Session Information
26 SES 12 B, Nordic Superintendents: Agents in a Broken Chain (Part 2)
Symposium continues from 26 SES 11 B
Contribution
The focus of this chapter is to analyse and discuss the changes in roles and power-relations and attitudes of superintendents especially in relation to municipal school boards and school leaders. The text focuses on how international trends have affected the governess of schools in the four Nordic countries. Compared to other parts of Europe the Nordic countries and school systems appear very similar. Comparing Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland with each other they display however differences as well. A traditional dominant discourse, ideally deep embedded in profession’s identities, was that civil servants served democracy, the guardians of democracy. They were seen as neutral actors in ideal, public sector bureaucracies. Transitions in educational governance from the mid of the nineties and onward not least with inspirations from OECD have featured changes relations be-tween elected politicians and professionals at all levels. Today the distinction on govern-ance/administration is increased on commercial logic know from marked logics. There is a clear tendency to influence the distinction between elected politicians and professionals at all levels of the governance chain: at institutional level the professionals are increasing operational and at municipal level they are in general more generic managers. Local politicians are made more stra-tegically and less institutional/subject specific. The chapter argue that essentially the reformations cannot argues to be less democratic in a formally sense of the position, but not the less has affected dynamic within governess of school toward a more clear top-down structure.
References
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