A history of educational policy-making and referencing to international large scale assessments

• In Event: Comparative Reasoning in the Making of Competitive Educational Systems: On International Assessments, Policy, and Society

Proposal

In this paper we answer the panel questions on processes leading to a comparativistic turn, and their implications, by focusing on reasoning in educational policy-making and its referencing. By using retrodiction, meaning an explanation based on traces of the past in the present (von Wright, 1983), we try to make visible national and globalizing conditions and tendencies that have triggered a comparativistic turn. The specific case is Sweden as an example of reformism (Rip, 2002) in a social democratic welfare-state regime, i.e. balancing of market forces at the same time as the individual is provided with a social safety net (Esping Andersen, 1990).

The paper starts with the present. Low PISA-results in 2009 came to be used as rhetorical evidence of a failure of the so called social democratic school sector, including its assumed liaisons with educational researchers. Leading politicians turned to OECD for help and government commissions were initiated to accomplish changes with references to OECD’s answers. Intertwined globalizing relations between discursive powers of policy, research, and international comparisons, together with weakened political parties as a consequence of the last elections, opened up for an educational ‘Agora’ of a new kind. A range of national and international actors forcefully entered the educational scene. ‘International comparisons’ based on ILSA came to be utilized as a main reference in the making of an education of a new kind.

One trace is a far-reaching governing by results that started around the turn of the millennium. ‘Professional accountability’ came to be utilized as a main reference in the making of a new education. This was a response to reforms of the 1990s that had created uncertainties. Thus. another trace is the ‘release of market forces’. With references to a globalization and the knowledge society, a far-reaching deregulation and decentralization was started to create balance. The market became a main reference in the making of a new education. The years around 1990 implied a final ending of the ‘social engineering’ based on regulative State interventions. Thus., a third trace refers to the post-World-War II period when ‘Mobilization of the individual’s resources’, including freedom from family bonds and market principles, came to be utilized as a main reference in the making of a new education. This was based on research carried out and developed by Torsten Husén and others and that formed a foundation for ILSA.

Taken together, the comparativistic turn is part of a fundamental shift in education policy making in a changing social democratic welfare-state regime: From individual freedom through the state, to individual freedom from the state.

Authors

• Gun-Britt Wärvik, University of Gothenburg

• Daniel Pettersson, University of Gävle