Why do national organisations proliferate in practically all areas of policymaking and organisational life, and why are they involved in supranational networks and organisations? The article approaches this mystery by exploring how organisations are built and used as authorities in domestic policymaking. The empirical focus is on the establishment of the institution of children's ombudsman and its uses in influencing Finnish child policy. The theory developed in the article suggests that organisations are accumulations of authority, here termed epistemic capital, which is the primary reason that they are established and sustained. Once these are institutionalised, various actors can use the authority of organisations to legitimate their policy objectives. The case of independent children's rights institutions shows how this mechanism operates in child policy. The Finnish office of the ombudsman for children has worked actively to become an established ontological and moral authority in child policy, and it has also attempted to utilise the mandate and authority of the United Nations and the Convention on the Rights of the Child to pressure the state into more childfriendly policy decisions.
In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which is an international comparative learning assessment measuring young people's knowledge and skills, Finland has been ranked at the top in the two rounds conducted and reported so far. In this article, the authors examine the discourses within which Finland's PISA results have been interpreted by the teaching profession in Finland, and how these interpretations of Finland's PISA success together with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's PISA may affect national education policy in the future. The main question posed is how do teachers interpret excellence so as to support their attempt to improve their working conditions, when the international success of Finnish education could also be used as proof that all is well. The data comprise editorials published in the official organ of the teachers' trade union in Finland, Opettaja-lehti. The analysis shows that in the editorials, success is explained mainly by the expertise of Finnish teachers and their university education. However, the editorials also argue that there is a discrepancy between the good PISA results and the present meagre investments in the education system, the deteriorating school network and the poor appreciation of the education system in Finland. Thus, the editorials use the national PISA results to demand more resources for the Finnish education system.
This study examines the Finnish media debate surrounding the OECD-led PISA Study during the periods 2001-2009 and 2013-2014. The empirical focus of the study is on how debaters dissatisfied with Finnish education have justified their criticism in the context of debating PISA and how the justifications used have changed as Finland's PISA ranking has changed. The study argues that as Finland's ranking in PISA 2012 apparently deteriorated, this lent great support to the critical arguments voiced in public in Finland. Criticism no longer needed to be based on the proclamation in public of the international success of the Finnish education system which had previously been an integral part of the PISA discussion. Instead it was legitimate to note the deterioration in Finland's PISA ranking. This poorer ranking was used as an authority with other sources of legitimate information when proposing what various reforms Finland should undertake. Of especially great help in publicizing such views was that the national political elite, which had long succeeded in dominating the national public PISA debate, were unable in the face of the changed ranking to offer convincing explanations for this change in the ranking or to propose what measures should be undertaken in consequence. That is, the obvious decline in the PISA ranking and the inability of the previously so well placed political elite to manage the public debate on the changed PISA rankings fueled a critical discussion on education which was rhetorically much more challenging in the earlier publicity surrounding PISA.
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