The Rhetoric of a Reform: The Construction of ‘Public’,‘Management’ and the ‘New’ in Norwegian Education Reforms of the 1990s

Abstract

This article presents a critical rhetorical analysis of the governing and reform ideology of the Norwegian school system of the 1990s. It uses Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies as a critical resource in the reading of the reforms, and discusses some of the consequences of the regime's models of leadership and public management for important pedagogical qualities of the school system.