Structuring School Reform Policy with Evidence: The Inter-Mediational Role of Knowledge Sources and Arguments in Norwegian Policy Documents

• In Event: Education debates in Nordic countries: local realities, global impact

Proposal

In Europe, as in other parts of the world, systematic inquiries have played a crucial role in the nation states’ efforts of reforming public education. However, in recent decades, along with globalization processes, various stakeholders have raised serious concerns about the legitimacy of such inquiries. Both in media and in research, policy actors raise critique towards professional-bureaucratic politics, arguing for evaluation-based decision-making that draw on both national and international research evidence (Addey, Sellar, Steiner-Khamsi, Lingard, & Verger, 2017; Maroy, 2012; Wiseman, 2010). By examining how national authorities have made policy into an evidence-based pursuit of ministries and their governmental bodies, this paper examines the institutional responsiveness to this critique. In particular, we are interested in how policy makers and experts have selected and mediated research-based knowledge and other knowledge sources to inform argumentation and legitimize decision-making processes.
By enquiring two white and eight green papers published by the national authorities in Norway, we ask: How do policy makers and experts draw on evidence and expertise in issuing school reform for basic education? How do they formulate options for school reform by deploying knowledge through argumentative forms of reasoning? How do various types of evidence structure these options by connecting policy realms and systems?

First, the paper begins with establishing the policy context, the theoretical background for our study and a typology that classifies various knowledge sources we use for analytical purposes. It presents some contextual information about the school reform we examined, gives an overview of the bibliographic meta-data that we collected and the research strategies we used to examine the mediation and use of policy-relevant knowledge. The ten reports that we selected for the study, relate to Norway’s most recent school reform that the state authorities launched in 2017 and which they put formally into effect from August 2020. The reform sets out to renew the curricula for the core subjects in primary and secondary education, along with a new introductory part that aimed at establishing a coherent framework for organizing and assessing teaching and learning in schools.
The part also introduces perspectives from sociological system theory based on Luhmann (2000) and associated scholars (Andersen, 2019). This theory helps us to examine how texts are formulated and provide semantical translations within policy-making processes. Through a semantical analysis, we demonstrate how documents serve as mediating links between thematic areas in school reform policy, such as curriculum and assessment, and between policy processes and systems, such as science, politics and education.

Second, the chapter continues with presenting findings and interpretations. We present the frequency and distribution of prominent references in our data set; that is results obtained from a bibliometric network analysis (Baek et al., 2018). By looking into the ways two white papers and eight green papers refer to various knowledge sources, for example, research reports, reviews and governmental documents, we demonstrate how policymakers use bibliographic references for legitimizing arguments for reforming basic education in Norway. In our analysis we identify how some references acquire a prominent role by being referenced by several sources within and across policy realms. This list of the most often co-cited references contains meta analyses (Hattie 2009, Durlak et al. 2011) and a configurational analysis (Nordenbo et al. 2008), empirical research studies (Aasen et al. 2009, Nordahl & Hausstätter 2009), and a number of governmental reports. We also uncover their prominence by mapping if these or other knowledge sources are frequently in-text referenced and thereby influential within translations made by the authors. This in-depth enquiry of text-segments in the two white papers demonstrates how state authorities used the most-cited sources to prepare for decision-processes within the parliament.

Third, we present the semantical analysis of how text segments within the two white papers translate knowledge sources through argumentative modes of reasoning. These two documents prepared for political decision making within the Norwegian parliament. Here we analyse how policymakers formulated options for school reform by postulations and aspirations that link structures, processes and outcomes (Colebatch & Hoppe, 2018, p. 6). According to Luhmann (1990) a medium, such as a policy document can deploy forms of reasoning by linking these components of the policy process via input/output schemes. By these schemes policy formulation and translation processes become programmatic by character.

Fourth, we question if the most cited and prominent knowledge has influenced the semantical repertoire of themes and arguments and thereby the configuration of the decision programmes built into the national school reform. The examination shows how arguments put forward by policy makers and experts for renewing education are highly purposively oriented along with an international and global interest to base reforms on evidence. However, they do not represent a purposive program form by solely referencing numbers and measurable standards. Instead, arguments are also normatively motivated, based on ideas of good schooling as approached within scientific literature. Arguments are also deeply rooted in national, governmental knowledge sources about earlier reforms, which appears as an interesting counterweight to global references in policy-making processes.

Finally, based on a comparison of how references are used within and across two main thematic areas covered by the white papers, we conclude that evidence has a structuring impact on the formation of policy realms and thereby options for school reforms. The empirical investigation shows that recommendations within the white papers are shaped by the type of knowledge source policy makers make use of, which policy realms they refer to and how they translate knowledge through argumentative modes of reasoning. We also demonstrate how policy documents mediate evidence that structurally connects the political system with the system of education. This leads to a discussion whether and how professional knowledge is restrained or constricted by evidence-based reform within the education sector.

Authors

• Bernadette Hörmann, University of Oslo

• Kirsten Sivesind, University of Oslo