Over recent decades we have witnessed a growing emphasis on educational quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) around the globe. The trend, not only to intensify evaluative measurements, but also to publish school-specific indicators, has become visible also in the Nordic countries. In Sweden, Denmark and Norway, the governments have launched webportals, in which various indicators can be observed and compared at the school level. However in Finland, the data is published only at a general level.In this article we compare the discourses of educational experts on comprehensive school QAE policies and practices in four Nordic countries, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. Our aim is to clarify how the discursive practices reflect the current evaluation and publication policies and how the discourses construct the rationales of educational governance. We have approached our data (58 interviews) from the framework of discursive institutionalism, which sees both the underlying ideas and beliefs, and the discursive practices as the dynamic factors behind institutional change.We argue, that in all the Nordic countries these discursive practices take place in a balancing discursive triad between global competence, neo-liberal accountability pressures and the traditions of the egalitarian Nordic comprehensive school-however with varying country-specific rationales on school accountability and transparency.
Throughout history educational leaders have looked to other countries and have attempted to learn by borrowing useful examples to implement in their own educational systems. As recent comparative policy research shows, processes of policy lending and borrowing have their own socio-historically defined dynamics. In this paper, the authors approach the use of reference countries through narratives of educational experts in Finland, Norway and Sweden. By comparing how international influences are used in stories about basic education, this research constructs a core narrative of a moving Nordic landscape. This landscape indicates both recognised and acknowledged policy borrowing relations in the past, as well as a changing orientation to preferred and avoided reference countries in the present. While new countryspecific performance indicators such as PISA have widened the landscape of reference countries at an official level, culturally mediated images seem to redefine how reference countries are observed in everyday semantics.
Being a teacher is an esteemed position in Finland. Finnish class teachers are academically educated professionals in five-year masters level programmes, where only a small percentage of applicants are accepted. However, in recent years, more teachers have reported having intentions to leave the profession, and there has been a slight decline in the number of applicants to teacher education programmes too. In this chapter, we elaborate Finnish expectations of teaching as a profession, set by society on the one hand, and teachers themselves on the other. Society sets both explicit and implicit expectations for teachers: teachers’ work is defined by a national curriculum as well as current policy aims, but is also moulded by the surrounding culture and norms. Teachers themselves are likely to have expectations of a personally fulfilling career; expectations that have begun to form already in their years as students in school, observing and learning what teachers and school are like. Schools, ideally, function to both maintain and reform society. We argue that expectations concerning teachers—normative expectations learned through observation in particular—act as part of the way schools maintain society. We ask whether Finnish teacher education today does enough to help teachers to assume their teacher role in society broadly and navigate the constantly changing field of education.
Artikkelissa tutkimme inkluusiosta käytyä päivälehtikeskustelua 2009–2019. Lähestymme keskustelua osana yhteisestä koulusta käytyä diskursiivista kamppailua. Tutkimme kamppailua analysoimalla inkluusion käsitteellistä muotoutumista, positioita, joista käsin kamppailuun on päässyt osallistumaan, millaisia argumentteja siinä on hyödynnetty sekä millaisiin kategorioihin oppilaita on asetettu Helsingin sanomien artikkeliteksteissä (n=187). Näin vastaamme tutkimuskysymyksiin: miten kamppailua yhteisestä koulusta on käyty julkisessa inkluusiokeskustelussa ja ketä varten kamppailussa rakentuva yhteinen koulu on? Tutkimus osoittaa, että inkluusiota lähestytään käytännöllisenä kysymyksenä, ja sen eettis-filosofinen lähtökohta jää vaimennetuksi, jolloin inkluusiokriittisistä sävyistä on muodostunut keskustelun valtavirta. Samalla kamppailun huomion kohteeksi asettuu erityisoppilaaksi ja maahanmuuttotaustaiseksi kategorisoitu oppilasyksilö, jonka läsnäolo yhteisessä koulussa käsitteellistyy haastavaksi.
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