Global Influences of the 2013 Danish Public School Reform

• In Event: Policy knowledge networks and lesson drawing in an era of international comparison

Proposal

Over the last decades, Danish education policymaking has increasingly looked to the international community for inspiration and the public school system has gradually changed towards a culture of more accountability and testing, less teacher autonomy and more professionalized school management (Egelund, 2008; Rasmussen, 2016). International large-scale assessments such as TIMMS, PIRLS and PISA have sparked public and political debates concerning the state of the Danish education system. Similar to the PISA shocks in Norway and Germany (Baird et al., 2011; Lundahl & Waldow, 2009), Danish policymakers have focused on reforming the education system with reference to mediocre performance results of Danish students combined with a relatively high public spending on education. As a consequence, several educational reforms have been initiated in Denmark since the change of the millennium: new common goals of the primary school curriculum (2003), the introduction of national assessment tests in primary schools (2006) and finally the public school reform of 2013 (EVA, 2012, 2015).

This paper focuses on the public school reform of 2013, which seems to have been heavily influenced by international trends as well. For instance, in an interview in 2012 the former Social Democratic minister of education, Christine Antorini, expressed that the reform was largely based on an ‘inspirational’ trip made by representatives of the Danish parliament to Ontario in Canada (Aisinger, 2012). Furthermore, in the proposal of the school reform, the results of international large-scale assessments are mentioned several times as justification for the introduction of longer school days and a focus on language, math and science (Danish Ministry of Education, 2013). Among other changes the school reform included an increased number of school hours, supportive teaching and stronger school management (Danish Government, 2013).

In this paper, we examine the role of evidence in the process behind the 2013 Danish public school reform. Using a bibliometric analysis of key policy documents, we analyze the references in the preparatory policy documents of the public school reform of 2013 in order to map the knowledge base on which the reform was constructed. In particular, we analyze the annual reports of the Chairmanship of the Council for Quality Development of the Public School from 2007 to 2012 whose task it was to “follow and evaluate the quality of the public school (…) and advice the minister of education” (Skolerådet, 2013, p. 4). We analyze the following questions:

• What was the knowledge base underpinning the Danish public school reform?
• Which kinds of knowledge went into the construction of the Danish public school reform?
• How was this knowledge used to justify the need for educational reform of the Danish public school system?

Authors

• Trine Juul Reder, Aalborg University

• Christian Ydesen, Aalborg University