With schools and universities closing across Europe, the Covid-19 lockdown left actors in the field of education battling with the unprecedented challenge of finding a meaningful way to keep the wheels of education turning online. The sudden need for digital solutions across the field of education resulted in the emergence of a variety of digital networks and collaborative online platforms. In this joint article from scholars around Europe, we explore the Covid-19 lockdowns of physical education across the European region, and the different processes of emergency digitalization that followed in their wake. Spanning perspectives from Italy, Germany, Belgium, and the Nordic countries, the article’s five cases provide a glimpse of how these processes have at the same time accelerated and consolidated the involvement of various commercial and non-commercial actors in public education infrastructures. By gathering documentation, registering dynamics, and making intimations of the crisis as it unfolded, the aim of the joint paper is to provide an opportunity for considering the implications of these accelerations and consolidations for the heterogeneous futures of European education.
This paper introduces the concept of 'soft privatisation'. Departing from a review of the literature examining the growing participation of private sector actors in the provision of public education across Europe, the paper investigates how privatisation has emerged in the context of the European Union as a phenomenon embedded in, rather than a replacement of, public education. Through analysing the creation of a European education areaand the move of European education from being a driver for economic growth to becoming an Economy in itselfthe paper argues that privatisation in Europe is deeply imbricated with the network modes of public education governance characteristic of the European Union and the Bologna Process. These entanglements have implications both for the transparency and political accountability of private sector actors involved in public education.
Purpose: Building on a qualitative case study of parents and tutors previously involved with a large commercial tutoring company, this article investigates experiences of private tutoring in Denmark. Design/Approach/Methods: The case study centers around an affective analysis of eight interviews—three parents and five tutors—centering on why and how the interlocutors decided to hire services from or work for the tutoring company. Findings: The article illustrates how the parents’ and tutors’ experiences of private tutoring are colored by a series of affective patterns that set the tone for how the parents and tutors make sense of and feel about the phenomenon. Three patterns are drawn forth which together sustain the “mood” in which the parents and tutors encounter the tutoring phenomenon: teacher intimacy, institutional professionalism, and nonexclusivity. Originality/Value: The article provides an empirically grounded perspective on the stakes of commercializing education in spaces characterized by egalitarian ideals in education.
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