Knowledge on the Ground: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Educational Activist and Social Movement Learning in Sweden

• In Event: Educational Advocacy: Motivations, Strategies, and Outcomes

Abstract

"Within three decades, the Swedish education system has undergone significant large-scale transformation through the implementation of policies of decentralisation and deregulation. These reforms transferred the financial management of education to local municipalities and created the conditions for school choice reforms, a voucher system, and a quasi-market of municipal and publicly funded, privately managed free schools (Ringarp, 2012; Wiborg, 2010). While the free school movement grows nationally and internationally, with two for-profit companies listed on the stock market (Rönnberg, 2019), municipal schools have seen their student numbers diminished, leading to cuts in personnel and resources and limiting their capacity to provide an equitable education. Furthermore, when a municipal school exceeds its budget, the municipality must give its free schools the equivalent in additional funding (Tankesmedjan, 2020). In response to this educational injustice, grassroots social movements, organised by a range of educational stakeholders (teachers, school leaders and parents), have emerged to defend public education. Additionally, new modes of knowledge activism, to counter the neoliberal narrative, have developed through a progressive think tank, teacher- and school leader-authored publications, and traditional and social media engagement. Most recently, these groups, in alliance with teacher unions, have organised around the findings of a 2020 Social Democrat government-commissioned report, which advocates for changes to the school funding and admissions systems (SOU 2020:28).

Social movements are defined as ‘epistemological communities’ (Scandrett et al., 2010), inherently intertwined with learning and knowledge development. Indeed, social movement learning – the learning that takes places within, about or from social movements – is considered important to organisation and social change (Grenier, 2019; Harley, 2014). However, there is currently limited understanding of knowledge and theory production in social movements from the perspective of those within them (Choudry, 2009).

This research attempts to address this empirical gap by exploring the characteristics, defining issues, and learning and knowledge development processes within the current social movements for public education in Sweden. Based on the Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2010; Van Dijk, 2014) of reports, books and webpages, and narrative interviews with four key activists, this paper traces the development of these new sites of educational advocacy. Embedded in a critical realist philosophical paradigm (Archer, 2008; Bhaskar, 1989) and drawing on theories of social movement learning (Choudry, 2009; Choudry and Kapoor, 2010; Harley, 2014), it explores the spaces of movement intellectuals’ learning, their approaches to knowledge activism, and their possibilities for political influence and educational change.

Initial findings, based on document analysis, reveal that activists organised around ideas of the welfare state and the quality of teachers’ working lives. Additionally, knowledge production underlines the significance of research-based evidence, knowledge exchange, and alliance-building (Bascia and Stevenson, 2017). This research makes an empirical and theoretical contribution to research on social movement learning through knowledge produced on the ground. It is significant at a time when professional knowledge is undermined by populist rhetoric and public expenditure is likely to be further affected by the financial consequences of the pandemic. Grassroots movements in other jurisdictions might also learn from these Swedish movements’ experiences.
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Author

• Alison Milner, Aalborg University