created, one for the writing of the public invitation and another for the assessment of the proposals. More precisely, one interviewee tells us: “One target group was comprised of the candidates for writing the books and the other target group was the reviewers. So, we had individuals who applied to take on the project of writing and the other group were those that wanted to become reviewers. These two groups had to have a common frame of reference and the authors couldn’t write blindly, we had to give them the specifications that they had to follow. So then we had to train the one group as much as the other. The one group so as to write as well as possible, so as to be able to take on the project, and the other group so as to be reliable and valid reviewers, in order to be able to evaluate. And to evaluate blindly”.

Thirdly, the ‘local actors’. This is perhaps the most interesting part of the change, since it constitutes an almost-new category of stakeholders. Obviously, there were writers and/or writing teams in the past, however they were fully controlled by the source of power and were formed through internal procedures that were based on personal, partisan and, at that time, Church networks. Now however, due to the public call, and the defining of a procedure, the potential interested parties are multiplied, either individually or collectively (writing team and/or publishing house). Of course, all this takes place within the framework of the PI; however, now this body is called on to respect the rules of transparency, choice and control otherwise there is the risk of becoming involved in the rejection procedure for Community funds. Indicatively, one interviewee tells us: “From the moment we used EU money, it was a condition that publishing houses could participate, not only Greek ones, but European ones too, and you couldn’t exclude them […] Consequently, that was the procedure. Of course, the publishing houses used the teams of writers. They didn’t have non-teachers. They made sure they did, because they knew that for their writing sample to be chosen, as laid down in the assessment procedure that would follow they had to use teachers for the process”.

Another adds: “In the writing of the books they opened up to the wider teaching community and this happened in two ways, they encouraged and proposed the creation of mixed composition writing teams, without this being binding. But there was a proposal that there should be university teachers, school advisors and classroom teachers”.

Another dimension of the involvement of the publishing houses was the increase in the possibility of publishing a lot of books at the same time. For example, one interviewee states: “I don’t know whether the School Books Organization (SBO) has the graphic artists to set up all those books. That’s the reason the publishing houses participated. That’s it basically, that the SBO didn’t have that capability”. In the Greek case, it is interesting that the Church of Greece is no longer represented in the new mechanism. An interviewee told us: “This time the system opened up. A different process took place, while it was an assignment in ’92–95, in 2003 there was a contest. And it was a book with European specifications, in accordance with the 3rd Community Support Framework. The Church, due to the change in the way things were done, could no longer intervene in the writing of the school textbooks. The religious studies textbook couldn’t be written as it was in the past”.

Why are the actors involved in policy transfer?

It is obvious that the catalytic decision concerning the integration of the writing of school textbooks into the Community support framework was political, and aimed at the funding of this particular action through Community resources. Whether the political chiefs who made this decision had known that the process for the production of the textbooks would change de facto and whether that was also one of the objectives, is debatable. On the one hand, it is easy to assume that the political chiefs were aware of the obligations which were bound up in the decision to integrate the action into Community funding. Other than that, we do not have any evidence of or reference to whether this integration hid any other objectives, such as, for example the restriction of the Church since no one mentioned it to us, although of course it has to be said that we did not interview any politicians. On the other hand, the leadership of the PI that was in direct contact with and had a direct relationship with the political staff at the Ministry, and whom we did interview, did not mention anything of relevance.

The second level (institution, PI) is extremely interesting since an institution has deeply ingrained internal hierarchies and procedures. The hierarchies refer to the centres of power within the institution and the procedures refer to the way in which the dominant centre of power in the institution reshapes its power into action and result. Consequently, the new process destabilizes the internal centres of power and the powerful actors and challenges them to find new means of influence if they want to retain their power (Crozier, 2000; 2010).

A new parameter seems to become dynamically involved in the latter: financial profit, either through the setting up of the new mechanism or through integration into one of the teams of writers. One interviewee says characteristically, in reference to the leadership of the PI: “‘A’ was in it for the money too. He had ambitions then to get into politics, to become a minister. He had ambitions beyond the university”.

Besides the leadership within the institution (PI), there were the old authors. They remained interested in writing the books, firstly for reasons of professional prestige and to maintain their position in the networks of power production, and also for financial reasons since integration into a team of writers by now implied financial gain. One of them tells us: “I was seconded to the PI for 20 years. I was a member of all the writing teams of all the history books in the 80s […] The projects were always given to us as an assignment, however they tried the call of the contest which I too took part in, in 2003, with the right to contribute in two subject areas. And at that time I was given the book for first grade of junior high school and grade four of primary school, which are similar in terms of content”.

The second level is interwoven with the third level, the actors in the field (writing teams), and it is interesting that this interweaving appears to be two-way. On the one hand, the new powerful actors are the publishing houses who until now had not been involved at all and their interest was not focussed solely on taking on the responsibility of writing one or more school textbooks. Indeed, from the moment a publishing house was chosen, it would make money not only from the writing but from the production of the accompanying study aids which concern the extracurricular activities of the students. Consequently, the undertaking of even just one book meant in general a significant increase in its publishing activity. An interviewee tells us: “The publishing houses became involved because they are always attracted by profit. Not to mention of course that one publishing house was set up for this reason alone, and closed when the project finished. To make money. It was a term of OP Education that publishing houses participate and they themselves created the conditions for them to participate. And the Minister was a choice of those interests”. On the other hand, the actors both inside and outside the institution seek to cooperate with the publishing houses. One interviewee tells us: “The teams addressed the publishing houses. We chose. We didn’t have a lot of choice. ‘K’ made some exchanges, I assume with some financial benefit. Then the publishing houses produced the study aids. They made a profit, that’s why they participated. We didn’t do anything, ok…We talked with ‘P’ and not with ‘G’ as we thought in the beginning, because all his books were there. Then ‘K’. produced some other books for ‘G’. I imagine the choice was made based on financial criteria”.

The analysis seems to highlight the formation of competitive networks of interests trying to win the authorship of as many school textbooks as possible. In these, members of the PI, old authors as well as the new ones and the publishing houses participated. PI insiders, who had inside information on the developments especially at the time of the public announcements, emerge as key actors it seems as they could develop the most suitable strategies to win the contest. A high-ranking staff member at the PI explains: “No, there was no way they had been informed. ‘A’ was trustworthy on that front. He had forbidden all the members working then at the PI, both permanent staff and those on secondment, from taking part in any external project team whatsoever that had anything to do with the books. That’s why a lot of those on secondment resigned because they knew it was in their interest. They knew the curricula, they had taken part in the project teams. They knew the spirit. You’d been working on it for three years, you knew the way of thinking, it was logical that you could write a better book than someone who was on the outside. They weren’t within the PI, but resigned so as to earn the extra money”.

In any case, what is surprising is the very short period of time allocated for the writing of a book which was blamed on the delays in the calls and the danger that funds would be lost. Certainly, there is some truth in this. What is not so clear is whether this time pressure was down to objective weaknesses or inadequacies of the PI for whom, in any case, the whole process was completely new and unfamiliar, or the result of planning. In any case, time became an important parameter since someone who had inside information could move more quickly and more correctly than the others, as much in terms of satisfying the requirements of the announcement as in terms of producing the material. According to one author: “Yes, the announcement was made in May 2003. Essentially when the whole story started it was July until mid-August. A month and a half were left. You had to send your proposal by 20 August, with a post office stamp, to seal the matter. So it was very little time and one of the reasons why many candidates didn’t apply or it was very hasty work was because they didn’t have the time. And there was a lot of hasty work. It was apparent from the contest’s closed file grades”.

Another interviewee mentions more precisely: “It had been published…But let me tell you, it never did the rounds. It came out after the first meeting with ‘M’ had taken place. I had taken part in the past, in 1998, in the writing of another book, for a different subject, and my old colleagues invited me to go to the presentation before they uploaded it. The information came by phone. I went to the PI. The contest was open, naturally, and there was time for the others to be informed. The first presentation with ‘M’ took place in March. It was then uploaded to the PI website. This usually goes by word of mouth. If you’ve worked on it in the past, a colleague calls you, an acquaintance, or if you search for it, you see it”.

What changes and what is transferred?

One might wonder why the Greek state left such an important action, like the authorship of school textbooks, to escape from its previously stifling control and whether ultimately the prospect of Community funding was what brought about the centralization of the Ministry of Education.

Things seem to be more complex and what primarily seems to be taking place is the convergence of Greek procedures with corresponding procedures in the other EU Member States and not what is obvious: the restriction in state control of national education curricula. Control remains but in a different form.

Indeed, traditionally in Greece, the basic unit forming the curricula was the one and only school textbook per subject and so consequently, the syllabus of the textbook determined the subject curriculum. Hence, whoever controlled the production of the books (the state through its Ministry of Education) controlled the official syllabus of a school subject. Obviously, this procedure diverged from all the well-known curriculum theories since usually the determination of official knowledge precedes the writing of one (or more) school textbooks (Mariolis, 2013; Karachontziti, 2015).

Hence, with the integration of the action into OP Education II, the traditional operation of the Ministry changed and it firstly establishes the curricula with presidential decrees and based on these the call for the authorship of school textbooks takes place. An interviewee characteristically tells us: “the curricula were the basis for our proposals for the OP Education”. So, the curricula become the desired frame of reference from the Ministry of Education through which from now on the school textbooks would be written. Another interviewee says: “And so we reshaped, corrected, tidied up the old curriculum and we delivered it so that the new books could be produced, the interdisciplinary ones, which happened in 2003. These first had to be published in the Greek Gazette and then the public call for the books was made”.

A third explained in more detail: “Until then we had the following peculiarity in our curricula, which few who are concerned with curricula make mention of. In Greece, we first wrote the schoolbooks and then we shaped the curricula. Here it was ground-breaking that first we established the curricula and then wrote the books. And that’s why the teachers, even today, still haven’t understood that the book isn’t the subject, but the curriculum. We followed what happens in Europe, and that was the right thing to do in my scientific opinion. First you need a model, structured knowledge, in order to decide what you are going to teach in each class”.

So far we have seen the effects on the procedures and the actors. However, it appears that there were significant effects on the content of the official knowledge itself in the curriculum. This signifies an effect on the nucleus of school activity and indeed on important issues, as we will see. For example, the OP Education II strictly integrated into the framework of objectives of the Lisbon Strategy had to promote European citizenship in practice, together with local citizenship. On the first issue, an interviewee told us: “Yes, the subject of the European citizen was one of the fixed axes that had to be included. One was a citizen of Greece, of Europe, of the world. That was the triptych”. On the second another explained: “The fact that some chapters were added that had to do with local history is one element. Things have changed now regarding citizenship. They certainly took this into account when they were designing the curricula. And this is a very new element and no doubt comes from European education policies. […] and the third and most important is that there was local history too. And indeed, there had been an attempt to include local history in as many chapters as possible. And for it to constitute a separate part at the end. The local element has acquired special dimensions”.

In addition, it seems that the way in which the curriculum is shaped based on the school subjects starts to change. The concepts of interdisciplinarity and the competence based approach are highlighted as central. A high-ranking staff member at the PI told us: “That has to do with European educational policy. We are entering the seven famous competences that were being talked about for the 21st century at that time, with the new technologies and so on. The educational systems are now called on to reassess their objective and to contribute to the development of competences in the pupil. Everything is part of this little package”. Another told us: “Of course it followed European education policies. In any case, the aim of this particular OP Education was to support the decisions of the Treaty of Lisbon. Certainly, we wanted to promote European citizenship. Interdisciplinarity was the new term”.

What facilitates or hinders the policy transfer process?

Undoubtedly the initial incentive was economic gain. This was possible however without any disturbance because the Ministry found a way to maintain control of official knowledge with the alignment of Greek procedures with widespread practices with strong scientific legitimacy (first determination of curriculum and then writing of the book).

Despite all that, the transfer of extensive jurisdiction from the Ministry to the PI did not take place without obstacles and controversy, which perhaps caused delays. The reactions from within the Ministry itself seem to concern its reduced involvement in the process of the production of the school textbooks. One interviewee claims: “The Ministry didn’t know anything for a year and a half. And when the Minister was informed that we had finished, he knew the plan but he didn’t know the matter, and while the Minister was in agreement, some of his advisors reacted. Completely, let’s say self-interestedly. Why should this big change, which in essence is an internal reform come from the PI and not from the Ministry. Because they had got used to giving orders to the PI, while in this case it was the other way around and there were very many problems with the then general secretary, who tried to trip us up and delayed me by about a year, while I was ready, if he hadn’t delayed me all the books would have reached the schools”.

And on two other levels, those of the PI and the actors, which on this point will be examined together since there is a strong interweaving, there were reactions. In fact, the reactions are not uniform, in other words they depend on the subject matter of each book. For example, one author who was responsible for the textbook for religious studies complains that the framework restricts him as a writer and he could not write that which he himself wanted, as he had done in the past: “You couldn’t avoid it. The instructions were precise. That was a mistake. You put creative limits on a writer. Anyway, after we fought with the PI, we found a way and like the Trojan Horse we made a few small changes […] For 4 months we were coming and going and fighting over this matter”.

Another author (social and political studies) revealed another kind of intervention. She refers to local interests and their pressure in the production of school knowledge, at the point where they can reject inconvenient proposed activities: “There was and there still is great control and pressure from the local interests. In other words, for the social and political education book, we faced a very big problem with the mobile phone companies. Just because we have an action, in which, in essence we call on the children. More precisely in the textbook of the fifth class of primary school, we had an activity about mobile phone aerials in which in a neighbourhood, in a school, with the presence of teachers and parents, a pupil discovers the mobile phone aerials and acts for their removal on account of the citizens’ health.…and also when the book came out…a lot of schools did the action I have to say, because there were aerials in many urban areas. The PI was bothered by these companies’ lawyers who said there would be charges brought. If you compare the first book with the republished one, you’ll see that this issue has been smoothed over. Basically, they told us to remove it and we refused and that’s why I say we had a lot of freedom. Because if you think about it, we gave the PI an intellectual product which ceases to be yours, it becomes theirs. In other words, they could essentially remove the chapter without asking us. However, they asked us and they allowed us in a way to form something a little lighter-we understood them too-so there wouldn’t be any risk of anyone turning against them. So then, it is the interests that shape the content of the books”.

A separate chapter in the whole process was the Greek Church. In fact, its reactions exceeded its institutional role in the authorship of the school textbooks for religious studies. We recorded two reactions regarding the textbooks for citizenship and history. Concerning citizenship, an author told us: “However, during the writing of the specific textbook, I realized that as an author you don’t have a lot of opportunity to put across or to express that which you see that scientifically you should. There are many interventions, criticism from bodies that you wouldn’t even think should intervene. Like, when we were writing the chapter on the Church. I felt very bad, when the individual responsible for the subject, because I had made it interreligious, with a religious dialogue without leaving Orthodoxy out of the picture, given that multiculturalism is something we see a lot in schools today. And why shouldn’t the immigrant be able to find some elements from his religion and so on. They returned this chapter to us, with the indication that it had been given to Church bodies and they didn’t agree with what we had written. And we had to write in line with specific suggestions”.

The most well-known occurrence, in the sense that it became a central issue on the political scene, was the reaction of the Church to the history textbook. The reactions were so strong that the book was withdrawn in 2007. An interviewee told us: “The first cases of analytical criticism and approaches with negative indications began in February 2006, with the first publications in Free Press ³ . These, with jibes at the educational political correctness of the book, as well as at the members of the writing team, set the tone for the first piece of public criticism. After that in the summer of 2006 there followed publications in a Cypriot newspaper. And of course, the whole thing started to get flesh and bones at the beginning of September 2006 with the intervention of the Archbishop. From then on there was a group of teachers, active in religious organizations, who took against the book and from other sources and from the internet and from other means that they possess […] And the book was in the hands of the children. It was in the schools. So the book began, through the television, to be vilified by the Church in terms of the role of the Church and at some point the word of the ‘scrummage’ was retracted. From then on, the road of public battle had many tentacles. And of course, there were voices in the Mass Media supporting the book […] At some point this grew too much and with a jibe in March 2007, when the Academy of Athens mediated, proposing the changes that it proposed. The political leadership mobilized behind this text, wanting to appease the public debate. So then, the decision was made to re-publish the book with changes and modifications, which the writing team itself would propose and plan and implement. So we arrived at the summer of 2007, when the writing team had handed in the second revised edition with all the elements that they believed they could change, in the way they thought was right. It was of course the political will of the Ministry too of the time. Elections came along, which had a taste of the school textbook. Even on the debate panels, the school textbook was a part of the conversation and the discussion. And of course, we arrived openly, while the draft of the book had been sent to the SBO for publication, the publication stopped and it was withdrawn with a decision of the then Minister of Education”. The aforementioned reveals precisely the reaction of the Church to an attempt to reduce its influence on the writing of school textbooks and the role it assigns itself as custodian of national identity, a national identity in which the Church itself holds a central position.

Ultimately, what was the degree of policy transfer?

Europeanization is not a simple top-down process. European policy seems to be more a roadmap than a detailed procedure of concrete and inflexible steps to apply. From supranational to national level, the state, as the main actor, seems to have the possibility to adapt, to filter or to interpret European policy. National politics look more important and in any case create the impression that they are able to ‘nationalize’ European policy. Moreover, in its passage from national to local level, nationalized European policy appears to be treated by the main local actors – individuals or collectives – mainly in order to maximize their particular interests. Of course, the shift from national policy to nationalized European policy modifies the previous local conditions and power games. Some actors manage to be integrated into the new system, some others are marginalized and new actors appear.

It is clear from the previous analysis that during the policy transfer (EU priorities that deserved its economic support during their implementation) there were things that changed and others that did not change after reactions, some of which were publicized and others not, and certainly it was not only the Greek Church that was involved in these but also big businesses, like the mobile phone companies. The final outcome seems to be mixed, certainly it is not like it was but nor is it something new, although it does contain new elements. This leads us to claim that we have a typical case of a hybrid situation. In other words, while it is by no means certain that policy transfer, at least in the EU and as far as countries with the characteristics of Greece are concerned, achieves its goal, despite that it does influence and change the long-established schemata for the formation and implementation of policies on a national level.

Why is this of interest 15 years later? Because today the Greek Government appears to want to change school textbooks again, integrating them into the current Community support framework. Consequently, if that happens, by about 2020 we will have new textbooks, produced in the same way. Consequently, it will be interesting for one to follow the implementation and compare the results with the aim of discerning whatever changes there are in the degree of policy transfer.