Session Information
23 SES 02 D, Media and Education Policy Making (Part 2)
Paper Session continued from 23 SES 01 D
Contribution
In the contemporary “audit society” (Power 1999), scrutiny, evaluation and control are prominent means of governing institutions, organisations and professionals (Dahler-Larsen 2011). The field of Higher Education is no exception. Under the umbrella of New Public Management, different evaluative activities are linked to and promoted by developments entailing increased marketization and privatization of public welfare in both Europe and beyond. Within such a neo-liberal agenda, HE is increasingly conceived as a form of private good (Englund 1996), which positions students as consumers and quality evaluations as means to assist, account, regulate and even fortify these relationships. The media is an important actor in this context, aligned with a public mission to scrutiny and at the same time providing powerful “interpretative frameworks for our understanding of society as a whole” (Hjarvard 2013:3).
In 2011, Sweden introduced a highly debated evaluation framework for assessing quality in HE focusing on results and student outcomes (Segerholm et al 2014). Implementing this framework led to Sweden being excluded from ENQA, European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, of which Sweden originally had been one of the founding members (Segerholm & Hult 2015). Among other things, the Swedish HE evaluation framework did not consider HEIs internal quality assurance procedures. It only focused on student results and outcomes, which was criticized by ENQA and turned out to be an infected issue in the Swedish domestic debate (Lindgren & Rönnberg 2015).
The evaluation framework targeted programmes of study that could lead to the award of a first or second-cycle qualification and resulted in a final overall grade: Very high, high or inadequate quality. The lowest grade meant a follow up by the Agency, with the possibility to revoke the entitlement to award degree qualifications (UKÄ 2014). The evaluations in full, and not only the final grade, were then made public on the Agency’s website. Needless to say, media reporting on such evaluations are of course ‘high stakes’: Attracting future students are vital and the HE institution’s (HEI’s) reputation are under potential threat, depending not only on the actual outcome of the evaluation, but also - importantly enough - on how the outcome is reported and represented by the media and thereby transmitted to the wider public and thereby to different HEI stakeholders.
This paper is interested in exploring media-policy interactions in the governing of Swedish higher education. More specifically, the paper aims to describe and analyse local newspaper reporting on the results of national quality evaluations of study programmes. The paper will initially a) map the attempted framing of the evaluation results made by the HEIs, via website announcements and press releases from both the HEIs and the evaluation agency UKÄ, and secondly b) analyse if and how these framings from the HEIs are (re)presented by the local media. A central question concerns to what extent local media is reinforcing or even promoting the representation attempted by HEIs, or if it is challenged and how this can be understood.
Theoretically, the paper draws on literatures related to media-education governing interactions, including a) work of governance and governing (Clarke 2015; Bell et al 2010; Clarke & Newman 2009), b) literature conceptualising the relationship between media, society and policy/politics (Thorbjørnsrud 2015; Hjarvard 2013; Strömbäck 2008) and c) literature more specifically targeting the media in the context of education as a policy field (Rawolle 2010; Thomas 2009; Anderson 2007; Gewirtz, Dickson & Power 2004).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Anderson GL (2007) Media’s impact on educational policies and practices: Political spectacle and social control. Peabody Journal of Education 8(1), 103–120. Bell, S, Hindmoor, A and Mols F (2010) Persuasion as governance: A state-centric relational perspective. Public Administration 88 (3), 851-870. Bergström, G & Boréus, K (2005) Textens mening och makt. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Clarke, J (2015) Inspection: Governing at a distance. In S. Grek & J. Lindgren (Eds) Governing By Inspection. London: Routledge. Dahler-Larsen, P (2011) Evaluation Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Dahler-Larsen, P (2012) Constitutive effects as a social accomplishment: A qualitative study of the political in testing. Education Inquiry 3 (2), 171–186. Englund, T (1996) Utbildning som "public good" eller "private good"? In T Englund (ed) Utbildningspolitiskt systemskifte? Stockholm: HLS. Hjarvard, S (2013) The mediatization of culture and society. London: Routledge. Gewirtz S, Dickson M and Power S (2004) Unravelling a ‘spun’ policy: A case study of the constitutive role of ‘spin’ in the education policy process. Journal of Education Policy 19(3), 321–342. Lindgren J & Rönnberg, L (2015) The Emotional politics of Policy Processes. Governing in and by Quality Evaluation Reforms in Swedish Higher Education. Paper presented at ECER in Budapest, September 7-11, 2015. Newman, J and Clarke, J (2009) Publics, politics and power: Remaking the public in public services. London: Sage. Power, M (1999) The Audit Society. Rituals of Verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rawolle S (2010) Understanding the mediatisation of educational policy as practice. Critical Studies in Education 51(1), 21–39. Segerholm, C & Hult, A (2015). Manoeuvring the Euroepan Quality Landscape: the significance of ENQA policy in governing Swedish higher education. Paper presented at ECER in Budapest 8-11 September, 2015. Segerholm, C, Hult, A, Lindgren, J, Olofsson, A, & Rönnberg, L (2012). Utvärdering som styrning av högre utbildning i Sverige. Application to the Swedish Research Council. Vetenskapsrådet, Dnr 721-2012-5424. Segerholm, C, Rönnberg, L, Lindgren, J, Hult, A & Olofsson, A (2014). Changing Frameworks, Changing Expectations? The Case of Swedish Higher Education. Paper presented ECER in Porto, September 2-5, 2014. Strömbäck J (2008) Four Phases of Mediatization. International Journal of Press/Politics 13, 228–246. Thomas S (2009) Newspapers on Education Policy: Constructing an Authoritative Public Voice on Education. In: Fitzgerald R and Housley W (eds) Media, Policy and Interaction. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 205-223. Thorbjørnsrud, K (2015) Mediatization of Public Bureaucracies: Administrative versus Political Loyalty. Scandinavian Political Studies 38 (2), 179–197.
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